Page 12 of September

“I’m going outside to bring Myra something to drink and play with Buster. You two have fun,” Elisa replied.

Gwen watched her walk back toward the kitchen and waited until she thought that she was out of earshot.

“So, what’s really going on?” she asked her niece.

“Nothing.” Adele shrugged. “I just need–”

“Bullshit. I’m not the mom. I’m the cool aunt. Spill.”

Adele closed her computer and said, “Wendy and I did it.”

Gwen sat there frozen and with wide eyes because, of all the things she had expected her eighteen-year-old niece to say, it hadn’t beenthatone. Now, she was really wishing that she hadn’t told Elisa to go.

“Yeah…” Adele added. “And I told Mom that we were going to do it before it happened, but now that it has, I don’t know how to bring it up to her. It’s weird. She’s my mom. Can I really talk to her about…stuff? I told her about Tucker after he and I did it, but I didn’t, like, give her details or anything.”

“Well, what do you mean by stuff and details, exactly?”

“Like, what we did.”

“I see,” Gwen said and swallowed, wholly unprepared to have this conversation.

She thought about how Elisa probably had beer or wine in the kitchen that she could really use right about now, but she soldiered on because this was about her niece, not her.

“Did you not like it?” she asked.

“No, I did,” Adele said quickly. “Ireallydid.”

“Okay. Well, what did you need to talk about?”

“I don’t know if I was any good. Wendy’s done that before, and we talked about it before we did it. I told her to tell me if I wasn’t doing something right, and we promised each other that we wouldn’tfake it, but I think she did. I asked her about it, and she said she didn’t. She promised me it was real, and she got upset with me that I didn’t believe her after the second time she said it.”

“Why don’t you believe her?”

Adele placed her computer on the table and replied, “It was really fast.”

“She came fast?”

“Aunt Gwen!” Adele turned around as if expecting her mom to be standing right there, and she didn’t want her to hear that.

“What?” Gwen asked. “We’re talking about sex here. If you’re old enough to have it, Adele, you’re old enough to use the words. She had an orgasm quickly. Orgasm is a lot of syllables. So, shecamefast.”

“Fine. Yes, she didthat,” Adele replied with red cheeks.

“Why is that a bad thing?”

“Because I did that with Tucker when he and I had sex. I pretended because it wasdonequickly.”

“Honey, girls can come fast, too. It’s a good thing. It means that Wendy was really enjoying herself.”

“I was… down there.” Adele pointed between her own legs. “Does it really happen that fast? When she did that to me, it took a while.”

“Yes, it can happen that fast. And every woman is different. Some don’t come from that at all, and some might not like it, which is fine, too.”

“She said she did.”

“Then, you need to believe her. If she tells you that she didn’t fake anything with you, you need to believe her, Adele. It sounds like you two enjoyed what you were doing, and that’s a good thing. Making a woman come is an amazing experience. It’s one of my favorite things to do.”

“Aunt Gwen, come on,” Adele said, shaking her head.