Seven #2
She jumps, but her fingers barely scrape his wrist, her chest bumping his. “It’s not a sex list. It’s an experiment!”
“A sex experiment.”
Charlie lets out a frustrated growl and stops her insane jumping. As she glares up at him, her chest heaves, her breathing ragged. Panic coils in her limbs.
“Please, Quinn,” she whispers, her throat constricting at the idea of him discovering its true nature. Her hands tremble, and she clenches them into fists. “It’s private.”
A pressure begins behind her eyes, a sharp sting pricking the corners. Swallowing around a painful lump in her throat, Charlie resigns herself once more to mortification at the hands of Wesley Quinn.
God, this was the biggest fucking mistake. Bigger than believing he was ever her friend. Bigger than agreeing to go to that party freshman year—
“Charlie.”
The soft brush of fingertips lifts her chin, a spark against her skin. Her lips part at the warmth she hasn’t felt in years, and she lets out a shuddering breath before meeting his gaze.
His eyes are gentle, knowing, familiar, all traces of teasing gone. “You can tell me.”
She presses her lips together, blinking rapidly. “You’ll laugh.”
He doesn’t look away. “I won’t.”
There was a time when she wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him, when she felt so secure in his presence, when confessing her secrets was easy.
That time is gone.
However, now, with his eyes so intense on hers, warmth flares in her chest at a memory of him listening to her like everything she said mattered. She hates how her body still remembers the thrill from when he looked at her like this on a regular basis.
Charlie decides to pretend. Pretend he never broke her heart. Pretend they are still Charlie and Wes and he cares about what she has to say. Pretend he won’t think her na?ve or sheltered.
“It started as an experiment of sorts,” she begins. “To figure out what I like in a partner.”
She doesn’t say it’s because of him. Because of what she overheard in that dark, humid hallway and the shame she’s spent years trying to shake.
“The results so far have been inconclusive,” she explains. “I know—” She pauses, her cheeks heating. “I know what I like, but it hasn’t quite manifested in the way I want with another person.”
She perches on her kitchen barstools, and he takes the one beside her a moment later. Her journal rests between them. Charlie traces the edge of the cover with her finger, gazing at pink cover. She feels Wes’s eyes on her.
When he makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, she finally looks up. He studies her, his chin resting in his palm. It’s easy to pretend he never broke her heart when he looks at her like that.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin,” he says.
Her body zips with electricity at his words.
“I know that.” She waves a hand through the air.
“Virginity is a social construct designed by the patriarchy to shame people into thinking they shouldn’t pursue their desires, that they need to remain pure, that their sexuality is something to suppress or hide.
It’s the twenty-first century, and we live in a country desperate to keep women down, full of government officials who believe abstinence-only sex education is actually effective. ”
She huffs out a frustrated breath and stands, pacing beside the counter, the words pouring out of her as she confides in the one person who used to be the only person she confided in.
“People deserve sex education that is inclusive and intersectional and engaging. And don’t even get me started on consent. That’s the whole point of sex ed.”
She presses her palms against the countertop. “I want to do this for myself. I can only learn so much from reading. I thought”—she touches her journal, stumbling over her words—“a practical experiment would be helpful. I just want to feel…normal.”
Her cheeks burn, and when Wes chuckles, she glares at him. “Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not.” He flashes a familiar affectionate smile. “I love when you go off on your soapbox tangents. But you’re not normal.”
Her chest constricts. “Wow, thanks—”
“You’re exceptional.”
She freezes, her pulse stuttering.
Wes leans forward on his elbows and continues like he didn’t just shake the walls she’s built around her heart to keep him out. “So, what have your findings been so far?”
She eyes him skeptically, but he appears to be genuinely interested.
Charlie tugs the journal toward her and opens it. Flipping past her observations on her pleasure—he is not reading that—she scans a page, worrying her bottom lip.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she offers it to him.
“Start here.”
She doesn’t watch him as he scans her words, knowing she’ll overthink any expression he makes.
Until he laughs.
“‘Colin,’” he reads. “‘Smells like feet.’” He grins with delighted amusement. “Are you serious?”
“Be nice,” she says. “He was fine.”
Colin, a perfectly fine boy from her dorm sophomore year. They got lunch a few times, but the lack of a spark was evident.
“If he smelled like feet, he was not fine,” Wes continues. “Also…” He peers closer at the page. “‘Too wet’? What does that mean?”
