I mix more paint slowly as the dark gray of the night dries, then I take a long time studying the moon, wanting to get its shape right. I also look into the mirror and try to find the stars I know best, the ones that shine brightest: Saturn, Jupiter and, if I’m lucky, Mercury.
I want to tell Maeve about them, but I also don’t want to break the spell that is our silence. It feels like we’re sharing something and although I can’t name it, and fear I can’t claim any kind of ownership of it, I like it. I like it a lot.
“I’m going to start with the moon now,” I eventually say in a low voice.
“It tickles,” she says a moment later when my brush draws a C in the top right corner of her back, just above the jut of her shoulder.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” she replies.
“You like to be tickled?”
“I like… I like to be touched like that. All gentle and sort of feather-light. I don’t know if that’s weird.”
“It’s possibly the least weird thing I’ve heard you say,” I tease.
She tuts and I expect a scathing retort, but it doesn’t come.
“Do you… do you like to be touched like that too?”
“Yeah,” I say with a smile she can’t see. “I like that too.”
She coughs, clearing her throat. “What else do you like? Like in sex, I mean.”
“You really want to know?”
“I told you. I want to get better at talking about sex.”
“I like a lot of things, Maeve. It’s sort of why I do the job I do,” I say and reach for a smaller brush to define the crescent moon’s points.
“But what’s your favorite thing to do? Go on, shock me.”
I let silence fall as I think about this. I don’t need to think about it, honestly. I know what my answer is. I’ve even talked about it on my channels, which again tells me Maeve hasn’t perused my content in any way close to the way I scroll through her videos. I hesitate to answer because I know my answer will not be what she expects and I know she’ll likely have questions about that.
“Kissing,” I say eventually. “Kissing is my favorite part of sex.”
I’m not surprised when I feel a new tension land in Maeve’s body underneath me.
“Kissing?” she repeats. “Of all the filthy, scandalous, X-rated things you do, kissing is your favorite?”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“ButIkiss,” she says and it’s almost like she’s talking to herself.
“What’s your point, Maeve?” I ask gently and still my brush so she knows she has my full attention.
She takes a couple of long moments to answer and for a second I think she’s just not going to bother but then her voice fills the room, tentative and lonely-sounding.
“I always thought I was missing out on something big, something special, something earth-shaking, you know? By not enjoying sex. By not feeling sexual attraction. But you’ve justtold me that kissing is the best part of sex for you and I…” she pauses, “I don’t know how to feel about that.”
A flurry of half-formed thoughts land on my tongue and I wait until they are fully realized before I speak.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s allosexual people who are missing out?”
“Ooh, you know the word and everything,” she teases, but I’m not in a joking mood. I stroke the back of my fingers up the right side of her back and that stills her.
“Did you ever think about how the way you see and experience the world is actually more special than those of us who do enjoy sex and get sexually attracted to other people?”
