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“Get that look off your face.” I roll my eyes, an exaggerated and entirely conflicting gesture to the emotion brimming inside me. “It’s just a pussy.” I school him on my ideals, on the way I’vealwaysconsidered sexual activity. “Folds. Muscles. Pleasure. Anatomy for childbirth. There is no significance to the first time it’s used.”
“Used,” he says the word with hatred and grips my hips through my jeans. The pressure is intense. “You’re a feminist,” he presses, “who doesn’t believe in the value of her own body?”
“No,” I retort with a single laugh. “I’m a feminist who doesn’t believe in the valueyouput on my own body.”
I’m selling mine.
Don’t make it mean something.
“Well then, maybe it’s not about you. Not all things are, Kaya.”Ouch.He squeezes my hips and breathes hard. “When a girl gives herself to a man for the first time, it means she’s picked him.” His expressive brows draw in, his intense blue gaze holding me like a Siren. “Heis herfirstchoice. That’s a lot. Thatmeansa lot.”
“No, Xander,” I say, needing him to agree with me, but he almost winces as I talk. “It means absolutely nothing. Itisnothing. A virgin is not a real thing. It’s just a girl who hasn’t had a cock up her yet, and whether she has had a hundred or one, your affections for her shouldn’t revolve around that.”
“Goddamn it, Kaya! His affections don’t revolve around that, Woman! They are cemented by that. His affections didn’t grow from that. They were set ablaze by that. Maybe it means nothing to you, but it would mean something to me—” I watch his throat bob. “To be someone’sfirstchoice.” But then he adds, “Which is why I can’t do it.”
I ignore the way his words make my hands shake, my heart soar and scream, and my eyes begin to well up.
He stands, and the bed springs squeak with the same mournfulness I feel as he leaves. “I’ve got to go... Ice this eye.”
Taking a hold of the door, he studies the lock, handling it, checking the mechanism, the deadbolt, testing it several times before he grips the frame hard and says, “Lock the door, Kaya. I’ll wait outside until I hear it.”
With his back to me, he glances sideways at the case on the floor by the single chair that I refuse to sit on because there was blonde hair in the green fibres. “What’s in the case?” he asks me for the second time.
I’m startled by the turn in the conversation, still feeling my stomach knotting up and my eyes fighting the flood of tears. My hands flex to reach for him, to say itdoesmatter, that it matters to me if it matters to him, but instead, I mutter, “Just some silly things that my dad gave me when I was a child.”
He nods stiffly—sadly. “Just something silly, huh? Like a virginity is silly? You’re such a fucking liar, Kaya. Goodbye, yeah? Good luck.”
Then he leaves me with that, closing the door behind his back. And his words aim true, right into my chest.
Goodbye is definitive.
My eyes spill over.
Good luckis a kind of contronym, because it’s used to wish someone genuine happiness, but to also leave them with a reluctant note that sings they are beyond achieving it.
Good luck with that.
I lock the door.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
xander
It’s rocking past midnight,and my eye socket is frozen beneath the ice pack I have pressed to it.
I only left Kaya a few minutes ago and the way I spoke to her…Fuck.I feel like shit about it.
The bar is near empty down this end, and our booth is isolated in a corner, but across from me, Stacey’s displeased gaze screams loud enough for a tavern full of rowdy patrons.
“So…” She leans back, folding her arms, suspicious. “Who is the girl?”
“What girl?” I feign nonchalance, not wanting to discuss Kaya while my brain wrestles to carve her every detail into it. Her face, her lips, her sweat. Nah, I don’t want to think about her. “The one from tonight?”
“The one who has been keeping you occupied. The one who was more important than seeing me tonight, than icing that fucking eye which clearly hasn’t been iced until now?”
“I called you, didn’t I? I told you I was having a drink here, and I called you. So, give it a rest,” I say, using my free hand to lift my beer, sipping it as if to prove my words. “I was fine, so I found a girl to kiss me all better.”
It’s not entirely bullshit, but I couldn’t let her kiss me all better like I really wanted her to.
