Page 37 of Study Buddies

“I did, and you said it was boring.”

“I said you could do better,” he corrected with a challenging look. “And I still think you can.”

“Give me an example.”

“All right, let’s see. What’s something you’ve never tried in the bedroom but secretly want to?” He side-eyed me. “And don’t say a new kind of comforter. I’m talking sexually, Victoria.”

Shock flitted through me followed by a half dozen different feelings in rapid succession. Disbelief at his words. Embarrassment. Arousal. Anger. I went with that last one. “You can’t say that kind of thing to a woman you barely know.”

“I just did.”

“Well you shouldn’t!” At the moment, I didn’t care if he thought I was a prude. “I’m in a moving car that I can’t leave.The driver is asking me sexual questions. Don’t you get how that would scare a woman?

“What exactly do you think I’m going to do to you while speeding down the road?”

He was missing the point. “You don’t know what it’s like for us. For all I know, you could pull off onto a dirt road in the middle of the woods and?—"

“Okay, okay, I get it.” He held up his hands in surrender, which was alarming since they were needed on the wheel. “I admit that I don’t know what it’s like for women, and I know you were treated like shit by that creep you lived with. But here’s the thing: I don’t think I scare you.”

“You scared me when you burst into the bedroom last week.”

“Yeah, I was an asshole. I woke you from a dead sleep. Anyone would’ve been scared.”

“If you knew that, why’d you do it?”

“I’m a complicated man,” he said, after a pause. “But I still don’t think I scare you in general.”

“How on earth could you judge that? You’re not a woman.”

“But I spend a lot of time watching them.” His unruffled, unrepentant voice somehow gave my heart rate a chance to settle.

“Like when you’re supposed to be listening to the professor?”

“Exactly. But okay, let me channel my inner girl.”

“Inner woman.”

“Whatever. Okay, I’m a woman. I’m hot. I’ve got boobs.” He briefly took both hands off the wheelagainto cup his pretend breasts. “But I’ve also got a brain.”

I rolled my eyes.

“You know what else I’ve got? A sex drive. It’s not just men who want sex, it’s hot chicks like us, too.” He sounded ridiculous saying those words in his deep voice.

“You’d make a terrible woman.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true. You might actually enjoy talking about more than just essays and homework. We’re young. We’resupposedto be interested in sex. And no one ever got pregnant just from talking.”

Wait, was he sort of making sense? I still felt he needed to understand my point, on behalf of all women. “What you just said may be true, but what I said is true, too. We’re not a frat party. I’m not wearing a little black dress, chugging beer, and grinding all over guys on the dance floor. We’re in your truck, thundering down the road… if you make me uncomfortable, I’m trapped. Short of jumping out of a moving vehicle, I have no way out of the situation.”

“So let’s give you one.”

“And also—what?” He’d lost me.

“Pick a safeword.”

“What?”Surely I’d misheard him.

“It’s a word that you use when?—”

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