Work Text:
“Then she would push me down and not let me up ‘til she made me come like six times.”
That was the silly little comment that set us down a whole other path.
I was a wreck over my recent breakup, and my friend Nicole (my extremely straight friend Nicole) had come over with vodka seltzer, cheese, cookies, and ice cream. I think she meant it as a, like, ‘pick your poison’ moment and was kind of appalled when I partook of all four, bopping back and forth as the mood struck me.
Come to think of it, I guess that was kind of our dynamic? I was the crazy one and Nicole was the ‘normal’ one. That is, she was a little... straight-laced? No pun intended? Not, like, conservative or judgmental or anything. She knew I was a lesbian and was totally fine with it. She was just a little tame. Maybe a little naive too, though I didn’t quite understand how yet.
(Not coincidentally, she was also the conventionally beautiful one, with her long blonde hair, dimpled cheeks, generous chest, and fashionable though relatively modest clothes. And there I was, giving strong ‘waif with a heroine problem’ vibes even though I swear I eat actual meals and don’t do drugs, wearing a T-shirt with ripped-off sleeves and distressed black jeans, and sporting a shag. Or, what used to be a shag. At the time I was too much of a mess to go to the hair place so my stylish layers had turned into a messy puff.)
(In my defense, I was going through a bit of a tough time.)
I was sitting on the floor for some reason, alternating sips of guava flavored vodka seltzer and bites of Oreo, considering the pros and cons of a vodka seltzer/vanilla ice cream float, and crying, pining, ranting, moping about my ex, Paula.
“She was just so... so fucking tense all the time. So high strung!” I complained. “I know women get told to ‘chill out’ all the time and mostly that’s toxic messaging about how we should have low standards and stop expecting people to respect us or whatever, but omigod she needed to fucking chill the fuck out. Everything was so dire all the time! Me missing a text and not picking up milk on the way home from work would be like ‘we need to sit down and talk about this’ and ‘I feel like I’m the only one keeping our household together’ and ‘I feel like I’m slowly being buried by all the unfinished things on our to-do list,’ and I’d be like ‘damn girl are we still talking about the milk, or...?’”
Frustration gave way to guilt. I brushed away a tear, took a big spoonful of vanilla ice cream, and muttered, “She was kinda right, is the thing? Like, she did keep our household together. She was so much more on top of everything, all the time. And she did way more housework, because she had waaay higher standards for, like, how clean stuff would be? Or how soon we would take care of anything that needed doing? I wanted to help, I just couldn’t be so meticulous, all the fucking time. She could not rest, could not relax when any little thing was not taken care of, and I just couldn’t keep up? And so she did it all, and then got burnt out and miserable, and she didn’t exactly blame me for it but I felt like it was my fault and... it was just a fucking mess.”
“Yeah,” Nicole said soothingly (from her normal-person perch on the couch). “That’s rough, Lena. But it sounds like maybe it was for the best? Maybe you two just... didn’t quite click as domestic partners, you know?”
“Yeah...” More tears. “But, I dunno, I loved her—love her—loved her—so much, and when we had fun together we had so much fun. And now it feels like I lost her because I’m too lazy and irresponsible.”
“It sounds like trying to find a compromise between your lifestyles was making you both miserable,” Nicole pointed out gently. “Maybe you could be friends again instead, someday?”
“I hope so,” I muttered, ignoring the crackers Nicole had daintily put out and just popping a big cube of cheddar cheese into my mouth. “I can’t really imagine,” I said while chewing, “a life totally without her.” I swallowed, then added in a small voice, “I already miss her.”
“Give it time, honey,” Nicole advised. “Once the hurt has had time to heal, maybe you can rediscover that friendship.”
I heaved a big sigh. She was probably right. Still. I took a big gulp of fizzy vodka mess, and muttered almost to myself, “Gonna miss the sex too though.”
I saw Nicole blush slightly, in her adorable girl-next-door way. “It’s...” she said hesitantly, “a little hard to imagine Paula... as...”
