“Your happiness is a big deal, little brother. It’s a huge freakin’ deal.” Bree gifts me with a watery smile, sniffling as she takes a step back. “I won’t hound you for details. I don’t think you’re ready for that yet.”
“Good. There are no details, and also, I’d rather jump into a pit of ravenous beavers than have that conversation with you.”
She knocks me on the shoulder with a playful fist. “I’ll break you down eventually,” she says, traipsing towards the box of assorted doughnuts and plucking a glazed blueberry from the mix. Bree takes a big bite and mumbles through the crumbs, “Just stay away from beaver pits until then.”
Evening falls, and I make my way over to my rolling chair when my cell phone pings with a message notification: Magnolia.
It’s been a few days since the tornado touched down in Delavan—when Melody and I cleaned up the debris littering her neighborhood street, mostly in silence, not sure what to say to one another after what transpired between us in that darkened den. But I caught her staring at me from time to time, lost in her thoughts with a somewhat dreamy look in her eyes. Pensive, yet whimsical. It was unnerving. That whole goddamn day was unnerving, so I haven’t spoken to her since, and I’m dreading our next meeting together.
I’ve talked to Magnolia, though.
She’s my outlet. She’s an anonymous stranger I can vent to, joke with, and even get vulnerable with—all things I can’t do in my day-to-day life.
I can be myself with her. I can be the person I would likely be right now if life hadn’t completely fucked me over.
Pulling up my Gmail account, I click on her little message box.
Magnolia: Tell me a confession.
Me: The pink Starburst is by far the worst flavor.
Magnolia: We’re no longer friends.
Friends. Is that what we are?
I’m pretty sure I have no friends—except maybe Owen, but I don’t think an eight-year-old boy I just met really counts.
Is this widowed stranger in my computer screen that I’ve never even seen considered a… friend? The notion seems ludicrous, but I don’t correct her because I don’t fucking know.
Me: Your turn.
A few moments pass before she responds.
Magnolia: I do have a confession… and it’s probably TMI, but I can’t talk to anyone else about it. You’re kind of like my secret diary, only you talk back to me and give oddly good advice sometimes.
Hmm. Interesting.
Me: Sometimes? I’m offended.
Magnolia: You don’t get offended.
Me: Touché. Okay, hit me.
Magnolia: You won’t judge?
Me: Never.
Another long pause, and then:
Magnolia: Okay… I miss sex.
My fingertips stall on the keyboard, barely grazing the keys. I wasn’t exactly expecting that, and I’m fairly certain I’m the worst possible person to give advice on the subject.
I’ve had sex twice. Fucking twice in my entire thirty-two years of life. I lost my virginity to some awkward classmate when I was sixteen because I thought it was something I had to do. It was weird and terrible, and I ignored her for the next two years of high school.
Then it happened again on my twenty-first birthday. One of Bree’s tipsy friends dragged me up to her bedroom, hopped on my dick, and five minutes later I decided I had no desire to ever do that again.
While I’m inherently attracted to women in the physical sense, my emotional connection to them has always been nonexistent, if not bordering on toxic.
Whenever I look at a woman, I see my mother. They all morph into her, with her sneering laugh, her beady, yellowing eyes, her blanched skin. Her long, brittle talons that would scratch at me, leaving bloody nail marks in their wake, and her dark, wiry hair, always hanging loose and greasy around her sunken-in face.
They’re all girls like Gwen and the rest of my foster sisters—all except for Bree. Sniveling, mocking, cruel. They’re like my foster mother, with her sharp, pointy features and a thin mouth that never smiled.
They’re all the girls in swim class who would laugh at me because I refused to take my shirt off in the pool, too horrified to put my grisly scars on display.
One of the girls ripped it off of me once, then humiliated me in front of the entire class, pointing and laughing at the evidence of my abuse.
I still never take my shirt off in public, even when I’m working outside in the ninety-degree heat, and it’s probably just another reason why I’ve had no interest in sex.
I’m too… exposed.
Swallowing, I shoot her the only feasible advice that comes to mind.
Me: So, have sex.
Magnolia: It’s not that simple. I haven’t been with anyone since… him. I haven’t been with anyone before him. It’s always been him. Only him.
My mind wanders, and I can’t help but wonder if Melody has slept with anyone since her husband died. Maybe she rotates men in and out of her bed like a goddamn Ferris wheel.
Or maybe not.
Maybe she’s lonely and celibate. Maybe the moment we shared together in her basement was as alarming and out of character for her as it was for me.
I send my reply.
Me: And now it’s only you. What are you going to do about it?
Magnolia: Stew in my loneliness and complain to you, apparently.
Me: Cop-out. The Magnolia I know stopped wilting a long time ago.
Magnolia: Maybe.
Falling against the chairback with a heavy breath, I roll it side to side, chewing on my lip as I ponder a response.
And then that response comes spewing out of me like vomit.
Me: Advice time. Here it comes…
Magnolia: Oh, boy.
Me: I think you need to go have sex. Raw, dirty, messy sex. The hair-pulling, biting, scratching kind. The kind that turns you inside-out and reinvents you. You need to come so hard, you forget about everything else, and you shatter into a million pieces, blinded by stars and galaxies, until you’re fucking free-falling, levitating, weightless. Screaming and begging. And the only thing you can think about is doing it all over again.
I click send before thinking it through, and then I have instant regret. Especially after three solid minutes tick by and nothing.
Fuck.
What the hell was that? Where did it come from?
I’ve never experienced that shit before. Is that what… I want?
Wondering if I scared her the fuck away, I attempt to fill the silence.
Me: I lose you? Too much?
She finally responds.
Magnolia: No. I’m just sitting here trying to figure out if that was supposed to be a suggestion or an offer.
Wait… what?
I blink at the screen, scanning over her words at least a dozen times.
Double fuck.
I’m not sure what the hell to say to that, as it was entirely unexpected, so naturally, I continue to spew more absurdity.