“But…” she sings, “it sounds like you’d be pleased if the peeping penis next door played professor to your pussy.”
I turn off the burner. “How manyPs can you fit in one sentence?”
“More like, how manyPs can you fit in one hole?”
“Vale!” I shriek as if someone heard her, glancing toward my empty living room, right next to my lonely bed. It’s an efficiency cabin with five hundred square feet all to myself. “I’m serious. This man is high-key hot, and I have to work with him.”
“Then werk it, girl,” she goads. “That’s right. Get up on that ass.” She sounds winded. “Can you hear me twerking for ya? Cuz I am. And our bouncers, Jace and Grant, are rolling their eyes, but that’s how much I love you.”
“Why don’t you twerk on them?”
“Because one’s married and the other one is too fine to touch. You know, like a Renaissance porn painting in a museum.”
“Hey!” I hear a man’s voice bellow in the background. “I’m fucking art too!”
“Yes, you are, Grant.” Vale must be caught in the crossfire. “And your wife is hella hot, and so is your brother, Jace, but my heart belongs to someone else.”
“Who?” I put my phone on speaker and set it on the counter. Straining my pasta, I note how she hesitates. “Who, Vale? Who’s finally captured your heart?”
Vale has been my best friend since middle school, but now, she’s getting her PhD in Sexuality Studies. Meaning, she studies her fucks, she doesn’t fall in love with them.
“No one I can have.” Her tone drops. “The man I want doesn’t exist. Not like I need him to.” That was cryptic, butshe changes the subject. “Butyourman is right there and ready to play.”
“No, frickin’ way.” I plate my dinner. “If I mess with a man I work with, my career is over. And his life is over, too, if my dad ever finds out.”
“Is that why evenIdon’t know who your first was?” Vale always speculates about this, “Because you’re protecting him from your dad? I mean, I get it. Nash Allen is an accountant who crunches numbers, but he’d crunch necks for you. So, I swear,” I bet she’s raising her right hand, “if you finally tell me who took your V-card, I’ll never tell your dad, even though he scares me in a weird way.”
My dad scares me too.
In a loving way.
My parents were young teenagers when I was born. They were never in love, but they became good friends. When my dad went to juvie for stealing credit cards to buy diapers for me, my mom never hated him for it. So when she joined the Army to support us, he supported her until she was killed during her last deployment.
My father became a single dad, and I became a girl with a mom who’ll never come home.
I look so much like her, it’s as if when I lost her, I lost myself, too, and my bully made it worse. I could never tell my dad because he’d kill anyone who hurt me. No hyperbole. He’s already been to jail once for me.
So it’s just me and Dad.
Me, figuring out who I am beyond my parents’ love—my mother’s hugging ghost and my father’s fierce protection.
And my dad, realizing I’m okay now. He’s done his job. I’m a grown woman, learning who I am, and so can he.
I never asked my dad not to date. In fact, I want him to find someone to love. He always seems so alone, kind of like me.
I know he has sex though. Objectively, my dad is good-looking. And obviously, he knows I can have sex too. I’m an adult.
So, I did.
Once.
Years ago.
I had sex with my dad’s best friend, my godfather.
It’s my darkest secret; only he and I know.
“It doesn’t matter who my first was,” I answer Vale, deflecting. “It was one and done. No biggie.”