“Yeah, everybody thinks that,” I told her. “Paula seems so buttoned-up everyone assumes she’s a prude. She’s not. The sex is probably what kept us together so long! We’d have these... not exactly fights, but episodes, where one or the other of us would be breaking down from stress and we’d butt up against this gap, this divide, this, like, wall between how I wanted to do things, and how she needed to do things. And we’d talk and cry and talk and eventually calm down and say it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay. And we’d have fucking amazing makeup sex. God. She’d kiss me like nobody’s every kissed me.” A brief pause. “Then she would push me down and not let me up ‘til she made me come like six times,” I added, realizing as I said it that it was probably TMI.
“Ahaha...” Nicole gave an awkward laugh. She wasn’t quite as open about sexual topics as I was, but I was past caring.
“If only I were exaggerating,” I groaned. “But she could basically make me come by breathing on me.”
“Is that...” Nicole shifted on the couch, blended nervousness and confusion playing across her face. “Can you really... do that?”
“What, come from being breathed on? No, that was an exaggeration. But she could make me come in like a minute once she went down on me.”
Nicole’s eyes slid back and forth, as if she were searching for useful context from the room around us. “Is that really a...?” She trailed off. Then she tried, “How much do you...?” I cocked my head, confused. “I thought,” she eventually clarified, “that, like, porn stars and cam girls were just, you know, faking it. Aren’t they just peeing?”
I stared at her, bewildered, a half-eaten Oreo forgotten in my hand. It took me a second to put the pieces together. “Oh, you mean squirting,” I said. “Yeah, porn stars probably are just faking it,” I told her, wondering how this was relevant to anything. “I don’t usually squirt when I come, and when I do it’s a lot less liquid than the porn stars. That’s not what I meant, anyway. I’m just saying she was really good at making me come. Like, normally.”
This didn’t seem to address Nicole’s question. “Then... how is that...?” she began, squinting in confusion.
“Uh, I guess it’s weird that we call it ‘coming’ even though nothing comes out? It’s just an expression. I mean ‘achieved orgasm.’”
Nicole just looked more confused. Almost frightened, like a deer in the headlights.
It slowly dawned on me than my straight friend Nicole thought female orgasms were a myth.
My ex Paula was forgotten. The ice cream gently melted in its tub. I’d joined Nicole on the couch, and we were sitting cross-legged on the cushions, facing each other.
“You never, like, learned to masturbate? As a teenager?” I asked.
She blushed and didn’t meet my eyes. “N-no...? I don’t really touch myself... down there.”
“Why not?” I gasped. It sounded more forceful than I intended. I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “Sorry, I don’t mean to, like, interrogate you. You don’t have to answer. I’m just... curious.” And kind of appalled, I didn’t add.
She just shrugged. “I dunno. It’s, like, wet down there? And my fingers would get dirty? I just...” She finally brought her almost pleading eyes up to meet mine, willing me to understand. “Vaginas are weird! Aren’t they?”
I rubbed my temples. Wow. So much to unpack there.
“I don’t think they’re weird,” I said slowly. “I mean, they’re part of our bodies right? They’re literally normal. Besides, I’m not talking about your vagina, I’m talking about your clit. Most women orgasm primarily from clitoral stimulation,” I added, when she looked confused.
She looked around the room again, as if for inspiration, but didn’t answer.
“Nikki,” I said carefully, “have you really, honestly, never rubbed your own clit?”
She shook her head.
“And nobody you’ve ever slept with has?
She shook her head again.
“Do, um... Look I know this is personal and you really don’t have to answer. I’m just, like, trying to understand. No guy has ever fingered you?”
“Um, only like, fingers inside me?” She made a gesture, index and middle fingers together, thrusting forward and back.
“Okay... Has anyone ever gone down on you, then?”
“Yes,” she said, almost sounding defensive. Defensive on behalf of her past boyfriends?
“But they didn’t pay any attention to your clit?”
She slowly shook her head. “I had one boyfriend who kind of just... licked up and down for a bit, to get me wet,” she told me. “And Da—I mean, another boyfriend,” she haplessly and transparently avoided saying the name of her last boyfriend, “would kind of, um,” she blushed prettily, “stick his tongue... inside?”
“He’d tongue-fuck you, basically?”
