“He couldn’t get it up,” I said with a smirk. “Maybe he’s gay.”
“That wasn’t it.” Tria promptly corrected me.
“What didn’t work then?” I asked. I had no idea what she was trying to say, or what she was trying to avoid saying. She was obviously embarrassed by something, but I had run out of patience and wasn’t going to let it go at that point. “Well?”
“He just…couldn’t get it in.”
Oh.
“Must be a big guy,” I said. My smirk was gone.
“No, no…he’s…I don’t know, average, I guess. It just…wouldn’t go.”
“Wait…” I had a sudden epiphany. “You mean you weren’t ready, right?”
“I was ready,” she said defensively. “We planned it for weeks. After prom and all that trite shit.”
“Maybe you said you were, but you weren’t wet, were you? He couldn’t get it in because you weren’t into it.”
Tria went silent as she stared at the corner of the coffee table where her drink sat untouched. Without the ability to read her mind, I wasn’t sure what she might have been contemplating, only that she was definitely deep in thought, and I didn’t want to break the imposed silence.
A couple of minutes later, she finally spoke.
“He was right,” she said quietly. Her voice was strained, and the tension in her shoulders was visible.
“What do you mean? Who was right?”
“Keith,” she answered. “He said there was something wrong with me; I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“What?” I bellowed. Tria jumped in her seat. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Just what you said!” she shouted back as her voice broke. “There’s something wrong with me!”
“For fuck’s sake,” I cried, “there is not!”
“But you just said…”
“I said you weren’t into it,” I reminded her. “You weren’t wet because he didn’t turn you on. You didn’t want him. That’s not a problem with you; that’s a problem with him being a douchebag. You didn’t want to sleep with him.”
“I did…” Her voice trailed off. Her tone was completely unconvincing.
“Bullshit.” I put my empty glass down and turned to face her. “Maybe he said you were ready, and maybe you wanted to believe you were, but you weren’t. If you really wanted it, you would have known it, felt it. Your body would respond to that, and it would have worked.”
I tried not to think about how fucked up the direction this conversation had taken and reminded myself that she was still pretty young. I hadn’t realized she was so naïve, but it kind of fit with the whole small-town theme about her. I didn’t want to admit it, but the fact that Keith had backed off and not just…well…forced his way in was a pretty good thing.
“How do you know?” Tria asked as she looked at me. The edges of her eyes were a little red, and though I didn’t see any actual tears, I could tell they were close.
“Because…well…” I had no idea how to answer that without sounding like a total man-whore. I reached up and ran my hand over my face as if that was going to help me come up with a better answer.
“Because what?” Tria pushed for an answer. Apparently she was not going to let me off easy.
“Because I know women,” I said. “I know women and how they are when they’re turned on. If there’s something wrong with anyone, it’s him for not knowing what the fuck he was doing. He didn’t know how to get you going.”
I looked straight into her eyes, and she looked into mine. It felt like some kind of understanding was flowing between us, but I couldn’t have put a name to it. It should have felt awkward—the whole conversation was bizarre—but it didn’t. It felt right. It felt good.
“You really think it’s not me?” she asked.
“It’s not you,” I told her definitively. I wanted to add that I would be happy to show her just how turned on she could get. I wanted to crawl right over the top of her and leave her dripping in her panties. I wanted to show her everything I could make her feel with my hands, my tongue, my…