Page 33 of Just Friends
I waited for her to turn to mush beneath my lips, like whatnormallyhappened when I necked girls and whispered naughty nothings in their ear. But that didn’t happen with Piper. Instead, she shied away from me and uttered the one word I didn’t often hear.
“No?” I repeated with surprise.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t do that with guys I just met.”
I slowly retreated.
“Oh.” My throat, suddenly dry, wentgulp.“Shit, I’m sorry. I thought—”
She seemed even more embarrassed than me. “No, no, it’s okay. I think I gave you the wrong impression.”
Webothtook a big swig of our drinks and shared an awkward, bumbling silence afterward.
I gestured at the exit. “Should I leave?”
“Only if you want to?” she replied.
I paused. Usually, once a date makes it clear things aren’t headed for the bedroom, I pack up and head home. But … now that I’d taken my shot and gotten denied? I felt lighter, somehow.
“I don’t want to, actually,” I said, surprising us both. “I want to keep talking.”
Relieved, she smiled. “Me too.”
Trying to move us past the situation I’d just created, she politely expanded her stance on hookups: she doesn’t do them.
“You’ve never had a single hookup?” I asked.
“Never,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against people who do. I just want to really get to know a guy first. I guess I’m just old fashioned or something.”
“Interesting,” I said, stroking my chin. “I thought for sure—” I stammered. “I mean, I thought because you grew up on a hippie commune, that um—”
“I already know what you’re going to say.” She’d clearly been through this scenario too many times to count. “You thought I’d be intofree love, right?” She threw up the peace sign and did a funny little hippie dance.
I chuckled. “Well,yeah,exactly. Isn’t that what it was like?”
“You’re not wrong,” she said. “Growing up, I was surrounded by it. I saw and heard all sorts of things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, the standard fare. Swinging, polyamory, BDSM stuff; whatever, you name it.” She took a gulp from her drink. “In fact, my own parents are swingers.”
I nearly choked on my beer. “What?! Really?”
“Yup. They tried to keep it a secret from me and my sister, but theytotallysucked at hiding it. It doesn’t help when everyone else on the commune knows it’s happening, too.Blech.”
“Oh, God. You poor thing.”
She giggled. “Yes! Thank you!”
I scratched my chin. “But you’re not into any of that stuff?”
“Nope.”
“Huh.” I paused. “Really?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“I just don’t get how you could be raised by swingers andnotbe into that lifestyle yourself,” I said.
