Chapter 6 #3
“No, it's just…I liked what you were doing before. It threw me off when you changed it up,” she was brave enough to admit.
“I'm sorry—”
“Don't be sorry,” she interrupted, in a laugh. “It’s just when I tense up, you're doing something right.”
“Gotcha,” remembering how tense her inner thighs had gotten when I was tracing the alphabet on her clit. I’d thought that she'd been trying to stop me from continuing, because the strength of her inner thighs gave me a challenge, but I’d actually been gearing toward the right direction.
Returning to the rhythm that got her back there took trial and error, but it wasn't long before she laughed a throaty moan, rubbing my face in her juices. “Right there, baby. Just like that.”
With little warning, her thighs became so tight, you'd think her intention was to crack a watermelon with them. “Yeah, right there, Graham. Don't fucking stop!” My mouth honed in, concentrating on her changes in breath, voice and raising of her hips.
“Oh…shit…” she dragged out as her body calmed, her bum rejoining the mattress, my mouth still quietly exploring.
“Oh my god, baby. I know you're eager, but I'm like super sensitive. It’s been a while for me too, so I just need a second to recover,” she swooned, pulling at my hair to get me to stop.
I wished her body could take more, because it felt like I’d just been getting started. “You’re so sexy, Jacqueline,” I said, between kisses to each of her inner thighs. Pulling me back to her, we shared a few horizontal pecks, before everything started to feel real with what she said next.
“I have condoms in my nightstand, if you didn't bring any.” Maybe I could learn my way through a good performance with eating her out, but if we had sex, there’d be no way to hide that it’d be my first time.
“You okay?” Her attempt to reassure me, as she instantly read the anxiety in my posture. “You just don't seem as enthusiastic anymore,” she noted.
“Trust me, Jacqueline, I truly fancy where things are going, but…I just don’t wanna lie.” I forced myself to sit up.
“Lie about what?”
So, here came the moment of truth. “Jacqueline, if we go any further, it’ll be the furthest I’ve ever gone.
Outside of kissing, I’ve never gone this far with a woman before.
If we made love, for me, it’d be my first,” I hesitated, taken aback by the fact that she laughed, but I think she just assumed I’d been joking.
“Boy, stop playing.” There was a shift in mood the moment I didn’t laugh back with her, her face contorting into a myriad of expressions, waiting for me to drop the punchline.
“I wish that I was playing,” I admitted.
“Wait, you're being serious?” Her expression hardening. “But you're twenty-eight.”
“Not denying that.”
“And you’re fucking tatted,” she said more like she was trying to make sense of it, or prove that I had to be joking.
“That I am,” as my palms uncomfortably bounced on top of my thighs.
“You're…gorgeous.”
“According to you,” I smiled, weakly.
“How is this even possible?” Her question accusatory.
“It's just my…situation,” not knowing much more to say. “I just…didn’t want to say nothing, in the case I underperformed. I just didn’t want an underwhelming experience to turn you off to seeing me again. I hope that’s not an issue, because I really want to see you again,” I pleaded.
My answer made her wince, her expression hard to hide her disdain and discomfort. Reaching for her knickers, she pulled them back on before flipping her hair over her shoulders.
“Actually, I’m going to pass on that. Don't get me wrong, you're so fucking adorable. So, I pray you don't take this the wrong way. I'm just not equipped for the responsibility of being someone’s first—”
“Seriously?” I interrupted, feeling the weight of instant rejection.
“I am dead serious.”
“Wow. Here I was thinking you’d be understanding. It took a lot for me to share that with you.”
“Graham, I’m really sorry if that’s a blow to your ego, but I wasn’t really looking for a lost little puppy searching for a home.
People with that little experience tend to get attached, and I wasn’t looking for something serious.
And I am not the right person to be giving you this experience, so maybe it’s just better if you go. ”
“Fine,” as I was likely over processing everything happening in the moment, but the rejection hit so much faster, so much harder than any other thing I was forced to deal with.
To my fear, my experience had been a turn off.
And it made the idea of putting myself back in this situation even more degrading.
I couldn’t help thinking if I were a woman, would this conversation had gone completely different.
Scrambling to slip back into my polo, I pulled the jumper over my head before blowing out a hot breath. “I hope you have a good night Jacqueline. Up until right now, I was having a really good time.”
The walk from her place to the subway train back to Harlem had been the only time I purposely rid my head of intrusive thoughts.
I didn’t want to think of people passing by as music.
I didn’t want to notice the lovely sounds of celloists playing powerful bellows that normally would’ve brought a smile to my face.
I just wanted to feel nothing, because in the moment I felt like nothing.
Or at least nothing that mattered. I could convince myself, it’s just sex, or we just met…
but I’d spent nearly a decade here and had never made a connection like that.
It just…shattered something. Or maybe it just made me feel like I wasn’t enough.
Jacqueline had been everything I wanted from a first time. Maybe even everything I could’ve wanted in a partner. But in the moment that it mattered, I hadn’t been enough. Or maybe my initial feeling about her had been wrong. But, there was the chance, that there was simply something wrong with me.