Blushing deeper, she nodded.
“Okay. Okay. Wow. For the record? Tongue-fucking is fine, but it’s like... a side dish, for most women? Look, everybody’s different, there’s no one right way to do it, I’m just saying it’s more common for oral sex to focus on the clit. At least partially. That’s the easier way for most women to orgasm.”
She nodded, looking oddly serious, like she was taking notes at a lecture. This is really all new information for her? I know it’s a cliche, but like, are the straights okay?
“And I don’t want to tell you how to relate to your body. That’s totally up to you. If you don’t want to masturbate, nobody’s gonna force you! But I do recommend you, like, think about it? Maybe try it? It can be really nice,” I told her as earnestly as I could, “to, like, understand your own pleasure, be able to, you know, do it to yourself. It also makes it easier to tell to someone else how you like to be touched.”
From the way her expression froze, I realized she probably hadn’t been doing much communicating to her partners about how she liked to be touched.
I bit back a sigh, falling silent. I didn’t know what else to say. It made me sad and maybe even a little angry to see someone so alienated from her own body, but harping on it wouldn’t help. Something something something, leading a horse to water.
She looked down at her lap. She seemed... small, and sad, and confused. I worried that I’d gone to far, lecturing her or implying that she was ignorant. (I mean, she was ignorant...)
Then it happened.
She looked up at me, her eyes still wide and watery but with maybe some kind of determination in there too.
“Can you,” she asked, “show me?”
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, I thought, after the initial fuck yeeeeah reaction had died down. We lay side-by-side on my bed. I’d discarded my jeans ‘cause it feels weird to be in bed with pants on, but she was still fully clothed, lying oddly rigidly on her back, staring fixedly at the ceiling, the sheet pulled up to her collarbone.
“So, um,” I said, uncertain what exactly we were even doing. “Do you want me to, like, show you on my body? Or talk you through touching yourself? Or...?”
That last “or” did a lot of heavy lifting. She turned just her head to face me, something almost like anguish in her eyes—no, more like mortification, I realized.
“Can you,” she said in a small voice, “show me... on my body?”
I fought back a grin. “Sure,” I said, scooting closer. Lying on my side next to her, our shoulders touching, I realized she was trembling. “You okay?” I asked.
“Y-y-yes,” she said. “Just... n-n-nervous, I guess? Um... go ahead...?”
“Okay...” Yeah, this was fucking weird as hell, I realized. She was a total dead fish, and the normal ways I might try to reassure/warm up a shy girl (wasn’t actually my first time popping a girl’s les-cherry) like kissing or caressing didn’t seem right. I didn’t think she was interested in kissing girls, and we weren’t hooking up, or at least I didn’t think so. This was more like... a lesson?
So, I slid my hand forward under the sheet. She gave a little spasm when it brushed against her belly, and I quickly retracted.
“S-sorry,” she muttered. “That surprised me. I don’t know why...”
“That’s okay,” I told her, a little bemused. “But like... I’m gonna reach my hand between your legs. That’s what you mean by ‘showing’ you, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Go ahead. Please.” That last word in a small, nervous, but oddly needy voice. Fuck she was really cute. I’d long since gotten over the inevitable crush I had on her when we first started hanging out, but lying so close like this, it was coming back to me.
Slowly and deliberately, I moved my hand forward again. She tensed up as I slipped it under the waistband of her skirt, then the band of her underwear, then through the curls of her bush (unshaved, my fave).
“Relax,” I whispered to her. I was necessarily lying quite close to her, my chin almost touching her shoulder, her neck and oddly beautiful ear in front of me. (I resisted the strong but manageable urge to dart forward and kiss her neck or nibble her earlobe.) “I’m just gonna hold my hand here for a bit, okay?”
“Okay...” she breathed.
I pressed my palm against her mons and slipped three fingers between her thighs, pressing lightly on her vulva but not moving. As I expected, she was dry as a desert, her outer labia resolutely closed.
“This was how I first learned to masturbate,” I told her quietly. “I just stuck my hands between my legs and kind of held them there, realized that it felt nice, and eventually started sort of... grinding myself against my fingers. You never did anything like that?”
