“That,” she declared as she pulled back, smug satisfaction written in every line of her face. “Was a sexual act just because I felt like it.”
My head jerked.
“Sex can be just sex.”
She found solace in her decree, but all I found were lies. Lies to cover all of the things she was actually feeling, and lies to make herself feel validated again. Lies to find truth in all of the things she spent her time telling the people who read her column. Lies to find truth in all the discrediting things about our relationship she was telling herself.
My eyes narrowed as she backed away and picked up her clothes, donning them in order.
When I finally got my voice back, she was at the door.
“You’re wrong,” I told her, my voice steady as a steel beam.
She turned, one eyebrow raised in question.
“That was our most emotional experience yet.”
“It wasn’t,” she protested easily, turning the knob, but I crossed the room quickly and stopped her with a hand on the door and my chest at her back.
Lips to her ear, I said everything she already knew. “It was.” It was trust and intimacy, and it was both of those things on a level most people are never blessed enough to comprehend. “And, Lo?”
She turned only slightly to look me in the eye.
“It’s just the fucking beginning.”
Things were falling apart.
They were doing it in an orderly fashion, following the goddamn story arc like they were supposed to, but in no way was the conclusion coming together like I’d planned.
First, I’d thought if I fucked Reed that my need to want to fuck him would go away.
But I had fucked him.
And I still wanted to fuck him. Again. And again. And again. Although, I doubt it could still be considered just fucking when I liked him as much as I did. I was starting to agree with him, for fuck’s sake.
As a means to combat these very uncomfortable feelings, I’d had the brilliant plan to play a little game of show-and-tell with no verbal telling whatsoever. I’d just shown him how well-versed I was in the act of masturbation in the name of proving to him that sex really could be just sex. I’d thought it would make me feel better. I would be victorious. And I wouldn’t want to cuddle and gab like a couple of lovesick fools after sliding down his body like a fire pole.
So, I had diddled and I’d strummed and I’d finger-fucked myself in front of him. Unfortunately, the instant the waves of my climax had subsided, my plan went up in forest fire-sized flames. I’d put on a good face, put my clothes back on, and headed home, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d looked—fucking enraptured as he watched my exhibition with hooded, heated eyes. The way his breath had caught as my hips swayed and my fingers slid down past my belly. Mostly, the way his electric gaze hadn’t objectified me but took me in, savored, appreciated. I’d never felt the way Reed made me feel—not even close.
And now, I was still thinking about him while doing laundry in the basement of my apartment complex.
I was starting to see a theme.
I couldn’t fuck or finger-bang him out of my head. Not to mention, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around his words: “That was our most emotional experience yet.”
I tossed a purple bra into the designated “colors” basket and leaned a hip against the washer. My gaze might have been scanning down the rows of washers and dryers, but my mind was fixated on trying to dissect his words.
Our most emotional experience yet?
I mean…we hadn’t had sex. Hell, he’d stayed completely dressed and just watched my little show from his desk chair.
At your command, my mind reminded me. I told it to shut up.
I might as well have been alone in my apartment. It was merely a one-woman show that just so happened to have an audience…Right?
Once my laundry was successfully separated, I poured detergent into the washer and filled it with a load of whites. I slid my laundry card into the machine, adjusted the settings, and hit the start button.
I focused my mind on the simple task of filling three more washers with my dirty clothes. This was why it was brilliant to do laundry at midnight. No one else was down here, and I could hog four washers at one time without getting the stink-eye from the other tenants in my building.
I stacked my empty baskets and set them on the ground, and just as the sounds of whooshing waterfalls filled the room, Reed seeped back into my brain.
Goddammit.
That was it. I refused to beat my head against the wall trying to understand what the fuck he meant. I slid my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and angrily typed out a text. My finger hit send a minute later.
Me: Our most emotional experience yet? I call bullshit. The only emotion I felt was happiness, and that was because I was literally pleasuring myself to climax.
I didn’t even have time to put my phone back into my pocket. The screen lit up with a notification of his response a mere minute later. I leaned against the washers and crossed my feet at the ankles. I had a feeling I might as well settle in for the circle of crazy conservation I had just unleashed on myself.
