Anatomy of a Single Girl (16 page)

I grin and return the records to him. “Yeah, you’re all clear. Thanks again for doing all this, even if it was ‘overkill.’ ”

“It’s okay. Sorry if I sounded like a dick about it before. It actually felt kind of good getting the results back, you know? Now we can just relax.”

I nod and lay my purse down on his dresser.

“Hey, Dom.” Guy lassos me in with his bath towel and holds me against his chest. “Is anything wrong?”

It’s fruitless to explain. Having never been in my place, he can’t possibly appreciate the momentousness of this night. Besides, our spartan setting isn’t too difficult to ignore in the midst of Guy’s naked body. Freshly showered, his skin’s glistening like dew. Plus his normally wild hair is wetted down, drawing all the attention to his deep-set eyes, which are fixed on me so fiercely that they seem like sex organs.

He continues, “ ’Cause if you wanna wait, don’t sweat it. We can do other stuff. Or I can show you the
Star Wars
prequels, although they kinda sucked—”

“I know, but I’m okay.” I grin again and kick away the empty pizza box that’s been sitting in the middle of the floor since we ate from it last weekend. “I’m ready.”

The first time we do it, it hurts somewhat, and I have to tell him to stop before he can even come. I think I’m just nervous, considering how long it’s been since I last did it. Also, I’m preoccupied with thinking,
I’m having sex again! Take
that,
first love!
Like he’ll ever know, or care.

Thankfully, the second time, I’m more into it and have
hardly any pain. But as sensual as Guy is, the sex itself still feels awkward. I suppose thrusting is an inherently comical activity, no matter what the guy’s experience level.

“So, what’s it like having been laid by six different girls?” I tease him after our third try. “You can count us on two hands!”

“It’s cool,” he says through a laugh, “but I don’t care about that right now. I just want this to start feeling good for you.”

“Well, practice makes perfect.” I wink.

We decide not to try for four, though, because I’m a little sore now and don’t want to push myself. Instead we go out for sashimi and kill the remainder of Friday at a nearby roller rink. Not having worn skates in years, I keep slipping, so to help with my balance, Guy holds my hand. Ironically, that’s the most intimate I’ve felt with him all night.

After biking home just shy of curfew, I stay up until three reading
Cosmo
articles about “great sex” tips, which I test out when Guy and I resume doing it the following afternoon. First I lift my leg up over his shoulder, which supposedly does the trick for a lot of women, but I’m not flexible enough to pull this position off for long. Then next time we do it, Guy tries rubbing my clitoris with his fingers, though it’s uncomfortable having his hand wedged between us, and we give up on that quickly too. By evening I’m staring bored up at the ceiling, wondering whether casual sex is worth the hassle or if I suffer from some kind of sexual dysfunction. Or maybe, as with anything, imagining having sex is always going to be better than actually doing it, because in your imagination it’s bound to be perfect. But just then, Guy
stops, sits back on his knees, and asks, “Dom, you know you can move and stuff, right?”

“Move?” I lift my head off the pillow. “I move all the time.”

“Not just your arms and legs but, like, your hips. That’s what the other girls did.”

“Oh. How’d they do it exactly?”

“Well, everyone had their own thing.” He wiggles his pelvis back and forth, side to side, and then around. “And they definitely liked it more.”

“All right,” I say, my enthusiasm rekindled. “I’ll try.”

Soon we’re at it once again, and now I know why I didn’t move before—because I couldn’t, at least not easily. It takes work to maneuver with a heavy male midsection sandwiching you against a bed. At one point I do manage to arch my back so Guy’s entering me at more of an angle toward my stomach, and immediately I get a kind of hot flash from deep within myself that I’ve never felt before. I can’t take his weight for more than a couple seconds, though, before my back drops flat against the mattress.

“Dammit,” I mutter. “I was getting somewhere.”

Guy rolls off me and says, “Dom, I really think you should get on top.”

“I told you last night I like being on the bottom.”

“But obviously that’s not cutting it. C’mon.
The
Lilith wouldn’t ‘lie beneath’ Adam. Have you had a bad experience on top or something?”

