A beat passed.
“Your first breakup,” he said as the moon came out from behind the clouds. “How did that go? That wasn’t Dirk, was it?”
I shook my head. “But Dirk was the first bad one. I had a few boyfriends before but none that were really serious. Each time we either drifted apart amicably or—”
“Or you broke their heart before they could break yours?” There was a hint of accusation, that made my gut drop. Isn’t that why I’d played people for so long? So their pain would eclipse mine?
“Something like that,” I said, hugging my arms around myself.
“How about when you lost your virginity?”
I almost stopped breathing.
“What exactly does that mean these days?” I asked when I found my voice. “The first time I was penetrated? The first time I sucked a dick? The first time I had an orgasm?” Two of those stories were not ones I was prepared to tell.
His eyes were glued on me, as always, and I was halfway sure he knew exactly what I didn’t want him to ask, but then he said, “Let’s go with the traditional sense.”
“That was fine,” I answered, relieved. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but it hadn’t been a big deal when it happened. “Over and done quickly. Nothing to tell Dr. Edward about.”
“Uh-uh. That’s not adequate. Tell me what happened.”
“You’re a little horny bugger tonight, aren’t you?”
“You wish. Stop stalling. Tell.”
A breeze blew a strand of hair across my face. I set my flute down in the sand, making sure it was balanced before I gathered my hair in one hand and pulled it over one shoulder, and angled my body to face him. “It’s not a grand tale of erotica, so don’t get excited or worry about memorizing it for the spank bank. Okay.” I took a deep breath, trying to remember just how it had begun. “I was almost seventeen. It was October. In the fall we spent a lot of weekends at the country club upstate. Dad called it father/daughter time, but, really, he’d play golf, and I’d hang out at the stables. Which was fine. I didn’t have much interest in spending time with him anyway. I mean, I was a teenager.”
I was twice that age now and still didn’t want to spend time with him.
“Anyway, John was a security guard, and when I came back from riding, he’d often be—”
“Pause a second. He worked at the club? How old was this John?” Edward had the tone I’d seen him get with his daughter, protective and possessive. It wasn’t a tone I’d heard often from my own father.
“He was twenty-seven,” I admitted.
“Celia.” Edward looked at me sharply. “He was ten years older than you?”
“You’re ten years older than me.”
“You’re thirty-two now, not seventeen. Not almost seventeen. That’s rape.”
I waved at him dismissively. “It wasn’t rape. It was consen—”
He cut me off again. “It doesn’t matter if it was consensual. He knew how old you were, I’m guessing. If you weren’t yet seventeen and he was an adult—”
It was my turn to cut him off. “Fine, it was illegal. But I was two weeks away from my birthday. It wasn’t ideal, and he knew my age, and, yes, that was bad, and I am not at all minimizing the impact of rape on a woman’s life, but this did not have that effect on me. He was just a guy, and he’d noticed me, and I wanted to get it over with, and I didn’t want it to be stupid and juvenile, so John seemed like a good choice. Dad.”
Edward was quiet, his jaw clenched.
I waited to see if he was going to say anything more, if I was going to have to defend the situation further.
Then, in the silence, I wondered why I was trying to defend the situation at all. “Maybe it was a big deal. I don’t know. The whole thing was just so anticlimactic. Literally. There was a utility shed that he took me to with cement floors. He took his jacket off and laid it on the ground for me. Then he helped me pull down my riding pants and told me to lie down. He unzipped his slacks and put on a condom that he’d had stashed in his wallet. Then he laid down over me and pushed himself in. It didn’t really hurt, and I didn’t bleed. I’m pretty sure my hymen had been broken a long time before that. It wasn’t comfortable, though. I wasn’t wet. He didn’t kiss me. He held my hands over my head, which, nowadays I think is pretty hot, but with John I felt...restrained. And then…”
I trailed off, trying to remember the details, the slapping of his belt against the cement floor, the smell of his breath, the strain in my thighs as I tried to keep them open with my pants still wrapped around my ankles. “My brain shut down. I think it went on for a while, but I don’t remember much after that. Just, eventually, he was done and tying off the condom. Then he was helping me to my feet and making sure my hair wasn’t a mess before sending me out to meet my father. It happened a couple of other times, exactly the same way. I’d thought it would get better, and it didn’t so after the third time, I found excuses not to go to the club anymore and that was that.”
Edward’s features had relaxed, but his expression was still grim. “He didn’t force you?”
“No.” Though, there had been a part of me that had felt like I hadn’t had a choice. Not that I could explain that, because I certainly did have a choice. He hadn’t bullied me. There had been plenty of chances to walk away.
“Why did you do it?” he asked, voicing the question I hadn’t been able to ask myself.
I shrugged.
“Not good enough, little bird.”
I puffed on my cigar a few times, thinking. “I wanted to get it over with. I know I said that already, and it’s true. All my friends had boyfriends. Everyone was fucking. Everyone wanted to be fucking. I don’t know that I was especially eager to, but it felt like my virginity was more of a liability than an advantage, if that makes sense. When a guy found out I hadn’t done it yet, that’s all they cared about. I was tired of always having to protect that virtue. Also, when the right guy came along—because yes, I still believed in that whole right guy thing back then—I didn’t want to be inexperienced.
“But if you’re asking why John...that’s harder to answer. He was always around, saying things. Dirty things. About how pretty my cum would look on his dick and how much better I’d feel with him between my thighs than a horse. Maybe if that had been the first time I’d heard a man say those kinds of things to me, I would have run off and told someone. Made a complaint. But it wasn’t even the third time I’d heard them. Not even the thirtieth. I’d been told for years by so many men in so many ways that my value was in getting men off. And since I’d never been fucked, I guess it felt like I wasn’t even living up to that.”
My mouth felt dry after all that. I picked up the champagne and finished it off in one swallow, then returned the glass to the ground and stared out at the ocean, the light of the moon reflecting on the ripples. “So it was fine. It wasn’t awesome, but it wasn’t the worst. Do I wish it had been different? Yes. I was a sort of romantic girl. I wanted the dream scenario. The boy who loved me, a boy I trusted. There’d be rose petals laid out and candles burning and soft piano music playing, and I’d be so turned on that I’d be wet before his dick got anywhere near me, especially because he’d give me three orgasms before his pants ever came down. But things rarely happen like the dream, and I didn’t see any way the dream was going to happen for me, especially when…” When Hudson hadn’t looked at me twice in any way that wasn’t sisterly.