Chapter Sixteen

 It didn’t take long for Beth to get going, probably because the rest of us were well into a second glass of wine.  After we all swapped some funny work stories she said she had some things to do in the morning.  I was proud of Madison for coming down to say goodbye, since I could tell Beth still made her nervous.  She hugged us all goodbye, and was on her way.

 After Madison went to bed Sara’s participation in conversation quickly, and purposely, declined as she instead started watching us with an interested smile.  The three of us continued sharing anecdotes for another hour, then Sara said she wanted to turn in with a smirk only a sister could see.

 “Have a good night, then,” I said, giving her back a look that said Jay and I still wouldn’t do anything but talk.

 “Jay, she did end up putting you upstairs, right?”

 “Oh, no,” I said.

 “I have never liked hearing that from you, Laura.”

 “Jay’s in the spare room, Sara.  I completely forgot.”

 “Am I supposed to join him?”

 “Laura, you said this wasn’t a setup.  This is the cheesiest attempt imaginable!  ‘Oh no, only one bed, whatever shall we do?’”

 “Will you stop?” I laughed.

 “You thought she was trying to set us up?” Sara asked him.

 “No, but I don’t trust what I think, so I figured I’d just make sure she wasn’t when she brought this dinner idea up.  Anyway, you can have the spare bed for tonight.  I’ll take the couch.”

 “You will not,” I told him.  “That’s not the spare bed, it’s your bed that you’re paying for.  You can have mine, Jay.  I’ll take the couch.”

 “Then why don’t I just take yours, and leave Jay his own bed?” Sara asked.

 “Why don’t you two let me be a gentleman, and sleep in beds?  I’ll take the couch.”  Jay turned to me.  “Trust me, when this booze finishes hitting me it won’t matter where I am.  When sleep comes, it’ll come.”

 “Too late,” Sara said while I struggled with my conscience.  “He gave me his bed.  You two can duke it out over who gets her bed or the couch.  Jay, I heard you tend to sleep in.  If I don’t see you before I leave, it was great to meet you and I’m glad my sister has you for a tenant.”

 “Nice to meet you, too,” he said.  “Goodnight.”  No ‘sweet dreams’?

 Sara and I said goodnight, and then Jay and I were alone.

 “The grown-ups are gone,” he said.  “Now we can be bad.”

 I didn’t know if he was just throwing words around as he liked to, or if he had something in mind.  “What, you want to play truth or dare, or something?”  I smiled at him.  I’d play with you.

 “Alcohol and dares?  No.  Although, I’m feeling pretty, uh, good.”  He took a demonstrative sip.  “And you’re really fun to talk to, so truth might work.”

 “Truth, huh?  Alright, who goes first?”

 He raised his glass to me.  “Ladies first.”

 I took a hearty sip of wine, wondering if the questions coming to my mind would tell me more about him than asking them would tell him about me.  On consideration, I was too drunk to care.  Truth would work fine, indeed.  “Okay.  How can you and Beth manage to be such great friends after dating?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen exes who were anything more than barely civil to each other.  You two joke around like you’re still dating.”

 “I already told you that one.  We didn’t end badly at all.  We just like different things.”

 “Fine, if you already told me that then it doesn’t count.  Tell me what ‘you like different things’ means.  Really tell me, no vague statements.”

 “You are so fascinated with me and Beth...”  He chuckled a bit, and had a drink.  “I’ll tell you as much as you want to know, even though asking something you already know just because you can’t listen should cost you a turn,” he joked.  “Be warned, I’m going to ask you graphic details about your sex life too, then.”

 “I don’t have a sex life,” I taunted him.

 “You have a daughter.  How’d that happen?”

 “That was five years ago!  Six!”

 “Beth and I didn’t exactly end things last week.  And there’s no way you haven’t had sex once since Madison was born.  Right?”

 “Right...” I sighed.  “Fine.  Ask me all about my sex life on your turn.  But you still haven’t answered.”

