There was a pause.
“So, let me take you on your first real date then, tonight.” His thumb ran up my leg in a way that told me he was thinking about more thanjusta date. What came after the date, perhaps. This made me feel two things: excitement and utter terror. Because I’m sure he had no idea how sexually inexperienced I really was. Sex had always terrified me. Being so close to someone. The germs. The possibility of sharing diseases. It was not something that had ever appealed to me, in real life, anyway. It appealed to me in books. But so far, my experiences had shown me that the real-life thing was very,verydifferent to books.
My first sexual experience had been strange to say the least. It had been at the age of eighteen with a guy called Monty, a friend of mine who I’d been in and out of hospital with for a decade. We both had leukemia, his was worse than mine, but through it all we’d supported each other and become the best of friends. Even our parents had become friends. But the last time we were in hospital, things were very different. Monty’s leukemia had progressed and the doctors had said there was nothing they could do anymore. Like me, he had been poked and prodded and operated on for years. The two of us had spent more time inside hospitals than outside. Monty got word that he was being transported to an “end-of-life facility” in the morning, and to all intents and purposes, this was going to be the last time I ever saw him.
Being a leukemia patient, you develop a strange relationship with death. At first you fear it, like everyone does, but then, over time, as your illness hangs around like an unwanted friend, for years, you kind of get familiar with the notion of death. Monty and I had both accepted long ago that this might not be something we would return from. But the night that I heard he was definitely not returning, I was still devastated.
We’d sat on his bed together, eating chocolate pudding cups late into the night, like we usually did. On this night, though, we didn’t have to steal them. This night, the nurses willingly gave us more than we could eat. We didn’t really say much while we ate, we just enjoyed the moment together, which we both knew was going to be our last.
“I only have one regret,” I remember Monty saying.
“What’s that?”
“That I’m going to die a virgin.”
It wasn’t only because he was dying that it happened, it was also because all my old friends were doing it now. In fact, it seemed that everyone was doing it, except me, and for the first time in a long time, I felt I could do something that was finally normal. And although I thought it was rather unusual to be having my first kiss and my first sexual experience all in one night, I guess nothing about my teen years had been usual anyway.
The kiss had lacked any kind of finesse. It was all hard tongues and grinding braces. The sex had also lacked finesse. It had been quick. Very quick. I hadn’t expected that. And I hadn’t really understood where all the pleasure was meant to come from either. Monty seemed to have enjoyed it, though. He’d told me that he could die happy now, knowing that he’d lost his virginity to the most beautiful girl he knew. I think he just didn’t know that many girls outside of the hospital, because if he did, he wouldn’t have thought I was pretty, with my bald head full of peach fluff hair and my collar bones that jutted so far out of my chest.
The next day he was transferred to the end-of-life facility and I never saw him again. I wasn’t even able to go to his funeral. I’d experienced a lot of death growing up, so many friends from the cancer wards and support groups who I’d gotten to know over the years had died, but his death had been the worst.
My second experience had happened a few years later. I guess I was trying to remedy the first one, but it only served to further solidify the idea that “sex” was much better left for solitary moments with myself and my book and my lipstick. I’d tried the internet-dating thing. I’d met an IT engineer who was almost as set in his ways and paranoid about germs as I was. He was also a vegan, so we only ever went to the same restaurant for dinner, a place he could trust because he knew the owner and everything served was non-GMO. I’d appreciated that too, as someone who rarely deviated from the same food and routine. The conversation never really moved past the mundane, punctuated with long silences. There had been a kiss at the end of date three, and by date six . . . sex. It had seemed like the appropriate time, really. Date six felt like a date that could end with more than a kiss at the door. I should have got a sense of what the sex would be like from the kiss.
Sloppy, way too much spit and, what was worse, he kept asking if it was good . . .the whole way through.
I think if you have to ask that question, you probably already know the answer. Or maybe he asked the question so many times because I’d lain on my back, staring at the ceiling, drumming my fingers on the mattress while I waited for the whole ordeal to be over. Again,nothinglike my book. I was starting to think that fictional sex was really not a good representation of what real sex was. And that’s when I decided to watch porn. I mean, if anyone is going to show you what real sex is like, it’s professionals. People who have sex for a living—surely they would be able to show me what real sex was like . . .
Only, when I Googled whether a woman could have a screaming orgasm every thirty seconds while her legs were in that position, the internet assured me it was highly unlikely.
So, if Noah was hoping for sex with me, chances are, he would be sorely disappointed, since I’m not sure I actually knew what real sex even was.
CHAPTER 63
“Sure, a date,” I finally said, after what had been a very long silence.
I heard Noah laugh next to me.
“What?”
“It’s about time you said something. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to say something for three minutes now. I thought I’d scared you off.”
“You didn’t scare me off,” I said, even though that didn’t sound very convincing at all, and there was a part of me that felt completely scared off.
“Okay, I’ll try to believe you, but I’m not sure I totally do . . .” He turned and looked at me. “If you don’t want to then, I mean, we don’t have to . . . it was just a kiss. If you want it to end here, then that’s cool. I won’t pretend that I won’t be disappointed, but if that’s it and this doesn’t go anywhere and there’s no date . . .” He sighed. “Sorry. I’m rambling. What I mean to say it, it’s totally up to you. Whatever you want to do, I’m fine with it.”
“I’m cool with it,” I quickly chimed in. “The date. Totally cool with it.”
“You are?”
“Yes!” I said, feeling a little more self-assured now. This was a time to try new things, right? To live experiences I had never lived before, after all.
“Great.” His cheeks and eyes brightened at the same time and he quickly looked back at the road.
“Where will we go?” I asked.
“I have no idea. We’ll have to Google.”
“Okay.” I pulled my phone out.
