Page 41 of Love Unavoidable
“I am.”
I look in the box. It’s filled with women’s things.
She nods and continues talking. “So, then I figured maybe you’re a cross dresser, but the panties are way too small and you don’t have pierced ears. Which means it’s got to be a girlfriend’s stuff and you just threw it all in a box quickly before I got here.”
I laugh at her explanations.
“I don’t see what is so funny here, Ethan.”
I stop laughing long enough to share the truth with her. “That’s all shit that women have left at my house over the years.”
“This entire box?” she looks shocked.
Uh-oh. Is that a bad thing?
It’s possible she won’t find this as funny as I do.
“Um, yes?” I answer it like a question. Such a pussy move on my part. I clear my throat and try again. “Yes, is there a problem?”
“Ethan. There has to be over a hundred different things in here!”
“Well, probably, yeah. I mean I never call them when they leave stuff. And when they call me it’s always because they want a second date, and leaving stuff is an excuse to call me the next day. Or hoping I will call them. When I don’t want the second date, they suddenly lose interest in whatever it is they left here that was so important.”
“How many women have you been with?”
I shrug my shoulders. Not to be coy. But because I honestly don’t know. I haven’t kept count.
“What does that mean?” She shrugs her shoulders back at me.
I shrug mine again. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know your number?”
“No. Do you?”
“Do I know my number? Yes! It’s one. My number is one.”
That turns me on more than it should. Not that it worried me about showing her the best sexual experience of her life anyway but knowing it was just Aaron before me. My god, it’s no contest. I will ruin her for all other men.
“How do you not know the number of women you have slept with?” she asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“It’s not like I’ve been notching my headboard. Or keeping a scorecard.”
“But don’t you have a general idea? Like in your head or something?”
I think on it for a minute. I didn’t peak in the looks or confidence departments until after college and during the fire academy. I got the job with SSFD shortly after the academy. I’ve been there for almost ten years. Probably slept with one to two girls a month in that time, more or less. Maybe a few more than once, rarely more than twice. I quickly do that math and decide for argument’s sake I will say one a month since it sounds better, or even eight a year.
“I’m going to go with a guesstimate of eighty-five,” I say, rounding the number down and thinking that sounds like a solid conservative number. I mean, not compared to one obviously. But for a perpetually single man who has played the field for the last ten years, absolutely.
“Eighty-five . . . oh my god. You’re a slut. A promiscuous slut.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I say. “It’s not like it was a different girl every night. I just didn’t continue seeing most of them after the first time.”
“Which is a slut,” she says.
“Well, now which one is it, Sadie? Am I a misogynist or am I a slut? Because I don’t think I can be both.”
“‘Course you can. My mama is right, you are a total player.”
