Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner Page A

and after a while it’s like there’s no other way you can do it?”
    No, she thought. “Yes,” she said.
    “Well, I’m like that. It’s like that for me. It’s like that with…” He gestured toward his crotch.
    “Sex?”
    He nodded miserably.
    “So you can only do it, like, in missionary position?”
    He sighed. “I wish. I’ve actually never…”
    It took her a minute to realize what he was saying. “Never?”
    “I can only do it by myself. I have this very specific method, and…”
    “What?” she demanded, shifting her weight so that her thighs were rubbing together. She was intrigued. And very turned on. “Tell me! Unless it involves, you know, your mother’s girdle or something. In which case you should feel free to lie.”
    There was a thunk as he banged his forehead against the roof of the car. “I can’t.”
    Becky poked his chest through the opened window. “Can’t tell me or can’t do it?”
    “It’s idiotic,” he said. “It’s so dumb, and I’ve never talked about this with anyone.”
    “What?” Her mind was ticking off possibilities, each more horrific than the last. Leather. Whips. Plastic wrap. Oh, my.
    He winced. “I can’t believe this,” he said, as if he was talking to himself. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”
    “Yes, you can,” she said, reckless in the warm June rain, willing herself to forget, for the moment, her earnest engineering-student boyfriend, who was probably waiting for her in his bed, on his beige percale sheets. “Take me home and tell me.” She unlocked the passenger’s side door. “I promise I won’t laugh.”
    Half an hour later, Andrew and Becky were back on his futon. The room was lit by two candles burning on top of the television set. Andrew had a juice glass full of Scotch in his hand, and his eyes were squeezed shut, as if he couldn’t stand to even look at her. “My mother…” he began.
    Oh, Lord, Becky thought. Please don’t let this involve something inappropriate with his mother.
    “She’s very. Um. Intrusive. When I was a kid, she didn’t let me have a lock on my bedroom door. The only place I could get any privacy was the bathroom. So I learned to…”
    “Get off,” Becky supplied.
    He smiled a little, his eyes still closed. “Right. Um. Lying on my stomach on the bath mat. Kind of, um, rubbing back and forth.”
    She exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Given the possibilities—nurse’s outfits, enema bags, stuffed-animal costumes, and worse—she was pretty sure that she could deal with a bath mat. “That’s not so bad.” She glanced toward the closed bathroom door, trying to remember whether she’d ever even seen his bath mat and whether jealousy was appropriate.
    “It’s not so bad until you try to do it any other way.” His voice got softer. “Like with a girl.”
    “So you never…”
    He swallowed a mouthful of Scotch and shook his head, his brow furrowed, eyebrows knitted. “No. Never. Not even once.”
    God. She felt so sorry for him…sorry, and aroused. A virgin. She’d never been with a virgin. She could barely remember being a virgin herself.
    “Tell you what,” she said. “I think we should do an experiment.”
    “It won’t work,” he said. “I’ve tried before.”
    Her mind tingled with possibilities and with questions. She wondered what had happened during his experiments. Would he get to a certain point with a girlfriend, then dash off to the loo and belly-flop on top of the bath mat for the finale? Or fake orgasm? Could men do that?
    “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” she asked
    He gave her another ghost of a smile. “I don’t know. Dying a virgin?”
    Becky winced. “Okay, that actually is the worst thing that could happen. But I bet we can figure this out.”
    He opened his eyes. “I appreciate that. Really, I do. No matter what happens, I’ll never forget that you were so…” His voice cracked. “…Nice about this.”
    “You’re