by Noelle Adams
He forced himself to speak through the block in his throat. “I’d... I’d be terrible at it.”
Her eyes flew up, as if what he’d said surprised her. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d be fine. I don’t need a good talker or someone to charm Mima. I just need a male body.”
Maybe some guys would think her words were an insult, but they actually made Brent feel better. She knew him well enough to understand his concern. “I get so nervous sometimes I can barely talk.”
“That’s okay. I’ll just tell Mima you’re shy. She’ll probably like that. You’re not going to have to say much of anything. Just let me introduce you to Mima as my fiancé. That’s all.”
“Just the one time?”
Her face twisted. “Well, no, it will probably have to be more than once. She’s going to stay for a couple of weeks, so we’ll need to have a few meals with her and maybe you’ll come to Mass with us on Sunday morning and maybe... It will be a couple of weeks’ worth of pretending. I know it’s a lot to ask.”
He breathed in and then out slowly. He desperately wanted to help her, and she seemed sincere in her belief that his social inadequacies wouldn’t be a major obstacle. “So I could just sit there? Not talk or anything?”
“Yes!” She reached out to touch his knee, and it caused his skin to tingle even through the thick fabric of his jeans. “You could just sit there. You’d probably relax a little after a few days, so you could answer direct questions and everything. But I would cover for anything you had trouble answering. And I’ll just tell Mima you’re shy and it takes you a while to warm up with new people. It wouldn’t even be a lie, right?”
He gave a huff of dry amusement. “Right.”
“So you’ll... you’ll think about it?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into. “I’ll... I’ll do it. If you can’t find anyone better.”
“I don’t want anyone better. You’ll do just fine. Thank you so much!” She was beaming at him, and it was starting to go to his head. “What can I do for you to repay you?”
He dropped his eyes. “You don’t have to repay me,” he mumbled.
“Yes, I do. I want to. Is there anything I can do for you?” She paused, obviously thinking quickly. “Do you want me to set you up with a friend of mine? I could find you someone really cute and sweet.”
He rubbed his beard, feeling his cheeks flush. When he couldn’t get a sound out, he shook his head instead.
“Are you sure? You don’t date very much. Oh. Are you into... into guys?”
“No!” He cleared this throat, embarrassed by his vehemence. He just didn’t want Chloe to get the wrong idea. “I like girls.”
He risked a glance up at her and saw something like relief on her face. He didn’t understand it, but it made his heart skip a few beats.
“So let me find you a nice girl.”
“I’m... terrible with girls. You wouldn’t want to do that to one of your friends.”
“Well, that’s okay. A lot of girls don’t mind— Oh, I know what I can do to repay you! I can help you with girls.”
“Help me?”
“Yes, help you. Help you get more comfortable around them. Help you talk to them and everything. How about that?”
“I don’t need...” He didn’t finish the sentence since it would be an obvious lie.
He needed all the help with girls he could get.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” he managed to say instead.
“Yes, it would. I’m good at that kind of thing. I’ve dated tons, and I know girls a lot better than you do. Why shouldn’t I be able to help you?” Her eyes were wide and questioning.
She clearly had absolutely no idea that he was totally gone on her.
Since she was waiting for a response, he made himself mutter, “Okay. Thanks.”
She clapped her hands excitedly. She was always like that. Bright as a ray of sunshine. Spilling over with whatever she was feeling. He’d never known anyone so full of light, bursting into a room and filling it with her warm glow.
“So have you ever had a real girlfriend?” she asked.
“Yes.” He was glad he was able to answer at least this question in the affirmative. “I got together with a girl in my senior year of high school, and we dated all through college.”
“Oh. Wow. You were with her a long time. Was she your only serious girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“When was the last date you went on?”
“I don’t know. About a year ago. I tried online dating and did okay until it got time to actually meet them in person. Then I always... blew it.”
“So what do you need the most help with?” she asked, clearly ready to get to work.
Half-embarrassed and half-excited, Brent was too flustered to be speechless. “Everything.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. You seem to warm up once you get to know people. Is it just meeting women at the beginning that’s the hardest for you? Approaching them? Making the first steps?”
“No. It’s everything.”
“Everything?” Her hand had returned to his knee, and she was just resting it there.
The touch felt like it branded him, and it was so distracting that he didn’t guard his words. “Everything. I haven’t done... anything.”
He always did this. He couldn’t seem to talk when he wanted to, and then he’d end up blurting out the most inappropriate thing he ever could have said.
A wave of heat washed over him, killing his earlier chill of nerves.
Chloe’s eyes were bigger than he’d ever seen them. Her full lips parted slightly as she stared at him.
She knew now.
She knew.
“Brent?” she asked after a minute. “Are you saying... Have you never...”
His shoulders slumped. No sense in pretending. He was the world’s worst liar. “Never.”
“You’ve never had sex?”
