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“Are you asking to masturbate together?”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Yes. That.” And it’s perfect. It doesn’t technically break the rules of the study; we wouldn’t even be touching each other, just ourselves. That’s not hooking up. “Friends do that, right?”
He huffs out a soft breath. “My friends do.” I don’t know exactly what that means but it makes perfect sense. If that’s what Jesse’s friends do then I should definitely be his friend.
I laugh, too loud and obviously nervous. “So should we like...” I gesture to the button on my jeans, but he stops me, squeezing my thigh. He looks past me at Betty, who sits with her paws crossed delicately one over the other. I have never seen a cat arch an eyebrow but in this moment, I am certain of it; Betty is judging us, for our weak interpretation of the study’s rules prohibiting exactly this, our complete lack of self-control, our extreme horniness, or my choice to do it all right here on Jesse’s couch.
“Let’s go to the bedroom.” He turns to me. “Is that OK?”
I nod and then I’m following him, his fingers hooked into mine. His shoulders block out the hallway, and the window in his bedroom is darker back here than at the front of the house, with no streetlights. My heart pounds in my throat in anticipation of relief. It smells more like him here, a concentration of Jesse, warm and already familiar. He turns on the lamp beside his bed. His comforter is a deep, dark blue, the corners tucked in tight and the pillows thick, bursting at the seams of their cases, but as light bathes the room, he seems to lose his sense of what’s next.
I sit on his bed, lie back against the pillows. He sits at my hip and I reach for him, like I’m about to kiss him before catching myself. That’s not what friends should do. Jesse leans over me, the lamp casting half his face in light and the other in dark.
“Have you done this before?” he asks.
“Masturbated beside someone?”
“Yeah.”
“Definitely not.” I shake my head for emphasis. “Well, I’ve gotten myself off after my boyfriend couldn’t do it. But he was asleep.” I cover my face with my arm.
“That doesn’t count,” he says, his voice flat. “Do you want me to...” His gaze wanders down my body. “Touch you?”
I bite my lip. Honestly, I do. But there are a set of rules in my brain that I haven’t quite worked out yet and all I know is touching each other would be breaking them.
“What if you...” He gestures to my shirt. “And I...” He pulls his off, throwing it to the side and leaning back over me. There’s hair on his chest and stomach that was slick, darkened the last time I saw it, from sweat and hose water. Now, the lamp catches threads of gold in his body hair, the light doing moody things to the sharp edges and soft curves of his body. I lift my shirt, not taking my eyes off him. I wait for this to feel weird, to pause at the act of exposing myself to someone new, but my skin feels too warm, flushed, tingling, and even though I said no touching I’m straining for it. To feel the brush of his denim-covered thigh between mine as he readjusts on the bed, the heat from his breath as his chin follows the path his eyes take down my body.
“Can I undo your pants for you?” he asks, and that seems like it would be OK. I nod.
Jesse pops the button, pulls down the zipper. The backs of his fingers brush my belly, sending an answering stroke of heat between my legs.
He clears his throat as he watches my hand slip underneath the peek of pink underwear showing between the V of my open jeans.
“Do you need lube?” he asks.
I think I should be embarrassed by how wet I am, how slick I already feel. I can’t even blame the movie. That showed intimacy with an artsy, sepia tint. It’s Jesse that makes me feel hot. Jesse and how easy it is to be around him. Jesse and our unfinished business.
“No,” I whisper. “I do not need any lube.”
He sits back, rummaging through what sounds like a very full drawer, and pulls out a pink bottle of hybrid lube. “Is it OK if I use some?” he asks and I nod furiously. He pops the cap, closes it, as if he’s still a bit indecisive about the whole thing. I lift up on my elbow, trying to see what he’ll do with that lube. I want to growl at him to just do it, just take it out already.
“Do that again,” he says.
“Do what?”
“Your hand. You dragged it across your stomach.” He takes my hand, putting it back where it was, under the cup of my bra.
“Like this?” My fingers feel illicit against my own skin, cool where the rest of me is hot.
“Yeah.” His voice is just as rough.
“Now what?” I whisper.
He pauses, the lube in one hand, his palm spread wide across his thigh. His shoulders are hunched, his strong back a soft curve.
“Now.” His brown eyes are serious in a way that ismorethan usual, since Jesse is always at least a little serious. “You tell me what to do.”
My mind is a flipbook of options, of sexual positions, of things he could do to me, himself. “Come here.” I spread my legs and he crawls between them. “Let me see you.”
