I’ve been avoiding eye contact, but when I check out her expression, I imagine she’s trying to keep a straight face, given away by the way she tilts her head slightly.
“Can I ask why you used the wordmight?”
“He was weird about it. We’re weird. And that’s part of what I like about him, and fuck, I can’t believe I said I like him.”
And now I’m back on my way to the door, but then I realize I already got that much out, so I stop, turning back to her.
“I do like him, though.” I’m confused about a lot of shit, but not that. I might have been a little oblivious—okay, more than a little—before the auction, but it wasn’t confusing when I was bidding on him. I knew what I wanted. And not just because it feels good to fill up his ass.
“That sounds really nice,” she says. “Does that feel good to you?”
“Sometimes. When it’s just the two of us, and we’re laughing or talking or fucking…or cuddling, definitely when we’re fucking and cuddling. Shit, I shouldn’t say fucking. What do you say here instead of that? When we’re being intimate?”
She smirks. “I’m not censoring however you want to say that, but intimate is fine if that’s something you’re more comfortable saying.”
“I’ll stick with that. I like Dax. Then he said we’re boyfriends, but I didn’t really say that’s what I wanted, even if maybe I did more than I should have. It was like when he said it, I wanted to be like,No, for real, we’re boyfriends now. You’re mine and just mine.But that’s not who we are at all.”
“Who do you think you both are?”
“He’s this cool, easygoing guy who’s deeper than he lets on, and he just fucks—is intimate—with whoever he wants. I’m the same. We don’t do serious. I don’t even know what a date would mean.” I take a breath. “I’ve never been on a date.”
I finally let myself sit back on the sofa. It’s like now that I said it, I can think straight again.
“So this would be the first time you’ll go on a date with someone?”
I laugh, but her expression doesn’t change. “Oh, that was serious. Because that’s like something a normal guy would have done already, right?”
“I don’t use the wordnormal.”
“I mean, you just did, but whatever.”
“Feels like you might be deflecting.”
Even in that, she’s smiling, and now I’m starting to think that if I’d landed a counselor who got me initially, it might not have been such a shitshow.
“It’s not as strange as you might think to have never been on a date. Some people take their time. Some people aren’t interested in dating at all. Some people are aromantic. It doesn’t really have much to do with anything unless that means something to you.”
Huh. “Good point. Seems obvious when you say it like that. Guess it helps having an outsider’s perspective.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” She grins in this playful, goofy way, and it’s disarming as fuck. “So where do you want to go on a date?”
“No clue. That’s why I’m here, at least partly.”
“You came here to figure out where to go on a date?”
“Well, I can’t ask my friend Tatum because he’s already giving me hell. He knew I was into someone, and now he knows who it is, and I don’t have many other friends… Really, Caleb’s my only other friend, and the whole not having many friends must be a red flag… That’s a red flag, isn’t it?”
“The only thing I’m picking up right now is a lot of judgment of yourself for things that seem pretty benign to me.”
“Because you don’t know me. If you did, you’d know I’m right.” My words come out almost like a threat. Likefuck around and find out.
“I’m sorry you feel like that.”
I shake it off. “Whatever. That’s not what I want to talk about. It’s just, I don’t know where to take him. I’ve been googling where people go on dates. Like the park or dinner. I saw there’s dinner and a symphony, which sounded boring as hell. But he might like it, and maybe I should be asking him if he wants to do that. Do I hold his hand? Why do I want to hold his hand? Yes, I definitely want to do that.”
“Well, now that you figured that part out,” Shera says, “you just have to figure out the date part. Did you want to involve him in the process? Maybe ask him what he wants to do?”
I huff. “No, I want to come up with something perfect so he’ll be like,oh, wow, you’re so cool because you thought of just the right thing. That’s not a very cool thing to say, is it? Why am I so in my head about this? I don’t typically give a crap about this stuff. What is he doing to me?” And the problem is, whatever he’s doing, I really like it.
