He looks surprised to see me, but hides it. “No, not really. Just planning to eat this, then study in the library. Liam’s going to join me later. You can join if you want?”
I shake my head. “I’m okay.” Studying with couples isn’t my idea of fun. All that lovey-dovey stuff is gross. “Can we talk?” I fiddle with my plastic container filled with salad.
“Sure,” Curtis says, and we sit down at a wooden table beneath a circle of gum trees.
“Remember on Monday, when you said I seemed freaked out? Well, yeah, I’m kind of freaked out.”
Curtis nods as he eats.
“There’s this person,” I begin. “And we…had sex…twice…during the holidays.”
He stops chewing, his brows jumping up.
“Hey, it’s not that surprising,” I complain, though I’m grateful for the opportunity to ease the tension.
Curtis shakes his head and swallows. “No, no.” He nods. “Go on.”
“Um. So I wanted to keep doing it, for obvious reasons. It was…good.” Heat creeps up my cheeks and I hurry on. “It’s a mutually beneficial thing, right? So I showed up at their house, which isn’t as creepy as it sounds because I’ve been to their house a lot before,” I say. “And, well.”
I look down at my wilted salad. “I asked them if they wanted to. And then they stood up and told me to get out.”
“That’s the whole story?” Curtis says, leaning back, fixing me with an analytical look. “You walk into their bedroom, you both sit down, and then you say it.”
“Uh, pretty much.”
“Pretty much?” Curtis echos. “I need all the context, Jasper.”
“Why does it matter?” I say.
“Because that doesn’t make sense, rejecting you like that. If we’re honest, most people our age won’t reject an offer of consistent sex. And you said it was good.”
“It was.” Oh god, was the sex horrible? Is that why Kieran said no? But then I think of the way his body moved in the queen bed, the things he said, the way his face changed…
No, the sex wasn’t awful.
“So. There’s gotta be something we aren’t seeing,” Curtis concludes. “Tell me everything that happened.”
I use my fork to move around a piece of cucumber. Then I tell him. As I recount every piece of dialogue we said to each other, I remember how nervous I was that afternoon. I blurted out some stuff I didn’t think too hard from about. “Then I said something like, ‘do you know what proposition means?’ Because, you know, it is the word people in the olden days would use. Anyway, then h —they— stood up and told me to get out. So I did. The end,” I finish.
I gather up the courage to look up and meet Curtis’s eyes. He’s staring at me with a heaviness I can’t decipher.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“What?” I repeat.
“Jasper.”
“What?”
Curtis wipes a hand over his face, then sighs, then chuckles a bit.
“How is this funny?” I demand. “I was humiliated. Don’t you…”
Don’t you understand how awful I felt? It affirmed all of my worst fears. Of course, he would say no. Anyone would say no. I’m just me. I’m unlikeable, and undesirable, and that’s why I was still a virgin until two weeks ago. He probably only slept with me out of pity.
No, that’s not right. He only slept with me because I threw a phone at his face, and he got so pissed off, he pinned me down and I was helpless, and yet I was still so touch-deprived that I begged for him, I said, “please”, the first time I’d ever used my manners with him, and then he deigned to sleep with me.
