Page 91 of The Unraveling

“You want to show me the flat, or something else?” he asks.

I shrug. “Whatever.”

“You don’t have to,” he says. “You know that. I find that women often feel guilty for crying and things like this. If I come up, I expect nothing from you. Not in the least.”

I know he’s saying something nice about consent and respect, but I’m distracted by his incredibly sexy accent.

“Oh, it’s fine,” I say, blowing him off and pulling him in by the hand.

We go inside and up the elevator. For the first few minutes, he just walks around saying, “This is amazing. Just amazing.”

I go to the study and I grab something at random off one of the racks of wine, making sure it’s not too old or special looking. I end up with something white and French.

For the next hour, we just talk more. I find that it’s too painful to say Jordan’s name, and too hard to really bring him up at all, especially to another guy. So I basically tell Luca, honestly, that I’m still in love with my ex, so I don’t want to talk about him.

Of course, he understands.

It’s not until nearly nine thirty that something in the tone shifts enough that I think we might actually hook up after all.

It starts because we start talking about sex.

“So what’s the worst sex you’ve ever had?” I ask, sipping my wine, feeling tipsy and happy. I know Luca well enough to know I can ask him anything at this point.

“I don’t like to answer that!” he says. “I’ve never had bad sex. And it was definitely never the women.”

I roll my eyes performatively. “I mean, that’s a very nice answer, but come on. There must have been something.”

He thinks for a moment, and then says, “Okay, I’ve got one. It was a three-way. Two girls from Sicily. Gorgeous, both of them.”

“I did say worst you ever had.”

“I know! I know, okay, so these two girls. I meet them at this hotel in Positano. I was there visiting family, staying alone; they saw me at the bar, and they walk right up and ask me if I want to fuck them.”

“Damn,” I say. “Bold.”

“Damn is right. So, I was twenty years old at this time, I couldn’t see why to say no. So I take them back to my room, and—”

“You’re really bad at this.”

“It’s true, it’s the worst! We were all there, you know, in the bed”—he blushes—“and I don’t know, there was something about it that just felt bad. It didn’t feel like sex, it felt like something else. Sex is about connection. This felt like it was something else, something more about the feeling itself. Or about saying Look how crazy we can be, but I couldn’t see to what audience we were performing. Each other, I guess?”

“Okay. Okay, I can give you that. I had a weird threesome thing once, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was with my best friend, Sylvie, and this, like…absolute asshole named Sebastian. He was the ballet master at the time, and in retrospect it was a total abuse of power. But basically we all kind of fooled around and then later on when I was asleep, the two of them started hooking up without me. I didn’t want to be part of it, but I still felt weirdly, like…excluded? If that makes sense?”

“Definitely.”

“Then they also went on to have this crazy affair. So it felt even weirder, like I felt like I had actually been in the way that time we all hooked up. Like an obstacle.”

“Did it feel good?”

I sigh. “Well, kinda, but same as you said, I was too preoccupied with the performance of the whole thing. I was on Molly at the time, though, so that helped.”

“Ah, I see.”

“I’ve had a lot of bad sex,” I say.

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