“No. I’ve never done it.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

Because if sex feels awkward, it must
look
awkward, and
as long as we’re in the missionary position, I’m largely covered. But then it clicks how I like being concealed for the same reason I like having the room dark. As it turned out, keeping the lights on wasn’t that embarrassing. And isn’t one of the pros of having sex again to try new things?

“Okay,
Adam
. You win this time.” I sit up and command him, “On your back,
stat
!”

Once he reclines, I hold up his penis with my fingers and straddle him before slowly descending on it. Then I just sit there for a moment, our torsos at right angles, taking in this new vantage point. I was certain I’d miss that safe feeling of having Guy’s weight on me, but it’s liberating not being pegged underneath him. Now the only part of me that’s really being touched is my insides, and I can center all my attention on that without distraction.

Guy gently pushes his pelvis upward, so I begin moving with him and then against him at varying speeds and directions. At first I don’t care how it feels and just revel in my newfound freedom. It must look like I’m hula-hooping and riding a pogo stick simultaneously. But eventually I arch my back again to see if I can re-create that fiery sensation from before. I do. I keep on moving.

I’m glad the other Betas are far away playing paintball, because when I climax, I couldn’t have stayed silent if I’d tried to. The intensity’s beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before with Guy or by myself. My skeleton feels like a tuning fork that’s been struck. It actually kind of hurts, but it’s in an exquisite way. If love and hate aren’t true opposites, perhaps neither are pleasure and pain—if you go far enough in one extreme, it resembles the other. The shriek I let rip certainly doesn’t sound like I’m enjoying myself, and
the groans I hear on the hospital wards could easily pass for orgasms. Now I understand what Amy meant at IHOP last week when she said sex with Joel made her feel like she was going to die.

When Guy finishes, I’m too keyed up to lie down with him. Instead I bound up from the bed to walk it off around his room.

“You okay?” Guy calls after me, but I don’t respond. My brain’s like vapor, and tingles continue coursing up and down my legs. Then he switches on his lamp. “Damn, Dom. Are you crying?”

“Hmm? No.”

But I brush my fingers across my cheeks, and sure enough, there’re tears. My hands are quivering, too. I look back at Guy.

“I came!” I yelp.

“No shit, Sherlock. I could feel it.”

“It was like … time-slowing, space-curving—”

“Now you’re speaking my language.”

“So … how many other people know about this?”

He cracks up laughing, but I’m not kidding. It’s as though I’ve pledged a secret sorority, and the members are the women who discovered firsthand that sex is about so much more than reproduction or pleasing your partner or trying to get closer to each other. I make a mental note to look into buying one of those internal vibrators Amy mentioned. I’ll be damned if a man’s my only gateway to feeling this heavenly.

I scamper back to Guy and reach for another condom from his stash under the bed.

“Let’s do it again!”

“Whoa, girl.” He stops my hands from tearing open the wrapper. “I need a break first. Maybe in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?”
I could slap him. “Five! Ten max!”

“Dom, this isn’t something we can bargain over. But I assure you, we’ll fuck the second I feel capable, okay?”

I huff and slump down next to him, though I’m amused by his choice of words.

“We did just ‘fuck,’ didn’t we?”

“I should say so.”

I smile. “This sounds loony, but that felt like my first ‘fuck.’ I mean, I know it wasn’t, but before I never
thought
of it as ‘fucking.’ ”

“I’m not sure how to respond to that, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

When we do it again, nothing happens. I’m not discouraged, though, because I know the reason is that I was trying too hard. The next time I’m calmer and just go with it, and it’s even better than earlier. The first thing I do afterward is check the date on my phone. In the same way that I’ll always remember the anniversary of that April night I began having sex, I know I’ll always remember the anniversary of this July night when I began having
good
sex.

By this point Guy and I both need a break, and he pulls me close to him so my head’s on his chest. My ex would also hold me like this after we did it, and then we’d tell each other, “I love you.” Maybe it’s force of habit, but I’m compelled to say something sweet now, too.

“Guy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love fucking you.”

He laughs again. “I love fucking you, too.”