She shook her head minutely. “I guess I put my hand between my legs as a little kid,” she admitted, but not really since...”
I shook my head, a little wonderingly. Her experience was probably common enough? But for me, as soon as I’d started feeling true pubescent arousal, I’d had a corresponding desire to touch myself down there. It had taken me a little time to figure out how, but I had trouble imagining not doing it at all.
Everybody’s different, though.
“How does it feel, having my hand there?” was all I said.
“Um...” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she spoke. “It feels... nice...? Kind of... warm? Even though I’m warmer than you?” She squinted up at the ceiling as if trying to read something written on it. “And also... exciting? It’s unfamiliar, having someone else... Oh, it’s too embarrassing...”
“Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head vigorously, biting her lip. (Gaaah how is she so cute!??)
“Okay. I’m going to finger you a little now. Is that alright?”
She nodded, still staring resolutely at the ceiling.
Gently and (if I do say so myself) deftly, I spread her outer labia with my pointer and index fingers and slid the middle finger between. A tremor ran through her body, and a grin split my face. As I had expected—or at least, as I had hoped—she was actually quite wet, it was just all shut up inside. She bloomed under the gentle coaxing of my fingers, and in a moment I was coated with her warm, slick juices. Her lips parted slightly as I slowly slid my middle finger forward and back between her labia. Fuck she was so hot, plump lips parted, long blonde hair spilled across my pillow, her breath coming audibly now. I wanted to sink the fingers of my other hand into that silky hair, grab a fistful of it, force her head around, and bite that round lower lip of hers...
I didn’t, of course. She’s not actually into girls, or me, I reminded myself dully. I’m just here to help her understand her body better. Still, my pulse leapt as I teased her entrance with my fingertip, eliciting a short but clear moan. She clapped her hand to her mouth, cheeks burning, and I giggled. “It’s okay, Nikki,” I said, almost calling her ‘babe’ for some reason. “It’s supposed to feel good. You can moan.”
“It’s just...” she whispered, “...embarrassing...”
“It’s embarrassing to feel pleasure?”
“...I guess? Ah—” She bit back another moan as I slipped my finger inside her, just to the knuckle, then slid it in and out, opening her up again and again.
“I think it’s sexy to hear someone moan,” I assured her, then regretted it. Without realizing it I’d gone into my teasing dom voice. I should try to stay more detached.
“A-anyway,” I said, hurrying on in a more normal tone. “You said you’d done penetrative fingering before.” I slipped a second finger inside her, descending into her very willing tunnel to the second knuckle and curling my fingers slightly. I tried to contain the tide of satisfaction at her gasp. “So this is nothing new, right?”
Her head turned slightly to face me, her brows furrowed slightly, and—were those tears in her eyes? (Ghhhh she was so. Fucking Cuuute!) “I—oh—Y-y-yes, this is... oh, um... Yes, I’ve... done...” She seemed unable to form a sentence as I continued to finger-fuck her, a little deeper now, curling my fingers and pressing harder inside her, causing her eyes to widen. “But...”
“But what?” I asked, keeping my voice level, my tone conversational as I pressed on what I guessed was her G-spot. I was rewarded by a pulse up her whole body as she arched her back and bit back a gasp.
“Um... They... ah... My boyfri—oh—It d-d-didn’t... feel quite like this!” She pronounced the end of the phrase in a rush.
“Well, everybody’s got different technique,” I said reasonably, mostly keeping the smugness out of my voice. She was now flexing her hips in time with the motion of my fingers—I think without realizing it.
She gave an adorable, frustrated little whimper as I withdrew my fingers, then blushed even deeper, no doubt realizing how she must sound.
“L-let’s move on,” I said, finding it hard to keep my own voice steady over my mounting arousal. “I usually do a little fingering like that first. You want the, um, the vaginal fluid as a lubricant so there isn’t too much friction against the clit.” I tried to speak as dispassionately as I could. She nodded in understanding, facing the ceiling again.
I slid my fingers up to rest on her clit—now palpably firm under the clitoral hood. With practiced ease (not to brag), I slid the hood back.
