Chapter Eighteen
Lori
“You mean you didn’t sleep with him?”
“I mean… we basically did.” Sam raised a skeptical brow. “I went further with him than I have with anyone else.”
“Oh, honey, that’s not saying much.”
We were sitting together in a booth in the dining room of the coffee shop. Outside, the streets were mostly empty, and the air had that serene Sunday morning stillness about it, though the sky threatened rain.
I emptied a packet of sugar into my tea and stirred quietly, not daring to look Sam in the eyes. She had stayed out with Jamal the night before, apparently hoping I would bring him home and do what she would have done in my place. So she was disappointed when she returned home that morning to find me sitting alone on the sofa watching Just Desserts—all the more so when I revealed how our date had ended.
“I hope I didn’t offend him by sending him home early,” I said sadly.
“You probably did. Imagine you were in his position and you had been making out with someone for the last hour and gotten them all worked up. And then, right at the pivotal moment when their libido was raging, you showed them to the door.”
“You’re basically describing what happened last night.”
“I know, but imagine if he had done that to you. Knowing you, you would probably cry.”
This was a possibility I hadn’t considered. “What if I really hurt his feelings? Do you think he’s sitting at home crying?”
Sam shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who cries when he can’t have sex. But I can’t imagine he’s too happy about it.”
“Great. Fantastic.” I had spent much of the night lying sleepless in bed, wracked with guilt for having sent him home early. I knew I shouldn’t feel bad for doing what was best for myself. I didn’t owe sex to anyone, no matter how kind they had been or how good of a date we were having. And I had every right to make out with him without wanting to go any further, but I still couldn’t help feeling bad about it.
This wasn’t the sort of situation I had ever wanted to be in. If it were up to me, I would be spending my morning reading a Barbara Pym novel and knitting my annual fall sweater for Aunt Trish. Instead, I was sitting here with my sister in an empty coffee shop trying to make sense of my love life.
“But at least the foreplay was good, right?” asked Sam. “I don’t know if you can really call it foreplay if that’s all you did, but at least you enjoyed it?”
I nodded, ashamed to admit how much I had enjoyed it.
“And you were in here the whole time? Where did you do it?”
I motioned toward the back of the room by the new coffee table.
Sam drummed her nails against the side of her mug. I could sense she was dying to know what exactly we had done, though she didn’t dare ask. “Jamal and I have had sex in here a couple times,” she whispered, as though afraid of being overheard.
“Seriously?” I glared at her indignantly.
“What? We cleaned up afterward. And you don’t really have room to lecture me after what you did last night.”
“We didn’t have sex! We were rapidly getting to that point when I put my foot down. He managed to get me all the way out of my dress.”
Sam raised her mug in salute. “That’s actually kind of impressive, considering that you won’t even undress in front of me.”
“And he didn’t cover his eyes in horror, for which I suppose I ought to thank him. I’ve always thought of myself as a hideous lump of fat, so it was sort of a relief to have a guy look at me and not be blinded. Even if we never go on another date, I’ll always be grateful for that.”
“You ought to ask him back out, just for that.” Sam’s eyes shone with mischief. “And to finish what you started last night.”
“No way! I’ve already chickened out once, and I don’t want to do it again. What if I keep taking him out on dates and suddenly backing out right before we have sex? If he doesn’t hate me now, he will eventually. Isn’t there a word for that?”
“There is,” said Sam, though she declined to say what it was.
Outside the window, the sky was darkening rapidly with a promise of rain. I sat there in silence for a moment watching the wind ripple a puddle of muddy water.
“I’ll never understand how Mom could have raised two girls with such different views of sex,” I said after a long pause. “I would feel uncomfortable having sex with someone I had known for a long time, let alone a near-stranger. That’s just how I was raised. I guess I should have known we probably weren’t going to have sex last night. My natural instinct is to avoid sex.”
“That seems like the sort of thing you’ll have to work through if you ever want to get married,” Sam pointed out. “You could learn a thing or two from me.”
“See, and that’s what I don’t get.” I motioned to her with my teaspoon. “We’re so similar in so many other ways, but we’re so different when it comes to sex.”
“It’s true,” said Sam. “I’ve done things that would probably curl your toes if I told you.”
“Undoubtedly. And you don’t feel any shame over it? Any guilt?”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t think I inherited the guilt gene from Mom the way you did. Growing up, you always seemed to take her word as law, whereas I never did. Remember when she told us we weren’t allowed to watch The Real World because it was unclean? You never watched it, but I just watched it when she wasn’t around.”
“Honestly, it’s a wonder I ever found the courage to run away.”
“It is—and at ten, no less. That was probably the bravest thing you’ve ever done.
“I didn’t think I had a choice. After what happened that night, there’s no way I was going to stay in that house. I was sincerely worried that she would kill me.”
“I don’t think she’d ever have gone that far,” said Sam. “But still, it’s a good thing you left. I sometimes wish I had left.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I guess I sort of felt like I had to stay and look after Mom. Like she would hurt herself if there wasn’t someone there to look after her. Which is not how a young girl should feel about her own mother; it wasn’t my responsibility to raise her. But I wasn’t old enough to understand that. I felt a loyalty to her because at least she had fed me and taken care of me, and she wasn’t always bad. There were times when she could be kind and affectionate—though looking back on it, I sometimes think that was just another way of controlling me. When you’re being abused, sometimes the abuser will use even love as a weapon.”
Sam rose, gathered our empty mugs, and placed them in the double-basined sink. I took a macaron from the display stand and placed a few quarters in the register. It was that hour of Sunday morning where I wanted to go back, crawl into bed, and stay there for the rest of the day, and the weather outside wasn’t helping. I would likely have felt drowsy even if I hadn’t been up half the night.
“I think I might go and take a nap before we cook brunch,” said Sam, stretching slowly and yawning. We were planning on making a balsamic chicken Massimo with artichoke soubise, though I still needed to run by the store and get the artichokes and baguette. “Jamal’s bringing a light wine, though I’m kind of in the mood for champagne.”
“That’s the one thing I feel really good about: my love life might be total shambles, but at least we haven’t had to worry about our finances this month. It’s been a long time since we were able to splurge on a meal like this. I hope we get the chance to do it more often.”
“I’d like that,” said Sam. She pressed play on her iPod, and the overture to the New World Symphony started playing. It was one of my favorite pieces of music: stately, sweeping, and romantic. “You ought to make a list of your favorite meals so we can start planning ahead for next Sunday and the week after that. If we get enough money coming in, we might even be able to have a sit-down meal during the middle of the week. It’s actually less expensive than eating out every night.”
“I still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do for fun tonight.” I got a knot in my stomach anytime I thought about trying to entertain two other people, even when one of them was my sister. “Do we want to play a board game, or rent a movie…?”
“Oh, hon, don’t worry about it,” said Sam. “Is this what you were like last night?”
“What? Panicking because I didn’t think I could hold his interest from moment to moment?” I shrugged. “Yeah, probably.”
“No wonder you made him leave before the date really got going. I probably would, too, if I felt that much pressure.”
This was an angle I hadn’t considered, and I began to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something to it. “Well, at least I won’t panic tonight and chase you both out of the apartment…probably. I guess I can’t make any promises.”
“If you did, I would understand,” said Sam. “At least neither of us is asking you to undress.”
“I hope you never do,” I replied.