 “Fine.”  A sip of wine.  “What I mean by ‘different things’ is...  Let’s just say some people are into screaming orgasms, and some are more into contented sighs.”

 “Not good enough,” I giggled at my own courage.  “I said no vague statements.”

 “Okay, Laura.  I’m going to torture you just as bad on my turn though, I’m telling you.”  He took a deep breath in and out.  “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.  After we’d dated a few weeks we tried having sex.”  He started laughing, and turned red enough to make me feel slightly guilty.  “Damn, this is embarrassing.  You’re lucky I’m drunk.  I was on top, and had kind of noticed she was seeming less into it as we went on in the back of my mind.  I was into it, though, so I didn’t really notice.  Anyway,” he laughed again, “in the middle of it she finally asked ‘What are you doing?’  I stopped, and kind of laughed, and said I thought I was having sex.”

 “What were you doing?” I asked.  I was picturing everything, far more vividly than I had earlier.  When Beth had first shown up, I was distracted by keeping images of the two of them together at bay until I finally got it over with and let them come.  That had been like looking at a picture, but now that picture was moving.

 “Having sex!” he repeated, making me laugh.  “I asked what was wrong, and she asked, ‘Well, is this it?’  I asked what she meant, and we traded places.  Then I saw what she meant.  I must have been moving too slow, and boring her.  She started moving slowly, but then she started going crazy.  I was able to keep up, but it was like a chore.  I didn’t feel like doing it.  So I stopped her, and we just...”  He shrugged.  “Stopped.  The mood was gone.  We cuddled and talked for awhile, mostly about how much it sucked that we had to be so compatible every other way.  We’ll joke about it in certain company, but for the most part, those dates and that night never happened.  Satisfied?”

 “It is too bad, you two would have been a cute couple,” I said, stalling.

 “You’re satisfied,” he smiled, seeing right through me.  “My turn.  I’m gonna turn you good and red.  Let’s see...”  He drew out his thought process just to torment me.  “How do you like your sex?”

 “What?”

 “Rough, soft?  Fast, slow?  Public?  Toys, food, hot wax?  And you better go into as much detail as you made me.”

 I turned red just like he wanted.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t willing to talk about it, there just wasn’t much to talk about.  “I don’t know, it’s not like I’ve ever had much of a choice.”

 “Don’t even try it.  Pretend you have a choice, then.”

 “I don’t know,” I said honestly.  “I haven’t been with many men, you know.”

 “Who was your favorite then, and why?”

 That was a choice between my high school boyfriend, Earl, and Jeremy.  “I had a boyfriend named Paul when I was a teenager.  We were mostly together because it was convenient, but I remember him fondly.  He was my favorite because...  Everyone else has been pretty awful.”

 “So you disliked him the least?  That’s it?  That’s not telling me much, you gonna play fair or what?”

 “I haven’t thought about him in a long time...  Not in any depth.”  I thought back to how happy I was back then.  I still had my hopes and dreams, and my parents.  My old life...  “He was tender with me, and I liked that.  But I was also just happier then...  Maybe that’s all there is to it.”

 “Don’t know if I want to go any further on that one,” he said, picking up on something that crept into my voice.  “Your turn, then.”

 I almost asked how he liked his sex, but realized the phrase ‘contented sighs’ already said more than enough to make being around him even more distracting than it already was.  “What do you look for in a woman?”

 “Tough one.”  He looked at his wine as if to sip it, but didn’t.  “The right feeling, I guess.  Haven’t found it yet.  In that respect, I don’t even know what I’m looking for, though.  If I had felt it before, I wouldn’t be alone.”  He stopped to think.  “What I’ve really picked up on over time, I hate to admit, is not so much what I’m looking for, as things to avoid.”

 “What might those be?”  I wasn’t done, I sipped my drink again.

 “It’s been a few years by now, the list is pretty long.”  I just smiled at him to let him know I wasn’t letting him off the hook.  “Well one thing, which is thankfully something I don’t need to worry about anymore, was crazy parents.  I swear I hung out with a girl who was nineteen, and not allowed to go anywhere with people, not even her friends.”