She gasped and spasmed.
“You okay?” I asked, withdrawing my hand slightly.
“Y-yes,” she murmured, obviously embarrassed. “That was... I’m just... sensitive...”
I grinned. “See? This is what I’m talking about. Do you want me to continue? Or maybe you want to try it yourself?”
Her lips flattened into a thin line and she shook her head. “Please. You do it.”
“Alright...” I returned my fingers to her most sensitive spot. “You want to be very gentle,” I told her. “It is really sensitive, and sometimes you can overstimulate.” I kept up a didactic flow, trying to keep myself in teacher headspace. “Now, everybody’s a little different, so you have to experiment with speed and pressure and motion. I’ve always liked relatively fast circular motions, but with very gentle pressure... Seems like maybe you like that too?”
She had clasped both her hands over her mouth to trap her moans, and her whole body was undulating slightly. She gave a wordless little nod.
“Alright, I’ll keep doing this then,” I said, my fingers already moving on autopilot through the practiced motion. “It’s best not to hurry. Enjoy the ride. Don’t think to much about trying to come. Just let it happen, okay?”
“O-o-okay,” she whispered through heavy, sensual breaths. Holy fucking fuck, I was almost as turned on as she was, and I hadn’t had an iota of stimulation. I could feel the wet spot spreading through my panties, but I ignored it. This isn’t about me, I reminded myself. I’m just teaching my repressed straight friend how to orgasm. That’s all. Don’t think about those sexy, almost-moaning breaths; don’t think about her heaving chest, or her squirming hips, or the pale expanse of neck she keeps showing as she leans her head back...
“Say, Nikki.”
“Y-y-yes...?”
“Do you like having your breasts touched?”
“Um...” She turned her head away slightly. This girl, oh my god. Does she really still have the capacity to be embarrassed by a question like that while I’m dittling her clit? “Y-yes...” she whispered tentatively.
“Do you like having your nipples played with?”
She just nodded, then added quietly, “G-g-gently, yes...”
“Maybe you should try it? Some people feel a kind of sympathetic connection between the nipples and the clit. Some people can even come just from having their nipples played with, but that’s rare.
“I should... now?”
“Yeah, why not?” All the while I kept up that steady, feather-light circling on her clit.
With tentative, fumbling fingers, she unbuttoned the top half of her blouse. I nearly moaned as the half-moon curves of her breasts over her bra came into view. She wore relatively loose tops, so it was easy to forget that she had some fucking boobs.
Does it make sense to be jealous of someone else’s hand, I wondered idly to myself as she slid one hand into the cup of her bra.
Her breathing grew even heavier. Her back arched slightly again. Her eyes squeezed shut. I could see her entering that liminal space of an approaching climax where time stops and the rest of the world only loosely exits.
I increased my pressure. Just a hair.
“Oh my god,” she breathed, her hips bucking up into me now. “Oh my god.”
A long stuttering breath. A moment suspended in time.
Then she shrieked, a sound quickly stifled into a throaty series of gasps. Her thighs clamped on my hand hard enough to hurt. She half rolled onto her side to face me, her eyes widening then squeezing shut as her first ever orgasm pulsated through her body.
And then, somehow, we were kissing.
It wasn’t me! I cried out defensively in my own head. I swear I didn’t!
But she did. And I kissed her back, our lips locking hard together as she moaned greedily into my mouth, her thighs still squeezing my hand. My tongue was halfway down her throat and her whole body was vibrating with lust, frantically grinding into me, until—
Suddenly we were apart, on our sides facing each other, her eyes wide with confusion. Oh boy, I thought. Here we go.
“Omigod. I am so sorry,” she gasped. “I don’t know what—I just—god—sorry—I—”
She fell silent as I rolled on top of her, pinning her down. Holy spirit of Sappho, she was so fucking sexy, her hair disheveled, her eyes wide, her lips swollen, her blouse open, her bra disarranged so one breast was hanging out.
“You don’t need to apologize,” I told her thickly. “I’ve been resisting the urge to ravish you since the moment we got in bed!”
She processed this for the space of one blink. Then two. Then, “Oh god, please do!”
