Page 9 of Two’s Better

“Huh? My face? What’s wrong with my face?”

Bernice snorted. “Want to try that again? This time, good?”

Fiona laughed. She’d tuned into the conversation at Bernice’s question and was eyeing me critically from the bench. I took a deep breath, locked my phone, and shoved it into my jacket pocket. Fuck, my hands were cold. I rubbed them together.

“Uzezi thinks we should have sex.”

There was a brief silence.

“With each other, you mean?” Fiona clarified, making three of us burst into laughter.

“Yes, with each other, obviously,” Bernice said, grinning. “Or did he mean the three of us?” She leered. I rolled my eyes. She laughed again, then her grin faded slightly. “I thought you guys didn’t see each other that way.”

“We don’t.”

“What even brought this on?” Fiona asked with a curious frown.

I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. “Okay, so, you know how I’ve said I want my first time to be special?” I loved that they’d never laughed me off or judged me for wanting something like that, despite the three of us, apart from Uzezi, being the only members of our friend group who’d never had sex. Fiona wasn’t purposefully waiting for a special someone, precisely; she was demisexual, wasn’t interested in casual, and just hadn’t met anyone who’d caught her fancy. I didn’t think Bernice was interested in sex or romance at all, though she hadn’t said as much. It was just an inkling, from her general neutrality and sometimes disinterest whenever the topics came up. “Well, it hasn’t just been a dream of mine, but mine and Uzezi’s.”

“Uzezi has never had sex?” Fiona looked shocked.

“No,” I said, slightly amused. He wasn’t exactly keeping it a secret; he just never talked to the group about the intimate details of his relationships, unless it was with me.

“Huh.”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just assumed, which was obviously wrong of me. Please carry on.”

I snorted. “Anyway, I guess ... recently, with all my trials and errors in dating, I thought I might just get it over with, you know? Do it with a stranger and have it be done. I just feel like it’s unrealistic to want something so ... I don’t know. Impossible or whatever. I feel like maybe I’ve romanticised the whole “first time” thing a little too much.”

“Ah.” Fiona nodded in understanding.

“And ... let me guess: he thought, rather than meeting a stranger, you might as well help each other out?” Bernice sounded sceptical, but she was smiling.

“Basically. Wild right?” I laughed but it sounded a tad hysterical. Just a tad.

“What did you say?”

“No, obviously. I mean ... wouldn’t it be weird? Having sex with my best friend?”

Fiona eyed me. “Depends. Do you want to have sex with your best friend?”

“No. Pft. I mean—it’s not—wouldn’t it—this isn’t—” Fiona’s gaze grew knowing the longer I struggled to articulate myself. Frustrated, I finally blurted, “Okay, so a part of me wants to say yes because he’s my best friend—because he knows me and he loves me, and I know he’ll make it good. But another part of me is afraid that if we did try to have sex, we’d be so grossed out it would basically ruin our friendship forever.”

There was a brief pause as my housemates let my rant sink in.

“Maybe you should kiss,” Fiona suggested. I blinked. She smiled. “I mean, what better way to know the chemistry is there, right? Even if it’s platonic.”

“Chemistry is chemistry,” Bernice agreed with a solemn nod. I huffed out an amused noise.

“If you kiss and it’s weird, then at least you’d know. Kissing won’t fuck up your friendship too badly, right?”

“No ...” Maybe I was being a little dramatic, because not even the world ending could fuck up our friendship; he meant that much to me. We’d been through too much for a little thing like kissing to come between us. It should be the same with sex, but, somehow, a part of me refused to agree.

Kissing did feel ... safer. Something we could laugh off if it was strange, and still come out virtually unchanged on the other side.

“There you go,” Fiona said, smiling slyly. “Ask him for a kiss. If it’s weird, it’s weird, and hey, at least you tried. And if it’s not ...”