Page 58 of The Shake Off

I nodded.

“Have you ever done stuff like this?”

I shook my head. “Not really. Definitely not that. What about you?”

“Nope.” He glanced over drawings one through ten. “I had a girlfriend in college, and we might have tried a couple of these. Maybe we did this one.” He tilted his head and tapped number eight, which looked like you needed a certification in gymnastics to attempt. “Couldn’t be sure though.”

“But this is my point. It’s all new. And if I can come back from the yips in one game after a night of amazing sex, what if I can really improve my game by getting better at all this?” I tapped the edge of the magazine.

But Parker was reading through the pages and not listening to my theory. “Have you seen this? Are you good or bad in bed? There are questions.”

“What?” I pulled down the edge of the page so I could see what he’d found. I’d been so engrossed in the cartoon people I hadn’t read beyond it. “What are they?”

“Foreplay. For or against? That’s it, that’s the whole question.”

“What’s the whole question?” asked Lux, dropping down in the seat next to me and shooting straight back up. “Ugh, why’s it wet?”

“Spilled water,” I replied, while also trying to consider my answer.

“Oh.” He moved to the seat next to Parker. “Anyway, what’s this question?”

I shot Parker a sly grin, and nodded. Including Tanner, the four of us were all very similar when it came to women, or so I’d always thought, because I realized we never really talked about girls. They were in the apartment more often than not; a fuss free revolving door.

But maybe this quiz would be interesting in more ways than one.

“Foreplay, are you for or against?” Parker replied.

“Foreplay? Like in sex?”

I nodded.

“Where’d this question come from?”

Parker stuffedCosmodown the side of his seat, out of sight. “Doesn’t matter.”

Lux’s gaze flicked between the two of us. “What are your answers?”

“We haven’t answered yet. You arrived as Parker asked it. Well?”

He scratched through his stubble and thought for a moment. “How much time do I have for the sex?”

My brows dropped into a confused frown, “What? You have a normal amount of time. A night.”

“Okay, is this with a girl I met after a game, or a girl I really like?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I’m going to make more effort with a girl I really like,” he replied in a tone that made it clear he thought it should have been obvious.

I sighed deeply. The man had a very valid point.

Which is perhaps where I’d been going wrong all along. I had nothing against foreplay, I think I’d perhaps forgotten the value of it. And when it came down to it, if I thought hard, it had been so long since I’d met a girl I really liked that I seldom bothered.

While I might be familiar with the casual-sex game, so were the girls I was having sex with, and more often than not, the reason they were with me in the first place was so they could say exactly that; that they’d had sex with Ace Watson.

Parker nodded, like he’d been thinking the exact same thing.

“Okay,” I said, “next question. Kissing. For or against?”

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