Page 72 of The Wrong Heart

Is this widowed stranger in my computer screen that I’ve never even seen considered a…friend? The notion seems ludicrous, but I don’t correct her because I don’t fucking know.

Me:Your turn.

A few moments pass before she responds.

Magnolia:I do have a confession… and it’s probably TMI, but I can’t talk to anyone else about it. You’re kind of like my secret diary, only you talk back to me and give oddly good advice sometimes.

Hmm. Interesting.

Me:Sometimes? I’m offended.

Magnolia:You don’t get offended.

Me:Touché. Okay, hit me.

Magnolia:You won’t judge?

Me:Never.

Another long pause, and then:

Magnolia:Okay… I miss sex.

My fingertips stall on the keyboard, barely grazing the keys. I wasn’t exactly expecting that, and I’m fairly certain I’m the worst possible person to give advice on the subject.

I’ve had sex twice. Fuckingtwicein my entire thirty-two years of life. I lost my virginity to some awkward classmate when I was sixteen because I thought it was something I had to do. It was weird and terrible, and I ignored her for the next two years of high school.

Then it happened again on my twenty-first birthday. One of Bree’s tipsy friends dragged me up to her bedroom, hopped on my dick, and five minutes later I decided I had no desire to ever do that again.

While I’m inherently attracted to women in the physical sense, my emotional connection to them has always been nonexistent, if not bordering on toxic.

Whenever I look at a woman, I see my mother. They all morph intoher, with her sneering laugh, her beady, yellowing eyes, her blanched skin. Her long, brittle talons that would scratch at me, leaving bloody nail marks in their wake, and her dark, wiry hair, always hanging loose and greasy around her sunken-in face.

They’re all girls like Gwen and the rest of my foster sisters—all except for Bree. Sniveling, mocking, cruel. They’re like my foster mother, with her sharp, pointy features and a thin mouth that never smiled.

They’re all the girls in swim class who would laugh at me because I refused to take my shirt off in the pool, too horrified to put my grisly scars on display.

One of the girls ripped it off of me once, then humiliated me in front of the entire class, pointing and laughing at the evidence of my abuse.

Istillnever take my shirt off in public, even when I’m working outside in the ninety-degree heat, and it’s probably just another reason why I’ve had no interest in sex.

I’m too… exposed.

Swallowing, I shoot her the only feasible advice that comes to mind.

Me:So, have sex.

Magnolia:It’s not that simple. I haven’t been with anyone since… him. I haven’t been with anyone before him. It’s always been him. Only him.

My mind wanders, and I can’t help but wonder if Melody has slept with anyone since her husband died. Maybe she rotates men in and out of her bed like a goddamn Ferris wheel.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she’s lonely and celibate. Maybe the moment we shared together in her basement was as alarming and out of character for her as it was for me.

I send my reply.

Me:And now it’s only you. What are you going to do about it?

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