The next morning

The next morning, I woke to the smell of eggs and bacon, always a good sign that Sarah was feeling either guilty or generous. She was standing at the stove, humming tunelessly, her hair up in a sloppy bun. In the light, she looked almost innocent, except for the dark smudges under her eyes and the hickey blooming across her throat like some sort of exotic, poisonous flower.

I sat at the table and watched her move around the kitchen. She set a plate in front of me and poured coffee, then sat down across from me, hands wrapped around her own mug.

She didn’t say anything for a while, and neither did I. The bacon was crisp and the eggs were just the right side of runny, but all I could taste was this faint, metallic tang, like I’d bitten my tongue in the middle of the night and didn’t know it until now.

Eventually, Sarah broke the silence: “He texted me this morning.”

I tried to act casual. “How’s the big man doing?”

She smiled, almost despite herself. “He’s alive. And apparently, he survived the night.”

“Congratulations to him,” I said.

She sipped her coffee. “He says she liked it. But now she wants to try… new stuff. And he’s freaked out.”

“Like what? Some weird sex thing?”

Sarah coughed, almost sprayed her coffee. “No. Well, maybe. He said she wants to try anal. He’s never done it before, so he got really nervous and told her he has. And now he thinks he’ll fuck it up.”

I rolled my eyes. “So what, you’re going to give him tips?”

She shrugged. “I guess. He asked if I’d, you know, practice with him. Before next week.”

I nearly choked on my eggs. “You’re joking.”

She shook her head, hair falling out of the bun. “No. I’m not.”

“And you said yes?”

She thought about this for a long time, stirring her mug. “I told him I would only do it if you agreed.”

I stared at her, unsure whether this was a new form of psychological warfare or some weird loyalty test. “You want me to sign off on you getting fucked in the ass by pervert fat fucking pig, Wiley Henderson so his next date goes well?”

She flinched at the phrasing, but didn’t deny it. “I just want you to say it’s okay. I don’t want to do anything that will fuck us up even more.”

I should have exploded. I should have thrown my coffee against the wall, or at the very least stormed out. Instead, the absurdity of the situation struck me in a way that was almost comforting, like recognizing a pattern in static. I set my fork down and said, “Fine. But first you have to do what you owe me for each time, and I get to do it first.”

She looked up, surprised. “What?”

“If I remember correctly, you owe my one if not two times fucking you.”

She blushes “Yes… I got that but what about the other thing?”

I smile “Oh me going first. Well, I figure that If you’re playing coach with his for anal, then I want to go first on you. You said you never wanted to try anal, but if Wiley gets to, I get to as well.”

Sarah's eyes widened, and she recoiled a little, as if I’d suddenly veered off the script and was improvising with lines she’d only half anticipated. “You know it makes me nervous,” she said. Her voice was low and guarded, like a cat appraising the approach of a strange dog—maybe not an immediate threat, but dangerous enough to warrant distance.

Of course I knew. She’d made it clear, many times, that it was a hard boundary, something she’d only let slide for a “medical emergency” (her words), or in the unlikely event that her favorite pop star personally requested the honor. Wiley, apparently, qualified for at least one of those thing in her mind, but me—her actual boyfriend, the one who’d been there since the first time she’d gotten blackout drunk—was still very much on the outside of that particular velvet rope. I could feel the tectonic plates of our relationship grinding against each other, setting up for either a massive rupture or a grudging compromise.

I let my expression flatten into what I hoped was a mask of indifference. “It’s simple,” I said, “no me, no him. If you want to help, I get to go first.” I tried to sound like it didn’t matter. Like I wasn’t dying inside to be, if not her first, then at least not the last. Like everything wasn’t a contest, even though we both knew that it always came down to scorekeeping.

Sarah looked down at her feet, the cheap linoleum suddenly fascinating. She rocked back and forth, chewing it over, her fingers drumming a nervous tattoo on her thigh. I could see the war play out on her face. I could see her just about to text Wiley and tell him not. I could see Wiley leaving our life… I could see me finally being happy… I could see it all until she blurts out “Deal,”

That was the last thing I was expecting “Wait, what? Seriously?”

She didn’t flinch. “I said deal. But you have to promise: Anal is the last thing. We do what you want, but after this, we’re done talking about it. Okay?”

I couldn’t believe it, she actually agrees to the one thing I thought would never happen just to help that pig, leaving me so speechless all I could do was nod.

Sarah straightened up, and for a second her old bravado flickered back. “So do you want to make up one of the times I owe you now or later?” she said, her voice monotoned and emotionless.

