Annika snorts, shrugging. "For fun."
"But you discuss these things…openly?" I ask.
Terra pats my thigh. "Sure we do. Those walls aren’t exactly thin, but they're not soundproof either." A shrug. "We're all adults, we all have a lot of sex, and so yeah, we talk about it, and sometimes tease each other. Why?"
"I…" I close my eyes again. "I couldn't talk about…that."
Naomi, surprisingly, answers me. "I felt the same way when I first came here. Myka, Anjalee, and Annika openly discussed their sex lives with each other. It made me very uncomfortable at first. Where I came from, such things were not discussed—at all. I…I felt like it was private. Personal. Sacred, even."
I blink up at her. "Do you not feel that way anymore?"
"Oh, no, I do. Itispersonal and sacred. But my relationship with these girls…" Naomi looks around, eyes misty. "It's very…intimate. And I…” she blushes, ducks her head. "I was very innocent about sex when I met Silas. Talking to women who have more experience than me has helped me in my relationship with Silas. I can ask questions. Share things. I never had friends, let alone girlfriends. We joke and we laugh and we tease, but we do know how sacred it is for all of us. It is very liberating to be able to talk openly about it with the only other people on the planet who can understand exactly how I feel. What it's like belonging to this group."
"So…" I sit up and turn to put my back to the couch back, holding my hands out to admire the color, although I hate the yellow with every fiber of my being. It's a fun kind of hate, though. "You tell each other things? Personal things? Details?"
Annika shrugs. “Sure. Not, likeeverything."
"You told me you queefed, Anni," Terra says. "And why. That's pretty personal."
"Because it was funny." She snickers. "It's still funny."
Terra can't help dissolving into snickering. "Queefing is always funny."
"Tell us something, Soph," Scarlett says, leaving her corner and joining the group crowded together at the opposite end of the sectional. "Just jump in with both feet. Trust us."
I look back over my shoulder at the men and find Lorenzo's eyes. He smiles—I may be reading things into it, but the smile seems to communicate how happy he is to see me with the girls like this, bonding, unwinding. Letting my guard down.
"I…" I feel a million thoughts percolating, and struggle to put one into words; my brain feels foggy and disorganized, as if my thoughts are a billion fluttering moths and I have to catch eachone in order to create a sentence, but when I catch one, another flies out of my net.
Or something.
"Rafael was a hideously depraved man. The things he enjoyed—his sick peccadillos would horrify even the Marquis de Sade.” I stretch out my hand, and someone reads my mind, fits the joint into my fingers; I take a puff, inhale, hold it, exhale. "One of the things he enjoyed doing to me was violent oral sex. It was...traumatic, painful, shameful, degrading. He would hold my hair and…" I shake my head, blowing out a sharp sigh. "You can imagine. So, after I escaped, I avoided all sex. I avoided people. Jakob, the man who owns this building and put the Broken Arrows together…my relationship with him has always been purely platonic. Boss and employee—friends. Perhaps even older brother and younger sister."
I puff again and try to catch the fluttering thoughts whirling in my brain. "I held much shame and fear about sex. But Lorenzo…he…when I am with him, I forget all of that. I felt desire, sexual desire, for the first time in a very, very long time when he and I reconnected. The desire made it easy to forget what I'd been through. Until it became time to…do things. To allow him to touch me, to try and touch him."
Naomi slides an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into a side hug. "I am so, so sorry you experienced that, Sophia."
"Thank you, Naomi." I let her hold me—and I find it comforting. These women support me. Accept me. Understand me. "Today, earlier, Lorenzo and I…" I blush, duck my head, roll a shoulder.
"Got it on like Donkey Kong?" Terra suggests.
Annika elbows her. "I don't think she's at the teasing stage yet, Ter."
I shoot Annika a grateful look, because I am assuredly not at the teasing stage. "Yes. We…connected, physically. It was very,veryintense. Emotional…in a way I didn't know it could be."
Naomi rests her cheek on the top of my head, which rests on her shoulder. "That's the best kind, isn't it? Where you feel like…gosh, how do you even describe it?"
"It's not just a physical connection," Myka says. "It's your souls…merging. Having grown up in a spiritual, religious family, to me, I still think of it as…touching a part of the divine, I suppose."
"Making love with your bodies," Tatiana says. "But the deeper connection is from heart to heart. Becoming one flesh, as your Christian Bible puts it."
"Exactly," I say. "That's how it was. And it was so beautiful. But…" I trail off, wondering if I'm really going to share this with them.
"But what, honey?" Terra asks. "C'mon, now. Don't be shy. No matter what it is, I promise you, we'll understand."
"We took a nap. And I woke up…" I trail off again, start over. "I woke up wanting to…to do something for him."
Myka grins at me over the top of her drink, which she's been nursing. "Ohhhhgirl, I know that feeling."