Maybe this was irresponsible, from a consent perspective. We weren’t drunk or anything, of course, but we had gotten in bed with a very different dynamic in mind. Maybe a little pause to let the blood cool, a little re-establishment of boundaries would have been good?
Well.
Do as I say, not as I do.
What I did was ravish her. The words were barely out of her mouth before I was pressed down on her, my teeth finding her lower lip, my hands scrambling at her bra. A chaotic flurry as we didn’t really part long enough to fully remove the clothing we were so uninterested in still wearing. A sweaty, writhing rush, like surfing on a big wave—if we stopped, we would have crashed, so we didn’t, we just kept going, kissing and clawing and biting and fingering. It was already clear to me that Nicole was, though she probably wouldn’t have described her self as such, a masochistic sub. A masochist with a very low actual pain tolerance, but who nonetheless wanted to be tormented, teased, edged. And for her it was like some floodgate had opened, letting out a rawly sensual creature that I wouldn’t have dared to imagine. The dark, swirling need in her eyes. The lusty whimpers as I pinched and pulled her nipples. The way her hips lifted clean off the bed as I crouched between her legs, finger-fucking her roughly while grazing her clit with my thumb, driving her to her second climax. The “Please please please please please please please” she gasped when I pressed her down into the bed, telling her how I wanted to fuck her until she couldn’t walk.
The ninety seconds it took me to put on my strap almost crashed the headlong wave of lust we were riding, but the way she pawed at me, kissing my neck and running her hands down my sides the whole time kept it going. That, and the way I shoved her back onto the bed and mounted her with my best dom energy. She was almost hyperventilating, looking down at the turquoise, slightly curved, abstractly penis-shaped dildo that now extended from my crotch, which I was rubbing against her very, very wet slit. A tilt of my hips, and I slid inside her in one, fluid stroke, rewarded by a long throaty moan.
I had every intention of utterly fucking her brains out, but I started slow and sensual, pinning her wrists with my hands, pressing my modest chest to her ample one, locking her mouth with mine, and sliding in and out of her with slow, long strokes.
And in that sweaty press, something changed. Maybe it was the slightly slower pace, maybe the closeness of the moment. But something changed. It wasn’t just lust anymore. “Nikki,” I whispered into her lips. “Lena” she replied, then moaning around my name as I slid to her neck, biting lightly, sucking, marking, then returning to a kiss, which felt somehow like coming home.
She moaned into my mouth as I picked up the pace with my hips. Part of me wanted to annihilate her fucking pussy, but I could tell that wouldn’t quite be her thing. She liked it rough, but only moderately rough. While half of me was drowning in her sloppy kiss, another part was carefully noting her responses, her shudders, her moans, her flexes, as I tried different speeds and angles, until I found it. The slight lift of my hips that made my curved dildo rub against her on the inside, making her arch and writhe. The long thrusts where I withdrew completely, pushing her open anew and making her gasp and shudder.
I found the pattern, and I kept doing it.
For a long time.
Not sure how long. Time loses meaning during sex. People always overestimate how long they’re fucking. Ten minutes of athletic sex is an eternity. And this was definitely longer than that.
My arms ached from holding myself up. My hips and abs ached from thrusting. My knees ached from taking so much of my weight, even on a soft mattress. But I kept going, because she was a puddle of pleasure beneath me, face shining with sweat, eyes clouded, hair a complete mess, breasts heaving with each stroke. I didn’t really plan to make her come. Well. I hoped, I guess. But I saw from the way she was thrashing, the sense of need, almost frustration that permeated her moans. I was getting close.
To my surprise, her hand (which I had stopped pinning to more comfortably hold myself up, haha), strayed down her belly, then was quickly retracted. I grabbed her wrist and led it to the point my dildo was entering her. “Go ahead,” I urged her.
Eyes closed, she began to rub her own clit. I could see her imitating the circular motions I’d made earlier. I adjusted (to an even more uncomfortable position) so that my thrusting body left room for her hand.
It was like watching a covered pot boil over, except instead of the heady bubbling sound it was her escalating gasps, and instead of the rattle of the lid as steam began to escape, it was the frantic bucking of her hips.