19

A
s curfew approaches, the idea of leaving Guy’s bed anytime soon seems unconscionable. So I dial home and conveniently forget that I’d promised myself after my last relationship that I’d never again deceive my parents because of a boy.

“The hospital called. It’s another staff shortage. They need me to come in right away for the overnight shift … and maybe through tomorrow, too. I have extra scrubs there I can change into—”

“But it’s the weekend!” Mom peals. “Aren’t they exploiting you?”

“It’s okay. They haven’t asked me to volunteer overtime since the Fourth. And I need to be able to stay awake
for long stretches if this is what I’m going to do for a living.”

“Well, we’ll miss you at fishing,” Dad says, “but you should be proud they’re turning to you for help. That shows you’re doing a good job.”

“Very true, Dommie. And at least you’re getting plenty of experience!”

“That’s for sure.”

I also cancel my babysitting gigs this week. I know I promised myself never to do that, either, but I want to maximize my time with Guy. Before long, I lose count of how many times we do it, and all the different ways we try it. It’s not always good. But the more we do it, the more I learn what to do to make it good, and the less inhibited I feel instructing
him
about what to do to make it good. But my favorite position is still with me on top, since it allows me the most control. I even start giving Guy head—not because it suddenly feels better, but because I’m thinking of it differently. Down there I’m in the lead, and it’s fun making him react to whatever I choose to do to him.

What’s freaky is that having all this sex makes me feel similar to when I was in love, but without any of the doubts or longings. It’s like I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been, and that I’m always on the heels of the best workout of my life. My skin’s radiant, too—my supervisor asks if I’ve gotten new makeup, and I’m not even wearing any. And although my internship is no less humdrum, I avidly put my all into each menial project. Amy says I’m in the “sex haze,” which sounds about right. All day I’m on a cloud as I look forward to what new flavors of pleasure I’ll discover that evening at Guy’s.

The only downside of doing it at the Beta house is the Betas. Each night as Guy joins me on the walk of shame back to my bike, whoever we pass in the halls makes obscene noises and hand gestures at us or says things like, “Coming up for air?” and “Did you break the bed?” Guy yells at them to knock it off, and I’m sure they’re only trying to be funny, but it’s a struggle not to feel cheap. On Wednesday, Guy and I can’t even go
into
the Beta house because Bruce accidentally sets off a stink bomb, leaving the whole place reeking of rotten eggs. Guy and I pace around campus trying to think up a plan B.

“What about a motel? We can split it,” I suggest, forgetting how I’m short babysitting earnings this week.

“I don’t know if we could find anything. I heard something on the radio about there being no available rooms left with some boating trade show in town.”

“Oh. Damn boats!” A minute later we’re passing the Physical Sciences Complex, and I point to it and whisper eagerly, “We can go to your lab!” I start jumping in place, excited to play out my schoolgirl fantasies of Mr. Chesnoff and me doing it on his office desk.

“It’s too risky. The custodial staff works till late, and they have keys to every room.”

“C’mon. The whole ‘doing it somewhere we might get caught’ thing is supposed to be kind of sexy,” I say more provocatively than I really mean it … I think.

“Dom, screwing in a physics building is just a couple rungs up from whacking off in the library stacks. I’m
not
gonna be that dude.”

“Oh, all right.… Then how about the other frat houses?
Or the dorms? It’s still July, so there must be hundreds of vacant rooms here.”

“Sure, but Res-Life keeps them locked to protect them from hornballs like you.”

“Ugh! I hate this—trying to figure out places to be alone. It’s so high school.”

Eventually we get dinner at Big Fish, though I don’t do much eating, since I have to keep sitting on my hands to stop myself from groping Guy under the table. Afterward we drive back to Bantam Beach in search of our secluded sand knoll, only to find that it has since been washed away.

Undeterred, I leap up onto Guy, wrap my legs around him, and French him in full view of the other beachgoers. And so begins a cycle of alternately making out and prying ourselves apart just when we’re about to commit public indecency. I normally look down on heavy PDA as crass exhibitionism, but now I don’t give it a second thought. That’s not surprising, considering that my standards have sunk to the level of wanting to rent a seedy motel room.