First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances

by Kent, Julia

If I had any doubt whether an entire fist can really fit inside a woman’s vagina (other than in those cable television birthing shows where the midwife shoved her arm in all the way to the elbow), I now knew the answer is YES.

  Especially when my smartphone is in there.

  I couldn’t pull it out.

  Bbbbzzzzzzzzzz.

  A cold horror set in as minutes ticked by and I Could.Not.Get.It.Out. I went to the toilet and tried to push it out. It could land in the toilet and find its way through the sewers of Boston to float out into the ocean and wash up on the shores of Provincetown for all I cared at this point.

  Moisture damage was probably a given by now anyway.

  But—nope.

  I lay back on the floor and pushed.

  Nothing.

  I wiggled and waggled and twisted and turned like I was a contortionist auditioning in front of a very naughty Howie Mandel.

  Nada.

  The bottle of lube beckoned, so I poured an unholy amount all over my naked mons, putting the bottle’s top in my vagina and squeezing. For a brief second, as I let go, it shifted inside me a few millimeters and I panicked, pulling it out fast, as if having that stuck in there was somehow worse.

  The lube did nothing but leave a stain on my floor.

  And then, someone knocked on my front door. I froze. Oh, sweet, merciful Jesus, who in the hell could that be, right here, right now? I stayed in place and stood naked from the waist down, in my own apartment, in horror. No way could I answer the knocking with my vagina humming like a demented version of a song out of Glee.

  I looked around and found my underwear and yoga pants, and yanked them on as quickly as I could, wincing as I bent and turned, unaccustomed to having an entire smartphone up my snatch.

  “Amy!” A very familiar, sickeningly familiar, voice came through my door. A voice with an Ohio accent.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! “Amy? You in there? I was gonna drop this off but your mailbox isn’t labeled.”

  Uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh. I froze and stood there like a toddler with a loaded diaper, bowlegged as if I’d just ridden a horse for five miles across a rocky stretch of mountain at a forty-five degree angle, being chased by a mountain lion. I would just keep quiet and she’d go away.

  Bzzzzzz. The only way to stop the damn app was to turn it off. Slipping my pants down and squatting, I shoved as many fingers as I could inside myself and frantically tapped the glass side, Squish—tap. Squish—tap. Crying without tears, I succeeded on the third try.

  No more humming. I’d turned the app off.

  And then, my pelvis buzzed. WTF? Was this some kind of super-BDSM vibrator app, one that turned Siri into a dominatrix? Did she decide when I was done? Thank you, Mistress, may I have another?

  My addled brain quickly put together that Darla was texting me. Oh, dear God, this had just gone from disgustingly bad to horrifically worse.

  Bzzzzz!

  “No luck,” I heard Darla mutter to herself. Good, good, go away, go away, I thought, standing there, my knees bent at an unnatural angle, my body wracked by the thought that she was texting me and making my g-spot go nuts. And then the distinct ringtone of Call Me Maybe came out of my crotch. Of all the ringtones to pick.

  “That’s weird,” I heard her say as the knocking started again.

  “Amy, you in there? I hear your phone buzzing! Amy? Amy?” Her tone of voice had become concerned. Midwesterners were so weird. Maybe I wasn’t in a place to judge, though.

  Maybe I could just get her to go away if I answered the door and let her know I was fine. I ran my fingers through my hair and took a step. Ow. Another step. Ow. Another step. Shift. Huah! Lurching step by step like a drug smuggler with a bag of cocaine up my ass, I decided no payoff would be enough for me to be a drug coyote. It hadn’t been an aspiration of mine anyway, but it was now official policy. Opening the door was an act of extreme faith. Or stupidity. I don’t think there was much of a difference at this point.

  “Hi,” I said, a little too brightly. “Hi, Darla! come on in!”

  Her eyebrows went from concerned furrow to surprised arches and back down to suspicious scrunch. “Um. Okay. Are you all right?” she said, stepping inside. I stayed near the door, as much to keep her from deciding to get comfortable as to keep from making myself more uncomfortable by walking. We were weirdly close together, but I pretended everything was normal.

