Five: I also learned that she has a meditation playlist, complete with a couple Camden songs, to help with anxiety.
Denny.
Anxiety!
Honestly, the shit I’m learning.
I never imagined her bull-in-a-china-shop personality could ever lean itself into anxiety.I told her to stop wearing the headband/earphones so I could listen before sleep too.
I play with the baby strands of hair at her neck because I can. They’re silky soft. Wispy but not ticklish.
All the different facades I thought I knew, she’s showing me a thousand more and I can’t help but be honored.
The movement of her hand stroking along my abs, aiming south, jerks me to awareness.
I snatch a hold of her wrist, suddenly aware that she woke up while I mused the morning away. “I told you. You don’t have to do that.”
Another fact—she’s squeamish about her period.
I figured out why the first morning too. She bled onto the sheet and I thought she was going to die of mortification.
That she’s still sleeping with me is a testament to how I handled that situation.
Thank fuck Mom normalized this stuff for me.
“I don’t see why I have to wait. You’re not having your period, are you?”
I tsk. “I’m not going to let you do that without reciprocating.”
She tosses her hair in my face. Like she’s done every other time this has come up.
Alongside my morning wood.
“How come I knew you were a butthead but not irrational?”
“This is howa man should treat his woman!”
She groans. “Stop saying that!”
“It’s the truth!”
“You told me the first night you hadn’t gone down on another woman in years. So who’s lying?”
“It’s how you should be treated,” I argue, expression settling into mulish lines.
“Sex doesn’t have to be reciprocal. What if I want to get you off, huh? What if I find pleasure in that, huh? Mr. Chauvinist!”
I’ve craved Denny for weeks.
We’ve been friends since we were four.
That’s a big gap filled with mistakes I’ve made.
“Me wanting you to associate everything we do with pleasure is chauvinism?” I can hear my voice getting louder. “Do you know how I’ve treated the women I’ve fucked in the past? I’ve been an out-and-out shit, Denny.
“Not only am I never going to treat you that way, but I also refuse to let you believe that’s how good men treat women.”
She gusts out her cheeks. “You make zero sense. What is this? One rule for the rest of the female population and one rule for me?”
