“Brendan,” Su-Lin says. She drags herself up so that her face is even with mine. “I don’tput upwith you. Iloveyou.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “But you don’t love it when I freak out and hurt you.”
“No,” she says slowly. “But I don’t want you thinking that I’m wishing that your problems would all go away so that my life could somehow be easier.”
I think that over, but it doesn’t make sense. “Why not? I do.”
She lays her head on my shoulder, her lips brushing my jaw. “I love you. Not some version of you that I hope will be all fixed some day.The more I’m with you, the more I experience what your life is like—I love youmore, not less. And I don’t want you to be in pain, so yeah, I hope things get better. But not for me. I’m happy with you, just as you are.”
My whole body goes weak. I don’t know how to believe what she’s saying, but I believe she means it. And that, in itself, is a miracle. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for waiting for me to be ready.”
She smiles. “Of course.”Then she giggles again. It’s one of my favorite giggles—the one that means she has a secret that she’s about to burst open and share.
“What?” I ask.
“So one of the things I was thinking last night, when I was . . .”
Oh, god. She could have been thinking any number of things, at any number of moments. I wonder if this is about the toaster and the random ding. “When you were what?”
There’s a long pause. “When I had your dick in my mouth.” More giggles.
I join in. “Okay. Do tell. What were you thinking?”
“First, I thought, oh my god, there’s a dick in my mouth.”
I close my eyes, groaning both from embarrassment and from the memory of whatIwas thinking at that moment. Or, more accurately, the way all my thoughts turned to mush, and all I could think about was how loved she made me feel.
“ThenI was like, oh my god, it’s Brendan’s dick! In my mouth.”
I laugh. “You really didn’t have to do that—”
“I wanted to! But, um, I might have been overconfident, because I definitely didn’t know what I was doing, or if it would even work, so I thought maybe I should stop right then and Google a tutorial—”
We’re both laughing so hard now the bed is shaking. “I’m kind of glad you didn’t,” I say. “Though that would have been hilarious.”
“Andthen—” she continues, and I am not sure how many thoughts a person can have while giving a blow job, “—I wondered if you had a name for it.”
“Like, maybe I should have introduced you properly before you got up close and personal?”
“Maybe!” Su-Lin says, grinning. “So do you?”
“Ha,” I say. “I do not. Candace did, but you really don’t want to know what it was, because you will hate it.”
She cringes. “Is it awful?”
I sigh. I obviously have to tell her now. “She called it the leash. Like, it’s what I’m led around by.”
Su-Lin wrinkles her nose at me. “I do hate that.”
I love that she does.
“Was she really a bitch to you about sex?” she asks. “I mean, not just the breast thing, but other stuff, too.”
“Yeah.” I want to pull away from her. She knows a lot about the things Candace said to me, but this stuff embarrasses me more than most because I imagine some of it was deserved.
“Really?” Su-Lin says. “Because I don’t have any complaints.”
I smile, because god, I love to hear that. But what I’m about to tell her still fills me with so much shame. “Did I ever tell you the thing she said to me when I confronted her about sleeping with John?”
