She nodded. “I know that sounds dumb.”
“That is the smartest thing I’ve heard all day. The short answer is you can absolutely have sex, but depending on what’s going on down there, you might have to make some adjustments. How do you feel when you masturbate?”
She went still.
“Sweetie, have you ever masturbated?”
“I’ve tried.” Noelle had gone a bright pink, but she soldiered on. “It’s hard for me to touch it. It. I mean my clitoris. I can’t arch my hips. I can move side to side, but not up. And my arms are freakishly short. It’s hard. I feel warm down there sometimes.”
“That’s normal when you see something that arouses you. Or you think about it. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Noelle. This is a normal part of life. Sex and intimacy are a necessary part of the human experience. It’s good that you have those feelings, because they’re normal.”
“But I’m not normal. What if I can feel arousal, but not all the other parts? I don’t have a lot of friends here. My best friend doesn’t know much more about it than I do. Her dad is the pastor and her mom said she wouldn’t talk to her about it until she’s ready to get married. I would talk to the other girls my age, but it’s embarrassing that I don’t know much. I had my period before the accident, and I think Dad thought Mom had covered the sex stuff. She did. I know how it works, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. Or what to do because I can’t quite touch myself to see if . . . you know.”
“If it works.” It wasn’t surprising that Noelle hadn’t wanted to talk to her predecessor about this. It could be difficult to talk to anyone about sexuality, but an older man might be a young woman’s worst nightmare. Or her dad. “Okay, we can deal with this.”
Luckily, she had some practice with this and she knew exactly what to do.chapter sevenArmie was well aware that everyone in the diner was looking at them. “Maybe we should have gone to Guidry’s.”
When he’d decided to have this conversation over lunch, he’d thought he could use it to get to know her in a low-key setting. He hadn’t realized they would be the center of attention.
Damn town.
She shook her head and folded her menu, shoving it back in the holder. She’d ordered a salad and taken off the cheese and eggs and then put them back on. Twice. He still wasn’t sure which salad would show up, and he wasn’t sure Dixie knew, either.
“I can’t take that much time,” Lila explained. “I actually have a couple of patients this afternoon. Apparently they called while I was in with Noelle. I’m doing physicals and drug testing for an oil company on a couple of new hires. It’s very exciting. Is it wrong that I’m kind of hoping I find something horribly wrong with one of them? Not like cancer. That would be terrible. But something curable would be nice.”
She was odd. He wished that made her less attractive to him. And then there was the fact that when Noelle had come out of her checkup, she’d had the biggest grin on her face. He glanced over at her. His daughter was sitting at a table with Beth Burns, her best friend. They were leaning in and giggling while waiting for lunch to be delivered.
She’d been tense lately, as though something was bothering her, and Lila seemed to have set her mind at ease.
He hated that he was about to shake Lila’s calm. “It’s hard when things are slow. It can be difficult to get used to the pace of life around here. I know it was for me when I came back. It still is sometimes. I often pray for tourists to get lost and fly through town so I can at least say I wrote a ticket that day.”
She stared at him. “Yes, you do that a lot.”
She was cute when she got mad. Not that he wanted to make her really mad. He got the feeling she could be mean. He should get her to forget the ticket. “So I mentioned I went out to visit Carrie Petrie.”
“And?” She said the word with the expectation of someone who wasn’t sure she would like what he had to say.
“Something’s going on with that family. Carrie’s hiding something,” he admitted. “I don’t know what it is, but she was nervous about me being out there. Normally I would chalk it up to nothing more than not enjoying surprise visitors. People who love being social don’t typically isolate themselves on an island.”
“Did you know her before she got married?”
“Vaguely, and I know what your next question is going to be. No. She wasn’t like this when she lived in town. She’s quite a bit younger than me. I know what I know from the few times I met her before she married Bobby. I know him, though. I know I was surprised he married a woman so much younger than him.”