can’t let him see my scarred back in natural light, that’s for sure.
‘So,’ I say.
‘So.’
I lean forward and kiss him, and he kisses me back, but he seems a little hesitant. After a few minutes, he’s lying on top of me, and the hesitation is disappearing. I tug at his T-shirt, and start to pull it up, putting my hands on the bare skin of his back. Now he stops.
‘What are we doing?’ he says, leaning up on one elbow.
‘What do you think we’re doing?’ I say, feeling a little twist of nerves in my stomach but trying to play things cool.
‘I feel like…I don’t know.’
‘Well, we’re doing whatever we want,’ I say. I can picture someone else—someone cooler, the kind of person with the confidence to wear black nail polish, the kind of person who could cut their hair into a pixie cut without regretting it, the kind of person who’s done more than the sex basics with at least two different people—being able to say this line in a really seductive way. I sound like a child.
‘You keep saying that,’ Alex says.
‘I’m hoping you’re going to catch on,’ I say.
‘You want to have sex?’ he says.
Okay, finally.
‘Yes,’ I say, feeling relieved.
‘But you said last week we weren’t going to have sex,’ he says.
‘That was last week.’ A hundred things have changed since then. (Emotionally. In my head.)
‘Okay, but why today?’ Alex has rolled off me entirely now, and is lying by my side, which isn’t filling me with confidence.
‘Why not today? Let’s get it done.’
He laughs, sounding nervous. ‘You’re making it seem like…’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a chore.’
‘No, I’m not. I just want to get the first time out of the way.’ I am saying ‘the first time’ so he might think I mean the first time between us, but I am quite sure he knows I’ve never had sex before and that what I really mean is ‘my first time ever’.
‘Out of the way?’
‘Over with.’
‘That’s worse.’
‘You know what I mean.’ (I’m starting to think maybe he doesn’t.)
‘You’re freaking me out,’ he says, sitting up and rubbing his temples.
‘Just the first time might be not great. After that we can get better at it. Go beyond the basics,’ I say, trying to sound as upbeat as possible, and also hoping he won’t ask me what I think the basics are.
‘Your expectations of me are terrifyingly low.’
‘Isn’t it better to exceed expectations than fail to meet them?’ I honestly go into every situation with the lowest expectations possible, and it always surprises me when I find out that other people don’t think that way.
‘This conversation is very stressful.’ He gets up off the bed and starts to pace.
‘Well, I don’t want to make things worse, but I have something else to ask you,’ I say.
‘What?’ he says, looking pained.
‘How many people have you had sex with?’ I ask. The question has been on my mind ever since he wouldn’t answer that night in Queenscliff, and I figure as things are already going badly, I may as well head in this direction. It would really help me to know.
‘Wow. You definitely made it worse,’ he says.
‘Is it more than ten?’ Ten is a number that represents enormous experience. I might realistically never sleep with ten people in my whole life. If Alex has already had sex with ten people, I don’t think I can be with him. I don’t think I can be around him. The gulf between us is too wide.
‘Two.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Why wouldn’t that be true?’
‘Zach told me it was more.’
‘Zach has no idea how many people I’ve slept with.’
‘So how many?’
‘Two.’
‘I’m not that naive. You’re cute, and you worked in a bar. It’s more than two.’
‘I’m short, hairy, and I worked in the kitchen of a pub. I spent most nights sweaty and covered in food stains.’
I let a long silence hang between us.
He puts his hands behind his head and lets out a long breath.
‘Fine. Fine. Six people. And that’s the truth! I have slept with six girls in my life. One was a girlfriend, two were kind of on-and-off casual things, and the other three were one-nighters.’
‘How many times with each?’
‘Natalie, I am not answering that. I don’t even think I could answer that. I don’t keep a tally of all the times I’ve had sex.’
‘I’m looking for ballpark figures, nothing exact. Like with Vanessa—’
‘I don’t want to talk about Vanessa.’
That means Vanessa was great in bed.
‘How many of them did you meet on Tinder?’
‘What? None!’
‘I know