Zoey sighs. "That’s so romantic."
Phe smiles at me with stars in her eyes. No doubt, she’s thinking how lucky James and I are to have met each other. And congratulating herself for having introduced us.
Only Grace still seems skeptical. "So, you met him for one evening?—"
"One entire night—" I correct her.
"One entire night, but you didn’t sleep with him?”
"I didn’t."
"And you never forgot about him?" There’s disbelief in her tone.
“It’s not always about the sex.” Zoey turns on her before I can say anything. “There’s something about being so in tune with another person that everything falls into rhythm.”
Grace scoffs.
“Sure, but what if it turns out that the chemistry was overrated? And when you fuck him, it’s anticlimactic?”
I chuckle. “There’s no fear of that happening. When we kissed that night…it…felt like”—I try to choose the right words—“like we were fusing together, stepping into each other’s skin. That we were as close to being one person as we could possibly be without actually having sex.”
There’s silence as the three of them stare at me.
“That was beautiful. But uh, TMI for me, considering it’s my brother you’re talking about.” Phe winces.
Zoey’s expression is surprised but filled with a good dose of yearning. “That sounds…like something that comes along once in a lifetime. I'm not surprised you waited for him.”
“Did you wait for him?” Grace’s eyebrows draw down.
I wriggle around trying to find a more comfortable position.
“Not consciously. He left on deployment the day after I met him. The next thing I know, Phe tells me he’s left the Marines. Once he opened his restaurant and won the Michelin stars, it was inevitable I'd hear more about what he’d been up to. But the next time I saw him was when I walked into his restaurant for an interview."
“He never contacted you in the time between?”
I shake my head. “I tried my best to move on from him. I went on dates… When I managed to get time off from work, that is."
“But you never slept with anyone else?”
I purse my lips.
Her jaw drops. “You really haven’t slept with anyone else since you met him, have you? You’ve been holding out for him.”
I redden. “Not for lack of trying. I even tried to have a one-night stand. But I backed out at the last moment.”
Zoey puts her arm around me. “You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” She frowns at Grace. “Stop interrogating her.”
“I can’t help it. I'm an investigative journalist,” Grace begins, but Zoey cuts her off.
“No really. Just cut it out.”
Grace sighs. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Harper?—”
“You didn’t. I tried to move on. I told myself that the hours I spent with him shouldn’t count for much. If I’d found anyone with half the kind of connection I felt to him, I’d have slept with him.”
But I hadn’t.
Which is why I’m still a virgin.
