Britney wrinkled her button nose. “There’s no maximum either. And please don’t use the word intercourse in my presence again.”
Ariadne took a sip of her cosmopolitan. “Is it that bad?”
I buried my head in my hands, pretty sure my face was flushing red by this point. My Korean American parents didn’t drink alcohol very often, but when they did, their faces also flushed. Thank you, genetics.
“It has nothing to do with that,” I said. “I don’t like to rush into things. I rushed with Jae and Theo, and look where it got me.”
A water bottle slammed against the tiny table. I raised my head and caught Macey’s angry look. “That had nothing to do with you. They were both dicks.”
Tugging at the ends of my hair, I mentally gave her that point. My ex-boyfriends Jae and Theo were both dicks, but I put up with them for as long as I could. Even now, I hated thinking about them. Those breakups were messy and honestly, made me feel pretty terrible about myself.
I’m sorry.Those were the only words Landon wrote in his letter to me.
That’s what men always said during a breakup. At least that’s what I thought until Theo cheated on me and never apologized. Jae never said it either. During those two breakups, I was told without a doubt that the breakup was my fault. Never mind the fact I was the one who dumped them.
Theo acknowledged that he should’ve ended things with me before he slept around, but“I was a nice girl and he didn’t want to ruin things.”Which confused me until he clarified that he liked me, but he needed to get his satisfaction somewhere else sincewe didn’t sleep together often. Jae had just laughed and said he would be better off without me.
Xavier at least was patient. Nice. Understanding.
Okay, my bar for men was pretty low.
“If I ever see them again, I will cut off their dicks and feed them to the rats in the subway.” Britney seethed.
Ariadne gathered her curly hair into a ponytail. “There are rats in the subway?”
“Don’t look too hard,” Britney answered. “Back on topic. Xavier is cute, maybe a little too preppy for my tastes, but I’m sure he’s way better in bed than your exes.”
I tried to hide my wince by finishing off my cocktail that was now 90 percent melted ice. It was possible that I fibbed to my friends about sex with Theo and Jae. When they asked me how it was, I responded “bad.” I never explainedwhy, though, so technically, it was a lie of omission.
My fierce friends had immediately jumped to my side, filling in the gaps I couldn’t stand to discuss. The sex must be bad because Theo and Jae were bad at sex, they assumed. I appreciated their faith in me, no matter how misplaced it was.
The truth was neither Theo nor Jae was bad in bed. Before Theo decided to sleep with every other woman in the neighborhood, he was very dedicated to his tasks. He always tried to make it good for me, to make me come first, but he rarely succeeded.
As for Jae…well, Jae was hotandexperienced. He had a lot of fancy tricks, ones that I knew I should’ve been impressed by, but coaxing me out of my head wasn’t a skill you could pluck like a rabbit out of a hat.
Because that was where I was all the time, especially during sex. I was hyper aware of everything that happened, constantly noticing every look and touch. It wasn’t that the touches felt wrong, but they never felt right. I felt distanced from my body,like it wasn’t solely mine, and I was looking down at it, confused, just like a partner in bed.
The worst part was the constant thinking.Does he like this? Am I moving enough? Where do I put my hands? How do I tell him he’s not where he thinks he is? Did I miss a spot shaving?
I’d known for a long time that there was something wrong with me. It felt like most women of twenty-five were excited by their lovers or enchanted at the thought of going out with the newest person they matched with on a dating app, and I was the odd one out. It wasn’t that I didn’t like sex, but I could only like it with the right people.
Dating was a similar concept. For a few years, I’d avoided it completely. I learned from an early age that men who had to compete with my solitude always lost. I was my own best company.
But I couldn’t live that way forever.
That was the real truth behind those two breakups. It was a wound that would always be raw or a bruise that wouldn’t heal. Sex stressed me out, so I avoided it. I would make up any excuse to steer clear of the lackluster between-the-sheets experiences. My avoidance drove Theo to cheat and it made Jae hate me.
I never had to eschew Landon, though.
Maybe it was because I loved him back then, or maybe because he wasLandon,which could have been found in the thesaurus of my life undergood. Unfortunately, he was an even worse dick for abandoning me.
Apparently, he also took my last chance of orgasming with a partner.
Macey leaned forward, empathy in her brown eyes. “Kira?”
I snapped out of it, dragging myself back to the conversation. “Right. Yes.”
Ariadne let out a soft sigh, her gaze flicking between the two of us. “Must be nice to be in a successful relationship.”