Charlie shifts in her seat, but he scrutinizes her until she throws her hands in the air.
“He used too much tongue!” She gestures to her mouth. “He had a lot of…secretions.”
Wes laughs so hard he almost falls off his chair.
She smacks his arm. “Stop. It’s not funny!” But now she’s grinning, his laughter infectious, warmth blooming across her skin.
“But the feet!” he gasps.
Charlie palms her face. “When he took his shoes off, the room smelled so bad, I had to keep the windows open for three days.” She peers at him through her fingers. “It was January.”
His gasping laughter fills her apartment, and when he slips off the stool, he clutches the edge of the counter to keep from completely falling over.
“Oh my god.” He shakes his head, flipping to the next page. “Adam VanderMeer?” He arches a brow. “Pretty sure he has chronic halitosis.”
“It was treated!” she cries. The only thing she remembers about Adam—a classmate from her Health and Policy class junior year—was the metal rod of his futon digging into her back while he made a valiant attempt to finger her until she made an excuse about a missed assignment and fled the scene.
She spent the rest of the semester avoiding one-on-one time with him.
“What do you prefer, halitosis or rotten feet?”
She throws a pen at his face. He dodges it with a laugh, and it skitters across her apartment floor, disappearing under the couch.
A feeling of cognitive dissonance washes over her as she laughs with him.
On the one hand, she doesn’t trust him not to disappoint her again.
On the other hand, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to share this closely guarded part of herself with this person who used to be so important in her life.
By the time he closes the journal and replaces it on the counter, her nerves are gone.
“Nash Hudson is useless,” he says. “His inability to listen to what you wanted is unsurprising but also abhorrent.”
She opens her mouth to agree, but Wes continues.
“By the way, you still haven’t explained why you told him we slept together.”
Charlie shoots him a glare.
He tilts his head. “Care to elaborate, Rogers?”
“No.”
There’s no way she’s admitting that she was thinking about him while Nash’s tongue was in her mouth.
Wes flashes a wry grin, unaffected. Rising from his stool, he makes his way around the counter, his fingers trailing over the cover of her journal. Her stomach swirls at the gesture, like he’s touching a part of her.
He stands in front of her, their bodies inches apart. “Do you want to know what I think?”
She lifts her chin. “If I say no, are you going to tell me anyway?”
He laughs. “I think the reason you haven’t had any satisfying results is because you haven’t found a partner who knows what they’re doing.
” He leans forward, his lips so close to her ear that his breath sends an insuppressible shiver down her spine.
“Who listens to your needs and knows how to make you feel good.”
A buzzing fills her ears. They stare at each other for two, three, four seconds until she blinks, realization striking her like lightning.
His eyes track the heat that is spreading across her cheeks.
She steps back, putting space between them. “You can’t possibly mean you.”
He flashes his most charming smile. “What an excellent idea. Yes, Rogers. I am, of course, referring to myself.”
She’s shaking her head before he finishes, a hysterical laugh bubbling in her throat. “Why would you want to do that? With me?”
His grin vanishes, replaced by confusion. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re not hideous, you know. It’s not like it would be a chore—”
“You don’t like me,” she blurts, and then wishes she could evaporate into thin air.
He stares at her, then makes a noise in the back of his throat. For a moment, he appears angry. But why would he be angry? Does he not remember what he said all those years ago?
Wes runs a hand down his face, and Charlie does not focus on those long fingers.
“I understand wanting experience,” he says.
“But it’s just sex.” He waves a hand through the air.
“Or foreplay. Or whatever you want to call it. An experiment.” He says this like he’s relaying the weather or the score of a sports game.
“It doesn’t mean anything unless you want it to mean something. ”
No, it wouldn’t mean anything for him, would it?
For Wesley Quinn, sex is easy, simple.
“Yeah,” she lies. “It wouldn’t mean anything. But it’s still an intimate act, right?”
He nods, crossing his arms over his chest. Her mind whirls as she stares at his powerful arms. She raises her eyes to his neck, the sharp line of his jaw, his full lips, locking her gaze with his.
“I want it to feel good,” she whispers. “There should be mutual respect and trust. But with my other partners, that felt like too much to ask.”
“It’s not,” he says. “That’s not too much to ask for, Rogers.”
His quiet words land like a punch in the gut.