My fingers itch to have him close. To feel his heartbeat. To get lost in a moment that’s filled with nothing but affection.
It’s no lie that I’ve longed for a partner. That’s what always kept me looking for a girlfriend… until recent years. Iwantthiscloseness. I want to hold and be held. I love hugs and cuddling and kissing.
The problem isn’t in the lack of finding people who want that. The problem has always been that they want it to lead to sex more often than not. Like there’s now some unwritten rule that cuddling must lead to sex.
“What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just be hard for me one time?”
The words make me flinch and I take another deep breath of Arush. Not this time. This is different. Arush is different.
“Just to be clear,” Arush says sleepily, “my hard dick against your leg doesn’t mean I want you to touch it.”
I burst out laughing and press my face further into his chest. Honestly, I hadn’t even noticed. He’s not flush against me. Now that he points it out, though, I can totally feel him poking me.
“Thanks for the disclosure.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I get aroused rather easily, but I prefer not to be touched. That’s not an insult. I hope you know that. It’s hard to explain thatyouarouse me and yet, Idon’twant you to touch me like that.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “In the same vein, not to offend you, but I don’t want to touch you even though I think it’s really… comforting? That you find me arousing.”
“This is probably one of the most satisfying conversations regarding sex I’ve ever had,” Arush says. “Even if that sounds counterintuitive.”
“I was just thinking how cuddling has now become synonymous with leading to sex and how this isn’t that same situation.”
Arush huffs. “Tell me about it. When my boyfriend and I broke up, I was sad and cuddling with my besties and no kidding, those fuckers asked if I needed rebound sex. Jerks.”
I grin. “Were they joking?”
“Yeah, but they were serious, too.”
“They still your besties?”
“Yes. Ironically, so is my ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He nods. “Yep. I think he’s my only true ex. We were together for a while and then his parents matched him with his now wife and here we are.”
“Ouch,” I say, cringing.
Arush chuckles. “Yeah, it was really rough at first. For me. Jash always just takes things as they come; as if they’re all the best things in life. In hindsight, it was a really good decision for both of us, even if I didn’t see that at the time.”
“Not that I’m trying to pry, but was he forced to marry a woman?”
“Oh no,” he says. “Nothing like that. While he never came out and said so, I think he asked for a wife. It’s strange and I still don’t necessarily understand why it happened the way it did. We were together for like three years as we finished school and began university. He brought me home, introduced me as his boyfriend, and his parents seemed to really like me. There wereno comments or looks or anything that made me even remotely uncomfortable, and I was there a lot. One day, he said that his parents were introducing him to the woman they chose, and we were going to need to break up.”
“That sounds…”
“I make it sound more heartless than it was. Hewasupset, but he was also excited. He couldn’t hide that. I don’t think he wanted to break up with me. I think if he’d have been given the option to have us both, he would have. But… Jash was all my firsts, and it’s with him I realized that I don’t like to be touched. Jash not only likes to be touched, he wants to touch a lot. He was never forceful and I think, ultimately, it was that incompatibility that had him agreeing to marrying someone else in the end.”
I sigh and hug him a little tighter. “I’m sorry. That sounds really difficult.”
“It was at the time,” he agrees, shrugging. “I thought he sent a lot of mixed signals by still coming around all the time. I hated that I actually really liked Chaaya, his new wife. I don’t know when, but at some point, I realized we were always much better as friends. He’s always been one of my closest friends, and now the past when we’d been together is a different lifetime. It’s like… it happened, but it was so long ago that… I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“I’m glad it ended happily.”
“I am too. I can’t imagine my life without him.”
“So, you have three close friends?”
