Loncey’s laugh is music to my ears, making me want to kick my feet and giggle to myself but I resist the urge, restless legs and all.
“You don’t hate kids. You’re already a goner for your niece.”
“True,” I say, feeling a rush of love for the little life growing inside Jenna. “But that’s different. I want her in my life, but I don’t want her tobemy life.”
“I get that.”
I swallow before speaking. “Also, I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with, you know, being pregnant or doing what I’d have to do to get pregnant.”
There’s a too-long silence before Loncey speaks and I both desperately want to know what they’re thinking and am terrified of their true thoughts on this revelation.
“Can I ask you some questions about that?” they ask gently. “You can say no. You don’t need to explain yourself to me, but I would like to understand it better.”
“You can ask,” I say, “but honestly, there isn’t much to say.”
I say it, willing it to be true. I don’t want it to be a big deal. I’ve never been sure if it should be a big deal or not, but I hate the idea that it would be deemed a big deal by others.
“Have you ever had penetrative sex before?”
“Yes.” I don’t say more because it suddenly feels like there’s too much to say.
“And you didn’t enjoy it?”
“No. I did not.”
“Maeve, did someone hurt you? Was that what made it a bad experience?”
“Jesus, I wasn’t raped if that’s what you mean,” I say almost dismissively and then feel like an idiot for adopting such a flippant tone about something so serious.
“Okay, so can you tell me what happened?”
I only intend to sigh but it comes out as a rough groan.
“I guess for it to make sense we have to go back a bit further,” I say.
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“I…” I pause, wondering if this is hard to talk about because I never have or because I still feel, even after all this time, like I’m making a big deal about nothing. “The first boy I kissed grabbed my boob without asking. It fecking hurt. I was fourteen years old. I pushed him off me and vowed I would never let another fella do that to me. And I waited a really long time to kiss somebody again – a decent guy, a boy I was friends with first. And that was grand, you know. I mean, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t amazing either. And this was a time when all my friends were starting to have sex and talk about how amazing it was. I just assumed I didn’t want to have sex with this boy, Timmy O’Connor was his name, because we were too good friends. So I dumped him and waited for something better to come along. Somebody who I felt more for. But that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen for so long that I felt self-conscious that I was the girl not getting any, so when I was about eighteen, I met and hooked up with this older guy. Dermot Mullaney,” she closes her eyes for a moment, sucks in a rough breath.
“He was already in college while I was still in secondary school, or what youse would call high school, I guess. Anyway, he took me on proper dates. To restaurants and bars and on long drives through the countryside. That made me feel really grown-up and I started to think that maybe I could have sex withhim, because that was a grown-up thing to do too, right? But I also knew I wasn’t really ready. But I never told him this. And I stupidly went away for a weekend with him, over in Galway in this poxy B&B that looked good on the website but in reality was all dust and chintzy décor. Anyway, when it came time to go to bed, I realised how badly I’d fucked up. But I still never said anything. I just hoped for the best. We were in bed and we started kissing but he didn’t do anything else and I thought, okay this is grand. I’m okay. But then something just switched in him and the next thing I know his hand was in my knickers and his fingers… were inside me. And, fuck, it hurt. It felt so, so, so wrong. I nearly threw up in his mouth.”
“Shit, Maeve,” Loncey says, and their voice is as soft as a feather.
“And he didn’t stop. Even when I moved my face away from kissing him. He kept poking and prodding and pushing.” I curl my legs up, feeling the ghost of the pain all over again.
“That shouldn’t have happened. What he did was so wrong.”
“But was it? We were boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d been together for months and he’d been so patient, not even talking about sex with me—”
“Maeve, Jesus, no. There are no excuses. There’s no world where what he did was okay. No way.”
“Anyway, it was the most expensive break-up of my life. I eventually pushed him off me and demanded he take me home, but he refused. I had to get a taxi all the way back to Dublin. Luckily I was already doing a bit of brand work with my content creation so I had the money otherwise I would have had to call my parents or my brother, and that would have been mortifying.”
“You mean they don’t know?” Loncey’s cadence is full of disbelief.
“Of course not! Jesus, I’d die a thousand deaths if they ever heard that story.”
“Have you told anyone?”
