Before Him

“Isn’t real? Well, I’m glad this is something you’ll get over. The same as I have.” Kind of. And though this is delivered with a whole load of sarcasm, it still seems to fly right over his head.

“This is like finding out Santa Claus works the pole over at the Fuzzy Clam!” he explodes, mislabelling the strip joint over in Bay Town. Not that its actual name is much better. I’m not sure how anyone would want to visit a place called The Pink Oyster. “Wait, wait, wait.” Jenner holds his forefinger in the air. “So did you marry him so you could drink wine or so you could get into a club? Is that like, even a thing?”

“My sweet summer child, marriage was just a pretext for getting me into bed.” There was no wine, but there was champagne. Champagne we drank. Champagne he bathed me in, following every drip and trailing tributary with his tongue. I push away the image. Because. Just because.

“Puh-lease!” Jenner’s lips pull together like the strings of a purse, his finger now moving with the attitude of a teenage girl. “I have eyes. That man is so hot, he need only smile, and women’s clothes begin to fall off Bruce Almighty–style. Hell, I had to take a hold of my own jeans!”

“Don’t worry, that wasn’t at all obvious.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Kennedy.”

“It’s also your favourite.”

“Did you marry him because . . .” He looks suddenly horrified. “You were a virgin!” he accuses, though his next words are less sure. “Were you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. For a minute there, I thought you were the author of this story.”

“Answer the question!”

“Okay, Maury Povich! No, I was not a virgin, thank you very much!” But let the record show that fumbled teenage sex and a quick roll in my college dorm’s twin bed did not prepare me for the experience. “My virginity was never ever up for grabs as a tool of the patriarchy because it was lost to some other tool several years before.”

“Then were you drunk?” His tone is plaintive, and my return look sharp. “I’m just trying to understand. Because I don’t. I truly don’t.”

“Well, neither do I,” I snap. I just know he looked at me like no one else on earth had ever looked at me. Like I was rare and precious. Like he was fascinated. And maybe I wasn’t so very wrong, and I was just the shiny, shimmering thing that had captivated the beautiful magpie for a little while.

“But that’s when Wilder was conceived?”

“Well, I didn’t make him all on my own.”

“I just meant y’all might’ve been together for more than one night.”

“We weren’t,” I return adamantly. Pushing back my chair, I snatch up my glass and take it to the sink, the bottle of wine long finished. “One and done,” I mutter, flipping on the faucet. One night, not one time. And explaining where babies come from is not on my agenda tonight.

“Was it good? At least tell me it was good—that he was good.”

“Why? Do you have a little crush?” I whirl back, pressing my butt against the sink, oddly jealous.

“Of course I don’t have a crush on him.” He turns in his chair to face me, throwing one knee over the other. “Unless you tell me he swings both ways,” he adds, fluttering his ridiculously long lashes. Not God-given unless Neeta down at the beauty salon has taken to calling herself Neeta Almighty. Goddess is probably more her style. “Well, does he?”

“No,” I reply emphatically. But really, what would I know?

“The man had mad skills, right? Come on, honeybun. Spill that tea.”

“If he did, he didn’t show them to me.”

“You lie!” The tune of those words? Sounds like I stood on his toe.

“First in the line for size,” I say with a sad shake of my head. “Last in line for instructions.” I am unrepentant about adding another lie to my list.

“Maybe he’s just been playing for the wrong team,” he says, turning suddenly ponderous.

“I didn’t say he couldn’t. Just that he wasn’t very good.”

“Maybe it was better than you remember. You know, after all that icky birth stuff. I hear it rots your brain.”

“My memory is just fine. I’m hardly likely to forget the first time I’d ever slept with a man.”

“But you just said—”

“Slept with, Jenner. As in, spent the night with.” A full night of glorious privacy. “It had been a long time since I’d had any kind of sleepover. I think the last time, I’d been eight. It had been the summer before my new friend, Anna—”

“Objection.” Jenner holds up a hand. “This is not the same story.”

“Fine. We caught a cab to some seedy twenty-four-hour chapel.” Jenner’s lower jaw almost hits the kitchen table, and I try not to laugh. “Money exchanged hands, words were said, and then we were back in a cab and on the way to his hotel room where we spent the night not sharing secrets and candies under the covers.” I remember how, in the cab, the prospect of what lay ahead terrified and excited me in equal measure.