“What difference does that make?”
“The difference of having some context for your experience. If you were both virgins, everything could have gone exactly as it’s meant to and neither of you would know.”
I press my thumb into the centre of her palm, focusing on the small point of massage rather than the larger threat of what I want to say. “It wasn’t normal.”
“Why? What happened?”
And now I’m flummoxed, wondering where to start. At the beginning will take too long and at the end will sound too rough and I never,never, should have embarked on this stupidity to begin with.
I blame the late hour and the shock and the throbbing wound on the side of my head and the loneliness that I feel and keep trying to pretend I don’t. The knowledge that for everyone who means something in my life, I’m an afterthought.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her at first, but I liked it. I enjoyed hearing her in pain. I wanted more.”
“How did you hurt her?”
The question comes back before she’s had time to think things through. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. Any second now, she’ll connect to what I’m saying, and she’ll make her excuses and grab her knife and go back to her bedroom and lie awake, except this time she’ll be lying awake, afraid of me.
I shake my head, but she grabs my chin with her free hand. The one I’m not massaging as though I’m trying to rub a genie free of its confines.
“How?”
This time, I shake my head again but to get it free. It annoys me she maintains her hold. Not letting me escape even this tiny cage. “I’m big, all right? I think that’s… she was ready but it… It didn’t really fit.”
“Can I touch you?”
She sounds like she wants to, is eager to, a temptation by itself. The richness of desire sandwiches between the opposites of curiosity and caution.
Or I’m projecting and she’s husky voiced because she’s getting a cold. “This isn’t a sex therapy session,” I respond after a long pause. “I’m fine with things the way they are, okay?”
“No, you’re not, which isn’t a problem, but since you insist on helping me when I don’t want you to, this is what you get. My help in return, whether or not you like it.”
I’m about to issue an angry retort, when I wrinkle my nose and give a soft chuckle instead. “Never thought I’d be with a beautiful girl on a couch in the dead of night, trying to talk her out of grabbing hold of my willy.”
“Ew. Call it that again and no one’s grabbing hold of anything.”
“Fine. My penis.”
The indrawn breath tells me that’s on thin ice, too.
“Prick? Dick? Rod? Member? Todger? Junk?”
She’s now giggling in earnest, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sound as sweet. I wish I could keep spouting out names, but my mind draws a blank.
“Why? What do you call it?”
“A cock. Because that’s what it is.”
“Ooh. Fancy.”
Her hand presses against my chest and even through the fabric of my t-shirt, it’s enough to make me catch my breath. I already feel closer to her than I have to a girl in forever. There’s never been someone occupy my thoughts so fully, especially when I barely know a thing about her. When our interactions to date have been so strained.
“So, can I?”
I cup the back of her head, closing my eyes and leaning until our foreheads gently press against each other. My heart catches in my chest, releasing with an extra-large thump. Her breath whispers across my cheek, tickling my ear.
The rush of red anger that can twist through my body has never seemed so far away.
“Yes,” I say in a voice that’s barely audible. Her hand shifts from my chest, fingers gently trailing along the curves and ridges of my abdomen, hitting the sparse hairs that strengthen into a thicket as she follows it down, down, down, unfastening my fly and slipping her slim hands inside to find my erection stretching to meet her, to give her welcome as she bends her delicate fingers around its thickening length.
