How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex: a Novel (19 page)

“Wait, stop,” I finally muster the will power to say. “Your hands are too dirty. Can we pick this up after we’ve had a shower?” I turn to look at him. He’s bummed out.

“I want you now,” he whispers, trying to be sweetly seductive, and even adding a gentle kiss on the nose.

“I know, and I want you, too.” It’s not even a lie. “But I’m not quite ready yet.”

He sighs, “I’m just getting worried that we’re waiting so long, you know, I’m getting more and more attached to you, and what if—Are we ever gonna do it?”

He’s getting more and more attached to me? Well that’s good news!

“Of course we will,” I reassure him, “and the more attached we are, the more special it will be.”

“I know. You’re right. I’m just getting impatient.” Awww. That’s a nice way to put it. I really do feel compassion for him. I mean, if he’s struggling with waiting half as much as I am, he’s in serious blue-ball land, so if it’s any more than that, he’s probably on the verge of accidentally killing a patient on the operating table from the sex-deprived shakes he’s most likely getting.

But maybe this is it? Maybe that was his way of letting me know that he is really into me. Should I just do it with him now?

“Let’s pack up and get going back to the car,” he says as a truce gesture. With that, he takes the pressure off me, and my heart rate instantly slows down. That’s how I know that waiting just a little bit longer is for the best.

“Thanks for understanding, John.” I love you. I don’t say that second part out loud. Instead I peck him passionately on the mouth. Then, so as not to fall back into his web of intimacy, I get out of my sleeping bag and roll it up.

We’re not out of the woods yet, though!

Chapter 21

On our way back down the hill, I notice John admiring me a little more than usual. After his little staring and smiling thing has gone on for too long to ignore, I finally ask.

“What?”

He laughs, “You’ve got a lot of stamina. You’re quite the little ‘routard’.” Did he just call me a retard?

“Boy, you sure do know how to make a girl feel sexy,” I snark sarcastically, knowing full well that there is no context in which calling me a retard works for that sentence.

“No, ‘routard’ is French for backpacker,” he explains with a chuckle.

“And of all the words that language has to offer, that’s the one you learned?” I tease.

“Colette and I used to backpack a lot. She’s French. From France.” Ah ha. “Colette”. That explains quite a lot. He’d told me a lot about his ex, but never that she was French.

“So is that why you’re so into French—everything?”

“No, I’ve always been a Francophile,” he justifies. Adding, “Which is probably why I was so into her.” This is a good example of an emotion he’s had that I
don’t
want to hear about.

“And it was lucky for her, too,” he goes on enthusiastically, “because when you decide to date a foreigner, you have to know if you want to get married within the time it takes for her visa to expire.” He kind of laughs at the memory.

“How long did you have?” I ask, wondering if we’re there yet and wishing I were foreign.

“We were married within four months. The wedding was a total rush job.”

“So it wasn’t romantic?”

“It kinda was, in a spontaneous way. We just ran off to Vegas with a handful of our party friends, and had an impromptu reception at the Pink Taco afterwards.” Eiw. I do not want that! “Okay, it was pretty low class,” he admits, laughing at himself.

“I’m sure your parents were very proud,” I say, mocking him.

“They were pissed! Mostly because I didn’t invite them.” We laugh. “That’s why the next time I get married, I have to do it right. I want a big wedding. Make it up to my mom.”

The next time? Big wedding?

“So you’ve thought about it?” I pry, just learning for the first time that guys think about what their weddings might look like, too. “What do you want it to be like?”

“I don’t know, like you see in magazines, I guess.” Yes! That’s what I want, too! Then he adds affectionately, “Why don’t I just let you plan it.”

My heart drops into my stomach. His next wedding is to me! I can barely breathe. He wants to marry me! It’s not exactly “I love you”, but it’s better! It’s, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Which no one wants to do with someone they don’t love. He loves me!

I can’t even try to hide my happiness. I’m panting to catch my breath—and not because I’ve just hiked 6 miles with a heavy backpack on—because I feel like I just won the lottery, or a game show, or anything else that would make you freak out inside, in disbelief of how freaking lucky you are.

