Totally and Completely Fine(17)

I wasn’t na?ve enough to think that things would ever go back to the way they were before.

The problem was that I still couldn’t help hoping that they would. That fixed point I kept staring at. That lie my heart just couldn’t seem to shake.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“We’re all doing our best,” I said.

Hollow words. And was I really? Was I doing my best when it came to Lena?

Gabe nodded, but the guilt on his face mirrored the way I felt. All. The. Fucking. Time.

“Yeah,” he said.

I didn’t think he believed me. That was fine. I wasn’t sure I believed me.

We sat there.

“Wanna watch some Star Trek?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

He’d become obsessed with rewatching old episodes of Next Generation. It had been something he and Dad had done together.

It wasn’t like I forgot that loss. It wasn’t like it hurt any less.

But it was a throbbing bruise, while Spencer’s death was a slash across my ribs. Sometimes it felt like I was quietly bleeding out.

We were all just doing our best.

Gabe leaned forward, reaching for the remote. Stopped. Sniffed. Sniffed again.

“Is that a new perfume?” he asked.

Fire suits you, Ben had said.

“Uh,” I said. “Yes?”

“It’s nice,” Gabe said.

“Thanks,” I said, even though I was pretty sure whatever fire had sparked that afternoon was dormant once again.

Chapter 11

Then

I’d expected it to hurt. That’s what everyone—movies, books, gossip—told me would happen when I had sex for the first time. That there would be a barrier that would tell the guy that I was a virgin, and then he’d have to break through it with some big, intense thrust that would make me cry out. I expected blood and pain. I expected to feel different afterward.

There wasn’t and I didn’t.

It wasn’t much of anything, really. It felt strange, sure, to have someone else’s body part inside of me, but I’d used a vibrator before, and it wasn’t halfway as nice as that.

Still, I wanted to make Pete feel like he was doing a good job, so I moaned and groaned and dug my nails into his back and said “Yes, oh yes, that’s it” even though it really wasn’t it at all.

Afterward we lay on his bed, both covered in sweat. His sweat. His skin was flushed, and his hair stuck to his temples, and he looked kind of sweet and cute, his face all relaxed like that. And I thought to myself that even though it hadn’t really been good, it hadn’t been bad and that meant that it could get better. He had seemed to enjoy himself, at least.

Then he rolled to his side.

“You were kind of loud,” he said.

I didn’t sleep with him again.

It was bad enough that the experience had been average—at best—but to be criticized for something I was doing to inflate his ego?

No thanks, Pete.

I made sure to tell Jessica so she could avoid him too. We shared all our escapades with each other, though I seemed to grade them far more harshly than she did. Even if she didn’t come, she always found some excuse for why it hadn’t been the guy’s fault.

I refused to believe the clitoris was that hard to find. I could find it. It wasn’t the Lost City of Atlantis or the Shroud of Turin. It was right. There.

After Pete, I slept with one of his teammates. Both as a bit of revenge, knowing that he’d hear about it, and also because the gossip on the street was that Matt was actually good at sex.

He should have been my first.

Because he was good at sex. Boring as hell before and after, but extremely, extremely good with his hands and his mouth. I didn’t have to fake anything with him, and he didn’t complain once about how much noise I made.

By senior year, I’d seen quite a few dicks.

Not as many as the fine people of Cooper assumed, but enough to be able to form opinions and make comparisons. They were fascinating, in their own way, something extraordinary about the way they could transform, soft to hard, unobtrusive to centrally featured.

I hadn’t seen much of Pete’s, both of us rushing toward the finish line without much warm-up. Matt gave me more of a chance to explore. Examine. He was my first blow job, and I discovered that I loved the power it gave me. The next guy, Kyle, was somewhat of a letdown, being that he knew plenty about what he wanted, but seemed to think that handling my body was akin to operating heavy machinery and he’d never gotten his license.

I’d had high hopes for Mikey Garrison. He had a big dick. That wasn’t so much of a surprise, since his baseball pants were pretty snug, but he seemed to think that just being in possession of a penis of that size made him great in bed.

He wasn’t. Barely a four out of ten, and that’s if I was being generous.

I didn’t realize it until later, but there were some real benefits with a smaller dick.

Because as good as Mikey looked in his tight white baseball pants, he sure as hell didn’t know what to do with the equipment he had in there. A lot of loud grunting, sloppy thrusting, and a quick finish.

He’d wanted to do it again, but I’d declined. He’d gotten mad. Called me a slut.

I thought I didn’t care.

That’s when he started running his mouth.