“Wow. Mom was a powerful influence for you, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah. No kidding.”
“So then you get to college…” he prompted.
I sighed, grinned a little. “Yeah, then I got to college. Straight As, with extra GPA points and a ton of college credits by graduation from taking a bunch of courses at the community college on a transfer program through my high school. Nearly perfect SAT and ACT scores, accepted to pretty much any college I wanted. I even got an offer from Cambridge.”
“Like, the one in England?”
I laughed. “The only one, yeah.”
“And you didn’t take it?”
I grimaced. “Yeah, no. I should’ve. But it was too scary, moving that far from Mom. So, I chose Yale. It was a toss-up between Yale, Harvard, and Brown, but Yale just sounded…I don’t know. Cooler, to me. Probably pretty shallow and stupid reason. But it’s where I went, and I met Glen the first day during orientation. We sat together during the initial meeting, and stayed together for the whole tour, hung out afterwards, and never really separated.” I swallowed. “We dated for six months before I worked up the courage to let him kiss me. Another month before I felt confident enough being away from Mom and making my own decisions to let things progress. Poor guy was very patient with me, I have to give him that much. It took nearly a full year of dating before we had actual sex. A lot of messing around, and me getting used to that. Just kissing and stuff. All the stuff I think most people do in high school, I was doing in college. He never rushed me or pressured me.”
“Good for him, for that much at least.”
“But he was also not…” I sighed, not sure how to put it. “Excited, I guess. By me. By us.”
He stared at me, eyes narrowed. “You’re filtering.”
I groaned. “Yeah. So, it’s weird to say these things out loud, but…he clearly was aroused by me, because when we started kissing he’d get an erection. And…before we had sex, yeah, I…you know. We did things with our hands.”
“Just fuckin’ say it, Charlie. We’re not kids, here. Not gonna be weird for me to hear you tell me you jerked off your college boyfriend.”
I blushed. “Yeah, well, there you go. I jerked him off.” I laughed. “A lot, actually. He, um. He would never…do anything. He wouldn’t make a lot of noises or move, he’d just sit there and watch, maybe his butt would clench a little as he got close, flexing a little. A sigh as he…you know. Came. And that was it. Clean up, and we were done.”
“And then he’d return the favor, right?”
I shrugged. “Not usually. He’d touch me, a little. But he wasn’t…um…good at knowing how to tell what I liked.”
He frowned. “Was he fuckin’ blind? Reading your body is like reading a large-print book.”
I laughed, but it was a little bitter. “So, he’d…he’d start, but I’d get impatient and take over, and he’d just watch me finish myself. And for quite a few months, that was our sex life. Me jerking him off, him watching me masturbate, essentially.”
“Wow. That’s…shockingly shitty, babe.”
“I guess so. It was all I knew, and I got frustrated sometimes, but I thought that’s just how things were, and he was nice to me, and easy to talk to. Our relationship was…cerebral. We could talk about heady, sophisticated things. Philosophy, politics, economics, literature. He was smarter than me in a lot of ways, and I felt mentally challenged by him.”
Crow smirked. “Ain’t gonna get conversation like that with me, I’m afraid. I ain’t even got a fuckin’ GED.”
I frowned. “Crow, you may not have a lot of formal education, but I think you are one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”
“How the fuck can you tell that?”
“It’s obvious. Intelligence shines out of a person’s eyes, and your eyes just…burnwith intelligence. You can read people, you understand situations.” I pointed at his bookshelf. “You read widely, and a lot. You’re curious, I can tell. So, sure, perhaps you’ve never readUlyssesor Kafka or—or Hemingway, or whoever. But that’s just exposure. Anyone can read a book. Being curious isn’t something you can teach.”
He frowned, and his eyes left mine, thoughtful, following my curves, pausing at my breasts, continuing to my hips. He spoke without looking at my eyes. “Thank you for that, Charlie.”
“Hey, I’m just callin’ ’em like I sees ’em,” I drawled.
He laughed. “Anyway. You and Glen.”
I shrugged, and traced my fingers from his shoulder over his pec, dimpling the hard muscle, down to his abs sheathed a layer of what I would just call the insulation of a life lived. He was still mostly erect, but fading.
I didn’t want that to happen.
I wanted to touch him. I felt my brain going into overthink mode—thinking of all the times I’d done it to Glen, how I’d tried different things to get a reaction from him, and never could, which made me feel like I wasn’t doing it right. I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, pulling myself out of my head.
