How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex: a Novel (13 page)

I wonder how I would’ve responded to this manic need to know my every move if I didn’t know why she wanted so badly to know it.

“You got it!” I agree.

~

John and I end up spending that whole day together, not counting a short separation before the party, during which time I shower, change, and have that discussion with Lacey about our plans.

John shows up again looking dapper. Not that he needed any improvements, but he cleans up very nicely. The aquamarine color of his shirt deepens the shade of his eyes, and the way he’s got his hair swooped back highlights his perfect bone structure and square, manly jaw. Right now, in his best going-out clothes, he almost looks intimidatingly good. All that intimidation melts away though, when I see how impressed he is with the way I’ve cleaned up.

“Wow. You look great!” He seems genuinely proud to be my date.

“You do, too,” I reciprocate.

He kisses me hello, and it feels so good that I accidentally let out a little moan.

“Sorry,” I apologize for no good reason.

He’s also unsure why I’m apologizing, when if anything, my little unexpected moan has made him as hot as I feel.

“Do we have to go to this party?” he teases, reinforcing my own desire to go back up to my place and release all this sexual tension between us.

Obviously we have to go to the party, but I am starting to wonder how I’m going to get through the night, in front of my parents and co-workers, without having a spontaneous orgasm every time I look at him. I may just have to pull him into the supply closet and rip off his clothes before the night is done.

I start doing the math in my head: if you count last night as our first date, and this afternoon as our second date, technically, doesn’t that make tonight our third date? We did separate for two and a half hours there in the middle. How many hours do you have to spend apart before it counts as a new date?

Okay, Sam, this is the opposite of how you’re supposed to be thinking! You got a second chance at this guy, and you will wait until the third date to have sex with him, even if the third date could technically qualify as the fourth date. Tonight is not your night. Get over it!

I pull myself away from his addictive embrace, “We’d better go.”

He laughs at my apparent struggle with his proposal and we get in his car.

~

As we approach my office building, I pull out my phone and dial Lacey.

“I’ve gotta let them know I’m here,” I explain to John.

“Hi Lacey,” I say when she picks up, “we’ve just entered my office building.”

“You’re in the building?” she says loudly, as if speaking to people around her.

“Yes, I’m just getting in the elevator.”

“Oh, you’re getting in the elevator to go up to your office,” she repeats informatively.

We’re just about at my floor, so now it’s my turn to take care of some important business, “Yeah, sorry I have to run this errand tonight, Lacey, but you know,” the elevator doors open, just the timing I’d planned for the next part of my sentence, “my boss is so good to me, and I feel like I owe him my best.”

The lights come on and everyone yells, “Surprise!” Nailed it.

Now is the part where I’m supposed to act surprised, and I genuinely am. Not about the party, which I knew was coming, but about the way everyone is staring at John, as if he were a ghost. I mean he could be. That wouldn’t be any more weird than the fact that I got a do-over, and nobody seems to remember the first time this all happened. But they’re all staring at him because they can’t believe I showed up with a guy the day after I called them all to set me up with the love of my life.

Are they really so surprised that I pulled this off? Don’t these people know that I can fix anything? Or maybe they’re all just mesmerized by his disarming good looks.

John smiles happily, as is his way, though I’m pretty sure this is more attention on him than he was expecting.

“This is John,” I explain, but it doesn’t seem to clear up their confusion.

Lacey steps in to clarify things for them, “She met him last night.”

John is more than a little embarrassed by her outing the fact that I brought a guy from last night, so he clarifies, “It feels like we’ve known each other much longer than that though.” Awww.

Meanwhile, John probably doesn’t get the context of why it was important for these people to know that I met him last night. Looking back on it, the second time I met John for the first time, I’m not sure I explained the whole “plan a party to meet a guy” thing that everyone else in the room is acutely aware of. Now that I think about it, without that context, I can see why her comment about meeting him last night may have made him slightly uncomfortable.

