The Second First Time by Elisa Lorello

Author:Elisa Lorello [Lorello, Elisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503941243
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

If you actually wind up having sex and need to talk to someone about it, feel free to text me from the bathroom while Jon is sleeping. Although please, no details. No offense, but picturing you and Mossy having sex is kind of gross.

I should have snapped a photo of our little pillow wall and captioned it: Birth control at its finest.

“Juvenile, I know,” he said.

“But good for peace of mind, I guess,” I replied.

“Which side do you want?”

“I’m a middle-aged woman—the side closest to the bathroom.”

He sat on the right side of the bed and unzipped his laptop case. I grabbed my own laptop and climbed on the other side, each of us propping a couple of pillows up and leaning against them. You know the phrase ignoring the elephant in the room? Well, that’s what we were doing while we checked e-mails and scrolled through social media. Except the elephant was neon pink. With sprinkles. Wearing a beanie with propellers. Sitting on the bed between us. And yet, something about our conduct—sans elephant—was homey. A togetherness within the separateness.

Jon abruptly closed his laptop cover. “What are we doing?” he said. “We’re here to hang out together, not with everyone else.”

“We’re spending plenty of time together,” I said. “I’m OK with us taking an hour to ourselves and chilling out.”

“It’s not that I want to smother you; I just want these next few days to be about us. I don’t want to share them with anyone else.”

“I’m not sharing anything with anyone, Jon.”

He still looked agitated as I peered at him.

“Do you not want people to know we’re hanging out together?” I asked.

“Forget it,” he said, and opened the laptop again. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Because I’m not going to act like we’re doing something illicit.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” I leaned slightly forward, one knee up, one tucked in, and waited for his explanation. The overstretched neck of my tee had tilted Flashdance-style, and I caught him completely fixated on my bare shoulder. Like a child zoomed in on an ice-cream cone. It was the first time I’d ever seen lust in his eyes. Sure, we’d FaceTimed countless times, and he always appeared on my screen with a twinkling albeit pixilated smile for me, as did I for him, even when we’d been nothing more than friends. But to see him ogling me—how could I deny the adrenaline that surged through me? How could I deny that I liked it? How could I deny that I wanted him to see more? And that I wanted to see more. How naïve I had been to think baggy tees and sweats would suffice in detraction, and to think we were shallow enough for it to have mattered.

He averted his eyes the second he was found out, one second too late for him. What was it Hazel had said to me that day at Toast café? We were a great movie that everyone missed.

“Are you OK with

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