Chapter Twenty-Two #2
There was a truck in front of us going extra slowly on the single-lane road, so Eamonn checked the oncoming lane to make sure it was clear and then went around.
He glanced over at me like he was checking that the move hadn’t freaked me out or made me feel unsafe, or maybe he was just gauging how I’d react to whatever he was about to say.
“Is it my turn to ask a question now?”
I’d thought we weren’t naming it, this game we were playing. But my last question had also been a big one, and something about the way he was setting this one up made me feel like it might be a doozy, too. I sat up straighter.
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you really think multiple orgasms are a myth?”
It took me a minute to remember the context, what I’d said back in the bookshop. I felt myself flush from my head to my toes. “Not a myth necessarily,” I said. “Just a lot rarer than they seem to be in romance novels.”
Eamonn made a sound in the back of his throat, a kind of hmm that I couldn’t tell if it meant hmm, interesting or hmm, you must be broken. I found myself wanting to defend my position.
“I’ve never personally experienced it,” I said. “I don’t think. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had good sex—I’ve had lots of good sex, believe me.”
“I believe you,” he said.
I knew that I was entering the territory of The lady doth protest too much, that the way to make my claim convincing wasn’t to double down and keep insisting.
If Eamonn had said that—I believe you—with any placating gentleness, I would’ve shut right down.
But he just said it matter-of-factly, like he did in fact believe me.
I sighed. “I’m thrilled if I come during sex,” I said. “Obviously. But sometimes I don’t, and I’ve still enjoyed myself. I don’t think an orgasm is necessarily the end-all, be-all of a sexual experience.”
“I agree with you,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be everything. But what about when you masturbate? You’ve never tried to go for another one, after you’ve already…”
For the first time, Eamonn seemed to get a little tripped up, like it only just now hit him what we were talking about. He shifted in his seat, adjusting the heater vent away from him, before seeming to remember that he’d turned the heat off a while ago.
It was probably for the best that he hadn’t said the word come, because the way he said it really did something to me. I pressed my thighs together, smoothing my dress down over my knees.
“Honestly,” I said, “it always seemed to me like if the goal is to orgasm, and you’ve done it, then…gold star? Well done? Mission accomplished? It would be greedy to go for another one after that.”
“Greedy,” Eamonn repeated a little incredulously. “I’m pretty sure the goal is to feel good, so as long as it’s still feeling good, I think you could try for as many as you wanted.”
“Well, what about you?” I asked. It wasn’t fair that I was the only one in the hot seat.
“It’s a bit different,” he said. “There’s a…refractory period. But I’ve wanked a couple times in a row before. Sure.”
I covered my face with my hands, unable to believe we were having this conversation. “I notice you picked up on the multiple-orgasms part,” I said, “and not the part where I said it was also a myth that true love was out there.”
“In mixed company?” he said. “I wouldn’t have brought that up.”
I laughed, but I also wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “Have you been in love before?”
He hesitated, but then he said, “No. You?”
“No.”
He glanced over at me. “I do believe in it, though. If we’re talking about the feeling. I don’t think that part’s a myth.”
“What do you mean, that part?”
I’d shrugged out of his jacket a long time ago, and he’d taken off his sweater, letting the heater in the car do the work to keep us warm.
Even now that he’d shut it off, the car still felt plenty cozy, but there was a fine ripple of goose bumps on the strip of bicep I could see from under the sleeve of his shirt.
“Like I get the emotion behind it,” he said.
“The feeling of You are the most beautiful person in the world to me and it has nothing to do with what you look like. Or I would do anything to protect you, I never want you to feel a moment of hurt or pain in your life. Or I can’t get enough of your mind, I want to know every single thing you think about or care about. ”
I knew he wasn’t talking about me, that his use of you was general, but I couldn’t deny that his words put a flutter low in my stomach. “And that’s love,” I said, meaning it more as a question, but it didn’t come out that way.
“Sure,” he said. “The feelings. The part that I think might be a myth is the getting to have it all. Finding a person who feels the same way about you, and who you can live out that love with, day after day.”
Eamonn looked over at me with a little alarm, like something had just occurred to him. “For me, anyway,” he said. “Not saying it doesn’t exist at all. Only that I don’t see it for me.”
His words made me sad, but if he truly felt that way, I didn’t know that I could talk him out of it.
Hadn’t I been the one just yesterday—or the day before, or whatever the fuck day we were on—who’d been promising myself I would stop wanting things because I didn’t see myself ever getting them? So I couldn’t say I didn’t relate.
“It happens, though, right?” I said. “For some people.”
“It must,” Eamonn said, turning the music back up a couple clicks, until I could make out the words again. I hadn’t even noticed that the same tape had been looping this whole time. “To keep us all going the way we do.”
I leaned my head back against the seat, closing my eyes. I wasn’t going to sleep, I told myself. My eyes were just a little tired, and I needed a rest.