Page 87 of Sex Positive

“Right,” he says. “Because we both know I can’t control myself around distractions.” He shoves his sweats into his bag, the muscles in his back bunched tight. “If that’s what you want.”

It isn’t.

Of course it fucking isn’t what she wants.

What she wants is to invent a time machine and go back to that day freshman year and never meet Wesley Quinn.

What she wants is to not have the person who hurt her also be the one who comforts her.

What she wants is to not feel like a fool for falling for him again.

What she wants is to not need him like the air she breathes.

But now that she’s kissed him, she knows with absolute certainty that the longer she lets this continue, the harder it will be for her in the end.

“It is,” she says with a finality she does not feel.

He faces her. “All right.”

Bitter disappointment at his lack of argument floods her body, turning her stomach sour. Which is selfish and ridiculous, becauseshe’sthe one who ended their farce of an experiment.

What does she want him to do? Insist she tell him the truth? That the real reason she can’t allow him to touch her like she craves is because she foolishly, irresponsibly fell for him? That he makes her feel understood and like what she says matters? That as improbable as it was, she hoped the reason he wanted to spend so much time with her was because he fell, too?

She’s just a distraction. A cheap, used distraction.

“Charlie.”

The way he says her first name burns like the heat from a flame. She wants him to say it over and over again and also wishes he never said it at all.

He stands there, gripping his coat in one hand, his green eyes shining in the dull morning light. “You’ve never been a distraction.”

“Then why did you come here?” she whispers.

He tugs his coat on, not bothering to button it. “Because.” He pulls open the door, his smile hollow. “When I considered what I wanted to do with my New Years Eve, spending time with you was my first and only choice.”

Turning, he walks out of her apartment, the door snapping shut behind him.

Twenty-Three

The elderly manis upon her before she can swerve out of his path. She blames it on the cloud of distractions hanging over her, wrestling for space in her mind—thoughts of deft fingers, a capable and clever mouth, moans and pleas and sighs, and confusing confessions that make her head spin and keep her up at night.

“Don’t kill your child,” a voice croaks. “I can help reverse your abortion.”

Startled, she stares at the old man, gray and stooped with age. He extends a pamphlet featuring an image of what might be an anatomically correct fetus, but she doesn’t examine it too closely.

“No.” Sidestepping him, she doesn’t even bother refuting his claim that abortions can be reversed. Keeping her head down, she walks the last few steps to the clinic doors, ignoring the large posters screamingask me about adoptionandabortion is murdernext to stock photos of smiling children.

“Jesus still loves you,” Charlie hears the man wheeze. “He’s ready to accept your penance.”

Gritting her teeth so hard she’s surprised they don’t crack, she tugs open the clinic door. It shuts behind her with a heavythud, the silence of the empty waiting room a welcome relief.

They have a clinic-wide rule about not interacting with the protestors, lest it provide fuel for their self-righteous fires—or for a lawsuit—but some days are harder than others. Like today, when she wants nothing more than to take her frustration out on a white man who thinks women should give birth no matter the cost.

The protestors are usually docile, but lately it feels like they’ve become more aggressive, bolder in their sense of righteousness. Before, they would stop trying to interact with her as soon as she turned into the clinic or averted her gaze. Now they hover next to the door, shouting at patients—patients whose appointments aren’t evenforabortions—to repent, to seek the Lord, to save their child. Two weeks ago, she triaged a young woman in tears because one of the older women had shouted that she was a “whore no mother could love.”

The patient just wanted a Pap smear.

It’s two days into spring semester, and she hasn’t heard from Wes in a week. She can’t blame him, considering how they left things. Yet she can’t stop thinking about him. Can’t stopmissinghim, feeling selfish and cowardly, yearning to talk to him, to feel his touch again.