“Well.” I returned to my tea for a moment. This was the price I paid for being loud about all the ways in which Beck aggravated me and quiet about all the ways I was slowly, stunningly obsessed with this man. Perhaps noteverything,but things were a world apart from where they had been when he told me to get my flowers off his property. “We’re going out together tomorrow night.”
“That sounds like a fancy way for you two to scream at each other before getting naked, but okay,” Muffy said. “I like it for you.”
“Hate sex is the best,” Beth said, a sigh ringing in her words. “It’s so much fun to just tear someone apart. I’m officially jealous.”
I stared into my tea, my usual hibiscus. The familiarity was a fine alternative to admitting to my friends—and myself—that this thing with Beck was a tiny bit more than hate sex. And there really wasn’t any hate involved. But I wasn’t prepared to explain that today. It was too early and I was too tired after another night of talking and touching and laughing. And sex. Lots of sex. More in the past few days than I’d ever had.
I mean, Friday night alone was more than I’d ever had.
Every day since then had been a new lesson in the ways my body could experience sexual pleasure. If you’d asked me last week if I’d want to learn anything with my cheek flat on the kitchen table and my feet nowhere near the floor, I would’ve saidhell no.
It was a good thing I embraced change with open arms.
And legs.
It didn’t bother me that my friends thought Beck and I were just working out some frustrations on each other. There were moments when that was exactly how it felt. Like in the shower this morning. And Beck’s bedroom on Saturday before breakfast when he’d had enough of my commentary about his vampire-red ties. Like last night, when we’d started watching a movie and peeled our clothes off piece by piece, completely unhurried until I climbed on top of him and learned how good it could be that way. How I’d rocked against him with confidence so new it tasted bitter and under-ripe on my tongue.
What was a little stress relief between people who couldn’t stop arguing with each other over nothing? No problems there. Perfectly healthy. A happy accident of mismatched parts that fit together in strange yet very nice ways.
But there were moments when it felt like something very different. Like we were staring out into a big blue ocean of possibility and we were all by ourselves, just waiting for the waves to pull us under.
“Hmm.” I glanced up from my tea to find Meara staring at me. “You like him.”
“Well, of course Ilikehim.” I set the mug down. “Liking people is one of the many boxes that must be checked off before I get anyone naked. You know that.”
“I do know that, and I also know you like him more than your standard sex threshold.” She tipped her head to the side, peering at me. “You like him quite a bit more.”
I gathered the papers in front of me and tapped them on the table. I wrote a note about nothing on one of the pages but it gave me a moment to think while looking busy. I shared many, many things with these women, but not everything. They didn’t know about my struggles with intimacy. They didn’t know that my sex life had been cobwebbed over until a few days ago. And they didn’t know that I was hoarding the moments I had with Beck and examining them while we were apart, trying to understand what was happening to me. What was happening to us.
“Maybe,” I said, “but we’re just having fun. Just blowing off steam.”
Meara gave a slow nod as she watched me. “Is that all?”
I wrote a few more notes of nothing and flipped through the pages. “I don’t know, but it’s okay. I don’t have to know. I’m sure something will happen that forces us to figure out what comes next, but until then I’m going to enjoy—” I stopped myself, not sure how to fit the relationship I had with Beck into something as insignificant as hooking up or hate sex. Because it wasn’t insignificant. And I didn’t like calling it hate sex. I didn’t hate him. Not now. Not for a long time. “I just want to have fun with—"
“Onions,” Muffy cut in. “You want to have fun with the onions.”
* * *
"There's a delivery for you."Muffy poked her head inside the office later that morning. "You should come check it out."
"Is it the bottle order? I've been waiting on that."
She glanced toward the front of the café. "I don't think it's bottles."
Something about her tone had me pushing to my feet and following her to the counter. Meara and Beth stood on either side of a sleek black gift box tied with silky silver ribbon, sharing glances that spoke volumes.
"It's for you," Beth said.
"And we want you to open it right now," Meara added.
"Yeah, I need to know what all this fuss is about," Muffy said. "I tipped the delivery guy with cookies. I hope that's okay."
I peered at her. "Why wouldn't it be?"
She shrugged. "I don't know how it is with rich boyfriends and their delivery guys."
I pulled at the ribbon. "I don't have a rich boyfriend."
