Page 36 of Guy's Girl
At times, she feels embarrassed. Girls aren’t supposed to chase boys. They’re supposed to be coy, play hard to get, twirl their bubble gum and roll their eyes and tell themsome other time. By all accounts, she must look desperate.
But Ginny has never quite understood how to be a girl. Not the way Heather does, with her bikinis and blond hair and knife-length nails. If she’s being honest, until she met Adrian, Ginny didn’tcareto understand. She was content to rub away at herfemininity, cut her hair short, and play video games and stand with her boys in a huddle at parties, laughing at the girls who showed up in heels and miniskirts.They must be from Wellesley, she would think, snickering.
Now she wonders if her disconnect with womanhood is why Adrian still hesitates to kiss her.
In Ginny’s past experience, once she and a boy kiss for the first time—andespeciallyafter they’ve slept together—a barrier drops. A threshold passed. After that, they kiss freely.
Not so with Adrian. Some dates, she waits hours for him to kiss her. Some dates, they’ll sit on the end of his bed, talking about God only knows what, and all Ginny can do is stare at his lips, begging him internally just to lean down already.
Every time she sleeps with Adrian feels like the first. He is so quiet, so closed off, that whenever she takes his clothes off, she’s faced with a brand-new puzzle.Where should I touch him? What will make him feel good?His body is all muscle and bone, a web of hard angles that never feels familiar, no matter how many times she sees it.
There is nothing rote or boring about being with Adrian Silvas. When he runs his fingers down her spine, she shivers. When he sighs into her mouth, she wishes she could capture his satisfaction, inhale it, and make it part of her own body. When he touches the most sensitive parts of her, a fire blooms, and she has to stifle her cries for fear they’ll startle him away.
She is constantly rediscovering him. Rediscovering all the parts he hides from the rest of the world.
But, despite the fire growing inside her, Ginny stays cool. She stays casual. She might set up their dates, but she never pushes him to acknowledge them as such. She doesn’t want to pressure him. She doesn’t want to ask for more than he can give.
***
One night, after her usual post-dinner purge, Ginny opens her phone and scrolls through the Instagram page for her sister’s business, looking at the bikini models flouncing the tiny pieces of fabric that Heather creates. She looks at the inward curve of their waists, the hard lines of their jaws. Women paid for their flawless femininity. Heather is in the photos with them, laughing, as if her beauty is the funniest joke she’s ever heard.
Ginny knows she will never be in any of these photos.
She tries to relax. After all, what does she have to worry about? Work is going well. She lives with her three best friends. She likes a boy who sometimes seems to like her back.
But none of that matters to Anxiety. The moment she registers that Ginny is sitting around, no distractions, no danger, she starts searching. Seeking. Looking for something wrong.
You see, Anxiety is a tricky little devil. She masquerades as your friend, as a necessary part of your life, allowed to dictate where you go, what you eat, who you befriend, and most importantly what to avoid. Her hold is so strong because she thinks she’s protecting you. She thinks it’s looking for tigers—but you left the jungle centuries ago.
It’s why things got so bad in Minnesota. Alone, with nothing and no one to pull Ginny’s focus away from her mind, Anxiety took over. She found tigers everywhere: in too many drinks, too many bites, too little exercise. She controlled every action Ginny made, from when she got up in the morning to how many episodes of Netflix she was allowed to watch at night.
Anxiety is a dictator.
But when Ginny is around Adrian, something strange happens. Her Anxiety quiets. Ginny doesn’t feel the need to obsessively plan every minute of her day. She can forget about work. She can eatand, at least until she leaves his presence, she doesn’t feel the need to throw up.
She picks up her phone. Pulls up his contact. Her finger wavers over thecallbutton. She’s never done this before. She doesn’t know if he’ll find it weird or clingy.
She hitscall.
It’s 11:30 p.m. There’s a good chance that Adrian is still at the office. That he won’t be able to answer, even if he wanted to.
“Hello?”
Ginny’s heart skips into her throat. “Adrian?”
“Yeah, hi.”
“Are you at the office?”
“No, I’m home. I got out early.”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
“Yeah.”
She glances about her room—which used to behisroom—searching for something to say. After a lengthy pause, she blurts, “Did the lady next door practice her scales in the middle of the night when you lived here, too?”
Adrian laughs, a surprised sound. “Yeah. She did.”