 “Allowed?  She was over eighteen.”

 Jay shrugged.  “I tried telling her that.  Anyway, that was the worst case of that, but there were others.  But like I said, that’s over.  If I meet a girl who’s also pushing thirty and is still completely controlled by her parents, something’s seriously wrong there.  Then there’s also the flair for drama.  I asked a girl wearing shorts what some scratches on her thigh were, and she said she’d tried to kill herself.  With a butter knife.  Because she was fighting with her step-mom.  I almost asked if she had any idea how much persistence that would have taken.  Instead I just stopped talking to her at all, for the most part.”

 “More parent stuff?”

 Jay laughed reflectively.  “I did most of my dating in college.  It was a big problem for a long time.  Another one is douchebag boyfriends.  This is probably the biggest.  Oh, I don’t know what I mean by ‘biggest’, that’s stupid.  The worst, I guess.  I’ve lost track, unless I do some really hard work, of how many times I met a girl who liked me, who I liked back, who would not leave a guy who was treating her like absolute s**t.  I’ve tried waiting.  I’ve tried giving them emotional support.  Once I talk to them and they feel better, they go right back to him.  I don’t get it.  I’ve tried being upfront about it, even arguing.  I get ‘You just don’t know him like I do.  He may beat the s**t out of me, but he’s really sweet underneath it all.’”  He had some old feelings coming back, and I noticed his reign on his vocabulary was slipping.  He shrugged.  “There’s never been one exception.  Nice girls don’t want nice guys.  They want f*****g pet projects.  They want to ‘fix’ guys that are just feeding off of them.  Or maybe the thought of being bored terrifies them.”  He laughed.  “I sound bitter, don’t I?”

 I gave a reluctant nod, but smiled at him.  I want a nice guy...  “Did you ever think it might not be as simple as you make it seem?”

 He brought his glass to his lips, only to lower it again.  “I’m sure of it, actually.  Remember, I was younger when all this happened.  That was how I felt.  And like I said, it had happened to me so many times.  Even if I sat down and mapped them out I’d miss some for sure.  Story of my damn life, until I started working at the hospital.  Now I don’t get to have a life.”

 “Alright, good enough.  Your turn,” I said to take his mind off it.

 Now he sipped his wine again.  “When was the last time you had sex, and what made it so awful?”

Reviews

[Sarah]

You probably already knew my stance on this, but I don't like the part about the girl with scratches on her thighs. You used the words "flair for drama," and I see it as anything but that. The stigma of cutters is very real here, and I think that should be changed to be taken in a more serious way.

That last question really leaves the reader on edge. I knew Earl would be coming around soon enough, and I was waiting for his name to get brought up in their conversation. I don't know how that is going to go, but it makes me wonder how Jay will react and what will happen the next time Earl physically shows up at her door.

[Christopher Miller]

This was an effort to make Jay not so perfect. Laura asks him to acknowledge that these girls have their own sides to the story. I appreciate your candor, and will try to expand on that, because although Jay made that statement, I don't want the story to.

[kgirl]

Ok so here I am, with nothing else to read, and I so want to!
I didn't even reviewed any other chapters yet because I got so caught up with the story that I just wanted to read more and more! (I will go back there and re-read to see if I have something to say)
In this chapter, the one thing that bugged me the most was the fact that Jay and Beth "separated"/broke up/stopped going out because of sex. They tried it once and found they were not compatible. I don't know, I do get that it's a very important part of a relationship, don't get me wrong, but it just felt they gave up too fast... If I got along so well with a person I was dating and I had the same problem I would've at least... tried a couple more times. But maybe that's just me.
Really hoping you post the next chapters soon!

PS: Also really hoping she's honest about Earl and that Jay reacts like the sweet guy I thing he is!

[Christopher Miller]

They did give up fast, thanks for mentioning it. I might expand on their talking things out afterward, deciding it's an age difference issue. They're meant to be close to ten years apart. I haven't specified that other than she's 'young'.