He shook his head in confirmation, checking her expression and relieved that she looked surprised but not appalled or judgmental.
“What about your girlfriend in high school and college.”
“We never had sex. She wanted to wait until we got married, so we never did anything but kiss.”
She frowned. “So why didn’t you get married then, if you waited all that time for her?”
Brent glanced away. “She... she broke up with me after we graduated college.”
“Oh my God! You waited all that time and then...”
“It wasn’t like that. She didn’t do it on purpose. She thought we’d grown apart, and she was right. I did love her, but it was a teenage kind of feeling that went away as we changed and grew up. But being with her for so long is why I... I got a slow start to begin with.”
“So why not start after that?” she asked.
“Because...” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Because to have sex, you actually need to be able to ask a girl out.”
Her eyes still wide, she stared at him. Her mouth quivered just slightly.
He closed his eyes and tugged on his beard. “Go ahead and laugh.”
She made a sound like a giggle, but she was fighting to keep her face straight. “I’m not laughing.”
Now that it was out there, he actually felt better about it. Chloe wasn’t judging him or mocking him. Her eyes were very soft. “Yes, you are. It’s okay.”
She let her amusement spill out in soft laughter. She squeezed his knee. “Oh my God, Brent. There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin if it’s a conscious decision, but if you want to have sex and you’re just afraid to ask girls out, then we can definitely do something about it. You should have asked for my help a long time ago.”
He was smiling sheepishly, unable to resist the warm fondness in her face. He hadn’t realized she really liked him, but it sure looked like she did. “I might be beyond help.”
“No, you’re not. Of course you’re not. You’re a smart
, good-looking guy, and girls are going to like you if you let them get to know you. You just need to relax and get more comfortable. I can help you with that.”
“You can try. But I don’t think you realize how paralyzing it is to be so inexperienced at twenty-five years old. Even if I could manage to ask a girl out and get to the point of... of doing something with her, I have no idea what I’m doing. Studying porn doesn’t help.”
She choked with amusement at his last comment. “Have you really studied porn?”
“Of course I have. But knowing specific moves I’m supposed to use doesn’t help me actually... do them. So even if I was able to talk to a girl, how the hell am I going to figure out what to do in bed?”
“You just need practice. Have you thought about...”
When she trailed off, Brent prompted, “Thought about what? I promise I’ve thought of everything.”
“Just... just hiring someone to have sex with you?”
“I’ve thought about it. I even tried it once. But it felt... wrong. For me, I mean. I don’t want to have sex with a stranger. And I didn’t know anything about the woman—about what brought her to the point where she was doing this. And it worried me. What if she’d been abused or something? What if that was why she was earning a living that way? I just didn’t know, and I didn’t want to... to make things worse for her. Treating her like nothing but a body. It didn’t feel right.” The words were falling out now, like a dam had been unleashed inside him. “So I didn’t do it after all. I paid her and sent her home.”
Chloe was still smiling, but her face twisted as if she was feeling something deeply. “That’s really amazing, Brent.”
He blinked. “Amazing? Aren’t I the most pathetic guy you’ve ever met?”
“No. Not even close. I like you better now than I did yesterday. I think you’re... pretty great.”
His cheeks were flushed hotly now, but he hoped his beard might hide some of it. “Oh. Thanks. I guess.”
“I totally understand not wanting to have sex with a stranger. So maybe just ask a friend to have sex with you,” Chloe suggested, moving back to their previous topic.
He gave her a narrow-eyed look. “You heard what I said about being unable to talk to girls, right? You think I have a lot of female friends I’d be comfortable asking to help me out with sex?”
Chloe giggled. “Oh. Right. I guess that makes sense.” She was giving him a different look now. Speculative.
His heart sped up. “What are you thinking right now?”
“I’m thinking...” She broke off, ducking her head and slanting a look up at him. “I’m thinking that I wouldn’t mind helping you.”
He froze. “With... with girls?”
“With sex.”
They stared at each other.
Brent licked his lips. “It’s not nice to tease me like that.”
“I’m not teasing, Brent. I’m serious. I wouldn’t mind... if it’s something you could want.”
“I don’t need pity.”
“Not pity. Just a... a friendly agreement. You help me, and I help you. I like you. I think you’re attractive.”
“Really?” He heard the surprised pleasure in his own voice.
“Of course. You know you’re good-looking, right?” Chloe’s hand moved from his knee to his forearm. “Listen, Brent. It’s totally fine if you don’t like the idea. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. But I have sex all the time with guys I like a lot less than you.”
“Really? Why?”
She shrugged. “Because I like to have sex, and I’m not in a serious relationship. But it’s better with someone you really like, and I’ve discovered—now that you’ve let me get to know you more—that I really like you. I’d be very happy to help you out with sex, if it’s something you might enjoy.”
His eyes blurred over. He couldn’t believe this was really happening.
Evidently it was.
Chloe was waiting for a response.
