Page 54 of Be Your Anything
CHAPTER11
LUCAS
Though I doubt anyone I know would believe me, in my entire life, I’ve only slept with four people.
Remmy was the first.
We lost our virginities to each other during my senior year of high school, her junior year. It was the day after the party at Tinsley’s, the two of us trying to use our bodies to make ourselves feel better about getting back together, about having broken up in the first place.
Two of the women I’ve been with were groupie types I slept with the weekend I came home from Santa Barbara.
Remmy called to tell me she wanted to have an open relationship, so I walked straight out to my truck and drove up there at two in the morning, ready to hash shit out and figure out what the fuck was going on.
That was on a Wednesday night. I came home on Thursday, accepting that we would have an open relationship or no relationship.
That weekend, I had sex with two of the girls who approached me at a surfing competition. Separately, and on different days, but in the same weekend.
It never sat well with me, and I regretted it after that alcohol-fueled weekend came to a close.
I might have been a young man with hormones racing through my body, but I was not a slave to my penis. Paige’s feminist sayings have taught me that enough times to have a permanent small lump on the back of my head from how often she’s given it a slap.
I’ve also never been a particularly lust-driven guy. My sex life with Remmy before she left for college was regular enough but not crazy. Of the two of us, it was Remmy who had the intense sexual appetite, not me.
So my choice to jump into bed with two women in as many days wasn’t about what I wanted to do. It was about the point I wanted to make.
That I could sleep with other people, too.
That I wasn’t being rejected.
That I wouldn’t care what Remmy was doing in Santa Barbara because I’d be busy doing my own thing in Hermosa.
Afterward, though, it never sat right with me.
Truth be told, I’d never felt like more of a fucking slimeball.
Until now.
Because the only other girl I’ve slept with besides those two groupies—a mistake I made in anger and frustration—is sitting across the booth from me, wearing the most unconvincing smile I’ve ever seen on her face as my girlfriend snuggles into my side.
Lennon has a good fake smile—a really good one. Most of the time, I can’t even tell when something is wrong.
But tonight I know.
I can tell.
And I feel like my hands are tied behind my back knowing I can’t do anything about it.
We’ve been sitting here for nearly half an hour, the girls peppering Remmy with questions about how her final semester wrapped up and how the job search is going. She’s been answering in her own way, deflecting in that very Remmy style that turns questions around and focuses on other people.
She’s really good at that—redirecting, shifting the attention back onto the person she’s talking with.
We’d been dating for over a year when I noticed it for the first time, but for some reason, I’ve never pointed it out to her. Maybe because I don’t actually want the answer to why she does it.
“So, Remmy…when are you coming home?”
Paige’s question yanks me out of my own head. I glare at her, frustrated that she’d try to bring our earlier conversation to this table, where there’s an audience, though that is definitely Paige’s style.
There’s no reason for her to get involved or ask questions to which neither of us have the answers, but I don’t think that’s ever stopped her from butting in before.
