they weren’t widely accepted.
She attempted to raise her glass and sloshed a portion of the wine onto the table in front of her. After her eyes fell to the spill, she raised them to meet mine and grinned. “Because?”
“Because I can’t risk losing you.”
She licked the wine from her lips. “Is that the only reason?”
It wasn’t, but for the sake of the conversation we were having, I didn’t need to expand my response to include my sexual deviance.
“Yes,” I lied.
“Fine.” She placed her glass of wine to the side and leaned forward. As she fixed her hypnotic green eyes on mine, she continued. “Forget dating. Forget a relationship. Let’s remain friends. I agree, losing you is something I can’t chance. But, I’m fucking dying.”
“How so?”
“I need some dick. I really do. You’re single, I’m single. I think we should just start fucking. You know, be fuck buddies. What do you think about that? You and me being fuck buddies?”
I sat and stared with my mouth agape, mentally prepared to provide her with a long list of reasons why we couldn’t be friends and have sex with each other.
Instead, I gawked at her as if she had just found a way to cure cancer.
She leaned away from the table and picked up her glass of wine. Her eyes widened as she raised it to her mouth. “Well, at least you’re thinking about it.”
She was right.
I was thinking about it.
And, although I knew it probably should have, it didn’t sound like a bad idea.
Not bad at all.
CHAPTER THREE
LIV
After being friends for two-and-a-half decades and never once discussing it, I found it hard to believe we had reached a point where not only were we talking about sex, but seriously considering becoming sexually active with each other. It was now two weeks after my suggestion of becoming fuck buddies, and we sat in the living room discussing it at length. It was the third time we talked about it, but this time seemed to be more serious. After discussions of sexually transmitted diseases and me reminding him I was on birth control, the conversation migrated to the sex act itself. Luke claimed to be some kind of sexual deviant, but as far as I was concerned, his personal diagnosis of what he perceived as a fault was just one more reason for us to be fucking each other.
“Sex is sex. I mean, really. Nothing against you, but I don’t see how it’s going to be much different,” I said.
He gazed down at the floor for a moment and appeared to be in deep thought. I mentally stood firm in my opinion that his warnings of my inability to accept his sexual offerings were unwarranted.
“So, I guess surfing is surfing.” He turned to face me. “You’ve seen me surf, right?”
“Uhh. Yeah.”
To see Luke surf was much different than watching anyone else attempt to do so. Typically, rows upon rows of surfers would wait for the waves, paddling to catch each and every one. Most failed completely at catching anything. Luke, on the other hand, waited for the perfect wave, and appeared to always catch it right before it broke, riding it in a manner that made it seem like he was personally taming it from a thirty-foot tall treacherous beast to the flattened white foam that softly washed to the shore.
He cocked one eyebrow. “Can you compare my surfing to all surfing?”
I shook my head. “No. Not at all.”
“Remember when we were in high school, and you came to see me compete for my black belt?”
“Sure.”
“How many matches did you watch before it was my turn?”
I shrugged and tried to remember the competition. “I don’t know, like, maybe, eight or ten.”
“Did any of them seem as talented as me?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t say I agreed with his theory that I would recede into a ball of emotion and sit in the corner babbling, but he was making some very valid points regarding the difference in his abilities as they compared to everyone else’s.
“You made your point. But that