Page 92 of Sunset Catchers

The first time I had sex, I was twenty years old. It was a Saturday night in early fall, and I felt like Rory Gilmore at Yale while I walked around campus to meet up with Junie after her last class of the day. The leaves had turned into their typical autumnal shades, and the temperature had dropped down to allow the start of clothes layering season without breaking a sweat.

Junie had been invited to a party by one of her friends from her cohort, and just as always, she made me tag along. She was adamant I still had some sort of collegial rite of passage, even if I was now working full-time and doing online classes. The party was at someone’s too-small apartment, and when we got there, it was crammed with people guzzling cheap beer from silver cans.

That’s the first time a guy looked at me as if I was desirable. Or maybe it was the first time I noticed. He came to me and spoke boring flatteries, and all the while, would look at my tits, down my stomach, along my legs, with appreciative lust.

He wanted me. And I wanted to be wanted. So bad.

At that point, it’d been almost two years since my dear mother had declared her parental duties fulfilled, but more than that, it had been much longer I longed to be wanted. By whoever and in whatever capacity.

And this guy checked that box that night and opened up a whole can of worms that would lead to an unhealthy pattern and a few urinary tract infections. Really do go urinate after you have sex.

From there on out, I got high on twenty-something guys glancing my way with pupils dilated with want. It took very little effort for them to get me into their beds. I was gladly following them to their apartments, then leaving as soon as they were spent, and they’d given me what I craved for.

Some of them were more than glad to see me leave; some of them tried to form some kind of casual sexual arrangement; some of them wanted to take me out on a proper date.

I said no to every offer.

Because while I was busy with my one-night stands and single encounters, Junie was busy with trying to fall in love and find The One. I had a front-row seat to see how her interest would slowly trickle out of her until she was left with none before calling it quits.

To put it simply, there was no way I was going to be on the receiving end of that. I would rather be a one-time good lay and leave it at that than go through the motions of seeing someone fall out of want for me. So, we both repeated our own patterns, and for years, I would hook up with guys that checked my one single box, while my best friend would date guys to find one that would check her long lists of boxes.

But then, I took it too far and relied on those hook-ups too much to fill that gaping hole inside me that was threatening to shred me with its sharp teeth.

Junie staged an intervention. We yelled and said some hurtful truths, then we cried in each other’s arms, and she made me promise that I would take a break from sleeping with random guys and work on finding something else to make me feel better. We came up with the whole reclaiming my girlhood concept, which did indeed make me feel better.

But now, I’m thinking my hiatus might come to an end because how am I going to spend the whole weekend sharing a room with Levi and not hook up with him?

After he kissed me on the cheek?

After I kissed him on the mouth?

And especially after I saw the want dilating his pupils, when he looked at me just now, when I got out of the bathroom?

The typical spike of need that is provoked anytime a guy looks at me the way Levi did is coiled tightly, ready to snap. But this time, though, I can tell my need for him comes from somewhere deeper.

If I could go back a few weeks, maybe I’d choose a different path and just keep Levi as my coworker and nothing more. Becoming friends with him, letting him see more of me, has led me to this turning point. I know how good he can make me feel with his words. I can only imagine how amazing he could make me feel with his body.

Give me a daisy to pluck its petal to the tune of to fuck or not to fuck Levi.

The door to the bathroom opens. My mouth goes dry.

Levi is an unholy apparition, his defined chest glistening with drops of water, dark hair wet and tousled, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped low on his hips; he forgot to grab his nag.

I sigh.

You know what they say: you make your bed, now you get to lie in it. And mine happened to be king-sized and the only one in the room.

23

Next week is gonna be bomb,” I say after swallowing a piece of lettuce while gesturing to the television.

Levi sighs tenderly.

By now, he knows I need at least 30 minutes to scroll through trailers before I can even begin to roam around the thousands of options that are already available to watch.

“Agreed. But how about we find something that’s available now?” he suggests.

“Fine,” I relent, rolling my eyes. Levi watches intently as I wrap my lips around the straw poking out from the canned cocktail he picked out for me at the pizza place. We brought up the small bistro table up to the edge of the bed so we could lay our dinner on it; a ricotta hot honey pizza and a house salad. The food was delicious.