“So last night was another overwhelming success,” Henry announces, further confusing John, while making me look like some kind of floozy, who brings a new guy around after every night out at the bars. “I’m starting to believe that she might even get him to put a ring on her.”

Hello, things you don’t say in front of a guy I’ve known for only slightly more than 24 hours! And I was worried about my parents being embarrassing!

“Ha! Bosses!” I cover, “they’re just like nagging mothers.” At which point, I make eye contact with my mother. Drats! It’s always something.

“I didn’t mean that you were naggy, Mom, I just meant the general ‘mother’, you know, the ones who do that. This is my mom,” I introduce John to her.

“Everybody nags sometimes,” my dad chimes in, not helpfully. Then to make sure John didn’t miss his point, he clarifies, “You’ll have to get used to that, too, if you spend enough time with our Sammy.”

“Thanks, Dad. And fyi, these sorts of comments are why you never get to meet anybody.” I’m starting to regret having brought him here. This is a room full of too many people who know too much about me that he may or may not understand. Note to self, this is why it’s better to wait for someone to get to know you before they meet your parents and everyone else you’ve ever known.

Thankfully, John is laughing at the whole thing, and seems to be taking it in stride. Still, I need to get him away from everyone, and fast!

“Ooh, I love this song! Let’s all dance!” I yank John onto the “dance floor,” as it came to be known at the end of the previous version of this party. I wrap my arms around him and sway until he feels obliged to dance. Nobody follows my lead.

I can tell John feels uncomfortable about the fact that I yanked him away from everyone and probably more so that we’re the only ones dancing.

“I’m sorry about this imposed first dance, but I just had to find a way to get you to stop meeting the people in my life.”

He laughs and relaxes into the dance, now that he understands my erratic behavior.

“I like meeting them,” he says, “you know, just in case they become the people in
my
life.” How does he do that? How does he always know what to say to make me trust him?

“Plus,” he adds playfully, “now we can talk shit about them on our next date!”

Even when he jokes about insulting my loved ones, he’s charming… But more importantly—
he wants another date!

“So, when are you cooking me dinner?” John goes on. How did he not get scared when they all tried to shotgun marry us off within seconds of meeting him? Who cares! He’s a keeper. I am definitely not having sex with him now!

“How about Wednesday?” I suggest, giving myself time to practice cooking French food on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

He smiles sweetly at me, and my heart turns to mush. This is getting to be a very predictable pattern with us.

Chapter 15

The table is set for a candlelit dinner for two. The food is being kept warm in the oven. John is going to be here any moment, and I’m running around like a mad woman, trying to hide the fact that I’m a naturally messy person. Was he right? Does my messiness mean that I don’t respect myself? Or does it just mean that I’m too lazy—or rather too busy—to clean up all the time? I mean let’s face it, even if you spend two whole hours scrubbing and cleaning and putting everything in its place, it only takes about fifteen minutes before you need to use the things you just tucked away so neatly, and then it all instantly returns to disarray.

I live in a standard one-bedroom apartment, where the bathroom is in the bedroom, and the kitchen and living room are only separated by a counter top. It’s basically just two large rooms. It shouldn’t be that hard to keep clean. But the smaller your place is, the less room you have to store things. And things just have a way of piling up!

The phone rings, it’s Lacey. I don’t have time to talk, but I want to run some thoughts about this date by her, so I pick up.

“Hey.”
“I can’t believe you gave Marty my real number! Now he won’t stop calling me. I couldn’t figure out a way to blow him off, so I agreed to go to his book signing tomorrow. But you’re not off the hook, you’re coming with me! That way he’ll know it’s not a date… Maybe I’m just too nice.”

