Page 55 of The Attraction File

TWENTY-TWO

Evaleen

I felt like I invented the ability to stop time.

Edgar seemed frozen. He stared at me with his hands on his hips unmoving. It was creepy.

Perhaps he had a heart attack and was deceased. I’ll be another Internet sensation: Woman Stops Man Dead with Virgin Confession.

I snapped my fingers in front of his face but he only blinked. At least I knew Edgar wasn’t dead.

“You can laugh if you want. I get it, being a thirty-something virgin is abnormal to say the least, but it is what it is.”

Edgar straightened.

“You’re right, it’s not something I come across every day,” Edgar said and then frowned.

I knew I wasn’t his type. It didn’t matter how beautiful the package, if it was broken or you couldn’t even get it opened, then there was no point to it. And I was both, broken and had never been opened.

Edgar was realizing at that moment there was no point to me. To kissing me or doing anything other than work with me.

Back to boring old Evaleen.

Did I really expect him to be happy about this confession? Like he found his pot at the end of the vagina rainbow.

Of course I knew better, I just hoped he wouldn’t freeze up on me.

I hopped off the desk and straightened my brown skirt. “Maybe it’s best that I go.”

“No, Evaleen; I’m sorry. It just surprised me. I mean, we hooked up four years ago. I know we didn’t have sex, but we did other stuff. Right?”

Four years ago. The happy hour I would never forget. I was surprised he remembered when the detectives asked him. So he avoided me after that because he was embarrassed, not because he couldn’t remember.

Now I felt even worse.

“All we did was kiss. Then we started tickling each other. You kept telling me to take your picture while I was tickling you. I thought it was odd but I did it. Then, after the fifth picture, you passed out. So I left.”

Edgar took a breath. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t remember much from it. Since you came home with me that night I thought you wanted sex. I don’t know, I just assumed since you are so in control, so self-confident that you had your pick of men. Is it a religious thing?”

He doesn’t know me at all.

“No, it’s not a religious thing.”

It felt weird looking at Edgar, so I stared at the floor while I pulled my blouse together. He thought I was self-assured. Little did he know I was unsure of just about everything.

He reached down and took my hand. As uncomfortable as I was right now, it felt good to have his touch. Edgar moved around the desk and pulled me along. We left his office with its wonderful walls filled with books and walked down the hall.

He guided me to his pale blue velvet couch in the center of his living room. I still couldn’t look at him as we sat so I stared across the room at the stone fireplace with an impressively large TV mounted over the mantle. Sparse family pictures in brushed silver frames dotted the mantle, and a similar brushed silver encased his otherwise glass coffee table. He turned, placing his knee on the couch to face me. Edgar still had my hand in his.

“I’m going to tell you something, Evaleen, and you probably won’t like it very much. But I’d rather be honest with you.”

Fuck.

That always happened. I dated a guy a few times and then finally I got the courage to tell him I was a virgin. That’s when the “It’s not you it’s me” speech came out. For some reason admitting to being a thirty-something virgin is about as much fun as an Ebola and Bubonic plague sandwich.

At least with those guys I had only known them for a few weeks. Edgar was different.

I had been lusting after him for five years. Not just that, but I still have to work in the same building as him after this.

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