Epilogue
Four months later
Harrison’s eyes gaze at me from just a few inches away, his body pressed neatly against mine. I sink into the bed—his, not mine, because mine is still squeaky as hell—and take a deep breath.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“We don’t have to do this,” he says. “We’re in no rush.”
I know. But my physical therapy has been going well, and I’ve finally graduated to using Cobalt—
I know you have a sexy new partner now, but don’t forget about m—
I cut her off. I may continue to need her moving forward, but right now, I’m focused on something a little more real.
“I know we don’t have to,” I say. His eyes move from left to right, focusing on each of my eyes in turn. “But I want to.”
He nods, almost imperceptibly. “Can I be honest?”
I nod back.
“I’m scared,” he whispers.
I chuckle gently, feeling my abs press against his stomach with each breath. “Sorry. It’s not funny. I know you’re serious. It’s just, I think I’m the one who’s supposed to feel scared right now.”
“And you’re not scared?”
“No. I trust you.”
But maybe I should feel scared. After all, this could end with me in pain, or crying, or I don’t know what else.
At the end of the day, though, even if this goes horribly wrong, or even if we don’t even get far enough for this to go horribly wrong, I know Harrison is still going to love me. And for that reason, I’m not scared.
Harrison’s eyes flutter closed, and I match his breathing.
Inhale.
Exhale.
His hands trace their way down my sides, over my goose-bumped skin. My breath stutters as he reaches between my legs, and I focus on the feeling of his fingers and their delicate strokes. Soft sensations. Gentle butterflies. The warmth of his body.
I center myself, noticing the way my muscles respond. They flutter and they tense, sometimes in a positive way, sometimes negatively. I breathe through the negative, imagining my muscles warming and melting as his fingers continue to massage me.
“I can feel your mind working,” he whispers into my neck. The words are hot against my skin.
“You can feel it?”
He chuckles just as the circles his fingers have been drawing start to grow tighter. I quiver from the sensation, and his grin brushes against my neck, his breath sending my baby hairs fluttering.
“Fuck,” I murmur.
He drags his lips up the sensitive skin at the side of my neck and whispers in my ear. “Working on it.”
I whimper instead of responding.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Okay,” I say. “Stop. You’re going to make me—” I’m cut short as Harrison hits exactly the right spot, and my muscles flutter. My body shakes again, and his fingers slow.
“Was that a good reaction or a bad reaction?” he whispers.
“A good one,” I say, my voice breathy. “Seriously, don’t make me come yet. That’s not the goal.”
“I can have multiple goals,” he says, kissing my cheek, and then my nose, and then my forehead, and then my lips. “And you can have multiple orgas—”
“Harrison!” I say, cutting him off as I laugh. “I’m trying to focus. Save that for after.”
He nods his head. “Don’t worry. I will. Once we’ve tried this, I’m going to make you feel so good, you’re—”
I lean forward and stop him with a kiss. He laughs into my mouth, then lingers, kissing me slowly and sweetly before pulling away and looking me in the eyes. “I love you,” he whispers.
“I love you wholly,” I whisper back, brushing a curl out of his eyes. “And I’m ready when you’re ready.”
Harrison runs his thumb across my cheek, studying me. Even after months of dating, he still acts like every look on my face and every word from my mouth is worth filing away.
I suppose I shouldn’t make fun of him for it, though, since I do the same.
He grabs the bottle of lube from the bedside table, and I hold out a cupped hand. He deposits a hefty amount, and I slide my hand down our bodies.
He hisses when I make contact. “That’s cold,” he says.
I smirk. “Yeah, well. It’s, like, two degrees outside. You shouldn’t have kept this in a drawer next to a window.”
“It’s thirty-eight degrees,” he says, rolling his eyes even as his body trembles from the up-and-down strokes of my hand. “That’s nothing.”
“So you’re not too chilly to make this work?” I ask, even though I can very much feel that he’s not.
His left eyebrow pops up, my challenge accepted. His eyes glitter, dark and serious, as he looks at me with an intensity that makes me squirm. “Not even a little bit.”
We exchange looks of determination. “Let’s do this,” I finally say.
He nods,
inhaling,
exhaling,
and then shifts his body so he’s aligned with mine.
Reaching down, I grip him and use him to rub circles around my opening, adjusting my body to the feeling.
Letting it know to get ready and prepare for contact.
His breathing becomes shallow, but when he feels me take a deep breath, he matches the steady rise and fall of my chest, keeping his body in sync with mine.
And that’s what we are. In sync. We weren’t always, but we’ve worked hard at it, being intentional about openly communicating how we feel and what we want, both mentally and physically.
We’ve been through a lot, even in the last four months.
He’s been by my side as I transitioned into a new part-time job, helping to manage the yoga studio I practice at.
I still work part-time at Jo Jo’s, occasionally making coffee but more often making appearances to run a variety of themed book clubs, each one of them so popular they fill the café.
Banned books. Romance. Nonfiction. One I like to call the “Books You Thought Were Boring Because Your Teachers Assigned Them but This Time You’re Actually Going to Read Them” Book Club.
Boring Books Book Club, for short. And I’ve been at his side as he reimagined his relationship with his mom, drawing new boundaries and slowly but surely convincing her I am not an asshole. Anymore, anyway.
I’m sure we’ll have more changes ahead. Bigger ones, even.
He made a jokey comment last week about how it’s silly we have our own apartments since we spend every night together anyway, and then we both burst out laughing when we caught each other immediately looking to assess how the other was reacting to that statement.
Maybe it is silly, I’d said. Ask me again when my lease is up.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Ready.”