“I... I don’t know.”
“That’s fine. If you’re not attracted to me, then—”
“Of course I’m attracted to you!”
His interruption was evidently too vehement. She stared at him in surprise.
He cleared his throat. “I think you’re gorgeous. That’s not the problem. I just don’t know... I don’t want it to feel like a trade-off. Sex, I mean. I’ll help you with the fiancé thing without you having to have sex with me.”
She didn’t answer immediately, so he darted a quick look up to see her expression.
To his surprise, she was smiling at him with a kind of overflow of fond appreciation. “You really are the sweetest guy I’ve ever known,” she said at last.
He dropped his eyes and didn’t say anything, but a warmth spread out in his chest.
Maybe it would be nice to be hot or sexy or powerful. But she clearly appreciated sweetness, so he’d take what he got.
“How about this?” she asked in a different tone. “You help me with the fiancé thing, and I’ll help you get more comfortable being physical with women. We’ll start with some easy stuff and see how it goes. If we... we enjoy it, and if we’re both comfortable with it, we can have sex. But it won’t be an obligation or a trade-off. And at the very least you’ll get a little practice being close to a girl, so maybe it will make it easier for you later on.”
At the moment, he couldn’t imagine wanting to be close to any woman except Chloe, but hopefully that wouldn’t be the state of his existence for the rest of his life.
If she thought he’d be okay, he wanted to help her with her family situation.
And he wasn’t about to say no to being close to Chloe—physically or otherwise.
He knew she wasn’t going to fall in love with him. She dated successful, outgoing men. Not geeky farm boys who could barely get a word out around her and were embarrassingly inexperienced.
But she wasn’t lying when she said she liked him. He’d assumed sex with her would be an impossibility, but she made it sound like it wasn’t. Even the slightest flicker of hope transformed everything for him.
She was waiting for a response, so he muttered, “That sounds good.”
“Okay. Good. We’ll need to find some sort of engagement ring. Maybe we can go shopping after work tomorrow, and we can work out a simple backstory to tell Mima about our engagement. Then we’ll take it from there.”
“That sounds good.” He’d already said that, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She hesitated a moment, as if to see if he’d say anything else. When he didn’t, she reached over to pat his knee. “Thank you, Brent. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled.
“It’s not nothing to me.”
With that, she got off his bed and walked out of his room, leaving him to his dissertation and a flurry of chaotic thoughts and feelings.
The only coherent word that came through the blur was her name. Chloe. Repeated over and over again.
Three
THE NEXT DAY, CHLOE was feeling excited.
She wasn’t even sure why.
She was still hurt and angry about what her mother had done, and she was still sad about losing Mima soon.
But her conversation with Brent the night before had been unexpectedly amazing.
She woke up thinking about him, and she kept thinking about him all through the day.
When she finished work at five, she walked across campus to the building where Brent’s department was located. He shared an office with another graduate student. She’d dropped by his office one other time with Steve and Michelle, so she knew where to find him. The office door was open, so she stood in the doorway and looked in.
Brent was sitting at the desk near the window, working on his computer. He was facing the wall, and he clearly had no idea of her presence.
The other graduate student he shared the office with was a friendly black woman in her thirties. She was at her
desk as well, and she glanced up after a few seconds. “Hey there,” she said.
“Hi,” Chloe said, nodding toward Brent, who looked big and rough and ridiculously attractive in his flannel shirt and full beard. “I’m here for Brent.”
Brent looked up in surprise at the sound of her voice. She couldn’t tell if he was happy to see her or not.
“Well, come get him,” the other woman said. “I was afraid he was never going to ask anyone out.” She was clearly teasing, and her smile was wide and genuine.
Chloe could tell that she really liked Brent, so she returned the smile. “I had to do the asking,” she said in a matching tone, going over to Brent and standing next to his chair. “But we do what we have to do.”
His officemate reached over to shake her hand. “I’m Ruth,” she said. “And I’m glad you’re willing to brave the beard.”
Brent made a grunting sound that made both women laugh.
“Come on,” Chloe said, putting a hand on his shoulder and trying not to like the feel of it beneath her palm. She tried to read the document on the screen, but she couldn’t understand any of it. “It’s almost five thirty, and we’ve got things to do.”
Brent was already closing down his computer, so Chloe waited as he got his stuff together.
She could sense Ruth checking her out, and she could hardly blame the other woman. She hadn’t corrected Ruth’s assumption that she and Brent were going out. It wouldn’t hurt Brent to have the people he worked with and went to school with believe he had at least a little game. Maybe it would encourage someone else to ask him out.
Her internal response to that thought surprised her. A small clench of jealousy.
She didn’t actually like the idea of some other girl asking Brent out, even though she knew it would be good for him.
Maybe she liked Brent more than she realized.
Until the conversation with him in his room last night, it had never occurred to her to be interested in him as anything but a friend and roommate. But something had definitely changed.