“But yet you stopped when I was clearly ready to go all the way with you.”
“You’re making me feel a bit stupid for it.”
“I just don’t know…” She shrugged, shook her head. “It’s new. It’s different. I’m absolutely not some…shrinking violet or…or prudish virgin who needs you to tiptoe around my feelings and be all sweet and gentle. I hope you realize that. I’ve never had a guy just…pull back like that. So I don’t know what to make of it.”
I scraped my hair backward. “I…shit. I don’t know how to make sense of it because it’s not like me, which I’ve said more than once now.”
“Try.”
“I fuckin’ am, alright?” I winced. “Sorry, don’t mean to snap.” I took a too-big swig off too-hot coffee, scorching my throat. When I could speak again, I was a little hoarse. “Fucking hot, holy shit.”
I paused to sip slowly, swallow, and then start again.
“When I was a kid, Mum and me would go for ice cream after she was done in the studio, and I’d have mine gone while she was on her third bite, and I always, always promised myself I’d go slower next time. But I never could. Then one day, I did. I chomped down that first bite, and then I was like, ‘no mate, savor it,’ so I forced myself to slow down. To reallytasteit. Each bite was slow, deliberate. I tried to make it last as long as possible. And, I fuckin’ swear, I’ll remember that ice-cream cone for the rest of my life.”
“So I’m like ice cream.” Her tone was…not flat, but I couldn’t decide how she felt about my metaphor.
“Sort of. Metaphorically.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I mean, yeah. Creamy, delicious, and something I want to devour, and have to make myself slow down and enjoy it properly.”
“And you don’t usually do that.” She held my gaze, keeping her poker face on, not letting her feelings show. “Take it slow. Sexually, you just…chomp it all down as fast as you can.”
“You want the real, honest answer?”
She nodded, sat forward and fixed me with a serious, fierce expression. “Every single time, Errol. Always. There’s not much I hate more than a liar. Lies of omission, flat-out lies, lies to spare feelings, lies to avoid uncomfortable conversations, all of it. I’ll take the brutal truth over a pleasant lie every time.”
“So then, yeah. Normally I’m an all-in, right-off sort. Like I was as a kid with ice cream. And yeah, I get that impulse sometimes, that voice that tells me to slow down and savor things a bit, but I never listen. I can’t. With that, with sex, slowing down is…”
“Complicated? Or maybe it’s more accurate to say complicating?”
I nodded, sighing in relief. “Yeah, exactly. Complicating.”
“So I guess I get all that. But the question is, then, why me? Why slow down with me?” She stood up, paced away, mug held in both hands. Stood barefoot at the edge of the water, so the glass-still water licked at her toe-tips.
I held my place. Thought about it. Really, I did. Hunted for a reason that made any kind of sense, that fit into the puzzle of words. “I wish I knew, Poppy. But I don’t. Shit of me, maybe, but I just can’t explain why you.” I huffed. “I like metaphors, so here’s another one for you. It’s like coffee. When I’ve got average coffee, I’ll drink a pot quick as anything. Three, four mugs, not even thinkin’ about it. It’s just coffee. But this?” I held up the Chemex, with the last inch of black swirling around the bottom of the handblown glass. “This isn’t just coffee, it’s an experience. I sip it slow. Taste the flavors. One cup, maybe two, trying to make the bag I’ve got last as long as possible, trying to make each cup last as long as I can without it going cold.”
She turned to face me, still at the water’s edge. “First I’m ice cream, now I’m coffee?” A tiny, telltale smirk, just a shadow of a smile at the corner of her lips, a subtle twinkle to her eyes.
“I mean, yeah. My two favorite things are ice cream and coffee.” A pause. “Favorite things in the world of food and drink, I mean.”
“I see.” She paused. “So what you’re saying is, I’m not just any old regular coffee, I’mspecialcoffee.”
“Not just special. You can buyspecialcoffee, it just costs more. You can’t buy this. To getthisexact coffee, you have to visitthatfarm onthathill outside Jakarta, and havethatroast master roast the beans just so.” I held her gaze. “Not just special. So unique, so incredible, to waste it by rushing would be…it’d be a crime.”
She huffed, dropped her head, shaking it, hiding a grin. “Okay…that was good.”
I stood up, set my mug down. Crossed the space between us, halting when a few scant inches separated us. “It wasn’t a line. Wasn’t meant to impress you or sound good. I was just telling you the truth. It’s what you wanted.”
“What Iwantedwas some nice hot, slow morning sex. What I got is blue balls, and you talking the smoothest game I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“I’m not talking a game, Poppy. I told you, I don’t play. You wanted to know why I stopped, and I’m trying to tell you.”
She stared up at me. Mug held between us like a shield protecting her virtue. I held her eyes, and hoped she saw the genuineness in me. Saw that I wasn’t fucking around with her.
I don’t know what she saw, but it apparently seemed to mollify her, to some degree.
“Fine.” She pushed past me, set the mug down.
I turned to watch. “Fine? What do you mean, fine?”
