Page 32 of Guy's Girl
Adrian decides he isn’t scared about not recognizing love. Why would he, when he already knows he’s incapable of feeling it at all?
By the time they return from their walk, it’s four o’clock—that strange in-between hour, too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Outside, clouds hide the sun. Inside, the walls of a studio hide Ginny and Adrian.
They’re at his place. They’re always at his place. They say it’s because of the privacy, because the boys clog up the Sullivan Street apartment, and, in a way, it is. It is because of the privacy. What they don’t acknowledge is what that privacy affords them: invisibility. The promise that, if this relationship implodes, they can pretend no one knows. They can pretend it never happened in the first place.
When Ginny steps into the studio that afternoon, she feels that the entire space is cloaked in that four o’clock in-betweenness. That hazy break in reality. It clings to every surface like a thin layer of dust.
She knows, then, that they’re going to have sex.
It’s been a long time for Ginny. In college, the more she restricted her diet, the less she thought about boys. While sober, she thought only of food, of what to have for her next meal, of what she shouldn’t have eaten at the meal before. But, when drunk, her mind wandered. She noticed the cute boys at the final clubs. She made eye contact with men across the rooftop of Felipe’s. But when she kissed them, she felt nothing. No butterflies. No arousal.
Sometimes, they would even go back to her dorm room. The minute Ginny found herself in bed with a man, however, she panicked. She would start fast-forwarding in her head to when he would take her pants off and try to have sex with her, and herthroat would close up. Her back would start to sweat. She wanted to run away. Only she didn’t know how to run away without being rude, and Ginnyhatesbeing rude.
So she went through with it. Went through the motions of sex—the sighs, the heavy breathing—even though no part of her wanted to. Even though she was dry as a bone, nipples soft, insides cold and rigid. Even though the idea of having something,anything, inside her body made her almost retch with disgust.
Until now.
Ginny sits on the end of Adrian’s bed.
“Want some water?” he asks, pulling two glasses out of the cabinet.
“Mmm.”
He carries the glasses over and sets them on the bedside table. As always, he sits next to her but keeps a hand’s width between them. He opens his mouth, probably to say something about the weather seeping in through the open window, but before he can get even three words out, Ginny takes his collar and pulls his lips down to meet hers.
Adrian’s mouth is warm and familiar. He has full lips that always feel as if he’s just applied ChapStick, though Ginny has never seen him use a tube. His lips taste like coffee. He never touches her with his hands, not at first. Never runs them through her hair or cups them beneath her breasts. In fact, he stays so still that Ginny sometimes wonders if he’s still breathing.
Ginny is all touch. She wants to feel every part of his body. To push back his hair and unbutton his shirt and cradle the hard line of his jaw. Adrian gives her no direction. She crawls up onto the bed and throws one leg over his lap, straddling him. She grabs the bottom of his shirt and pulls it over his head. Even though it was over seventy outside, there isn’t one bead of sweat on his body. There never is. Ginny wonders where all the sweat goes.
That simple act—stripping one layer from Adrian’s body and tossing it aside—does something to him. Causes him to loosen. He wraps his hands around her sides. Pulls her gently toward his pelvis. His eyes are dark, hooded, even closer to black than usual.
Ginny places a hand on Adrian’s chest and nudges him backward until he’s lying flat on his back. He doesn’t speak. Just watches as she pulls her own shirt over her head. She isn’t wearing a bra. She never is, with breasts as small as hers. Her stomach rolls over once, right at the bottom. Ginny hopes he doesn’t notice.
Adrian reaches up one hand and runs it slowly down the length of her torso, from collarbone to pelvis. Ginny closes her eyes, leaning into his touch. The brush of his fingers feels completely foreign, as if they’re the first thing to ever touch her bare skin.
“Do that again,” she whispers without opening her eyes.
“Okay.”
But when his fingers find her skin again, it isn’t at her collarbone. It’s at the sensitive area atop her breast, where they trace slow circles. Her nipples harden. She lets out a low moan.
Normally, now would be the time that Ginny panics. That she questions whether she even wants to sleep with this person, or if she’s doing it simply because it’s what’s expected. Normally, Ginny would be so far up in her head that she would leave her body entirely.
She opens her eyes. “Take off your pants.”
Adrian does, unbuckling his belt and kicking off his dark jeans, causing Ginny to raise up slightly from his lap. Underneath, he wears tight black briefs. Again, she’s struck by how thin he is. How his stomach is like a crater, how she can see every rib. She wants to fill all that open space. To press her chest to his concave center, the illusion of two bodies fusing together.
She lays one palm on his chest and starts to rock her hips back and forth. Her skirt billows over his hips. He slides his hands upher legs, under the folds of her skirt. As she moves, pressure starts to build at the base of her pelvis. Heat, familiar yet long forgotten. She pushes it into the hard length inside his briefs. It isn’t enough, not even close.
She feels no anxiety about what’s happening between them. No doubt. No guilt. Adrian’s lips part. She wants to hear him speak. To hear her name. She realizes, then, that she can’t remember him ever saying it aloud.
“Do you have a condom?” she whispers.
Adrian pauses, hands still warm on her legs. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
And she is. For the first time in her life, she is.
