She doesn’t have any mind-numbing substances right now. Not even a Xanax. In fact, she’s never felt more terrifyingly sober.
Sex was supposed to resolve the tension. So why is her stomach still a giant knot?
There’s no way to rationalize it. Ari is almost certain she’s never used a cringe term like “making love” before. Her stomach tightens just thinking it, silently.
She cried. Fucking cried while he declared things to her. She’s never done that—not with Cass or anyone. Ever. And she had several borderline-religious experiences with Cass.
Ari forces herself to take some deep breaths.
Find the exit. It’s the smartest course of action. She has put her underwear back on in an elevator on several other occasions; she can do it again. Her brain serves up an array of excuses. “It would be terrible to ruin the friendship.” “Let’s not rush into anything.” “Your dick is phenomenal and I need time to process that.” Or, better yet, “I have an early appointment.” A valid reason that also has the benefit of being true. It’s just not the Reason.
She hasn’t slept with anyone since Cass. Nothing like burying the lede in your own mind.
Maybe she should say these things with clothes on. Yes, clothes first, then excuses, then exit.
She’s about to tiptoe into the living area to track down her dress, when a ringtone shatters the silence.
“Call from…Dust. Daddy.”
Ari grabs her phone out of the bag and swipes away the notifications she’s racked up. The battery is at two percent. She clears her throat.
“Twenty-four hour Erectile Dysfunction Hotline, how may I direct your call?”
There’s a quiet moment in which Ari can hear the trace of a resigned sigh.
“I’d like to file a complaint about one of your service providers.”
“Oh,” she says, quickly transitioning into a singsongy customer service voice. “I’m sorry to hear that. What’s the nature of the problem? Failure to deliver a blow job?”
“I’d describe it as a failure to communicate. Sometimes she even uses humor to fend off serious conversations.”
Ari gasps. “I see. There must be some malfunction in our training program.”
“Clearly.” There’s a long silence. “Are you planning to come back to the bedroom?”
“No,” she admits.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen if you come back?”
Ari searches her potential-sex bag for her toothbrush. “Spooning.”
“You can be the big spoon,” he offers. “It could just be sleeping.”
“It really couldn’t, though.” The wood floor creaks beneath her feet as she pads back to the bathroom. “I don’t do this—”
“This is different,” he insists.
Except, it’s not different at all. Every relationship starts this way. And most of them end in tears and half-empty bookshelves.
“You said some really intense things.” She squeezes some of Josh’s toothpaste （Colgate Total—she’d expected something more exotic） onto her toothbrush.
“I was ‘intense’？” he replies. “You invented a new dialect. For all I know, you proposed marriage.”
“Yeah, because I can’t wait to jump back into one of those again.” She brushes vigorously and spits. She’s never been more passionate about dental care.
What the hell does she do with her toothbrush? Just set it in the little stand, mingling with Josh’s Oral-B 7000?
Ari snoops around the artfully distressed metal basket attached to the side of the tub, which contains a lot of “product.”
“You use Russian leather scented body wash?”
“Ari.”
She pops open a bottle of Aesop “Calming Shampoo” and inhales a whiff, hoping for some immediate effect.
Nothing.
What the hell does someone with such ridiculous taste in grooming products know about the reality of relationships?
Ari stares at her reflection. She has a terrible case of raccoon eyes and a burgeoning hickey where her neck meets her shoulder. “I haven’t had missionary sex with a man—like, vanilla, face-to-face, whatever—in a really long time.”
“What? What about the couples?”
“They usually want to do that with each other. It’s too—”
“Intimate?” Josh suggests.
“—awkward.” She makes a face. “All that eye contact.”
“You know,” he says, “Zeus ordered Apollo to rearrange the entire human body so people could have sex face-to-face. When they found their missing half, it healed their existential wounds.”