John notices my delight and says, “Have I ever told you that backpacking makes me horny?” He knew what I was waiting for all along. He remembered when I joked that he should tell me when he feels something. It’s time. I can finally sleep with him now!

“Have I ever told you that wedding talk makes me horny?” I retort making light of what an incredibly momentous occasion this is.

“Does it? Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” He lifts me up like he’s taking his bride over the threshold, and he continues to create our fantasy wedding.

“There are rose petals on the ground.” He kisses me deeply. “All eyes are on you, in a beautiful white gown, glowing, as you walk down the aisle, toward your loving groom.” He kisses me again. “Flowers everywhere. Matching bridesmaids and groomsmen—“

I am so into him that I have to interrupt, “Get me off of this trail and strip me naked!”

He carries me off the path to a more private part of our already private mountain trail, and without wasting another minute follows my instructions. I am completely naked inside of thirty seconds. He has his shirt off and his pants around his ankles within another fifteen.

This is one of those rare times in life when foreplay in unnecessary. He sticks it inside of me and I moan like an animal in the woods. I could swear I hear my fellow mammals responding to my calls, in the distance. Soon I’m screaming so much they probably wonder if I’m warning them about a coming earthquake or other predator they should run and hide from.

Months of pent up sexual tension and emotional frustration all get released in the time it takes to cook a Lean Cuisine.

I finish first, making John feel proud of himself. Once I’ve regained consciousness, I get a chance to observe him finally getting what he worked so hard to earn. I can see what Lacey means about how stupid a guy looks in the throes of passion, with his face all droopy and his eyes rolling back into his head. But John is
my
stupid, droopy-faced guy, and that makes him beautiful to me.

After he finishes, John plops down on top of me, to catch his breath, and we smile in the afterglow. We lay there for a while, just resting and holding each other.

Eventually, he pushes himself up to look at me and says, “Wow… It’s been a long time since I’ve done that.”

That strikes me as a funny thing to say, and it actually hasn’t been nearly as long for him as he thinks, but none of that matters to me right now. I wanna talk about romance.

“You would really let me plan the wedding?” I ask blissfully on my little cloud in heaven.

“Sure,” he says casually, “if we decide to get married.”

If?! That’s not what he said before I had sex with him. Please don’t let him start pulling away already. This isn’t fair! This can’t be happening again.

He notices my fearful expression, and tries to explain himself, “Well, we’ve only been together a few months, and—you have to admit it’s still early in the relationship to know.” In his mind, that probably seems totally reasonable, and I seem like I’m overreacting. But he’s the one who brought it up!

“It doesn’t have to be too soon,” I say, practically begging him to change his refrain, “You married Colette after just a few months.”

“Yeah, because I had to, or she would’ve been deported. I didn’t want her to be deported.”

Maybe he’s not the romantic type after all. Even his first marriage seems like it was all business with a little spontaneity thrown in. But what’s so special about Colette?

“But you said you were getting attached to me, and I thought, when you said about the wedding… I thought it meant you were in love with me…”

John is perplexed by this assessment. And he thinks I’m the one who’s crazy? It’s not crazy to connect his desire to get married with the concept that maybe he’s in love with me. He’s the one who’s crazy to not put those together. Then again, he does already have a divorce under his belt, so maybe he’s just dumb.

“It’s possible,” he finally replies to my question about him loving me, “I don’t know. I definitely think you’re great. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to jump back into another marriage right away.”

I’m disappointed, so I can’t help but get a little mad, “Then why would you say I could plan the wedding?”

“Hypothetically,” he says calmly, as if it were the only logical thing in the world, “if we end up together.”

I’m so upset. I’m so confused. I poured my heart out to him, and he gave me “maybe”. I feel sick. I let him have me. After torturing myself to stay a sexual mystery to him, I gave it all up for this. I took it to mean, “I love you”!

As I get dressed, I’m totally stuck in my own head. John sees me grow distant, as he gets dressed, too. I’m not even sure whether or not I’m overreacting.

