Page 53 of Necessary Time

“This is all just a lot,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be. Sex can be a beautiful thing.”

“Like a pension.” I rolled my eyes. “I remember.”

“Much better than a pension.” Grayson flipped on the blinker and made a turn onto PCH. “The next thing I’m going to say is from a place of compassion and friendship, okay?”

“That’s ominous.”

“Sex can be really great, Wes. Like, intimate and groundbreaking, leave you trembling in a pool of spit and sweat if you’re doing it right.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, shifting uncomfortably in the passenger seat.

“And sometimes it’s boring, or painful, or just…not right. Either one is okay.”

“One sounds much more okay than the other,” I said.

He laughed at me. “The point is, above all else, sex should be fun.”

“Fun?” I clenched my molars, thinking about exactly how not fun the idea of having excessively lubricated fingers up my ass sounded.

“Fun,” he said again. “If you can’t laugh with the person you’re fucking, then you shouldn’t be fucking them.”

“I was under the impression laughing during sex was rude.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re being a brat right now and you know exactly what I mean.”

I sighed, the parking structure for our building coming into view. I had been excited to go over to Colin’s, and now I was reduced to not much more than a bundle of immature nerves.

“Is it like that for you?” I asked.

“You and I are different.”

“Are you exempt from the laughing during sex rule?” I shot him a look as he drove into the parking garage, then rolled up my window before the gross parking garage exhaust smell got too overwhelming.

“Not at all, but I have a different kind of sex,” he said, each word coming slow like he was measuring the rightness of it before letting it out of his mouth.

“The kind that uses poppers?”

“Who said poppers are a sex thing?” he asked, pulling into the spot and putting the car into park.

“Aren’t they?” I prompted, ready to get the truth out of him.

“Ask me when you’re older.”

“My birthday is in three weeks,” I reminded him.

“Fine.” Grayson unlatched his seatbelt and pushed open his door. “I’ll tell you when you’re twenty-one.”

I unbuckled and turned toward him, holding out my hand.

“Shake on it.”

He chuckled, rolling his eyes, but he shook my hand.

“It’s a deal, Wes.”

“Good.” I dropped his hand and got out of the car, debating if I wanted to go upstairs first or just leave straight for Colin’s. I’d been over there, but not to stay the night and I didn’t have anything over there. No toothpaste, clean underwear, or anything.