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Valeria slaps her hand to her mouth. A wide-eyed oh fuck surprise face. “I figured it was, like, within a year, but shit…” She takes my hand. “Um, you not being ready for a strap is, like, themost normal thing I’ve heard. Shit, two months? You could’ve told me.”

I sink deeper into the covers. “It’s…not exactly the cutest thing to say.”

“Luna, what are you talking about, ‘cute’? Don’t be ridiculous. And of course I wouldn’t have cared. Jesus, you’re— How are you feeling? This is—this is a lot. I did— Are you okay with how things went down?”

I take a deep breath. “Did I lose my virginity? When would you say that happened?”

Valeria’s body language tightens, still panicked. “What?”

“We had sex, right?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

Valeria eyes Eustace, then slowly focuses on me. “I mean, I personally consider it oral, but I don’t think it’s so black and white.”

“But I didn’t perform oral on you.”

Valeria takes my hand. “Luna, it’s…Would you lose your virginity to a man if he penetrated you but didn’t make you orgasm?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I guess I don’t have to orgasm for you to lose your virginity.” She pauses. “But for the record, we both did come. Like seven days in a row. I know virginity is so confusing and the idea that you have to lose it is so prevalent in society, and…I mean, if it makes you feel more confident to have been eaten out or to have had my fingers inside you, sure, you lost it.”

I huff. “Why don’t you or Romy just have a straight answer?”

She runs her fingers through Eustace’s fur. “Because virginity is stupid as a concept. Because why should het sex count if women don’t orgasm? But you have to define what sex means to you for yourself. If you get down to the bare bones, sex is, what? A performance of intimacy and sexual satisfaction? Then…”

Us naked together on that rug. Knowing each other’s bodies. Making each other come and holding each other, knowing those intimate details. That sensation of post-orgasm bliss: smelling someone else’s scent, feeling someone else’s hands on my back, looking into someone’s eyes. Being one of a special few who knows what she sounds like when she comes. And she’s the only one who knows what I do when I come. That feeling I had in the Uber after karaoke simmers in me, the feeling that I was getting something intangible about sexual desire that I never got with the men I dated. It wasn’t earth-shattering like the books I read as a teen said it would be, but it was something I’d never felt before.

I want sex to be as simple as that.

“I guess I did.”

And I guess it can be.

She studies me. “Were you hoping I’d take your virginity when we started flirting?”

I blush, hard. “Yes.”

She swallows. “And I wanted an escape from this closet thing. I guess we kind of played each other.”

I don’t know how to feel about that. It’s bitter, and yet it’s also intimate on a whole different level. We were both so uncomfortable with aspects of our sexualities, and we were finally able to break past that with each other. We trusted the other enough to try, at least.

“I guess we should have had that talk you wanted to have earlier.”

She smiles, joyfully at first, but then it slips into sadness. “I’m out with people I know. I’ve been out since I was nineteen. But…” She takes a deep breath. “I had a fiancée in my Ph.D.program. But when my dissertation was denied and I got the part in that movie, we just—we ended things. Then the premiere for Stroke comes along, and my delightful publicist, Tori, says I have two options: a certified female family member or a male friend. Attractive, preferably. I ended up going with Charlie. You met him on set, right?” I nod. “Yeah, he’s gay as shit too, but the media hasn’t really asked him about it since we ‘broke up’ before Goodbye, Richard!”

My eyes sting.

“I spent more than six years living my authentic life, out and proud, and they just kinda snapped their fingers and it all went away.” She blinks. “And the worst thing is they make you believe their bullshit. For so long, I was genuinely afraid of coming out accidentally, thinking it’d kill this career I left my whole life for.”

“Would they really keep you in the closet forever? No one even cares now.”

“They said I was free to marry a woman and have kids. I’d just need to keep them a tight-lipped secret. But they said that was fine, because why would I want to expose my family to fame anyway?” She pauses. “Mostly celebrities who’re in the glass closet want to be there. They want their privacy. I was never even given the choice.”

The whole argument with her team…It wasn’t about her dating someone she worked with. It was about her being seen publicly with a woman.