Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It(91)

“You can say boyfriend if that’s easier.”

I stop in my tracks and look back at him. “Okay,” I say with a smile.

“Okay.” He smiles back.

“I will do that,” I tell him.

“Great.”

“Great.”

I walk to the bar, where Alex and Jerry are flirting over cosmos, and introduce Matthew as my boyfriend. They offer us a toast. I drag him over to Cheryl and Teacher Rob and introduce him as my boyfriend. Teacher Rob makes a dramatic gesture like he just got stabbed in the heart. I introduce him to Nora as my boyfriend through the iPad. She yells so loudly that it somehow disrupts the internet connection. Everyone’s reactions are perfectly predictable.

Except for my parents’.

When I introduce them to my boyfriend, my mom is the one who cries.

I introduce Matthew to every single person in the room as my boyfriend until the word has lost all meaning. Having thoroughly exhausted myself, there’s nothing left to do but sit down and let myself revel in the joy.

The last thirty days have been nothing short of total chaos, and I’m grateful for every single one of them. Because they all led to today.

And now that all the chaos has subsided, there are two things that I can see clearly.

I’m thirty today.





This one is a given.

I’m still a virgin.





This one, though, I’m not in a rush to change.





Epilogue


I lost my virginity in my childhood bedroom, on top of my old collection of romance novels, when I was thirty years old.

I had the whole week off work for Thanksgiving break, and wanted to spend as much of it as I could holed up with Matthew in his apartment. But since we’d be splitting up to spend Thanksgiving Day with our respective families, Mom insisted on having the two of us over to the house for dinner the night before. By the time we finished dessert, it was late, we were tired, and the idea of making the trek back to Matthew’s in Brooklyn seemed too daunting. We decided to stay over in my old room.

“I hate long-distance,” I lamented while we were curled up in my full-size bed. I was playing with his ring. “Every time we’re together, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that one of us is about to leave.”

“I know,” he agreed. “It sucks. Big-time.”

It felt like the right moment to ask the question that’d been sitting in the back of my mind ever since our first date.

“Would you…” I hesitated, scared that I was coming on too strong. “I know we haven’t been together that long and I’m not talking about right now, but eventually…” I propped myself up on my elbow to look down at him. “Would you ever move to LA?” I had thought about what it would look like to move back to New York, but the thought of leaving my friends and my job made the idea less than appealing.

I started panicking the second I asked the question. The past few months with him had been so perfect, and the last thing I wanted to do was scare him off by moving too fast.

“Sorry,” I apologized before he had a second to respond. “Too soon. Forget I said anything.”

“I don’t think it’s too soon.” He sat up so we were eye to eye. “I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to keep my excitement contained.

“Yeah.” He nodded and smiled softly. “I have.”

“And?”

“I would consider it,” he confessed. “I can do my job anywhere.”

“You’ve been thinking about moving across the country for a girl who hasn’t even had sex with you yet?” I didn’t get it. He had been so patient and understanding, and I was just waiting for the day when he finally had enough. But it didn’t seem like it was ever coming.

He didn’t skip a beat before answering. “Yes.”

“Why?”

His brows knit together in a way that implied the answer to my question was the most obvious thing in the world. “Because I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” I had answered.

When I pulled Matthew on top of me that night, my heartbeat had never been so steady and my hands had never been surer of themselves.

“Are you sure this is okay?”

“It’s more than okay.” I shut him up with a kiss. “Now stop asking and show me what all the fuss is about.”

He did. And once we finally got started, I never wanted to stop.

“I don’t think I can go again,” Matthew confessed, breathlessly, three hours and four times later.

“Just try,” I pleaded.

“It doesn’t work like that.” He huffed a laugh, looking at me sympathetically. “No matter how badly I may want it to.”

I couldn’t fall asleep that night. I was too in love.

Oops.

I shook Matthew awake.

“Mm-hmm,” he groaned.

“I’m in love with you, too.”

Of course I was in love with him.

He pulled me into him and fell back to sleep with his face buried in my hair.



* * *



—

Getting on the plane back to LA that Sunday was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I spent the following weeks in a frenzy that had me turning to Google every few minutes: