“That really was the best day ever,” she agrees with a happy sigh.
I toss the Louboutins into my bag and dig through my drawer for my black lace bra. I know it’s in here somewhere.
“What are you and Sawyer doing today?” She holds up a hand. “Besides the obvious. I already know he’s going to fuck your brains out. Blah, blah, blah.” She’s turned to face me, both feet pulled up to the chair and her arms wrapped around them.
“We are going to the Reading Terminal this afternoon,” I tell her, naming an old railroad station in downtown Philadelphia that’s been turned in part into an indoor farmers’ market of sorts. “After that, I don’t know.” I sit on the edge of my bed and grin. “But probably sex.”
“Well, have fun.” She scrunches her nose. “Wait, I’m not sure that ‘have fun’ is the appropriate thing to say to that.”
“Oh, it’s appropriate. We have a lot of fun,” I respond, stressing the word ‘lot.’
“I don’t need any visuals, thank you.”
“Why won’t you just let me set you up with someone, Chloe? I bet his office is crawling with great guys. I already saw one who’s super hot, but Sawyer’s assistant has been pining for him for like, an eon, so I have to make that happen. But I’m sure there’s loads more.”
“No.” She shakes her head, but she looks a little sad. “No, thank you. You’ve done enough to assist with my dating life.”
I exhale in frustration. You put someone on a dating site one time without their knowledge and suddenly they don’t want your help anymore. She’s so unreasonable.
“You know, Chloe, in my experience sex is even better after college.”
“You’re still in college, Everly,” she responds, practical as ever.
She’s adorable in sweatpants and a waffle-weave long-sleeved tee. Her hair is piled on her head, hints of red weaving its way through the mess. She’s sexy in the most unassuming way. And I really need to get her laid.
I wave off her dispute with a flick of my wrist. “You know what I mean. With postgraduate men.”
“Postgraduate men? Formal much?”
“Your hymen is going to grow back together, Chloe. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It is not. That is not a thing,” she huffs.
“It’s a thing,” I counter, then stand and hunt through my panty drawer to look for the lace panties that match the bra.
She’s silent, but I hear the tapping of the keys on her laptop.
“Is not,” she comes back with a moment later.
“But you looked!” I point a finger to the ceiling in triumph, certain this proves my point.
“Is Sawyer really that much better than anyone else you’ve slept with?” She bites her lip, her brow creased, as if it cannot be possible that it would be that different.
“I promise you, yes. I liked sex before, and I’ve never had bad sex, but…” I pause and search for how to explain it. “It’s so much better, Chloe. It’s better. I like him more, obviously. But it’s more than that. It’s more than this connection we have, which is spine-tinglingly phenomenal.” I pause again, thinking. “Even if I didn’t like him, the sex would be mind-blowing.”
Chloe watches me speak, chewing on her lip again, her head tilted to the side and her nerdy little study glasses swinging from her fingertips.
“Okay,” she says finally, and I’m satisfied. Because an ‘okay’ from Chloe is not a dismissal. An ‘okay’ from Chloe means she’s heard me and she’s thinking about it. I nod in contentment that I’ve done my part to ensure her hymen does not grow back together. Because that is so a thing.