Page 56 of Escaping Our Reality

He rubs his hand over his jaw. “You’ve decided, huh? You know, Lulu, losing your virginity is a very big deal. It’s not something to take lightly.”

“Who said I was a virgin?”

He rolls his eyes. “Are you serious right now? Come on.”

I wave my hands around in the air. “Fine. Fine. Point taken. But you’re still avoiding the question.”

“Because I don’t wanna answer it.”

“That many, huh?” I bite my bottom lip in thought. He said he never sleeps with a girl who’s high, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t sleep with drug addicts who happen not to be high at that particular moment. Has he had sex with that Christina girl? She looked really nasty.

“Go ahead and ask me. I know you want to.”

He’s right. He’s always right. So, I do. I ask.

And he doesn’t like the question.

“I don’t have sex with drug addicts, no. And I try to make it a point not to have sex with ugly girls.”

“Ry, this isn’t funny. I’m being serious.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “Me too, Lulu. You wanna know my life’s sexual history? Fine! I was a virgin until after I graduated high school. Why, you ask? Because I make it a point to never have sex with a girl who knows where I come from. Who knows my past. Who knows my family.

“I’ll meet a girl at college or at the bar and have sex in my truck. Sex at her place. Hell, I’ve even had sex in a public bathroom. I’ve never gone on more than a handful of dates with someone because that would have them getting too close. And even then, it’s not actual dating. It’s just fucking.

“I prefer to meet a strange girl, have some fun, and she’ll never know that I come from filthy white trash. She’ll neverknow that I don’t have a home. That I sleep in either a twin bed in the middle of a body shop or a blow-up mattress in a tent in the woods. She’ll never know that, most days, I shower at least two or three times because I’m terrified of physically looking like the white trash I am.”

He’s pacing. Breathing hard. Clenching his fists.

All of that hurt. Every single word. That broken rib just pierced my heart. I hate to think of him with other women. I hate to think that his body has been inside of someone else’s body. A body that’s not mine.

More importantly, I hate what he thinks of himself.

Ry is my world. My person. My soulmate. My one true love.

I wish he could see himself the way I see him.

He stops stomping around and stares at me. “Well? What do you have to say?”

“I hope you’ve been tested for STDs because I need to know you’re clean for when we have sex.”

He bends back, screaming into the night sky. “You drive me fucking mad, woman. I tell you all of that, and that’s all you have to say? And yes, by the way, my cock is absolutely 100% perfect. Condoms do their job.”

I scoff. “That’s not all I have to say, but it’s the only practical thing to say right now. I could tell you what a wonderful person you are and how none of those things you think about yourself are remotely true, but you wouldn’t believe me. It would go in one ear and out the other. I could tell you how I’m terrified that you won’t wanna have sex with me because I know who you are and where you come from. I could tell you that the thought of you being inside of another woman makes me wanna throw up because the only person you’re supposed to be inside ofis me. I could tell you that I’m terrified that you’ll grow tired of waiting for me and go find someone else to have sex with. I could tell you that I’m terrified of leaving here tonight and not feeling yourbody on top of mine. Feeling what I want. Feeling what I need. Because I feel like I’m about to die without it.”

He’s giving me a headache. I grab the tie securing my braid and work my fingers through my hair, shaking everything loose until a pile of waves fall around my shoulders. “So, tell me what you want me to say. Tell me, Ry, and I’ll say it.”

For several long minutes we stare at one another. He’s watching me, studying me. Looking at me like I’m a flower blooming in the middle of the night. Looking at me like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever seen.

And I love it.

“Tell me what happens when you orgasm, Lulu. Do you cry out? Do you shake?”

I don’t know how he hears me. I can barely hear my own whisper. “That’s never happened. You know I’m a virgin.”

“You don’t need to have sex to have an orgasm. What happens when you touch yourself and think of me?”

“It feels good. Really good. But I can’t bring myself that far. It doesn’t happen for me.”

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