Just One Night(42)
of my sophomore year, Dan’s parents were off in Australia visiting his sister, who
was studying abroad, so he came home with me.”
“You did it at your parents’ house? How has that not been a story topic yet?”
“Actually it has,” Riley said, thinking back to a short piece she’d done a couple of
years earlier. “I just didn’t base it on personal experience. Hell, as you guys now
know, none of it’s based on my sexual experiences … But anyway, no, we didn’t
do it until we got back to campus after break.”
“Okay …,” Grace said, winding her fork into a careful twirl of noodles. “So what
was the catalyst? You don’t exactly sound smitten with this poor guy.”
“Oh, I was smitten all right,” Riley muttered. “Just not with Dan.”
Julie put the pieces together almost immediately. “Sam was there. At your
parents’ house at Christmas.”
“Sam was there,” she said, meeting her friends’ eyes. “So was his new wife.”
“Sam was married?” Grace said. “How did I not know that?”
“Because it was over in a hot minute. Just a spontaneous oopsie that ended in a
dramafree divorce. But that Christmas break when I went home with my first
serious boyfriend, half convinced that it would force Sam to see me as a grown-
up, he was very much married.”
“Oh, Ri,” Julie said, setting her plate aside. “That’s why you slept with Dan?”
“Well, I didn’t let myself acknowledge the reason at the time. I told myself that he
was sweet and kind, and fairly good-looking, and why not, you know? But when
I’m really honest with myself …”
“It always comes back to Sam,” Emma finished for her.
“Exactly.”
She went on to explain how she’d half stalked him at the distillery, then played
the jealousy card with Brent to spur him into action. She told them about the kiss
at her parents’ and the kiss at the bar …
She told them everything up until the door of the hotel room, which is when she
felt herself blush and realized that talking about sex in general terms is a hell of
a lot easier than talking about sex in personal terms.
And she definitely didn’t tell them about Sam’s outburst about not being good for
anyone. It was simply too untrue to voice to anyone. Even her best friends.
“He must have balls of steel if he walked out,” Emma said. “It’s obvious to
everyone on the eastern seaboard that he wants you as much as you want him.”
“Obviously not,” Riley said as she rummaged through the delivery bag in search
of tiramisu. “And I don’t blame him for not wanting to see things through that night.
If I’d found out my mom was in the hospital, I’d be a wreck. But I guess I thought—
hoped—that he might have stayed. You know, just to cuddle. Or whatever.”
She broke off on this last part, embarrassed by the admission, and Julie
squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“It’s okay to feel, Riley.”
Easy for Julie to say. Julie had someone who loved her back. Riley was terrified
that if she opened up those floodgates, she’d turn into one of those needy women
who puts her life on hold because she’s smitten with a man.
And Riley was smitten with a man.
She just didn’t want to be.
Then Emma tilted her head and brought the subject back to the elephant in the
room. “How is it that you haven’t gotten laid at all since that night in college? I
mean, Sam’s sexy and everything, but I don’t know that any guy’s worth being
celibate for.”
“Well, it hasn’t been entirely intentional,” Riley muttered. “But you know how when
you first meet someone and forget their name … and then you run into them again
and don’t want to admit that you don’t know their name, so you don’t ask? And
then by the tenth time you see them, it’s entirely too late to admit that you have
no idea who they are?”
They nodded.
“Well, my sex life is kind of like that. I started out just waiting for the next guy after
Dan, but then a year passed. Then another … and then I started freaking out,
like, oh my God, I’m twenty-two and don’t know how to have sex …”
“And then you inadvertently became a sex ‘expert’ and you couldn’t admit that
you hadn’t had any,” Julie guessed.
“Precisely.”
“There’s no shame in it, you know,” Grace said kindly. “There’s no one right
answer on the appropriate amount of sex.”