Jack shakes his head. His jaw has a stubborn set, like this is a rule he’s made for himself, something he’s thought a great deal about. “It’s what’s best for you. For us. Right now.”
“I’m sorry, did you . . .” I clear my throat. “Did you just inform me that we’re not going to have sex, because it’s what best for us?”
He nods once, like he would to a known, undisputed fact. Water molecules slow down light. And that’s when I stand, indignant. “You understand that this should be the product of a dialogue between two people, right?” I’m barefoot. He’s so much taller than me, my neck protests the unnatural angle. “You can’t just hand out decisions without explanation—”
“I can, actually.” The way he bends down can’t be comfortable, either. We’re sharing about two square feet of space. Cross-armed. Unsmiling. A second ago we were joking on the couch. What the hell?
“This is incredibly patronizing. You can’t assume that you know what’s best for—”
“Okay, then.” He shifts forward, and I can feel every millimeter. “How do I make you come?”
I . . . must have misunderstood. “What?”
“What do you like when having sex? What do you want? What are your needs?” His eyes are pools of black in the dim lights. “How do I make you come?”
I shake my head. Edward is moving at light speed to save his love, and my mind is as slow as a slug. “Sorry?”
“You said it was patronizing of me not to discuss sex. So let’s talk.” This is the Jack from our first meeting: challenging, uncompromising, demanding. “Unless it makes you feel uncomfortable. A good sign that maybe it’s best for you not to have it, either, but—”
“That’s not it,” I hurry to say. But maybe it is, a little. I don’t talk about sex very much with people. Just Cece, and mostly in terms of what fourteenth-century nuns were supposedly up to when they should have been tending to the herb garden. But it has nothing to do with comfort. We don’t talk about sex for the same reason we don’t talk about stock dividends: we have very little of it.
“Then tell me,” he repeats. His look shifts to something that’s not quite daring. Like for once this is not a power play of his, and he genuinely wants to know. “How do I make you come?”
“This is such a weird thing to ask. I—” Light bulb: on. “Oh my God. You think I’m inexperienced.” I laugh right in his face. “I’m not. I’ve had sex with J.J., like, a million times, in a million ways!” I add, just to get a reaction out of him. But Jack’s reaction is infuriatingly nonexistent. “You think I’m lying?”
“I don’t. If you told me you’re a card-carrying member of the Orgy of the Month Club, I’d believe you. But since you have all that experience, you’ll have no problem telling me: How do I make you come?”
I open my mouth and . . . immediately close it.
“I’m waiting, Elsie.”
I hate him when he’s like this. Just—smug and merciless and all-seeing and—
“Still waiting.”
I look down at my feet, the stockings sheer around my toes, and all of a sudden I’m feeling just . . .
I’m embarrassed. I have no idea what to tell him, and for a second I consider lying. Pretending that I’m a fucking sex goddess. Twenty orgasms in a trench coat. But Jack is lie-repellant, and he’d know, and it’d be even more mortifying than the truth: I have no idea how he can make me come.
My mind turns to J.J., and here’s a truth I’m not going to admit out loud in this fancy open-plan apartment: I don’t even know if I have the capacity to like sex. I never wondered, because me enjoying something was never a priority.
“Is this something you do with every girl you sleep with?” I ask bitterly. “An entrance exam?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Other times it’s more trial and error.”
Something heavy twists in my stomach. “And after that?”
“After that, I do what they like. Have them do what I like, if they’re up for it.”
Jealousy. That’s the feeling—I’m jealous of these unnamed girls. In my mind they all look leggy, stunning, smart. Worthy of being fucked by Jack.
Unlike me.
I turn away and step to one of the million windows. I don’t know how he stands it, the nakedness of this place. It’s a fishbowl. He needs curtains.