And instead of water forcing it’s way out from under the lid, she squirted.
Actually, she stopped touching herself a few seconds before her orgasm. I think she was already over the edge, was just waiting like a roller coaster car at the top of a rise, but with two deep, full-length thrusts, I finished her off, and she shrieked again, and clenched so hard my dildo was actually forced completely out of her. Her hips pumped and almost clear liquid splashed in every direction. I thrust back into her between two contractions and she almost screamed again, still squirting in little bursts syncopated against my thrusts. I slowed as her climax died down, until I finally lay my aching body to rest on hers, my synthetic cock still buried in her. She wrapped her arms and legs around me and help my body to hers. Two human forms, sticky, sweaty, exhausted, spent.
Awkward, I thought, as I set a mug of tea down in front of her.
We were back in my living room, fully dressed in rumpled clothes, her hair still wet from a shower. Neither of us had spoken since she emerged. Our two showers had given us both time to process what we just did, and neither of us seemed quite sure how to talk about it.
She sipped her tea and looked pretty and nervous.
I sighed. “I feel like I should apologize. I got... carried away.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You? I thought I did! I’ve never...” She blushed (gorgeously). “I’ve never gotten so... um... enthusiastic before. And I’ve certainly never...” She blushed deeper, probably thinking about her first ever squirting climax.
Smugness and awkwardness played tug of war inside my gut. “Well... enthusiasm isn’t bad... Not in my book, anyway. I, uh, didn’t expect this, though. Not to say you seem frigid or anything! But I really thought you were only into guys.”
“Me too...” She bit her lip, looking thoughtful. “But maybe I just... assumed that about myself? Thinking back, it was never especially true? I remember back in high school, listening to my friends talk about boys they had crushes on, saying how cute or how hot they were... And I remember thinking ‘Oh. Is Brad cute? Is Josh hot? I didn’t realize...’”
“Yeah... I kinda remember that too. I mean, I was definitely gay by like age 15 so I was just like ‘ugh, boys, whatever.’ What about now, though? Are you attracted to men now?”
She squinted at the ceiling. “Um... nnnooo?” she guessed. “But I don’t think I’m ‘attracted’ to women either? Maybe? I never, you know... I never imagined us doing anything like this together. But I think I pretty much never look at a person and think ‘oh, that person is attractive, so I want to have sex with them.’ I, like, appreciate people who look good? But it’s more like... liking their style? Not being turned on by how someone looks, if that makes sense. But it’s not like I don’t want sex either? I did, um, enjoy sex with my past boyfriends. Some of the time. Probably most of the time? So I’m ‘attracted to men’ in the sense that I can enjoy sleeping with a man? But I, uh, I, ummm...” She began to blush again. “I also enjoyed... what we did? So I’m ‘attracted to women?’ Except not really, because I never actually felt sexual attraction to you before. But I don’t really feel that for anybody. It seems to me that wanting sex doesn’t really have to do with ‘attraction,’ at least for me. Thinking that way, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a man or a woman or what? I dunno. Is that super weird?”
“No,” I assured her, “that’s not weird at all. I mean, cultural stereotypes about sex and sexuality will tell you that it’s weird, but I think it’s totally normal and plenty of other people feel something like that. Sounds to me like your pansexual, but your libido has more to do with rapport and mutual desire than any lizard brain ‘grr want’ feeling you get when looking at someone. Which... again, that’s actually pretty normal? Probably? Culturally, we really emphasize that ‘omigod so hot want’ reaction, but I kinda think that’s capitalism trying to sell us attractiveness, in various ways? So yeah. You’re fine.”
“Pansexual...” she said quietly, as if testing out the word.
