Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 27095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Not to mention growing up in a small town where the most exciting thing to ever happen to me was getting a participation trophy for soccer when I was twelve.
My mom was always pleased with me. Always said I was doing everything right.
But apparently, I’ve missed out on something…
“What about yourself?” Lourdes asks, stopping her pacing. “You’ve never…on your own?”
These may be my friends, but I’m starting to feel a little awkward now. Like an alien species being examined at the museum.
“I mean…I tried once or twice,” I say, trying to be forthcoming. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, and then Mom knocked on the door asking if I wanted pizza or pasta, and that was the end of that.”
Dani has given up screaming into the pillow and is simply lying face-down on the carpet looking defeated.
“Okay,” Lourdes says with the expression of a woman who’s just made a decision. “This is fixable. Totally fixable. We just get you a vibrator, we show you how it works, and—”
“A vibrator?” I ask, pointing to the pink thing. “Is that what that is?”
Dani groans like she’s been kicked in the ribs.
“That’s what that is, yes,” Becca replies.
I shrug. “Okay, well, I have anatomy textbooks. I can figure it out.”
Becca blinks twice. “That is the most Jessie sentence that I’ve ever heard.”
Lourdes laughs.
I don’t know what to do, so I just smile and reach for my Boba tea. I’m running low, so my straw makes an awkward slurping sound as I suck up the tiny, delicious balls.
My friends turn to each other, excluding me from a vigorous conversation that I only catch bits and pieces of. Then they turn back to me, showing me diagrams on their phones and possible products on websites I would never in my life visit.
How do they even know all this stuff?
They ask me questions that should embarrass me—anatomical questions—but I answer them honestly. I mean, it’s just the human body. What’s there to be ashamed about?
It’s almost ten o’clock when Lourdes presses the buy-button on something that looks a lot more mechanical and a lot less sleek than the pink zucchini sitting on the coffee table.
“Express shipping,” Becca insists. “Do they have first-day-air?”
“Geez, it’s not an emergency or something,” I protest.
Dani puts a hand on my shoulder. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Lourdes nods in agreement. “It’s going to change your life.”
“You all keep saying that—”
“Because it’s true!”
I take a sip of my cheap wine and try to process this the way I do most things—carefully, from multiple angles, and with genuine curiosity. My body is just a body. It has systems and processes and…an orgasm is just another one of them.
One nobody ever took the time to explain to me properly.
What I need isn’t a friend telling me what I’ve been missing out on. What I need is a teacher.
2
AUGUST
I’ve performed open-heart surgery on a man whose chest I sawed open with my own hands and I did not break a sweat.
I’ve lectured five hundred people at the Edinburgh Medical Symposium on the biochemical function of the thoracic cavity while running a fever and wearing shoes that were half a size too small. I received a standing ovation and even signed books afterward in the hallway.
Still, I did not break a sweat.
I’ve never lost my composure or failed to complete anything I set my mind to in the thirty-six years I’ve been on this Earth.
Not until she walked in and sat down.
I stare at her, and my brain simply stops working. It only takes a millisecond. One moment I’m standing at the podium going over my opening remarks that I’ve delivered every first day of the fall semester for the last five years. And the next, I’m awestruck by the girl sitting in the front row.
She’s got dark hair, enormous brown eyes, and a body that is so perfect it should be taken in for study and examination.
By me only, of course.
She’s eighteen, maybe nineteen, and has the face of beauty that belongs in a museum. The way she looks at me as she uncaps her pen and opens her spiral notebook—it’s like she’s ready to learn everything I know. And not just class-related.
Get it together, August.
I’m a thirty-six-year-old professor of anatomy with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, and for the first time outside of the gym, I’m feeling myself start to perspire.
I clear my throat and look at my notes, but my eyes move right back to her as she twirls her pen between her fingers. Such delicate fingers.
God help me.
It’s not just the sweat starting either. My heart is racing, and blood is rushing between my legs. I clench my jaw, even chew the inside of my cheek. No, I cannot get hard right now. Not here.
She smiles innocently at me, completely unaware of the depraved thoughts flooding my mind. Knuckles going white as I grip the podium, I look away.