  The flip phone in her hand looked like a cat-o-nine-tails from my current perspective, and I was delighted to see her shove it in her back pocket. My stupid brain took a second to think, You can text with a phone that old? That’s pretty amazing.

  “Uh, sure, yeah, totally okay! Is there something...you, uh...what brings you by?”

  She reached into a rather large backpack and pulled out an all-too-familiar object. My tablet.

  “Did I leave that at the bar?” I asked. I took it from her and then turned to put it on the nightstand, and came to a dead halt, flinching. Lurch. Lurch. Lurch. I walked over.

  Darla was simultaneously surveying the boxes piled around the futon on the floor, and watching me mince around. “Amy? Are you sure you’re okay? You’re walking like…Did you...hurt your hoohaw?”

  “My what?”

  “Your...you know.” She gestured to the crotch area. “Your woman parts.”

  “You mean my vagina?”

  “Any of it,” she said. “Vagina, vulva, clitoris. Whatever. You okay?” And then her face changed. “Oh, did you have a really good night of sex? Did I interrupt somethin’? Is there a guy in your bathroom? Oh, shit, I’ll get goin’.”

  If my wits had been present, I would have told her, “Yes, there is a guy in the bathroom and please get the fuck out, now.” Except my wits weren’t with me. Hell, if they had been, I wouldn’t have been standing there with Steve Jobs’ baby midway to my womb. “No, no, I don’t have a guy...no, no.”

  “Well, then,” she leaned in, “you got a yeast problem? ’Cuz,” she twisted the backpack around to her hip and began to rummage in it, whispering, “I have a coupon you can use…”

  I looked around the hundred square feet we were in and said, “There’s no one else here, so you don’t have to whisper.”

  “Oh, I was just trying to be, you know, modest.”

  “You? Modest?”

  Darla, still confused but suspecting she ought to be insulted, opened her mouth to say something to me

  And at that exact moment, Darth Vader appeared. “Dum dum dum da duh dum da duh dum,” my vagina said.

  “Is that your phone?” Darla said, looking around. “Where is it? Sounds like it’s under something. I tried to call or text you before, is that why you didn’t answer?” She crouched down to start helping me look for it. Before it dawned on her that my place was too small for furniture that had an “under,” the ring came again. As close as we were to each other, she couldn’t help but realize where it was coming from. My pocketless yoga pants were too tight to hope she thought it was anywhere else.

  “Amy, you’ve got a vagina that can play music!” Darla shouted. “You’ve been hiding one hell of a special gift. Holy shit!” Phone forgotten, she stood back up, and looked around. “All right, where’s Ashton Kutcher? C’mon. I’m gettin’ Punk’d here, aren’t I?”

  The Star Wars theme continued as she walked over to the bathroom door, opened it wide, looked in, slid the shower curtain open. “Nope, nope. Come on, come on out.” She waved her hand. “Get out, get the cam- where’re the cameras? Come on. Come...on,” she stammered, looking at me. “Where...are the cameras? This has to be a joke, right? You’re, like, on some reality TV show here, because nobody’s vagina plays Star Wars.”

  I couldn’t speak because at this point my face was on fire, and I would have been deeply appreciative had the universe spontaneously combusted me, leaving only the smartphone behind in my mortified ashes. At least the ringing had stopped.

  “Unless…is this some really bizarre cosplay body mod?” Darla asked, her tone turned down
to sympathetic and conspiratorial. “You know, Amy, it’s one thing to dress up as Link, or Zelda, or Duella Dent, but sticking a microchip inside your pretty place, is...wow.” She held a finger to her temple and made a face of disgust. “There’s...there’s some limits you gotta employ.”

  “I don’t – I’m not – Ugh,” I sighed. I went over to my futon on the floor and bent down, and made a face as my knees hit the ground. My pelvis felt very very strange, and moving made it worse.

  As did the voicemail alert, I discovered as it started buzzing and made me jump and yelp.

  Darla freaked out, too. “What is it? What is that?” She looked at my crotch. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  “It’s not what you think,” I said.

