The F Word by Liza Palmer

Author:Liza Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

HAMBURGER NIGHT FOR VEGANS

Warm tingles break out everywhere, bursting across my body like fireworks. I follow the detonations like a curious detective. Goose-pimpling skin. His unshaven jaw. My body and his body. Just the heat. The heat. No. Too much. I can’t breathe. My fists tighten around his jersey as if the teenage version deep inside of me is already throwing a tantrum because I’m about to ruin this for her. And she propels me deeper into him. I want more. No. I hear myself let out a painful, yearning moan that comes from somewhere so hidden it scares me. Frantic, I break free from him.

“I’m so sorry. I … I shouldn’t have done that. I’m so sorry.” Ben steps back. And then farther back. “Shit.”

“We’d better get back out there.” I turn around and gather the costume in a wad. “You ready?” I whip the Groot head around with enough pent-up energy to hurl it all the way over the San Gabriel Mountains and motion to the door.

“Right behind you,” he says. And of course now everything he says is sexual and I feel my face flush and I hate it. I have to get out of this musty conference room. Now.

As we walk down the hallway, I start and stop a thousand sentences. All of them horrifying. I congratulate myself on realizing they’re horrifying before I say them. The worst offender being some blurted version of, “My husband was right behind me last night, if you know what I mean.” Which is both super tacky and 100 percent false. My husband hasn’t been “right behind me” in years.

Years.

Years.

Adam and I and sex … it just never clicked. I jiggle too much. I’m too heavy. My body doesn’t work right or something because it never reacted to Adam how he wanted. How I thought it was supposed to. Is this right, I’d be thinking? Is this what sexy is? Is this what love feels like? And I would miss it. He would finish and I’d still be wondering. When I found out about the other women, it didn’t surprise me. If I’d been good at sex, Adam wouldn’t have had to go looking elsewhere for it. No, I did this. This was all my fault.

But, that kiss was something new. Although, right now the shame and embarrassment for how uncontrollably greedy I felt and that no matter the state of my marriage, I am in fact still married, is eclipsing any big questions or even the fantastical high-fives that finally, after scoring his phone number just days ago, Ben Dunn kissed me.

I open the door to the outside and hold it open for Ben just as Myrna comes walking down the hallway with Louisa, Tilly, and five cakes between them.

Fuuuuuuuuck.

Ben quickly glances back and looks as horrified and flushed as I do. For such a teenage fantasy moment, it seems apropos that his mom would almost walk in on us.

“Ten goldfish and now five cakes. What else? A partridge in a pear tree?” Ben asks, throwing his hands up.

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