Presently, we were walking toward an ice cream shop he knew about, and apparently Matt wanted to discuss hot sex.
"You know." He nudged my shoulder with his, grinning with overly exaggerated lasciviousness, such that it wasn't lascivious at all. It was just silly. "Is that one of the reasons you stuck things out with Doug? Because he supported both portrait and landscape modes?"
"What? You mean David?"
"Sure. Whatever his name is. Did he have you demo his multi-touch capabilities? Was it love at first optical recognition, or did he have to ambulate by your location multiple times? I bet you liked it when he touched your PCI slot, and it probably made his floppy drive hard."
Speaking of hard, I was laughing so hard my jaw hurt. "Oh, God. Stop."
Matt lowered his voice and leaned close to my ear. "Your mouth says 0, but your eyes say 1."
"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."