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Peter squeezed my hand. “But you didn’t?”
“I did a little.” I tugged my hands back, twisting them in my lap. “I think I should have enjoyed it a lot, but it was like he was telling me he loved me in a language I didn’t understand.”
Peter hummed softly, and Windy muttered, “Je t’aime.”
“Right. Like that. Then… it was only when he started speaking some of the words Idoknow that I felt right about it.”
And by “words,” I meant actions, and by actions I meant choking me.
“But then it was over, and he left.” I grimaced. “He didn’t insult me, or smack me, or make me feel like a whore even once.” I grabbed another piece of grass, twirling it between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Mon ami,” Windy said, slinging his arm around my shoulder. “That’s intense stuff.”
Peter’s brows furrowed again. “This girl I went to high school with? Her parents were psychologists. Maybe you could benefit from talking to someone like them? They were good people.”
“Like I have the money for that.”
“There’s free counseling on campus through the Student Psych Center.”
I rolled my eyes. “You think some twenty-one-year-old grad student is going to know what to say when I tell them about my history, about what my father did to me, and that I’m a total fucked-up mess now because of it?”
“Would you have preferred your Dom had hit you on the date? Called you a slut?” Windy asked, ignoring my last comments.
I sat up straighter. “Yeah. It would have felt normal and expected between us. This felt like…” I struggled to come up with an example. “You know how church choirs usually sing their hymns backed by organs or piano? But now they’ve started having these early services for young people with religious rock bands singing praises and stuff?”
“No,” Peter said, of course, because he didn’t ever go to church despite his father being the head of the religious studies department at the university. Also, he was a Jewish atheist.
“My family’s Catholic,” Windy reminded me. “No rock bands.”
“Okay, well, just believe me. In white, Appalachian churches, this is happening. I know because my mom still makes me go with her sometimes. Anyway, the first few times she took me to the rock band worship, I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, this is a service, I guess, but is it worship? I like it, but it ischurch?’”
“Okay, I’m following you,” Peter said.
“So that’s how I felt. I liked it, but was it sex?”
“Maybe it was lovemaking,” Windy offered.
“That’s what he said.”
Peter and Windy shared a long look, and then Peter cleared his throat. “He really said that? Or is that some of your wishful thinking?”
“He said that. I swear. He said love can be an action and not a feeling. So, it’s not like he said he wasin lovewith me. He just wanted to fuck…lovingly, I guess. And I came, and it was good. Different. But weird. Was it sex, though? Or was it something other guys who aren’t me get to have with people who truly like them?”
Windy blinked at me. “Wow, you’re all up in your head about this. I think you have to tell him.”
“What if he—”
Windy put a hand over my mouth. “Shh. No what ifs. Just talk to him.”
“I agree with Windy,” Peter said, getting his stuff together as the bell in Ayers tolled. “Sorry. I’ve got to get to class, but Windy’s got your back on this.”
“Actually, I gotta go too,” Windy said, dropping the blanket as he stood and stretched, his green shirt riding up and showing a slice of his nearly hairless stomach and his deep belly button.
“I thought you were skipping class with me?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. Big test at the end of the week. I can’t miss this lecture.”
Windy and Peter said their goodbyes, but Windy lingered a moment after Peter had walked off. “By the way,” he said, squatting down next to me. “Next time you talk to your Dom, can you ask him how a person gets trained to do what he does? I’m interested.”
