“I hope that was everything you imagined it would be,” he said, and I could hear the joking note in his voice, but there was also a part of him that sounded completely sincere. I rolled to my side and nestled myself next to him.
“If I had known sex was like that,” I said, “I might have started doing it a whole lot sooner.”
He laughed. “Oh, boy. Well, I’m glad to hear that. I think. Really, though, I should’ve done this the proper way and taken you out on a date first.”
“Will you stop it!” I whacked his shoulder playfully. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m some sort of princess or something.”
He gave me a pretend hurt look. “You don’t want me to take you out?”
“I’m not saying that! I think that would be a lot of fun, actually, and of course I would love to. But I only want you to do it if that’s what you want to do, not just because you think you need to create some sort of special scenario for me.”
“We can do things backward,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow afternoon? Let me take you out. To a restaurant. You know, like an actual date. The thing that two people usually do before they sleep together”
I grinned. “That would be lovely. But do we get to sleep together afterward?”
“Hell yeah, we do.”
Chapter Nineteen
Graham
I’d never been one to kiss and tell, but of course Todd wanted details after I told him that I’d been hanging out with Chloe. We were out on another training ride, and when we should’ve been pedaling hard enough that talking would’ve been next to impossible, we were riding at a leisurely pace while Todd harassed me for details.
I gave him a few, but not many, which obviously wasn’t going to satisfy him. “Come on, man,” he said. “I’m hitting like, 0 for 3 in the women department. It’s fucking pathetic. I’m just off my game as of late. I don’t know what the fucking deal is. I mean, here you are, getting pussy despite declaring yourself celibate for the whole summer—what the hell happened with that, anyway?—while I’m actively out there trying to score and getting repeatedly turned down. What is up with that?”
“Maybe you too need to take a vow of celibacy and then women will start to find you irresistible.”
“So, is that it for you? Your summer of no sex is officially over?”
“Well, seeing as I’ve had sex ... yeah.”
Todd grinned. “Bring on the ladies.”
“Nah, it’s not like that. I’m still not looking to get involved with a bunch of other women. Just this one.”
He widened his eyes. “What? Am I hearing you correctly? In all the years I’ve known you, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that you were interested in just being with one girl. In fact, I think the only time you tried anything even close to resembling that it was with that psycho Danielle.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” I said, grimacing. “But Chloe is nothing like Danielle. She’s sweet. She still sees the good in people, in things, she hasn’t been all fucked over by the world yet.”
“She’s sheltered, is what you mean,” Todd said. “She’s a sheltered rich girl.”
“Her parents have money, yeah.”
“So she hasn’t been all fucked over by the world yet, because people like that never are. You know how it is—they just get shit handed to them on a silver platter. The world is their oyster. Which is a totally messed up saying, if you ask me, because oysters are fucking disgusting.”
“Supposedly they raise your libido.”
Todd shuddered. “Fuck that shit. I’d become celibate before I’d eat an oyster. A raw one, anyway. Who the hell wants to bite into something that’s still alive?”
I personally liked oysters a great deal, though they weren’t something I indulged in very much.
“Anyway,” he said. “I’m not even going to attempt to disguise my envy that you are getting laid and I currently am not.”
“It’s not a competition.”
“Everything is a competition. Life is a competition, and one I feel I’m completely sucking at, big time. Help a bro out. You must know someone.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.