“How did this get so serious?” he says, triggering my greatest fears.

“Please don’t say that.” I don’t want to hear that bullshit again.

“I just don’t understand how it got so serious.”

“It got serious because you fucked me! And I thought you meant it!” But I always think he means it, because I want him to. And then he says I’m too serious and he ends up dumping me.

“I really don’t understand why you’re freaking out right now,” John says. “What’s the big deal?”

“I just don’t understand why you always pull away after we sleep together!” There. I said it.

“I’m not. I don’t. I couldn’t. This was our first time.” Okay, so in this case, he’s rightfully confused. He doesn’t even know about his pattern, or the fact that I’ve been desperately trying to break it, so I guess considering the circumstance, there is a possibility that I am coming off a little nutty.

And I know it’s possible to love someone, and still think it’s too early to know if you wanna marry them or not, so there’s actually still a chance that he really does love me. Although I probably just deleted any positive feelings he’d formed, with my little outburst right then.

Shit! I’m so stupid. I worked my ass off to get him to fall for me, and I’m the one who threw it all away by acting like a lunatic. He probably wasn’t even pulling away. I was just projecting it onto him because he did it before. And it’s true that when we had sex after one night or three dates, he didn’t know me that well, and if I’m honest, he didn’t really owe me anything afterwards. Who was I? Just some girl he’d met a couple of times. He probably knows his barber better than he knew me at that point.

Yeah, this time is different. He’s not pulling away. Which means that I just messed up big time by yelling at him. I have to salvage this before he starts to question whether or not he knows me at all. I just hope he doesn’t think that was a fair indication of me. I hope he doesn’t think that that’s who I am, and it’s only just coming out now. I’m not that. I’m the girl who makes him laugh. I’m the girl who makes him happy. I’m the girl who puts all the animals on high alert when he makes love to her.

“I’m sorry,” I finally fess up, “I didn’t show you my prettiest side just then.” His expression implies that he agrees. “Can we just pretend all that never happened, and we’re still as happy as we were before we had sex?”

“Sure. Yeah. Let’s do that.” He seems to accept my apology, but we hike down the rest of the hill in silence, both still digesting our first fight.

Aside from a few instructional words here and there to pack up the car, we drive home in silence, too. It’s all very uncomfortable. I can only hope he’s just being quiet because he’s gone into his cave, and he’s going to come out the other side with compassion and solutions, and a sense that it’s all gonna be okay now.

As we get closer to my place, I feel the mounting need to talk about it more, building inside of me. I need to know that everything is okay. I need to know that he understands that I’m sorry, that my outburst was an exception, not the rule. If nothing else, I need to know that he still wants me.

I try to think of ways to start a conversation, but it all feels forced and unwelcome, and I’m worried I might cry, reinforcing his idea that I’m just some unstable woman.

When we pull up to my building, he’s the one who speaks first.

“We’re here,” is all he offers, without emotion. Not exactly what I’d hoped for. I don’t get out of the car. I need to get this out in a somewhat private environment.

“So, I’m sorry. About what happened. I’m not normally like that. I just got nervous. Because we had sex. But that’s not me. You know that’s not me, right?”

He pauses before responding. I can tell he wants to believe me, but he’s clearly still working it out in his mind.

“Yeah. It’s cool,” he says, leaving me guessing.

“Okay.”

What more can I say?

I get out of the car. He gathers my stuff from the trunk, gives me a polite peck goodbye, and gets in the car to speed away. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about all this, but what I am thinking is, “This doesn’t feel good.”

~

My conservative old neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Apartment Seven, are walking by, as I unlock my apartment door, when suddenly, an earthquake shakes the City! Oh my God, I was right in my warnings to my animal friends! Simultaneously, The Apartment Sevens and I run for cover under the closest doorframe, which happens to be mine.

This only becomes embarrassing when the final jolt of the earthquake swings my front door open, and subjects my neighbors to the mess I’ve left inside. For once I have a great excuse.

“Whoa, it looks like an earthquake struck in there!”