Jack reached over and pinched my cheek. “Such a teddy bear,” he said before walking off.
“Maybe we can circle back to this scene later this week,” Gretchen said mostly to herself. “The Hope Channel owns the barn, so we can pop in and out thankfully.”
I sat there in the sled, waiting for my next instructions as the crew members began to reset the scene should Winnie reappear.
I felt bad for Winnie. I wanted to fix it. I wanted to make it better. I wanted to make her laugh.
But I was also really fucking angry at Michael Bacher. What kind of guy has the honor of marrying Winnie Baker and doesn’t even take the time to learn how to pleasure her? If I ever had someone like Winnie, I’d memorize their body from head to toe. I’d learn every little thing that made them gasp and plead.
Fuck. If Winnie Baker were mine, I’d have a goddamn PhD in making her come.
Paging Dr.Lieberman.
Chapter Seven
Winnie
An hour later, I was standing next to Pearl Purkiss inside a cramped building off the state highway called the Toy Shop 2. Above a display of dusty condom boxes, an equally dusty TV played a video of a lady demonstrating the stretchiness of a silicone penis ring. The painted cinderblock walls were lined with see-through clothes and shelves of sun-faded boxes; a magazine rack against the wall nearest to the door was a study in glossy overstimulation: a flesh-toned collage that reminded me of cold cuts at a grocery store.
Heart pounding, I kept moving into the sex shop, trying to act cool, so cool, like this was stuff I saw every day, likeTentacle-shaped butt plugs, no big deal, am I right?
Pearl, on the other hand, squealed at every other thing she came across.
“Oh, adragondildo, Winnie! Do you think they make dragon penis sleeves too?” Another squeal. “And look, look, look, it’san actual Vajankle. I thought those were a myth!”
She pulled me in front of the Vajankle, which was not a myth—and was exactly what the name made it sound like—and then the realization hit me like va-sledgehammer.
I was in way over my head. Likewaaayover.
I thought watching a sex tape was hard-core? I’d had no idea how deep the well of human sexuality ran! And I wasn’t a well at all, I was just a puddle... a half dried–up puddle with a slick of gasoline shimmering over the top, that’s how not a well I was.
“He-e-ey,” Pearl said, coming to stand in front of me, her already large eyes getting even larger. “Your aura has just gone really murky.”
“It has?”
Pearl nodded at me, like a wise and concerned aura doctor, and gently touched my face. “And I don’t have any obsidian or selenite with me, so I need you to push through this, sweet Winnie.”
Push through this? Push through being a living punch line after years of being a living headline?
“I don’t think I can, Pearl,” I confessed. “I mean, not the aura thing, I guess. But pushing through my, um, intimacy problems.” I pressed my hands to my face, trying not to think of everyone’s reactions to my god-awful performance today. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Wait. Wait.” Pearl’s hands came around my wrists, frigid but soothing. “Why are you embarrassed?”
“Because I—” I stopped. Swallowed. Looked around the store for any employees and didn’t see any. “Because it’s embarrassing to be thirty-two and not know what my body does when I have an orgasm, you know? It’s embarrassing to feel like I’m the only one who’s behind, who’s not in on some secret that I really, really want to be in on, but I just don’t know how to be. Ugh, it’s even embarrassing to be embarrassed!”
“You stop it right now,” Pearl said, with more firmness than I would have thought her capable of. “Everyone—and I meaneveryone—who likes having sex is still learning new things about how they like to have sex. For example, I was today years old when I learned I wanted a dragon dildo, even if it’s made of”—she made a face—“Silicone.”
“Is silicone bad?”
“Glass is best. Rose quartz too. I have this quartz egg—” She stopped herself. “My point is, there’s no age when people stop learning about their bodies. Maybe you got a later start than some, but you’re still in the same wonderful race.”
“That’s really kind of you to say,” I said politely as I cast my eyes down. My view of the red-and-white linoleum floor was framed by her arms and her torso; she wore a clear raincoat over two layers of sweaters. “But this is more than a late start. This might betoo late.”
“Uh-uh,” Pearl said, voice still firm. “There’s no such thing as too late for something you want. And I’m guessing there is a reason you don’t know as much as you want to know, right?”
Areason? Singular? I could almost laugh if I weren’t so embarrassed. I could tell her about my teenage bookshelf full of books likeI Kissed Dating GoodbyeandAnd the Bride Wore White(if the memory of that bookshelf alone didn’t make me smash my face against the Toy Shop 2’s linoleum first). I could tell her about my accountability journal, about my purity ring engraved with the wordsTrue Love Waits. About the uncountable times I’d heard the phrasestumbling block, as in:Don’t be a stumbling block to your brothers.
As in:You don’t want your brothers to sin because of you, right?
