“I think part of me was afraid that I would forget who I was. Because it seemed like my parents were possessed. I was kind of afraid I’d lose my head. But instead, he was this really nice guy, and I liked him.I dated him for three months, and then we slept together. It was very planned, very controlled. I felt the same. When we were done, I felt like myself. I didn’t lose my head. I didn’t suddenly want to race out and bang somebody else. I didn’t want to get in a fight over him. I just felt likeme. I didn’t feel it had been turned inside out.”
She felt a little bit inside out now. But it was Justice. So it had to be okay.
“So... you had sex finally and it was lame.”
She laughed. “I guess.”
“You know, I’ve never thought much about what it means to be a woman trying to navigate this stuff as I have since you told me about you and Asher. It’s important to me that my partners have a good time, but IknowI’m going to have an orgasm. Could be memorable, might not be. But a minimum amount of pleasure is a certainty. That’s why I do it.”
“I did it because I wanted to be in a relationship. A good one. A healthy one. And to me, that meant needing a nice man and having a nice house and having nice sex. You know, nice. Companionable. I wanted all these pieces of normal. But I don’t even really know why I wanted them except to just have the opposite of what I had growing up.”
“Sometimes I think... I was trying to give that poor kid the stuff he didn’t have. We have this version of family that’s different from anything we had with my parents. I go out when I want, I don’t deny myself anything.”
He believed that; she could see it. But there were actually a lot of things he denied himself. Becausewhile she had been determined to make herself a family, while she had been dead set on finding a way to normal, finding a way to give herself something that she never had, he avoided it. Avoided emotional connections as far as romance went.
But then, she could see why. Part of her still believed that the ideal existed. Part of her still believed that there was something good out there. The kind of good that she might never have experienced, but that she believed, bone deep, had to be real.
She didn’t know why she believed it.
Her parents hadn’t exemplified it, her grandma had been single since long before Rue was born. She’d never mentioned Rue’s grandfather, which had made Rue assume it had ended badly. Asher had betrayed Rue.
But she believed that love existed.
Maybe she was the idiot. Maybe she was the one that was wrong.
“Maybe that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to give that kid who never had a well-ordered life the life that I wanted. And more than that, the one that I believe my parents could have had if they would’ve cared enough to try. I just knew that I wanted something more. Something different. But it kind of became its own cage.”
“Are you afraid that you’re going to be like your parents? Because nothing about you is like them,” he said.
“Yeah. I am.” She lifted her hand up out of the water and watched some drops fall back in, leaving ripples on the surface. “I’ve always been a little bit afraid that I could be. Because I don’t know what they were likebefore. Part of me wondered if they transformed each other. Into these kinds of uncontrollable monsters they were.”
“Well, you’re not them. And there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I don’t think I could’ve had that with him,” she said softly, letting her hand drift down beneath the surface again.
“Because he wouldn’t lick your—”
“No. Because it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a matter of trying to stop myself from getting lost. I just was.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For giving that to me. All the trust. It’s not a small thing.”
She shifted so that she sank a couple of inches lower in the water, then looked at him. Hard. “What was your first time like?”
He tilted his head, a crease between his eyebrows. “What?”
“I wanted to ask you back when it happened. Kind of. I also didn’t want to think about it, which is why I never asked you.”
“And you want to think about it now?”
“Yes. Because I feel like I finally get to know all of this about you, so I want to know it.”
“Uhhh... I was young. I was horny. I looked at your boobs.”
“You looked atmyboobs?”
