Page 45 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
Half my shake is gone, and the silence is beyond awkward and into downright agonizing.
Finally, staring into his tumbler, he sighs. “Nova, I…” He takes another long drink, more for something to do while coming up with what to say than anything, I think. “About the other day, at your house…”
I wait in silence, keeping my eyes on his.
“I just…” Another heavy sigh. “I’ve relived that moment a million times, and it hurts more every single time.”
“Which particular moment, James?” I ask, even though I know.
He looks at me, pained. “You know, Nova.” I don’t answer that, and James swirls the dregs of his shake. “I know I’ve already apologized and explained, I just…I can’t get it out of my head.”
“And I told you I understand as well as anyone can.”
“Doesn’t change it.” He finishes the shake and rinses out the tumbler. “You were crying when I went into your room.”
I nod. “Yes, I was.” I shrug; I go for blunt honesty, not to hurt him but because it’s just my way. “I don’t cry easily, James.”
He winces. “You don’t seem like the type.” He hesitates. “It really hurt you.”
I nod. Go for more brutal truth. “After Craig passed away, I…I guess you could say I sort of went through a period of time where I did everything I could to pretend to myself that I was fine. I grieved, sort of—cried a lot, lay in bed for days until friends dragged me out of bed and forced me to shower and eat, that whole scene. But then I snapped—not like a stick breaking, but like a rubber band. I didn’t crumble, I didn’t turn to drugs or drinking.” I swallow hard. “Until then, I’d been very…conservative, sexually. Few partners, and only ever with someone I was emotionally involved with.”
I pause. Think. Gather words. I’m not sure why I’m telling him this. I’m not ashamed of it, but I’m not proud of it, either. My feelings about it are, to be honest, very complicated.
“Craig was my last romantic partner. The last person I was involved with emotionally.” I hesitate again. “I stayed alone for a long time. Six months? Close to a year, maybe, while I recalibrated, trying to figure out what I wanted out of life after losing Craig. I moved away, went back to school. I knew no one, had no friends, no family around—I was just utterly alone. And so, so lonely.”
James nods. “That’s rough. I always had Jesse, Franco, and Ryder. I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”
I sigh. “I got sick of being alone and lonely. I needed…companionship. So I tried going on a date.” I laugh bitterly. “That didn’t go well.”
“No?”
“Panic attack. Straight up panic attack. Couldn’t breathe, heart palpitating, the whole nine yards.”
“Ouch.”
I nod. “I tried a couple more times, but I couldn’t make it through a date without panicking. And then one day I got invited to a party by a classmate.” I roll a shoulder. “I got a little tipsy, and out of sheer desperation to feel anything besides pain and loneliness, I let the guy who’d invited me take me to his apartment. I was…not quite sober, but only buzzed enough that I could get past my hang-up. Sort of. He started feeling me up, and I stopped him, told him I couldn’t stay the night, hoping he’d catch my drift. He just laughed and was like, I wasn’t planning on asking you to. So that was that. And for the first time in my life, I had a one-night stand.”
James keeps his expression neutral. “I see.”
I drop my eyes. “That was the start of what I guess I’d call an experimental phase. I coped with my fucked-up feelings through sex. Casual, short-term, no-strings sex.” A pause, and let it all hang out. “A lot of it. But none of it was…” I drift off, hunting for a word.
“Real?” James suggests.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Did it work?”
“No.” I scoff, and then frown, tilting my head and rethinking that. “I mean, yes, to a degree. For about two years, I tried to cover the heartache and loneliness with sex, and for a while it was fun. I did enjoy myself, I’m not gonna lie about that. Unless something touched on my hard limits, I went with it.” I blush, because it’s hard to talk about this with James. “But after a while, it became…harder and harder to pretend I didn’t feel weird about it. I think by nature I’m just a monogamous person—a one-man kind of gal. Things just caught up to me, I guess. I really don’t know how to put it. I didn’t feel guilty, and I don’t now. I don’t regret it, and I’m not embarrassed by it. I learned a lot about myself, and about what I liked and wanted, and what I didn’t.”
