“Pen—”
“I have to tell you something.” She lowers her thumb then nibbles on it again. “But I... well, honestly, I should have said this before.”
The way her gaze keeps darting away makes me sit up fully. “What is it? You’re scaring me with that expression. Just tell me, Sweets.”
“I will, I’m just... God. I’m so embarrassed. I can physically feel little flames of it on my skin.” She waves her hands as if trying to beat off that embarrassment. It’s cute. Or would be if she hadn’t just slammed the breaks on us. She’s also clearly uncomfortable, which is the last thing I want her to be.
“Sweetheart, nothing you could say could possibly be—” She shoots me a repressive glare, and I hold up my hands. “Okay, okay. Just... take your time. I’m here.”
“I know. You’re so great. I want you so much—”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Fucking great to hear, honestly. I want you so badly, sweet Pen. More than you know.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Okay. Just let me say this. I can say this...”
Really worried now, I take her hand in mine and find it clammy. “Baby. Just say it.”
“I’m a virgin.”
Oh.Oh.
“Okay.” I frown. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“But you’re—”
“Twenty-two, yes, I’m aware.”
She looks so cutely disgruntled; I bite back a smile.
“I was going to say, ‘so hot.’”
“Oh.” Her cheeks pink as though the idea of me calling her hot is a shock. Honestly, this girl.
“How have you gone this long without anyone trying?”
Pen’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t say no one tried. I just never accepted.”
“Right.” I swallow, stare down at our clenched hands, then meet her defensive gaze. “Is it... didn’t you want to?”
She wrenches her hand away. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is why I was afraid to tell you.”
“Penelope.” I take her hand back and squeeze it gently. “I’m only trying to understand why you’re embarrassed.”
“I’m not. Okay, I am, but I don’twant to be. It’s more I feel like maybe people will think I’m a freak or I don’t know...” She sighs and straightens like she’s facing a tribunal. “It’s like this. I don’t make new relationships easily. It’s hard to let someone in. And it’s not that I think virginity is some sort of precious commodity that I must save for marriage.
“But sex is, for me at least, an act of trust. I’m letting someone touch my body,intomy body, for fuck’s sake. That’s big for me. So it was never going to be a drunken fumble on someone’s couch—”
Inwardly, I wince a bit because that’s exactly what my first time was.
“—I wanted to wait for someone I really liked. Then the whole awful pandemic happened, and I’m not risking a kiss for nothing, never mind going all the way—”
“Hold on.” I lean forward, peering at her glassy eyes. “A kiss?”
She flushes rose red. “Ah, yes. I mean, kissing hasn’t been... That is to say, if I’d liked someone enough to kiss them, I probably would have liked them enough to have sex with them, I guess.”
A certain sort of horror blooms in my gut as I figure things out. “You never kissed anyone?”