Reed: 24 hours. I’m impressed.
My face scrunched up on its own accord. Impressed? What in the hell was that supposed to mean? And did he always have to talk in existential riddles? I wasn’t even good at the Sunday morning crossword in the New York Times. Riddles weren’t my thing. And Reed’s Riddles might as well have been a mental Rubik’s Cube.
Side note: I really suck at Rubik’s Cubes, too.
Me: Huh?
Reed: I thought it would take you at least 36 hours before you graced me with your opinion.
I rolled my eyes. I did that a lot when it came to him. If I weren’t careful, he would push my already bad eyes to blindness.
Me: That wasn’t our most emotional experience. There was no “our” in that experience. It was just me. Getting myself off.
Reed: In front of me.
I started to type out a sarcastic retort, but the bubbles started to move across the screen and then another text came through.
Reed: You were bared, exposed, so beautifully vulnerable…
Reed: In. Front. Of. Me.
Well, fuck. When he put it like that…
Reed: Last night WAS the most intimate moment we’ve shared together.
Me: No, it wasn’t.
The instant I sent the reply I felt doubt creep into my throat, sitting there like a rock, and there was no amount of swallowing that could make it vanish.
Reed: You trusted me, LoLo. You trusted me to watch you in a very intimate and vulnerable moment, and you did this, trusting that I would watch you without judgment.
And do you want to know what I saw?
Say no. Say no. Say no.
Me: What?
Obviously, I had zero willpower when it came to him.
Reed: I saw a devastatingly beautiful woman pleasuring herself. And even though, on the surface, it might have just seemed like sex, it wasn’t. That insanely gorgeous woman shared a very emotional and intimate moment with me. The kind of moment I bet she’s never shared with anyone.
Reed: Thank you, Lola.
Did he just thank me? For masturbating in front of him?
And more importantly, was he right? Was last night more than just sex?
I replayed the night in my head. The way I’d taken a deep breath and calmed my nerves before I’d found the courage to lose myself to the music, to the moment. The way my heart beat like a hummingbird’s wing inside my chest as I removed my clothes. The way I had felt like my stomach was about to fall to the floor as I started to touch myself while he watched…
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Last night wasn’t just sex.
Goddammit, why is the conclusion always that he’s fucking right?
I opened the message box and started to type out a response.
Me: You’re right.
Delete.
Me: I still hate you.
Liar. Delete.
Me: I think I’m falling for you.
Holy hell. Delete. Delete. Delete.
My Converse tapped across the tile floor in synchronized steps. Back and forth, I paced inside the laundry room. I had no idea how to respond to him. The last six words I had typed—and then deleted—had freaked me out. They made me feel a bit too vulnerable, too exposed, just too much.
Kind of like how you felt last night…
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I glanced at the washers and noted there were only five minutes left until they were finished. Instead of pacing a hole into the tile, I decided to sit outside the laundry room, in the little seating area for tenants to hang out and watch TV.
I plopped my ass down in a leather chair, and with the remote in hand, I started scrolling through the channels. Once Phoebe and Rachel filled the screen, I tried to turn my racing thoughts off and enjoy an episode of Friends.
But my brain had signed up for a marathon and had no intentions of slowing down. Not even to laugh at Chandler’s frequent sarcastic quips or Monica’s OCD. A few minutes later, my phone was back in my hand and my gaze fixated on the text conversation with Reed.
“Oh, I didn’t even see you there.”
The unfamiliar voice had my eyes moving upward until they reached the face of a guy I had never met in my life. He sat down in the chair beside mine, and right off the bat, introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Jon.”
I just nodded and offered a halfhearted smile. Normally, I would’ve done the polite thing of introducing myself, but I wasn’t in the mood. Small talk with some random guy outside the laundry room of my building felt as appealing as writing a column that told the world I, Lola Sexton, thought Reed Luca’s existential outlook on sex, dating, and relationships was pretty fucking spot-on.