"Friends kiss and stuff," I say, with my hands in my pockets.
"And stuff," she repeats.
"Your tongue felt nice. A little big, maybe. But I didn't mind."
She stares at me.
I stare at her, pull on the back of my neck, and nervously press my lips together.
"Oh, for fuck’s sake, Bennet. Come inside before I change my mind." She turns and walks into the apartment with a heavy breath. "Whotaughtyou this shit?"
"Nobody," I say, following her in. "That's kind of the whole problem."
She chuckles and gives me a slow once-over. "Okay." She nods, mostly to herself, then heads to the kitchen. Gerald thecat materializes from wherever cats go when they're judging you, takes one look at me, and exits the room with profound disdain.
"He likes almost nobody," Jenn says, pulling two glasses from the cabinet.
"I have that effect."
"On cats?"
"On most things."
She pours two glasses of wine and hands me one before she leans against the counter, taking a sip. "So. Friends kiss and stuff."
"And stuff," I confirm.
"We're setting the bar on the floor; you know that, right?"
"The bar has been on the floor for a while," I say. "I'm just finally admitting it."
She smiles over the rim of her glass. "Touché."
"Friends admit things to each other in confidence and without judgment." I say it matter-of-fact, like I'm proposing terms to a contract, which I suppose I am.
"Should I be sitting down for this?"
"Maybe I should be."
"Make yourself at home." She waves a manicured hand toward the living room.
I take a seat on the couch while she takes the seat on the chair across from me, legs folded underneath her. I gulp down another half a glass of wine and shake my head, mostly at myself.
Maybe it's because I don't have romantic feelings for Jenn that I'm about to say something I've never said out loud to another living person. There are no stakes, or any risk of her looking at me differently in a way that matters. She alreadythinks I'm unhinged, and she's still here, so the bar for what constitutes too much information has effectively been removed.
I look into her eyes for a long time before taking a deep breath.
"When I was eighteen, I had a pretty traumatic experience. A girl I liked —really liked, the kind of thing you only feel when you're young enough to not know better — used me for a prank. She and her boyfriend set me up in front of an audience. The whole thing was designed to humiliate me, and it worked exactly the way they designed it to."
“Wow. Bennet. How fucked.”
I hate reliving this. I hate the way my body still knows how to feel it, ten years later, like the information never fully left the tissue.
I drop my head back against the couch and look up at the ceiling.
"You need to paint," I say.
"Focus, Bennet."