“Elsie.” He’s behind me. I see his reflection in the glass, holding my eyes like in a mirror. “You have a pattern of doing things you don’t enjoy for the sake of others, and I need to be sure the two of us don’t fall into it. I need to know that you’re not initiating anything with me because it’s something you think I expect. And I need to be certain that you don’t feel like you have to be some . . . fantasy lay whose only focus is my pleasure. That you’re in a place where you’re able to acknowledge and articulate your needs.”
I let my forehead fall against the glass, watching my eyes cross over my nose.
“You should tell me what you’re thinking,” he says after a while, much more gentle than a minute ago.
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.” He sighs. “And you promised you’d try.”
Right. Yes, I did do that. Stupidly. “I’m thinking . . .” I turn around. Drum my nails against the windowsill and close my eyes when I can’t bear to look at Jack. What am I thinking at any given time? The more I try to grasp my own mind, the faster it goes blank. “I’m thinking that two things can be true at once: you want to protect me, and also do it in a patronizing way. I’m thinking that by trying to respect me, you ended up making a decision for me—like everyone else before you. I’m thinking . . . that I don’t really know you, not yet, but sometimes, when I’m with you, I feel like you know me better than I do myself.” I swallow. “But I’m also thinking something else.”
“What?”
I open my eyes. He is—I want him. For myself. I have no idea in what shape, timeline, texture, but I do. “I’m thinking that I don’t know how you can make me come. But it would be fun to find out together.”
I’m exhausted from all the thinking, overthinking, rethinking, unthinking. So for the first time in my life, I just let my mind white out. I step out of my head and into my body, savor the absence of formulas and prediction models, and just do it.
Grab the hem of my dress.
Take it off in one fluid motion.
Drop it until it crumples at Jack’s feet.
It’s a big gamble. I’ve never done anything this brave, stupid, reckless before, but this is Jack: having so many of my firsts. And it doesn’t even matter if the second my clothes are off, I’m all out of courage. I stare at the fabric, too scared to move my eyes anywhere else, letting the tension stretch, the pressure build, till I hear a low “Elsie.”
I glance up.
I’m not insecure about my body, probably because I am so busy being insecure about every little thing I do, say, broadcast. But if I were, if I had any doubts about whether I’m attractive, pretty, desirable enough to him, they’d dissolve like sugar in water.
Jack’s cheeks are pink. His pupils fat, fixed at some point between my belly button and the elastic of my panties. At his sides, both his hands twitch, then clench into fists. “It’s too soon,” he says again. “We should wait till you’re more comfortable around me.”
“I’m at my most comfortable around you,” I say. And then, because honesty: “And also at my least. But that’s because you’re an asshole, and unlikely to ever change.”
He exhales a sharp laugh. I look at him looking at me, thinking that I might win this if I play it right. And then he says, “If we . . . We need rules,” and it occurs to me that I’ve already won.
“I don’t—”
“I need rules,” he says firmly, in a tone that brokers no objection. He’s staring at the swell of my breasts over my bra, mapping the edge of the simple black cotton. “You promise me you will—”
“Stop you if I need to. Tell the truth. Be honest.” I nearly roll my eyes. He’s right, but I’m impatient. Hot. Tingling with a sense of almost victory. Of possibilities.
His throat bobs. “We take it slow.” He’s starting to sound like he just finished a sprint. I consider making a CrossFit joke, but my mind’s occupied. “We’re not having sex. And clothes stay on.”
I glance at my dress. “Should I put it back on?”
“Jesus.” He licks his lips, steps closer. His hand lifts to hover somewhere around my waist but doesn’t touch me. “My clothes stay on.”
They won’t. They can’t, logistically. But he seems obsessed with being in control, so I say, “Suit yourself.” I reach around behind my back to unclasp my bra. He stops me and shifts even closer.
“Leave that on.”
I nod and bend down to roll off my thigh highs.
“Leave them on, too.” His jaw works. “Please.”
Oh.
“Okay.” I clear my throat. My heart is pounding and he’s flushed, and neither of us is doing anything. We’re caught. Stuck in the transition. “Can we . . . I don’t know. Can we kiss now? Or is it still ‘too soon’—”