I felt my hands shake, felt my lungs shrinking like they were trying to fold inward around my heart. “I guess now?” I said, and the words sounded like a dare tossed to the floor between us rather than anything I’d actually meant to say. My knees clipped the edge of the table as I stood up. Sarah just watched, expression somewhere between clinical and oddly proud, like a kindergarten teacher watching a kid learn to tie his shoes for the first time.

She didn’t kiss me or say anything. Instead, she reached out and took my hand—her palm was dry, strong, her thumb running over my knuckle with this weird, insistent rhythm. The contact felt like a prelude to **** or therapy or both. Sarah led me through the hallway, her grip never slackening, her posture so upright it was almost mocking. She didn’t look back, and I wondered if she cared how closely I trailed her, or whether she’d already stopped thinking about me the second she stood up from the breakfast table.

We passed in the bedroom, with its flickering overhead light. It was still cool from last night. Sarah hadn’t bothered making the bed, so the sheets were tumbled in a rough blue sea, bearing the faint indentations of old sleep.

She let go of my hand, sat down on the edge of the mattress, and then lay back, phone still in her grip. She set it aside, screen up, and for a second her eyes darted to it, like she was waiting for a text or a call to rescue her. She wore her oldest university T-shirt and a pair of plaid sleep shorts; the shirt was several sizes too big, the shorts barely visible beneath the hem. Her hair had started to loosen from the bun, strands falling in tangled, sunburned ropes around her face. She looked so much younger than she had at breakfast, as if the mere act of lying down could siphon off years of adult certainty and replace it with something fragile and painfully hopeful.

Sarah sat up, tucking her knees awkwardly to the side. Then she took a deep, uneven breath and scooted back across the mattress, leaving streaks in the wrinkled sheets. Her eyes pinched shut as if bracing for a sudden blast, and her hands trembled only a little when she reached for the waistband of her shorts. She looked up at me, as if checking to see whether I was going to call it off, or maybe just to see if I’d flinch at the sight of her, so exposed and unguarded in the gray morning light.

I didn’t flinch. I stared, probably too hard, as she shimmied out of her shorts and shifted her hips to give me access. I tried to mask my surprise at how smooth she was—Sarah always said she hated the way it felt to shave, but apparently she’d made an exception this week. Or maybe she’d done it just for today, for me. My heart stuttered at the thought, then tumbled into something darker when I remembered that Wiley was the reason she felt anything needed to be changed at all.

I peeled off my own clothes, clumsy with nerves, my hands shaking so visibly it must have been embarrassing for both of us. My cock was already hard, jutting out with the kind of urgency even I found faintly ridiculous, but Sarah didn’t laugh or roll her eyes. She just watched, her parted lips reminding me of the way she sometimes bit them when she was about to say something devastating. The air in the bedroom was cold and sharp, and my knees pressed into the mattress as I crawled forward, every movement feeling both painfully deliberate and hopelessly rushed.

We kissed, mouths clashing at first, then settling into a rhythm that was less about passion and more about reassuring each other that this was still okay. Her hands pressed flat against my chest, not pushing me away but not exactly pulling me in, either. When I tried to deepen the kiss, Sarah snorted and said, “You’re super cute with the French thing…” She trailed off, hands moving lower, fingers grazing my pelvis. I nodded, as if I’d been given instructions from a more experienced guide.

I wasn’t expecting her to be so wet, or so ready. As I lined myself up, my hands braced on either side of her, Sarah’s legs fell open, inviting and ****, and I slid inside her with an ease that left me momentarily stunned. For the first few seconds I just held still, eyes squeezed shut, memorizing the feel of her heat and the way her body seemed to grip me, a vice disguised as velvet. Her breathing hitched, then steadied, and she looked up at the ceiling as if she was counting off tiles or calculating the trajectory of some distant comet.

My cock slipped inside her tight pussy at 10:37 a.m. on an overcast day, in a bedroom that still smelled faintly of popcorn and burnt coffee, I’ll remember it forever because it was win, I lost my virginity to the woman I loved.

I felt a tremor at the base of my spine, a kind of static unfolding, as her body opened to me in a gesture that felt like both invitation and surrender. My cock pressed deeper, steady and uncertain, until I bottomed out inside her for the first time. There was a beat—an inhale, an exhale, her stomach tensing, her fingers clutching the twisted navy sheets—then Sarah’s eyes fluttered open, locking on mine with a look that struck me as pure, nuclear light. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected—maybe a gasp, maybe a flash of pain, or even a schoolgirl giggle—but what I got was this brightness, an almost alien clarity, as if she were seeing me for the first time.

