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“Yes,” she admits.
“Then let’s do it – talk, I mean,” I add in a rush. “Talk. Not do.”
“Are you as awkward as I am?” she asks seriously. “I feel like I need to be open about this.”
“That’s what we’re doing, Lindsay. Being real. Being open.”
“Okay.” She takes in a resolved breath. “Then I’ll be open. I want to have sex. I loved having sex with you. Loved it.” She blushes, clearly remembering.
I’m about to go out of my mind with lust. Controlling my breathing and blood takes effort. I just want to be close to her. And naked. And sweaty and tender and --
“I’m angry I haven’t been having sex. I’m just so angry about everything! And then I imagine having sex and I want to die.”
I was with her right up to that last sentence.
“Sex makes you think about dying?”
“Not sex with you.”
“Thinking about sex with other men makes you want to die?” This conversation suddenly makes me irrationally angry.
“Thinking about what happened in your apartment does.”
“Got it.” I calm down instantly.
“I can see I’m upsetting you. I’ll stop talking about it.”
“No,” I say softly. “Yes, it upsets me. But it would upset me more if you felt like you couldn’t share parts of the true you with me. I’m here. I’m here to listen. I’m here to touch and heal with. Only when you’re ready, though.”
“That’s what makes this so hard!” she says, her body vibrating with frustration. “You’re patient and understanding and calm and rational and so damn perfect!”
“And that’s...bad?” Women. I really, really do not understand her.
“It is when I’m such a mess.”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. My fingertips are ice cold. “I’m a mess, too,” I admit.
“You are?”
I nod.
“How?”
“I think it would be easier to tell you all the ways I’m not a mess.”
Her eyes light up. “That’s how I feel, too.”
“But no one shot me. No one made me parade naked in a room full of people – and on streaming television, covered by every major cable news channel, replayed over and over, still in the newspapers even now. No one violated me publicly like that, Lindsay. Not the same way. I’m not trying to compare what I’m feeling to what you’re feeling -- ”
“That’s just it, Drew – you can!” Her breathing goes shallow, her chest rising and falling, the conversation stressing her out. I want to tell her to stop, but this feels pivotal. We have two more hours to get to Vegas and it feels like this topic is the answer to the meaning of life.
“I would never try to compare.”
“I am not some special tortured snowflake! Don’t do this to me, too. Everyone’s walking around on eggshells with me. Do you know how alone I feel? How lonely? How different and unique? Those words really, really isolate. They turn me into some freak again. Unreachable and misunderstood. I can’t have you do that, too, Drew. Not you.” She starts sobbing, her chin tucked into her chest at an awkward angle.
How did we get from the topic of sex to this?
Doesn’t matter. I can’t continue driving while she’s crying, pouring her heart out to me. I pull over, the tires rolling gently to a stop. Within seconds I’m across the gear shift, holding her any way I can without hurting her more.