  “Good, because I don’t know what to think, but I’m imagining all sorts of crazy ass shit, and I’ve got a pretty good imagination, Amy. So, if it’s not what I think, please tell me what it is. The truth can’t be any worse than what I’m thinking.”

  “Well, what are you thinking?” I whined.

  “I’m thinkin’ you’ve got a Star Wars dildo up your vagina or maybe a Storm Trooper butt plug, cause…”

  “A what?” On the continuum of sex toys that could be stuck inside me, the thought that a Storm Trooper butt plug might be the thing that leapt to her mind first made me recoil in horror. Apparently, there’s a spectrum of acceptable items to have shoved in one’s genital area, and in my spectrum, the Storm Trooper butt plug was worse than my smartphone.

  Saying the words meant acknowledging what I had just done to myself, and of all the people I wanted to share that with, Darla was about 147,000th on my list. And then, the absolute kiss of death. The opening lines of I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer, the ringtone I’d assigned Sam when I saved his number in my phone the night before, began to play out of my nether regions. He must have texted me and now he was calling.

  “How is it playing that now? What ….” Her eyes got big and she said, “Amy, is your phone up your crotch?”

  I buried my head in my hands. “It’s not what you think,” I said again. Those words were so anemic.

  “I think you put your phone up your...twat,” she said.

  “Um, then it is what you think,” I stammered.

  She inhaled, started to say something, then frowned, put her finger to her lips, started to say something, then stopped, looked out the window for a second, squinted, raised her eyebrows, looked at me again, and then said, “Why?”

  “It has a vibrator app.”

  “Your phone has a vibrator app?”

  “Yes.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “I think it’s pretty fucking clear,” I said through clenched teeth. “My phone has a vibrator app.”

  “So you can turn a $500 phone into a vibrator?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you just buy a $20 vibrator and then leave yourself with a phone that doesn’t smell like a porno set?”

  Sigh. She had a point. “Do you really want to know the entire story?”

  That made her shut her mouth.

  “Good,” I continued, “I didn’t think so.”

  She pulled out her phone and began to press numbers.

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  Bzzzzz! “Ow!”

  She closed the phone. “You weren’t kidding.”

  I put my finger in her face. “I hate you.”

  “You can’t hate me, honey, ’cause I’m the only one who can help you right now.” She held her hands up with palms facing the ceiling in a gesture that made me homicidal.

  “What are you going to do, pull it out?” I spat.

  She snorted. “I don’t midwife smartphones. Have you tried pulling it out?”

  “Of course I’ve tried pulling it out. I fit my entire fucking fist up there.”

  “Whoa—didn’t need to know that. TMI.”

  “Oh, and it’s not TMI to tell you that I have an entire smartphone shoved up my hoohaw?”

  “Did you, like, go in there and try to use something to pull it out?”

  “Like what, salad tongs?”

  “Well?” she said, making a face like it was something to consider.

  “I have squatted over the toilet, I have reached up with my own hand, I have borne down, I have squirted enough lube inside me to have sex every day for the next five years and not feel a fucking thing. I’ve tried everything, Darla, trust me. You don’t walk around with a smartphone shoved up there and not try everything.”

  She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Have you done a kegel?”

  I did one involuntarily on the spot. “Yes, why? That’ll just keep it in more, not push it out.”

  “No, I just wonder if you could open an app with the right kegels, you know, like, work those muscles and maybe do some Pilates things, and you know, see if you could…”

  “Get out.”

  She held up her hands. “It’s funny! You’ve gotta admit it’s funny, Amy.”

  “I don’t have to admit anything. I have an entire phone in my va-gi-na.”

  “Yeah,” she said, suddenly somber. “You do,” she added, pulling her phone out again.

  “Don’t you dare buzz me.”

  “I’m not gonna buzz you, but I am going to make a phone call that’s going to help you.”

  “Who’re you going to call?”

  “A doctor.”

  “A doctor? I don’t want a…”

  “Amy,” she said kindly, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You need to go to the ER.”

  “Noooo.” I’d wiggled my way over to the bathroom. If I had a bathtub I could soak and try to get this thing out, but all I had was a shower. I couldn’t go to the ER. It would show up on my insurance forms and my mom would ask me why, and – the horror. I was about to become a Facebook urban legend. “All I wanted was to masturbate and dream about sex with a hot guy,” I cried.