While she talks I have time to smell some of the bras I have airing out on my doorknobs. It’s kind of a gross habit, but bras are expensive and fragile, which means that you can’t wash them too often or they’ll fall apart, and when they do you’ll have to pony up the cash for new ones, which may not fit as well, or make your breasts look as nice in clothes. One might advise me to simply buy the same bra again, but one who gave that advice might not realize that fashion designers stay in business by regularly discontinuing everything good that they make, in exchange for something new and different. The only real solution is to buy like 20 of them at once, but that would be a few hundred dollars investment, and eventually you’ll still wear them all out, and be stuck having to find a new style that you can live with. I’m not into it, so I try to go longer between washes by hanging them on doorknobs to air them out. Anyway, these bras smell fine, so I put them back in the drawer.

I also have another semi-gross trick I use for when I’m having company but don’t have the time to fully clean up. I hide all of the clothes strewn about my room in the living room closet. Some of them are clean, some of them are dirty, and some of them have been worn briefly, so not dirty enough to wash, and not clean enough to put back in the closet. I don’t have the time to figure out what’s what, right now, so I shove it all in there. I’m aware that the bedroom closet would probably be closest and therefore more convenient, but it’s stuffed to the brink already. I have too many clothes. Or maybe my closet is too small. Yeah, that’s probably more likely what the problem is.

“I’m available tomorrow. No problem,” I respond.

“Good. Because this is your fault.”

Obviously it’s not, but I don’t have time to debate that right now. I have to get to the point.

“John is on his way over, and I think I’m gonna sleep with him tonight.”

“No! It’s too soon. You can’t yet.”

“But you said the third date was okay.”

“When did I say that?”

“On my birthday.”
“No, I didn’t. I hardly talked to you that night. You spent the whole time with John—if that’s really his name. I still think you already knew him and that whole charade about bumping into each other was just some story you guys made up so that you could pretend to meet him on the night before your 30th.”

Oh, that’s right, Lacey wouldn’t remember telling me about the third date rule, because that was on the birthday that got erased.

“But I don’t think I can wait much longer. I’m so into him.”
“Exactly. The more into him you are, the more you have to wait. It’s called manipulation!”

“But I don’t want to manipulate him into liking me.”

“Fine. Do it your way, but don’t come crying to me when you sleep with him and he never calls you again.”

“Do you really think he would do that? You saw how attentive he was to me.”

“Well, he did seem really into you, but he’s still a guy, and they’re squirrelly! You just don’t know how they’re going to act from one day to the next.”

I notice that the dishes I compiled cooking dinner aren’t done, but I don’t have time to do them. Plus, the dirty dishwater might splatter on my silk blouse and then I’ll have to change. No, I definitely can’t do that; this outfit took me days to pick out. I put the dirty dishes in the dish rack with the clean ones, which I haven’t put away yet, and take the whole thing to the closet, where I rest it on top of the clothing pile I just put in there, which is already on top of the semi-dirty towels, sheets, and rags that I didn’t have time to wash before this date. I’m embarrassed to say that the pile of clean and dirty junk in my closet is already half as tall as I am.

“Well if you don’t know how they’re going to act from one day to the next anyway, you may as well do the thing you feel like doing, right?” I’m aware that I’m basically begging her to give me the go-ahead.

“You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do, so why are you asking for my permission?”

The doorbell rings.

“Oh my God, he’s here. I’ve gotta go!” I hang up and suddenly realize that I’m nervous.

“Coming!” I call toward the door, as I run in the opposite direction from it to give myself the once over in the mirror. Okay. I look okay. I’m not wearing any shoes. Right, I left them by the door.

I run back toward the door, but take a quick detour through the open kitchen to put back a shot of chocolate liqueur, in hopes of numbing my adrenaline-filled nerves before embarking on this scary high stakes date. I put the bottle away though, because he doesn’t need to know about it.

I slip into my high heels, breathe deep, smile, and open the door.

Damn is he hot.

He kisses me. Yowza. I don’t think kissing a man this sexy will ever grow old.

I’m already breathy as I tell him to come in.

He looks around the place and immediately comments, “I like how clean you keep the place.” Point one Samantha.

“Thanks. It’s always like this.” God I feel dirty when I lie, but never more so than when I lie about being clean.

John licks his lips, “You taste like—“