Third Life - Noelle Adams Page 0,1
I don’t like about my life, so I’m going to change it.
“You know I support you. If you want to have sex, you should have sex. But do you really want it to be a stranger you pick up at a hotel?” Ashley’s eyes are sober. A little worried.
When she says it that way, it does sound rather silly and irrational. “Who else is it going to be? Am I supposed to just ask some random male acquaintances until I find someone willing to help me out?”
“No. Of course not. But you can focus on dating for a while until you find someone it feels right with.”
“You make it sound easy, but it’s not for me. I’ve tried dating. I’ve tried all those apps. And the very few times I’ve landed on someone I’m remotely interested in, I’m paralyzed with awkwardness over the fact that I’m still a virgin. I know theoretically that I’m not the only virgin in my thirties, but it’s hard to feel that way when I’m in the moment and looking at a guy across a table at a restaurant. I want to do this in a way that feels disconnected from my regular life so I won’t feel so much pressure about it.”
My dad was narrow-minded and ultrastrict, so I spent the first twenty years of my life believing that if I didn’t wait until marriage for sex, I was going straight to hell. I wouldn’t let myself even think about straying into forbidden territory. But my father died from a heart attack when I was a senior in college, and my mother encouraged me to do what I really wanted to do—which was get my PhD in biochemistry.
My life started again with graduate school. I was no longer the good girl with the weirdly strict parents. I got my PhD, and then my mother was diagnosed with MS. Instead of taking the lucrative jobs I was offered, I stayed in Boston so I could take care of her. The only job immediately available to me there was a temporary position at a pharmaceutical company, putting together a promotional booklet on a new medication.
Through that, I discovered my real talent. I can write well, and I genuinely understand the science. And those two skill sets don’t often go together, so I began to take on freelance projects—writing up research for nonscientific publications or developing manuals that communicate highly technical information or creating high-level promotional material in scientific fields.
Before I knew it, I had my own business as a prestigious freelance science writer. Right now I’m in high demand and making a lot of money.
Ashley is focusing on the traffic, but her eyes dart over briefly to my face. “I get it. I really do. And I know what happened with Matt makes everything harder for you. I’m just not sure getting it over with is the best way to approach sex. I thought you were waiting for the right man.”
“I was. I am. But he hasn’t made an appearance, and I’m afraid he never will as long as I’m hung up on this virginity thing. I’m sick of it.” My voice breaks slightly, although I don’t normally consider myself an emotional person. “It feels like I’ve lived two lives so far. One as that scared good girl I used to be. And the second one focused only on my mom and my career. I’ve lost my mom. My career is great, but it’s not enough. It feels like this is the time for me to... to start my third life. And I don’t want to live my third life as a virgin. I don’t, Ashley. I’ve thought this through. Endlessly. This is what I want to do.”
“Okay.” Ashley’s expression is less worried now. She’s almost smiling. “I’m with you then. So you think you’ll find a guy at this conference?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. There are two conferences at the hotel this week—one for pharmaceutical sales and one for software developers. I think I’ll be able to find a basically decent guy who’s interested in hooking up for a night.”
“Why not do a singles cruise or something?”
“I don’t want to go somewhere where everyone is looking to hook up. There will be too much competition. I don’t want it to feel like high school and college, where the guys are all going after the popular girls while I’m invisible in the background. I don’t want a player. I don’t want someone who is really