Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 57866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Marlowe hummed in sympathy. “Buzzkill. I was once with a guy who could not get it in. Not to save his life. He tried and tried while I laid there staring at the ceiling. He eventually deflated and wanted me to suck it.”
“Glen,” Marlowe said from my couch, where she was lying while we listened to her most recent podcast. “Never date a guy named Glen.” She looked over to make sure I was paying attention. “Listen to this part; it’s my worst sexual encounter ever.”
“…waited like several months to have sex because I really liked him,” podcast Marlowe said. “He was funny and cute and we had the best conversations. But then when we finally had sex, and oh my god, girl.”
Her guest laughed. “Been there, my friend.”
“With every thrust, he made this noise, like uhh, and that was bad enough, but then he started talking, and it was like How Not to Dirty Talk 101. He was like, ‘You feel that? You feel my penis in your vagina?’”
I laughed along with Marlowe’s guest, whose voice was coming from the speaker on Marlowe’s phone.
“No, that’s not even the worst part,” podcast Marlowe said. “I was trying to disassociate myself from what he was saying so I’d have a chance of at least getting an orgasm out of all this, but then he starts saying ‘I can feel your uterus. You like the way my penis pokes your uterus?’”
Her guest howled with laugher. “He did not!”
“He did!” Marlowe said, turning from her position on my couch to face me. “That happened. Every single word was true. I seriously thought I might be on some hidden camera show where he was trying to make it the most terrible, comical sex imaginable, but sadly, it was real.”
“Did you stop seeing him after that?” I asked.
“He was so great in every other area that I tried to train him. I told him silence was my kink, but he said he couldn’t get into it without making it a whole production, so…I broke it off.”
I thought about Christmas night with Beau. The things he said to me made my entire body hum with arousal. It was the first time I’d kissed a man and felt no awkwardness. With Beau, I just knew what to say and do.
Pregnancy hormones had shifted from making me sick in the first trimester to making me horny in the second, so my vibrator had gotten a workout. Every time, I fantasized that Beau hadn’t stopped that night, or that he showed up on my doorstep saying he’d been wrong and he wanted me immediately.
It was ironic, fantasizing about being with the man who had said he wanted to be with me when I’d told him to stay away. But fantasies always had a happy ending; reality didn’t.
“Read me the text again,” Marlowe said.
I didn’t even have to look at my phone to recite it; I’d read it at least fifty times already. “I’m thinking about you. I miss you.”
We were having a lazy Sunday afternoon. After going out for lunch, me and Marlowe had come back to my apartment and started listening to some of Marlowe’s recorded podcasts. Marlowe was on the couch and I was kicked back in my favorite recliner. She’d turned off the podcast, but I’d be finishing it on my own later.
I was proud of her. She’d recently gotten a big advertiser for the podcast because her subscription numbers were growing rapidly. She had a way of making listeners feel like they were chatting with a close girlfriend.
“And he sent it last night?” she asked.
“Yeah, early evening.”
“I don’t know how you kept yourself from responding, girl. Or why. He’s hot, successful, and sweet, and you’re pregnant with his kid. What more do you want?”
I smiled, because we’d had this conversation over and over in the three months since I’d stopped speaking to Beau.
“I just feel like I’m better off alone,” I said. “It’s not because there’s anything wrong with him. My plan was to have this baby on my own, and I’m sticking to the plan.”
“No, you got offended when he didn’t want to have sex with you. Or I guess he wanted to but didn’t want your first time to be with your mom in the next room. Which I get. And then your mom screwed you over the next day and you wrote both of them off for it. You were wrong.”
I’d had plenty of time to reflect on things, and I knew she was right. I’d overreacted. But I’d also thought a lot about how dangerous it was to get involved with Beau, because if he developed a relationship with our baby and things didn’t work out between us, he could sue me for visitation.
That was what really burned, and I was ashamed of the reasons for it. When I thought about our child spending time at Henry and Claire Fox’s home, surrounded by warmth and love and luxury, or going to the hockey games of their superstar father, and then returning to me, I felt inadequate.