“Right.” He clears his throat. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to know.”
I regard him with indifference. “Yeah?”
Ian looks around, waiting to speak until two kids walk by and leave his range. “What exactly is third base, anyway?”
“Huh?” He’s kidding, right?
Of course he’s not. Why would I ever expect him to take things seriously? Why would I ever expect him to talk about anything but sex? Haha, who do I think I’m sleeping with other than a giant twelve-year-old?
“So you’ve got first base. That’s making out. Most guys agree that second base is groping. Getting to touch some boobs, maybe feeling a girl’s heat. Even better if she starts rubbing your, uh...” He looks around again. Yeah, we’re in a family-friendly environment. Very friendly. There are at least fifteen kids in our section of the restaurant, easily. Remind me to never have kids with this guy. “Rubbing you to make you happy.”
“Uh huh...”
“Hitting a homerun is getting to stick it in, preferably to completion. The guy’s, of course.”
“Of course.” I’m shaking now. Shaking in frustrated rage while I plaster on a rueful smile for the public’s sake. “Why would it be any different?”
“So hear me out. If second base is scoring some groping, and hitting a homerun is sinking deep into some hot pussy, then what is third base?”
By now my face is in my hands. I don’t know this guy. I am definitely not married to him in the eyes of the law, and probably God too.
“I do not have a clue,” I sigh, staring at the bottom of my coffee cup. “Oral sex, I guess.”
“But if oral sex is still sex, then wouldn’t that be a home run of some kind? Trust me, hon, guys don’t care where they get to stick it. Happy to get a blowjob as much as we are to...”
“Stop. Please.” I’ve got a headache, and we’re in public. This conversation would try my patience even in private, so... “Oral sex is sex, but I think most people, especially those in heterosexual relationships, see oral as foreplay and therefore not as intense or intimate as PIV sex. I know me giving a guy the ol’ tongue and throat is not the same as letting him stick it between my legs.”
So much for euphemisms.
Ian considers my words. “Huh. Guess so. So where does anal fall? Foul ball?”
We’re done. I tell him as much when I get up and get some actual food from the buffet and come back with enough carbs and fat to kill me for my whole vacation. My personal trainer will be screaming at me when we go home.
“You haven’t fixed your ring,” he says the moment I sit down.
I look at the ring on my left hand. “Oh, yeah.” I’m retaining water like soil on a rainy day, so yanking that puppy off takes some effort and then some. Ian watches, half interested, as I take his promise ring and shove it on my other hand, where it belongs. I stop for a brief second, considering what it means. He got them for us, as a promise that we would be as good as engaged, even though we officially weren’t.
I don’t want to get married.
It’s not personal. I love Ian, more than I could probably love any other man. We get along better than I get along with my own father. Sure, he pushes a ton of my buttons, but I push his right back. He gets me. He dotes on me and takes care of me. And he’s hot... and we have hotter sex. I trust him with all my heart... but I don’t want to marry him.
It’s me.
I’m not the marrying kind of girl.
How he feels about all of this, I can only guess. He’s on his phone right now, texting someone. Looking disinterested as I eat. Based on our conversations over the months, my guess is that he wouldn’t mind getting married one day, let alone to me. Ian’s a romantic guy. He likes surprising me with flowers, dinners, and weekends in Bermuda. He remembers my favorite everything and has lost his emotional shit more than once over how much loves me—usually when he’s intoxicated, in case I hurt his manliness there. He’s a ham and a half, a spoiled rich kid who has had access to anything—and anyone—he wants. It seems to be me he’s singled out for “forever.” It warms my heart to think about spending the rest of my life with him. Growing old and maybe buying a townhouse together one day. If I were the marrying type, I’m sure he would be thinking about how to propose to me, even if we put off marriage a few years.
He likes having the world know I belong to him. He also likes having the world know he belongs to me, although he would never say it.
Except there are a fuckton of issues!
“We need to get this sorted out,” I say softly. “We can’t be married, Ian. We need to get an annulment.”