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Were you supposed to have this conversation? He had no clue. “In the morning and at night. During the night. Like that. If you really like the person.”
“If you’re sex-mad,”she muttered, and that was him smiling again.
“It feels good,” he said. “Free entertainment, too. What, you thought we only had it twice? Once for you and again for Troy? Sorry.”
“Then why are you not meant to do it until you’re, like, old?” she asked. “If it feels good and it’s free entertainment?”
Here, at least, he had some idea what to say. “Because you can catch feelings from it, and those feelings mean you can get hurt.”
“Why?” she asked. “I mean, if you go out anytime, you can get hurt. Your feelings can get hurt, anyway. A girl in my class was going out with a guy in another class, and they broke up, and she was crying at lunch.Hewasn’t crying, though.”
“He may be hurt all the same, though,” Beckett said. “And sex makes things more … more intense. It can be confusing, because the feelings get pretty strong. Sexual feelings, and, uh … other feelings.” Was this how to say it? He had no idea. “Especially for girls,” he decided to add, because it had seemed true whenhewas in school, and that was the only experience he had to draw on. Surely people hadn’t changedthatmuch. “Boys get pretty overwhelmed by the sexual feelings. So much so that a girl can feel like the boy will break up with her if she doesn’t have sex with him, and remember, she’s having those sexual feelings, too, so it’s hard to know which feelings to trust, maybe. Or he may say that if she loves him, she should want to have sex with him. Which isn’t true a bit. If he lovedher,he wouldn’t want her to do anything she wasn’t sure about.”
“What ifshe’sthe one tellinghimthat?” Janey asked.
“Same thing,” he said, “wouldn’t you say? If it isn’t right to pressure somebody, it isn’t right, full stop. It’s all confusing, though, like I said, because you get those strong feelings even if you do other things besides … besides full sex. Kissing, and touching, and …” He trailed off. Crikey, this was hard. Was this the right way to talk about it?
“You mean oral,” she said matter-of-factly. “Like, if she doesn’t want to do sex yet, she can just do oral. Or a hand job.”
He dropped the plaster knife to his side and stared at her. “Pardon? Who’s saying that?”
“It’s, like, common knowledge? At least with the eighth-graders,” she added fairly. “And Alexis.”
Don’t blow up,he told himself.Don’t. Blow. Up.“Yeah. That’s the kind of thing I mean. And it doesn’t keep you from catching those feelings, or getting hurt, either, just because you don’t have … full sex. If you get … get used by somebody who it turns out mostly liked you because they wanted to have sex, that hurts.” It hadn’t hurthimthat he could remember, but he wasn’t going to mention that. “Also,” he went on, “pregnancy. STI’s. All of that.”
“Condoms?” she suggested.
“Well, obviously.”Although I haven’t been using them,he did not say. “But they can be hard to remember in the heat of the moment. Especially for a boy, and most especially since he’s not the one who’ll fall pregnant.”Thatwas true, anyway.
“So whenisold enough to have sex?” she asked.
He wanted to say, “After high school.” He settled for, “If I had to give a number, I’d say sixteen or older. And only when you’re with somebody who cares more about what you need than he does about what he wants, and in my experience, that’s just about no sixteen-year-old boy. In the meantime, if you have questions or you aren’t sure if it’s right, you can ask me.”
“OK,” she said. “Although you have to admit, it’s kind of weird, since you’re my dad and all. Most girls don’t even talk about it with theirmums,because their mums never bring it up. It’s too embarrassing, like talking about having your—” She stopped.
“Like talking about having your period,” he guessed. “I know about that, too. I buy the pads for you, have you noticed?”
“Dad,”she said, and he could see her turning red. Or redder. “You’re not supposed totalkabout it. You’re not supposed tonotice.I mean, of course I had to tell you the first time, but—"
“Why not?” he asked. “You’ll talk about oral sex with me, but not your period?”
“Because I haven’thadsex, obviously. So it’s just anidea.”
“Theoretical,” he said. “But youdohave your period, and I know it, so it’s more embarrassing?”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m going to notice. Good for you that I do, I’d say. I’d have a pretty hard time knowing when to buy more pads if I didn’t check the box. They don’t turn up by magic, you know. Also, am I meant to avert my eyes from the bathroom rubbish?”
“Dad.”She seemed to have no more words.
“Face it,” he said. “I know about it, and it doesn’t bother me. I’ll know when Quinn’s having her period, too, because that’s the kind of thing men know about women they live with, and it’s fine. There’s nothing shameful about having your period, and nothing shameful about sex, either. If two people love each other,” he decided he’d better add.
“You don’t love Quinn, though,” she pointed out. “You can’t. You barelyknowher. And your examples are extremely … extremely inconsistent.”
“Good word,” he said.
“It was in a book,” she told him unnecessarily.