I guide him to my entrance, then remove my hand, letting our bodies fall closer together. He leans down, giving me another kiss, then draws back ever so slightly, our lips separated by a hairbreadth. Our bodies shifting, I feel him start to press into me.
Inhale.
Exhale.
He breathes with me.
Inhale.
Exhale.
My body tenses, and I breathe through it.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Should I keep going?” he asks. He’s so close, his lips brush mine as the words leave his mouth.
“Yes. Slowly.”
He pushes farther, so slowly it’s almost impossible to tell he’s moving.
My muscles feel calm—for once, I feel in control—but I’m also experiencing a faint burning sensation, which I know is the result of the physical pressure and the high concentration of nerve endings, all of them pushing back at me.
What the hell do you think you’re doing? they ask.
I breathe through it.
“Keep going,” I murmur. “I’m okay.”
Harrison is maybe halfway inserted at this point, and there’s no way this feels good for him, either.
I don’t pretend to understand how it feels to have sex as a man, but, like, I think you have to do more than just sit there to achieve any type of positive sensation.
And yet Harrison has a look on his face that screams pleasure.
No—that’s not right. It screams pride. He’s proud of me.
“You still okay?” he asks. I nod, and I take the initiative this time in tilting my head to give him a soft kiss.
I catch his bottom lip with my teeth as I pull away, and his body jerks involuntarily with pleasure.
My muscles tense, and the burning momentarily increases, but after one more breath, I’ve adjusted, and he’s in farther than he was before.
“Shit—I’m so sorry—”
“It’s okay,” I reassure him. “That didn’t hurt.”
He rests his forehead against mine, our noses aligned. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
I shift, spreading my legs to create more space, à la happy baby pose. After months of yoga, I still feel stupid doing it. Fortunately, though, it makes a noticeable difference in relaxing my pelvic floor.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Harrison’s eyes widen as he feels my muscles relax, and he pushes forward more. I feel an uncomfortable pressure, and he must see me wince because he starts to shift as if he’s going to pull out, then stops himself.
“Okay. It’s okay. I’m frozen,” he says, reassuring himself as much as he’s reassuring me. “I’m not moving until you tell me to.”
I steady myself, prying my eyes open to meet his. “I’m good. I’m good, I promise. Keep going.”
Unexpectedly, he smiles, dimples forming. “I can’t keep going.”
“Oh, uh—okay,” I stutter. “Yeah, you can pull out slowly.”
He smiles wider. “I can’t keep going because I’m all the way in.”
I freeze, my eyes widening. He smiles at my obvious shock, leaning forward to give me another kiss, then another, and then another. When he pulls back, there’s a wet spot on the side of his face.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m doing great.”
“Actually, they’re my tears,” he says, chuckling. And he’s right—his eyes are red-rimmed, and my own eyes feel dry.
I kiss a tear off his cheek. “I hope these are happy tears?”
“Something like that,” he murmurs. My pelvic floor seizes up briefly, but we both breathe through it. “Happy tears, proud tears, general emotional tears. I don’t know.”
“I’ll take it.”
He looks down to where our bodies are connected, then meets my eyes again. “Tell me how it feels.”
How do you describe the sensation to someone who doesn’t have vaginismus, let alone someone who doesn’t have a vagina?
It feels like I just lifted a heavy weight, and now my muscles are tense and sore and also actively burning.
But not in a burned-by-boiling-water way—more like a sandpaper way, like it’s super dry down there, except I know it’s not dry because we used a metric shit-ton of lube and also because I was super close to finishing before we did this.
“Honestly?” I say. “A little uncomfortable, but mostly just really vulnerable and really embarrassing.”
“I know it’s hard,” he says, leaning forward and kissing my forehead. “But you know what?”
“What?”
“I think you are so incredibly sexy.”
A surprised laugh erupts from me, sending my pelvic floor into another fit of spasms. Harrison and I breathe through it together.
“Yeah, that’s super sexy, isn’t it?”
He tilts his head, thinking, then begins murmuring in my ear in between kisses:
“The happy sighs you make when I kiss you.
The way your body fits perfectly against mine.
The way you look when we go out to dinner.
And the way you look when we wake up in the morning.
The curves of your face when you smile.
The ponytail that brushes the base of your neck.
The way you know me, more intimately than anyone else ever has.
And the look you get in your eyes when we make love.”
This time, tears fall down my face. I wrap my arms around his neck, and he buries his face against my cheek, his body warm and impossibly close.
“You’re unbelievably sexy, even when you don’t think you are,” he says. “And I’m proud of you.”
“We did this together,” I say.
He shakes his head. “We’re doing this together, as in this, right now. But you’re responsible for all the progress you made up until this point. You’re incredible.”
I reach my hand up, brushing my fingers through his hair. They stick slightly, and I cringe as I bring my hand back down to my side. “Gonna be honest, I think I just raked some lube into your hair.”
Harrison snorts. “It sort of has the same texture as hair gel, right? Maybe it’ll give my curls more definition.”
“Actually,” I say, “it just looks like I raked lube into your hair.”
I can tell he wants to laugh, but he holds himself back to avoid any sudden movements.
“Not that this isn’t, like, super sexy,” I say. “And as much as I love—and as much as I’m sure you love—just sitting here with your dick inside me—”
“Mmmhmm,” he says.
“How about we wrap this up for today and get in the shower together? I think we have some unfinished business to attend to. You mentioned something earlier about multiple orgasms?”
“I sure did,” he says. “And I intend to follow through. You ready for me to slide out? You breathing deeply?”
I nod. “Let’s do it.”
Inhale.
Exhale.