“Don’t worry about me,” she whispers between kisses. “This is enough for me, kissing you.”

She palms my cock through my pants, scrapes her nails over the denim, and my blood rushes, everything tightens, every hair on my body stands on end, I almost come. Damn if that isn’t the sexiest thing.

But then her words sink into my brain.

Kissing is enough? She doesn’t expect to get anything out of sex with me? She’s okay if I nut on her like she’s a blow-up doll or some shit?

Like I’m some kind of charity sex case because I’m not whole anymore.

My fly comes undone, and she reaches inside, and I can’t help it, I stiffen, I jerk away, I put distance between myself and the couch and her.

She stares at me, her eyes wide and startled. Her hair is disheveled, her dress open, showing off her gorgeous tits and thighs. The sight is almost enough to bring me to my knees. I take deep breaths and run my hands over my face, only to smell her on my slick fingers. I stifle a groan and drop my hands to my sides.

“Anna, I’m sorry. I just …” I shake my head. Honestly, I don’t know what to say.

She pulls the folds of her dress together and seems to shrink in upon herself. With her face turned away from me, she asks, “Is this it? Are we done?”

“Can we talk through this?”

She grimaces and opens her mouth like she wants to speak, but words don’t come. She takes a breath and tries again to speak, but, again, words don’t come.

I take a step toward her. She’s so clearly struggling, and I hate seeing that. I want to make things better. My fly is hanging open, and I zip and button everything before sitting in the armchair adjacent to the couch.

“Remember when I told you it’s been a while for me?” I ask softly. It doesn’t feel good sharing about myself, but I can’t stand the idea of her misunderstanding the situation.

“Your surgery,” she says.

“Yeah.” I exhale tightly. “I often feel like … my body isn’t right anymore. Tonight, I was hoping to, I guess, prove that I’m still—I don’t know. If you’re not with me, if you’re not feeling it, I can’t—” I make a frustrated sound. It would help if I gave her specific details, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want her to look at me differently. I don’t want her to think I’m less. “Do you know what I’m saying? I need you to be just as into it as I am.”

She frowns at me for a long moment before she says, “Maybe?”

“Is there anything that I could have—”

She covers her face with her hands. “Can you not, please? People don’t talk about this stuff.”

“They do. I do.”

“They really don’t,” she says.

I tilt my head to the side as I try to figure this out. “How does a guy know how to touch you, then? I tried the regular stuff, and it didn’t seem to do it for you.”

She makes a miserable sound and shrinks deeper into herself.

A suspicion rises, and I ask, “Are you a virgin? Have you never …”

She drops her hands from her face and gives me an impatient look. “I’m not a virgin. I’ve had sex many, many, many times.”

“Have you ever come before, like, had an orgasm? That’s, uh, when your body—”

She claps her hands to her face again. “I know what an orgasm is.”

“Have you had one?”

She draws her knees to her chest, and after a while I hear a muffled, “Yes.”

“Do they happen on accident? Or … can you make them happen?” I feel like I’m playing a guessing game, but I keep going.

“They do happen on accident sometimes, during sex, a few times when I was sleeping,” she confesses, and I arch my eyebrows. From my perspective, that’s a clear sign that a girl isn’t getting the proper loving. “But I also”—she clears her throat—“by myself, I can—” She drops her fingers to her mouth, and her face is red, her expression painfully embarrassed.

Because I can’t stand her discomfort, I move to the couch, next to her, and she immediately curls up against me, pressing her face to my neck. I wrap my arms around her, and those same feelings from before swamp me: tenderness, protectiveness.

“I don’t really see why that’s so embarrassing. I do it all the time,” I say, and her body shakes as she laughs. “Like every day, sometimes more than once a day.”

“It’s different for guys,” she says, hitting me lightly on the chest with a small fist.

I pick up her fist and kiss her knuckles. “It shouldn’t be.”

“It still is, though.”

“I think it’s hot as fuck when chicks do it,” I tell her.

She laughs again, and I gently pull on her until she looks at me.

“I mean it,” I say, completely serious. “If you can’t tell me what you like, you could show me.”

Her lungs expand on a sharp inhalation, and her face flushes an even deeper shade of red. “I could never, ever, ever …”

“Why?”

“Quan,” she says, her tone accusing, like I should know why.

“It’s just you and me here. It’s not like anyone is watching.”

She shakes her head quickly and looks away from me.

“You’re okay with never having good sex, then?” The idea is horrifying to me. “And what about all those times you’ve had sex in the past? They were all shitty?”

She says nothing.

“Anna, it would have been so easy just to—”

Her body tenses, and she sit upright, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. “It’s not ‘easy.’ Not for me. If it was, I would have done it.”

“I’m sorry. I just think—”

“I think this is as far as we’re going to get,” she says, and there’s a finality in her voice that tells me she’s done. Her dating profile was clear that she only wanted one night, and this was our one night—since the first night didn’t count.

A sense of loss threads through me. I don’t want this to be how we part. I didn’t accomplish what I wanted, and I don’t think she did either, not if she wanted to get over her ex—whoever that dickhole is—by having rebound sex. But we really are at a standstill. We both want things the other won’t give.

I stand and pick my shirt up off the ground. As I pull it on, I’m aware of her eyes on me. She likes what she sees. That’s something, even if it’s only skin-deep. With the right person, I think she’ll open up, and it’ll be fucking glorious. But that person isn’t me.

“Thank you for tonight,” I say when I’m standing in front of her door. “I know it was rocky in the end, but I had a great time.”

She joins me in the entryway. “It was the same for me. Thank you—for being you.”

It seems like the right thing to hug her good-bye. When I have her in my arms, it feels like the right thing. She fits against me like she belongs here. I don’t mean to kiss her. It just happens. And she kisses me back. There’s a moment when we hesitate, both unsure of what we’re doing, but our lips come together again. I don’t know who initiates it, her or me, maybe it’s both of us, but I kiss her like it’s our last kiss. Because that’s what this is.