I wanted to say something poetic, something that would knit together the ragged ends of our history and make this moment feel like a culmination instead of a compromise. Instead, I just grunted and started moving, my hands braced on either side of her head. The first few strokes were awkward, staccato, like I was afraid of breaking her, or myself. I could feel her heartbeat through the skin of her thighs, felt her calves wrap around me with a pressure that was both **** and absent-minded. She closed her eyes, this time for longer, and the muscles in her neck flexed as if she were steeling herself for an incoming wave.

I picked up the pace, more out of nervousness than desire, and to my surprise the mattress began to creak beneath us, the headboard tapping out an irregular rhythm against the drywall. Sarah’s breathing kept time in sharp, shallow bursts, but it didn’t sound like the kind of breathing she’d had with Wiley. Not that I’d ever witnessed it, but I’d heard her voice through the walls, the way she’d moaned and screamed and, once, sobbed so hard after a fuck that I almost called an ambulance. This was different. Filled with love but Muted… Technical. As if she was enjoying it, but not in the way she enjoyed it with Wiley.

For a moment I imagined Wiley’s face, pressed against the window, grinning at the two of us like a cat watching goldfish circle a bowl. I tried to shake the image, but it clung to the inside of my skull with the tenacity of a bad tattoo. I thought about the way he had smiled at Sarah. I wondered if, even now, his perverted mind was thinking about her as I fucked her.

But I was inside her, and I had to believe that counted for something, even if it was just inertia.

I slowed down, pulling almost all the way out before thrusting back in, watching her face for clues—was this good? Was I doing it right? Did she want me to go harder, softer, faster, slower? She gave nothing away. Her lips parted, a thin line of saliva catching the light at the corner of her mouth. Her hands found my shoulders, then my back, then slid down to grip my ass with a kind of mechanical insistence. It felt less like passion and more like she was adjusting the settings on a stubborn appliance.

I tried to change it up, rolling my hips in a way I’d seen in porn but never practiced in real life. Sarah responded with a faint whimper, but it sounded more like a reflex than a revelation. I wondered if she was bored already, if she was counting ceiling tiles or planning her grocery list while I sweated and panted above her. Each time I bottomed out, I felt a weird mix of triumph and futility, as if I were digging to China with a plastic spoon.

Still, I kept going—faster, harder, chasing the possibility that I could make her feel what she’d felt with him. It became a contest, me versus Wiley, my cock versus his memory. I thought about all the things he’d probably done to her, all the tricks and techniques I’d never even considered. I promised myself that, no matter what, I’d give her an orgasm she wouldn’t be able to forget, or at least fake it convincingly enough to make me believe it.

“Is this okay?” I panted, bracing myself for criticism.

She didn’t open her eyes. “It’s good. Don’t stop.”

The words sounded like a challenge, or maybe a dare. I redoubled my efforts, hips pistoning, sweat dripping from my temples onto her chest. I felt her legs tense around me, her hands pressing me deeper, and for a second I thought I was actually getting somewhere—until she started to shake, her whole body going rigid, and she let out a sound that was halfway between a moan and a cough. The climax, if that’s what it was, lasted a few seconds at most, and then she went limp, her arms falling to the mattress like dropped marionette strings.

I followed a few thrusts later, my own orgasm wrung from me with a **** that left me dizzy. I collapsed on top of her, too spent to care about the awkwardness of the moment, but Sarah was already squirming out from under me, rolling to the side and pulling the bunched sheet up to her chest. She stared at the ceiling, her face blank, breathing heavy but there was a hint of something else. Something that bothered me.

For a long minute, neither of us spoke. The only sound in the room was the slow, sticky separation of our skin, the faint whir of the ceiling fan, and the frantic pulse of my own heartbeat. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed, or just tired, or maybe both. I wanted to ask, but the words stuck in my throat, lodged behind a wall of pride and self-loathing.

Eventually, Sarah sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She didn’t look at me. Instead, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand, checked it, and then muttered, “I’m gonna take a shower.” Her voice was flat, businesslike, the same tone she used when calling to schedule her car’s oil change.

She didn’t wait for a response. She padded across the hall, the hem of her T-shirt barely covering her ass, and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, I heard the roar of the water, the pipes rattling in the walls.

I sat in the trace of our sex for two minutes wondering what that looks was, before I finally got up and followed her into the bathroom. As soon as I walked inside the water shut off. For a few seconds, there was only silence. Then the door swung open and Sarah stepped out, wrapped in a towel, her hair slicked back from her face. She looked at me, really looked, and for a brief second I saw something old and soft and almost loving in her eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by the impassive mask she wore whenever she was about to say something she knew would hurt.

She perched on the edge of the bed, towel clutched tight, and said, “You’re up next for the shower, if you want.”