“Oh no.” I tried to look horrified, glancing at him askance, but the effect was ruined by my laughter. “Was that a binary pick-up line?”
He was also laughing, but not nearly as lost to it as I was.
Man, I loved how funny he was.
“Come on, Marie. Did he make your interface GUI?”
I made another involuntary snort-laughing sound, but finally managed to say, “No. David wasn’t really like that.”
Matt’s smile fell. “What about your other suitors?”
Wiping the tears of hilarity from the corners of my eyes, I didn’t point out Matt’s use of the word suitors and instead I considered my other boyfriends—short-lived as they might’ve been—and scanned my memory for any occasions of hot sex. “I was with two guys in college, both of whom were inexperienced. We didn’t stay together long enough to unlock the key to hot sex. But there was this one guy I dated—or thought I was dating—a musician. A friend of my brother’s. He was a fantastic kisser. And, yeah, I guess he was a purveyor of hot sex. I thought I was in love.”
“But you weren’t?” He looked acutely interested.
My smile flat, I shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I found out that I was just one of many. So I called it off.”
Matt’s jaw ticked as his gaze traveled over my face, but he said nothing.
“I think that’s one of the reasons I stayed with David for so long.”
“The lack of hot sex?”
“No.” I shot him an amused look. “Because I trusted him to be faithful.”
I didn’t add that, with David, I preferred to take care of business myself. I never saw David “lost to passion” while we had sex. It seemed like he preferred blowjobs more than traditional sex. So most of our times together were as follows: I’d go down on him until he was hard; we’d have sex for maybe two minutes; I’d fake it sometimes; he’d come. Then, if I felt so inspired, I’d finish myself off—by myself—in the bathroom, or maybe the next day while he was at work.
And I didn’t like it when he went down on me. It felt like he was doing something just because he thought I’d like it. Like a favor. He didn’t say anything to make me feel that way, but I never believed he was into it and I couldn’t get out of my head long enough to enjoy the feeling. So, eventually, I told him I didn’t like it, and that was that.
“He was faithful, but not a purveyor of hot sex,” Matt said, forcing me to grin.
“No. Not a purveyor of hot sex.”
“Would you like to? Have hot sex?” he asked, now sounding and looking acutely interested.
Glancing at him askance and giving him my very best get-over-yourself look, I endeavored to ignore how his question made all the most fantastic parts of me tense with anticipation.
With forced flippantness, I said, “Are you offering me a prototype robot capable of hot sex?”
“No.” He laughed. “I’m just curious. Kerry didn’t want to. She was very . . . efficient in the bedroom.”
“Shy?”
“No. Efficient. At first, I was as well, so it worked. But then I wanted to try new things, positions and such. And she didn’t understand why we couldn’t just do it for five minutes once a week, missionary.”
I winced, at this point in our friendship no longer surprised by his candor. “Oh my.”
“When we divorced, I made it a point to find someone who wanted to have hot sex. And that was . . .” His voice deepened, his sly smile sliding into place. “A fucking god-awful disaster.”
I burst out laughing at the unexpected description, covering my mouth.
“She was completely crazy.” His eyes grew wide and something like remembered-unpleasantness pulled at the corners of his mouth. Eventually, he shook himself, his attention refocusing on me.
“But the hot sex was worth it?” I asked, both curious and teasing.
“No!”
And just like that, I was laughing again.
“No. No. No. God, no. Definitely no. It wasn’t even that hot, it was just freaky. And dirty. And weird.”
“So freaky, dirty, and weird don’t do it for you?”
“I guess not. Not with her, anyway.” Matt’s gaze conducted a quick sweep of my body, but before I could process the mysterious shift behind his eyes, he pointed to a sign across the street. “That’s the place I want to go. They have coconut ice cream.”
“Sure. Fine. We can go there. But, about your lady friend who you were using for hot sex, maybe if you—”
“I wasn’t using her for hot sex. I don’t use people. I liked her at first, or I thought I did. I wasn’t just looking for a hookup. She was smart, worked for Yoodle as a team leader. I thought, okay, here’s someone I could be with, shares my interests, let’s see where this goes. And then, she starts showing up at my work every day, every day, at all different times.” His gaze swung back to mine. “She accused one of my managers of trying to seduce me, in front of my entire team. She put a camera in my house.”
“Oh no. That’s so awful.”
“She told me she did it because she loved me, and that I’d never been loved before, so I didn’t understand.”
“That’s not love.”
Matt gathered a deep breath, and shook his head. “She cheated on me, with lots of different guys. She took pictures of herself doing it, and then left them all over my bed.”
I sucked in a shocked breath. “That’s so bizarre. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “By the time it happened, it was a relief. I decided, if that’s what love is, if that’s how people behave when they’re in love, I didn’t want any part of it.”
“Wow.” I was stuck on his words if that’s what love is. I was assembling the puzzle pieces of Matt Simmons, and finding that much of his repugnance for long-term relationships made a lot more sense now. “So, that’s the last time you dated someone?” I wondered if he had any more buried horror stories.
“No.” He gathered another deep breath, shaking his head. “I tried dating a few times after that.”
“What happened?”
“Well, one woman wanted to take pictures of us all the time, for her Instagram account. The few times we went out it felt like we were dating for the sole purpose of posting pictures to Instagram. She wasn’t ever happy with how I looked, or how I dressed, and she wouldn’t let me drink my coffee—you know, at coffee shops when they put a design on the top—until she’d photographed it. And then she always wanted me to take pictures of her, so she could get just the right one, and post it to her account. Then she’d spend the whole date on her phone reading comments on her photos. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t think this part of her personality was cute.” He made a face. “It wasn’t cute. It was annoying. And childish.”