  “Isn’t that what we all just want?,” Darla said, philosophically. “Don’t you have any other sex toys, though? Maybe that…”

  “I can’t find them. I have this whole collection, but I moved, and without my trusty Rabbit I…”

  Her hand went back up. “Okay, again...TMI.”

  “You asked!”

  “All right, fair enough, I did ask.” She hunched her shoulders up in defense. “So you downloaded an app and used your phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Aaaaannnd… you pushed…”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t want to say,” I groaned. “I don’t want to say what happened next.”

  “What? You wanted some feeling in…”

  “Yeah.” I waved my hands away. “Now this is TMI.”

  “Well, I kinda have to know.”

  “Why do you have to know?”

  “You’re right, I don’t have to know,” she admitted. “But you need to go to an ER.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t.”

  “But Amy, you have to.” She flipped her phone open again.

  “So who are you calling?” I groaned.

  “My aunt.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “Shush. I know a doctor who’s a gynecologist, and he might be able to help. Give me a minute.” She dialed a few numbers and then waited. “Hey, Josie,” she said. “Yeah, On my way. Running a little late, I had to…I have to….” She looked over at me with a sideways glance. “There’s something I have to take care of. Is Alex on call anywhere right now? Or workin’ a shift at any of the hospitals? Oh, yeah? He is? Yeah, you know which one? All right. Yeah, you think I can give him a call? Phone’s the same? Yep. Okay. Um, it’s, well, it’s nothing you have to worry about. No. No, I don’t have anything that requires antibiotics. No. Yes, they use con-...yes, we are careful all the time. No, I’m not pregnant.”Her shoulders slumped. “I just, I have a friend who needs help with something he can help with. Yes, a friend. No, I’m not using the word ‘friend’ a
s code.” Darla’s eyes rolled so high in her sockets that she could have changed the light bulb in the light fixture. “All right, fine, thanks. Bye.”

  “Your aunt has great faith in you,” I said.

  “You have a phone in your vagina. You do not get to make fun of people,” she said back.

  She had a point. I shut up while she made another phone call, to this guy, Alex.

  “Yeah. Alex? Hey, it’s Darla. Yeah, you workin’? Yeah, I have a friend who has a, um, delicate gynecological issue. No, she’s really a friend, it’s not me. Yes. Do you and Josie telepathically communicate to torment me?”

  Her face soured, then lightened up. “Fine. Yes, I am asking you for a favor for my friend. So, could...is there a way to come to your hospital and get her seen in a way that might be kept quiet? Yeah, can you help? All right, what should I do? Okay, text you when we get there? All right. Okay. I’ll owe you. Yeah, I know. I know. I know! Okay, thanks. Thanks, Alex. Bye.”

  And just like that, in two conversations, Darla began to fix my giant mess.

  “First, honey, we need to get a cab and take you to the hospital where Alex works. He said if we can get there quickly, he’ll meet us at the desk and find a quiet exam room where he can take care of you.”

  “Take care of me? Who is Alex?”

  “Dr. Alex. He’s a gynecologist, you know. An OB. And he’s your only hope.”

  “You say that like he’s Obi Wan Kenobi.”

  She snorted. “For you, he is. How else do you think you’re going to pry that piece of metal and glass out of your delicate bits without having anyone know? It’s not like we can call Mike Rowe and have him yank it out with a plumber’s wrench.”

  We winced in unison.

  “You get my meaning. Alex is my aunt’s boyfriend. He might just be able to keep this all on the down low for you. Isn’t that what you want?”

  I considered it. I did a mental inventory: I knew where my insurance card was, I had plenty of cab fare on me, I could call a cab in less than five…call a cab. Jesus. I could NOT call a cab, because Siri was pressed against my cervix, and I didn’t want her to read out transit company options.

  This was sooooo not sexy. Dear God, I pleaded. Let me push really hard one more time and let it slide out and I will never, ever use another sex toy for my entire life. Ever. Please.