if I didn’t know any better, I’d think the little minx liked it.
“How are you a virgin?”
My thick brows go up. “Are you?”
Charlie removes her hand and returns it to her lap. “No.”
Sex, sex, sex.
The word plays on a loop in my brain, implanted there.
“Although just barely,” she adds.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This is not good.
“What do you mean?” I volley back.
I get an eye roll for my efforts. “Um, hello—isn’t it obvious?”
“Um, no.” I’m confused. What the hell is she trying to get at? How can you be barely a virgin? You are or you’re not.
“I mean—look at me. Listen to me! Guys just…I think I might be too much to handle.”
Too much for who? Pussies? “Please do not go down that road of self-deprecation and loathin’. I can’t stomach it.”
“Loathin’,” she repeats in almost a whisper, as if the word holds some magic. Her top teeth nibble on her bottom lip. “You’re right—I hate when girls do that, too. I’m not fishing for compliments, I swear. And I don’t hate my body, but I like tall guys and none of them ever like me back, so I’m stuck with the short ones who can’t take a joke.” Her laugh sounds a bit sardonic.
Oh Charlie, if were I the dating kind…I’d date the hell out of you.
Her head is cocked and she’s staring out into the dark yard.
“Why are you waiting?” Her question isn’t condescending or calculated, merely quiet and curious.
“I don’t…date.”
A lilting little laugh fills the silence. “One has nothing to do with the other.”
No, it doesn’t. Still, “Sex complicates everything, and I decided a long time ago I wasn’t lookin’ for any. Complications, I mean.”
“That sounds a tad dramatic.” I don’t see her eye roll, but I can hear it.
“It’s the truth.”
“Well it doesn’t have to be complicated. It is what you make it.”
“Someone always gets hurt.”
“Who gets hurt? The other person? I thought guys didn’t care about feelings—are you telling me you’re sensitive?”
“I just know from experience—everything is one-sided and the other person loses out.” My statement is vague, slightly ominous, and only makes a bit of sense.
“Are you even talking about yourself?” Charlie gives her head a shake. “I’m so confused.”
That makes two of us.
I choose to be honest. “No, I guess I’m not talkin’ about myself.”
“Who then?”
“My parents.” I let out a puff of air.
Charlie is silent a few heartbeats before leaning back against the swing’s bench. “Ah, I see.”
I want to ask, What do you see? But I’m afraid she’ll actually fucking tell me what she sees when she looks at me, and the last thing I want or need is a psych eval from a pretty girl in the middle of the night on a Friday.
That’s not why I brought her out onto this porch.
“Love fucks it all up.”
The swing slowly sways back and forth, only its rusty chain breaking the silence. Then, “So. You’re one of those, eh?”
I detect a chuckle tacked on to the end of her sentence. Charlie is amused.
“One of what?”
“You have to be in love to have sex with someone. You want to feel something for them. Is that it?” The way she says it oozes skepticism, as if the notion is impossible. She’s put me in a box, stuck that box on a shelf, and labeled it Guys who fuck whomever. Anyone with a pulse, like some of my teammates.
“No, but I’d like to have a relationship before stickin’ my dick inside them. Otherwise it’s just weird.”
“Stickin’ muh dee-uk,” Charlie repeats with a laugh, full on this time, loud and boisterous and sounding fucking glorious. “You and that Southern accent of yours have a way of making everything sound so eloquent.”
My lips press into a thin line. “I appreciate the sarcasm. Truly.”
“Don’t be a pooh. I like it,” she says somewhat shyly. “The accent, I mean. I’m a bit rusty with the teasing.”
I don’t want to say it out loud, but most girls do love the accent. Fucking love it. Eat that shit up, in fact, driving me batshit loco with their demands: Say something Southern, Triple J! Say y’all! Say fixin’ to!
Drives me fuckin’ nutso.
Charlie here isn’t immune to it, isn’t the exception; she’s the rule. Same as all the others, really.
I have nothing more to say as she rocks the swing with the toe of her shoe, though she’s the shorter one between us. I watch her leg—her calf in the tight, dark, denim skinny jeans. The toe of her leather boot pressing into the wooden