“You’re a virgin?”
Fuck, this was so embarrassing. Why hadn’t he just slept with one of the Honeys? At least once? One time wouldn’t have killed him, and it certainly would have kept him from this humiliation!
“Yes,” he begrudgingly admitted.
“I don’t…” Rose shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why?”
Keys blinked, not sure how to take that question. “Why what?”
“You’re not religious. Is there a reason you waited?”
Fuck, this was just getting worse and worse. She thought, what, that he’d made some vow of celibacy or something, and that was why he was still a virgin? Not wanting to risk her rejection, Keys just shook his head. “Look, I’ll go. We can talk about this later.”
Orneverif he had his way.
But Rose moved quickly, tackling him to the mattress. Unlike in the kitchen, though, Rose had the strength and surprise on her side to successfully take him down. Straddling his chest, she held herself over him.
“You know, you and I really are a match made in heaven. Give us a computer screen and we can tackle any enemy, but put usface-to-face and neither of us can get over our embarrassment or fears enough to parse two sentences together. Now, tell me why you’re a virgin, so I can tell you that I don’t care and all that matters is that I want to be with younow.”
Keys blinked up at her. “You do? Even though I just had a panic attack when all we did was kiss?”
Rose nodded. “Keys, I lost my virginity at fifteen because I was trying to fit in at school. And it sucked. I was way too young and far too naïve to even think about sex, let alone do it. But my parents made such a stigma of sex that it was like drugs and alcohol, so of course, I was going to do it. I figured something was wrong with me. Everyone else raved about sex. So I had to be the one doing it wrong. Stupid, naïve me, I kept trying. Because that’s what you’resupposedto do. And as much as I love Oscar, if I had the confidence or the self-awareness to know that I wasn’t ready to have sex at even nineteen, he wouldn’t be here. I got knocked up because I was scared, alone, and a man almost twice my age convinced me that he was my hero, my white knight who rode in on his grand steed to rescue me. My experience with sexsucks. I’d take it all back if I could. Not Oscar, obviously, but the need to prove to anyone else that I was having sex when I should have only been concerned about myself.”
“I did that,” he confessed. Lifting his hands to her hips, he helped her settle even further into him. “I made my brothers believe that I was sleeping with the Honeys when I wasn’t. I wanted them to think I was having sex.”
Rose lifted her hands off the mattress by his head and laid herself down on top of him. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I was a nineteen-year-old kid. No other member was around my age. Sissy was, obviously, but she was Lucky’sdaughter. Being around her was intimidating enough, let alone even thinking of befriending or trying something with her. My brothers would arrange for one of the Honeys to be with me each night. They even gaveherthe condom like Iwasn’t responsible enough to do it myself, and then they would push us off towards my bedroom, laughing like it was all this big joke.”
“The Honeys never told?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Only one of them ever gave me a hard time about it, and she turned out to be a total bitch anyway. I was able to play it off that she wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do. They never paired me with her again.”
“I’m sorry your brothers put you in that situation. Why didn’t you just tell them you didn’t want to sleep with the Honeys?”
“I was embarrassed. Like you said, there’s a perception about sex. It’s supposed to be private and intimate, and yet there’s like this spotlight on you. My brothers are all older than me. I knew they’d been with the Honeys, and the idea of being with them was…intimidating. What if I sucked at it? I can barely find my toothbrush half the time, how am I supposed to find a clitoris?! And eventually, it just became something to avoid.”
“Clitorises?” Rose asked, clearly biting the inside of her lip.
Keys glared up at her playfully. “Ha-ha.No. I meant, sex.”
Thankfully, she was able to contain her laughter. More seriously, Rose inquired, “And you never dated anyone?”
“Never came out from behind my computer screen long enough to find someone.” He shrugged. “I mean, I thought about it. I even looked into online dating, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t work up the courage. I don’t know how to talk to women. You’re all so pretty and my tongue never seems to work right when one of you smiles at me.”
Rose held her face over his. “I’m smiling at you.”
“And you’re the prettiest of them all.”
Her smile widened. “See, you know how to talk to women.”
“I know how to talk toyou,” he clarified. “Because I knowyou. I just can’t seem to stop making a fool of myself around you.”
“Keys, you’re too hard on yourself. I thought you wereworking on that, learning to stand up for yourself with your brothers and believing how incredible you are.”
He raised a derisive eyebrow. “Really? And what do you call whatever that was out there,” he tipped his chin towards the kitchen, “andfreezing on our first kiss?”
Rose shrugged. Her expression was soft, but not mocking as he would have thought it would be. “I call it one hell of a story that we can tell our kids one day.”