“That’s just, like, me guessing based on what you said,” I added quickly. “I don’t want to decide for you what label feels right. Also—and, god I wish someone had said this to angsty queer teen me—it’s okay if no single label fits perfectly. Labels are useful, ‘cause we need to be able to talk about things, right? We need to be able to refer to things. But any given person isn’t necessarily gonna fall perfectly into one label or another. Like, take me for example. I say I’m a lesbian. But I’m attracted to all kinds of genderqueer people all the time, so it’s not like I’m only attracted to women in some strict sense. But ‘lesbian’ feels right. I’m a lady, and I’m mostly attracted to other lady-ish folks, and there are, like, cultural associations with a word that go beyond its literal meaning?” I point to my (vestige of a) shag haircut. “This hair legit makes me feel more like a ‘lesbian’ than I would otherwise. So... Yeah...”
I realize that I’ve been babbling a little, but she’s nodding seriously again, as if taking mental notes. “That sounds really smart, Lena. That’s a good way to think of it.”
“Yeah. I mean... Yeah...”
Silence descended. And awkwardness with it.
“I’m sorry,” Nicole eventually said in a small voice, looking down. “I came here to help you get over Paula, and I ended up dragging you into my own weird thing...”
“Don’t apologize. Nothing could have pushed Paula further to the back of my mind than wild sex with you.” I blurted it without thinking. Now it was my turn to blush, but I plowed on. “Listen, Nicole. I had such a big crush on you when we first met. That’s like, pretty normal for me with pretty straight girls? But I had it bad. I got over it because you had a boyfriend at the time, and you didn’t seem at all interested in girls anyway. But today? When we were all naked and pressed up together and moaning each other’s names into each other’s mouths? It sorta came flooding back to me. And I’m sorry if that makes things weird. But I feel like I gotta say it. I’m pretty into you, Nikki.”
I looked at her carefully. That deer-in-the-headlights look wasn’t very reassuring. Then she blushed again—ugh, why is everything she does so fucking pretty—and looked away.
“I...” she began slowly. “I felt that too. But... I don’t know, Lena. I was so not expecting this. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”
“Totally fair,” I said holding up my hands in a disarming gesture. “I... Fuck, I kinda knew we were going too hard in there. Going to fast. Blowing past the boundaries we set initially. But I didn’t stop. I... couldn’t help myself. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. A smile briefly passed over her face, like a time-lapse of a flower blooming. “At least, it’s only half your fault. I was right there with you.”
“Do you... regret it?” I asked, a little scared of the answer.
But she shook her head emphatically. “No. I promise I don’t. You... You taught me a bunch of things today, Lena. About my body. About myself. I’m actually grateful. I’m just...” She looked away again. “I’m just a little jumbled up. I need time to think. And to... Oh, I feel like such a bitch saying this. But to figure out what I actually feel about you.”
I winced. It was her turn to hold up her hands as if to say “Wait wait, don’t freak out.”
“Listen. Lena,” she said earnestly. “I love you. I have always loved you as a friend. And that’s not going to change. But now I know that you have feelings for me, and that we have this, um, this sexual chemistry that I did not expect... But is friendship and sexual chemistry the same as romantic chemistry? I don’t think so. Not for me. For me the romantic chemistry has always come before the sexual chemistry. So...” She shook her head, as if trying to shoo away buzzing bugs. “I need to think. I need to let this first rush calm down a little and try to figure out what these feelings even are, you know?”
I nodded, about forty-seven different feelings swirling in my chest. “I get it. I totally understand.”
It was awkward, when she left. Normally she’d hug me without a second thought, and I’d muss her hair a little. But this time we sort of nodded formally to each other. Somehow, our crazy intimacy earlier had left us further apart than when she arrived.
I understood where she was coming from. But I hated it, this distance. I flopped on the couch, letting the, like, quadruple whammy of my failed relationship, the letdown of parting after great sex, the uncertainty with Nicole, and my own natural ineptness at dealing with my feelings alone wash over me.
After a few minutes, my phone buzzed. Thinking that even an Instagram notification would be a welcome distraction from the nonsense feelings rustling about in my chest like trapped butterflies, I pulled the little black rectangle over to me.
My whole body snapped to attention when I realized it was a text from Nicole.
This is stupid. I can’t have something so wonderful staring me in the face and do nothing. People suss out romantic chemistry as they go all the time, right? So... Would you like to go on a date with me this Friday?
My face hurt. After a moment, I realized it was because I was grinning so hard I was in danger of splitting my cheeks open.