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“Fifteen,” I tell her, watching the amusement spread out on her face. “I was kind of dorky. No one wanted to kiss me.”
“I find that extremely hard to believe.” Her eyes trail from my eyes down my arms, my stomach, and back up to meet my gaze.
“You?” I ask her.
“I was eleven. With my best friend. A girl.” She giggles and scrunches up her nose, and it’s probably the cutest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. “Neither of us had ever been kissed, and we just wanted to practice before the real thing happened so we didn’t suck.” She full-on laughs now. “We still sucked.”
“Did you do anymore kissing with girls when you got older?” I ask, genuinely wondering.
“Nope. And don’t look at me like that, you weirdo. It was just that one time. I’ve been into men, strictly, ever since. I leave the girls for my sister, Veronica,” she says. It makes me wonder about her family and what they’re like. She thinks of her next question, her eyes drifting away from mine before snapping back to me once she thinks of one. “How many women have you slept with?”
I feel my skin redden as I gulp down my mild embarrassment, growing warm under her gaze. “A man never tells,” I joke, trying to gauge her.
“Oh, come on. Twenty questions. You don’t get to pick and choose the ones you want to answer.”
“Fine,” I say. “I don’t know.” It’s the truth. I’ve been drowning myself in women for as long as I can remember.
She grabs a pillow from above us on the bed and swats me with it, nearly knocking my champagne out of my hand. “Oh, please!” she cries. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Bordeaux Daniels. You know how many women you’ve slept with.”
“I’m serious,” I tell her. “It’s not like I’m putting tally marks above my headboard.”
“Give me your best guess, then,” she says, looking at me with wide eyes.
I’m not exactly proud of not knowing my number. I know it’s high and that I’d rather not tell her, but I’m also not going to lie to her, either.
“Probably somewhere near one hundred,” I say, not knowing how close I actually am, but knowing I don’t turn women down who offer to sleep with me unless there’s a damn good reason. I love sex. Fuck, I love sex. The feeling of getting off rivals that of playing a sold-out show.
I take in Isla’s face, the way she looks right now. She doesn’t appear to be judging me, but it does seem like she’s thinking deeply about something.
“I make it very clear to anyone I sleep with that I’m not going to be calling them the next day. I won’t be asking for their number or changing my relationship status on Facebook. I’m not really a relationship type of guy, but I am an incredibly sexual guy.” I’m honest almost to a fault with this woman, but I hold back just a little, not wanting to cross a line right now after what happened tonight.
“I have two questions,” she says. “One, why aren’t you the best at relationships?” I can tell the alcohol has given her a bit of a boost, too. She follows up her question with another as I try to decipher the look behind her eyes. “And two, you’re an incredibly sexual guy. Explain.”
Her second question slightly confuses me because I’m not exactly sure how to explain how much I love fucking a woman without offending her or crossing that imaginary line I just drew for myself. I also see a hint of what looks like desire in her eyes for the first time. Her dark eyes shift, and I detect a sparkle in them. The way she’s looking at me right now is enough to drive me absolutely insane, but I control myself. I have to.
“I’m gone a lot,” I tell her, answering question one, which is partially true. “And because I didn’t have a very good example of it growing up, I don’t really know if I’d be any good at it anyway, but I’m going to assume I wouldn’t be.” I tell her more than I intended to and suddenly, I feel as naked as she is beneath her robe.
She nods in silent understanding. “So, I’m going to assume your parents aren’t together.”
“This is like, what, your fifth question, and I haven’t asked you one besides the kissing one.” I smile at her. She doesn’t give in, just keeps her eyes trained on mine, waiting for my answer. “Alright,” I say, clearing my throat. And against my better judgement, I spill. I’ve known how captivating this woman has been over me since the minute she walked into the shop, but I’m still surprised at my willingness to talk about this with her. “My mother walked out on us when I was young. My dad is an alcoholic. He used to bring a lot of random, sleazy women home when I was growing up. I always thought maybe one of them would be my new mom, but none of them liked us enough to stick around. At least that’s how I took it.” I have no idea why I’m laying here, bearing my fucked-up soul to her. I don’t talk about this shit. Not with anyone, not ever. “So, the way I see it is, if neither of my parents knew how to love, why would I? After all, their DNA runs through my blood. And if I do the responsible thing and refuse to allow myself to get close to women, I can’t hurt them by not being what they expected.”
There. She asked for it.
“So, fuck love and fuck expectations?” she asks, a slow smile spreading out on her face. “I’m sorry, B.”
I’m shocked at her use of a shortened version of my name coming from her lips. “Did you... did you just call me B?” I ask her, hoping it doesn’t derail her from doing it again, because that was fucking awesome.
Her hand flies up to her mouth and she snort-laughs, which causes me to break out in laughter, both of us cracking up, unable to contain ourselves.
“Well, if that shimmy titty woman can call you B, I think I can, too.” She gets out between laughs and when we both finally calm down and her snort is a distant memory, we lay looking at each other for a long time.
I know I see something different in her honey-hued eyes. Something that tells me she is really seeing me, maybe for the first time.
“What about the second part of my question?” She finally breaks the silence hanging in the air between us.
“You want me to explain about being a sexual guy?” I ask, really unsure of what she doesn’t understand about my comment. “Most men I know are pretty sexual.”
She nods, biting her lip, and I force myself to gulp down any comments about how unbelievably sexy she looks doing that. I decide that if she wants me to tell her how much I love sex, I’ll tell her. Why not?
