Summer Heacock - The Awkward Path To Getting Lucky

He looks floored. “And you have no problem with that? With the idea of me having sex with someone else?”

I consider this, wanting to be as honest as possible. “It’s not my favorite, and I’m not going to go into great thought imagining you in whatever situations may arise, but yeah, I’m okay with it. I can’t stand the guilt hanging over me anymore, Ryan. You have needs that I’m not meeting, and it just makes sense to let you live your life while I’m getting my shit together over here.”

Ryan gently shakes his head, but seems very calm. He places his hands on the counter by the plates, and his fingers start tapping. Whenever he’s deep in thought, they tap out little non-rhythmic signals. He works with computers all day, so I like to imagine he’s subconsciously working through things by tapping out binary code or something.

“This is sick.”

I give him an encouraging grin. “I like to think it’s practical. And it’s only thirty-four days.”

Ryan stares at me for a long moment, fingers still rapping out a beatless sound, and I can’t read his thoughts in the slightest. He looks down at the food he was setting out before I came in and dropped a giant bomb of what-the-fuck.

“I got that veggie korma you like,” he says with a sigh, pointing to a tray of yellow sauce. “And the garlic naan.”

I’m familiar with this form of acceptance. Ryan is very go-with-the-flow, which is generally a good yin to my yang. Part of me feels a little bad for steamrollering him, but the rest of me knows I’ll be able to make it up to him with sweet, sweet lovin’ in thirty-four days.

“It smells awesome,” I say with a smile.

He seems to easily fall back into our comfortable Wednesday date-night routine as he hands me a plate. “So,” he says, spooning rice out onto a plate of his own, “how was work?”

I grab a fork and quietly let out a deep breath. This is going to work. I’ve totally got this.

Hell, I bet I won’t even need all thirty-four days.

5

“You what?” Shannon shrieks at me.

Our morning meeting ended, and I decided to break the news of my master plan to get my vagina back on track.

“I told him to see other people,” I repeat, running my finger around the rim of my coffee mug. “We’re on a break.”

“How the hell is that supposed to help you?” she shouts at me. “You’re trying to have sex again, so your plan is to get rid of the guy you could be having that sex with?”

“Will you calm down?” I ask, feeling a bit annoyed at her reaction. “I am going to work on the therapy myself. And I have an appointment with my gynecologist next week. I just want to get things sorted on my end before I jump back into bed with him. I want to make damn sure it all works before we go for it. I’m not putting either of us through another failed roll in the hay, okay?”

Liz looks like I just told her the Earth is actually flat.

Butter looks concerned as she asks, “And how did Ryan take all of this?”

I shrug. “He was okay with it, actually,” I answer. “He’s a free agent until our anniversary, and by then, I will bloody well have things in working order, and we’ll pick back up again.”

I swear I can see smoke rolling out of Shannon’s ears. “Part of getting through my therapy had a lot to do with Joe helping me through things, Kat. There was a lot of trial and error!”

“That’s you guys,” I snap. “You’ve been together forever and you have kids and it’s all kinds of different, okay?”

“Everybody chill out,” Butter says, holding up her hands. “There’s no reason to get loud with each other.”

“But she’s being ridiculous!” Shannon argues.

“Lady, calm down,” Butter demands, “or I’ll hit you with my glitter brush.”

Shannon can’t help it. The side of her mouth twitches with a hint of a smile. “Well,” she says at a far more human volume, “are you going to see other people, too?”

“No. Why would I? That’s the whole point. It’s a ‘Me, Myself and I’ kind of therapy.”

“Yeah, but the actual having sex thing isn’t,” she says. “And doing the therapy is very different from sleeping with someone. It’s not like you’re going to be able to just hop back in that saddle after a few weeks of work and everything goes smoothly, you know? It can take a few tries.”

I gasp. “You never told me that!”

Shannon looks around wildly. “When would I have had a chance to tell you? How was I supposed to know you’d run home and break up with Ryan?”

“Glitter brush, guys!” Butter warns.

Shannon takes the kind of breath that I have seen her take many times before when dealing with her children. “I’m just saying that in this case, practice really does make perfect.”

“Since he’s going to be seeing other people,” Butter offers, “why don’t you see other people, too? Then you could...uh, practice.”

Looking like she’s giving this thought way more consideration than it deserves, Shannon says, “That could work, actually.”

I look at them like they’ve each grown three heads. “How am I supposed to date someone new with all this going on? ‘So, this is great—however, it’s possible I can’t have sex with you, but let’s go ahead and give that third date a go anyway’?”

Shannon frowns. “Yeah, you’d want to try with someone you were really comfortable with, for sure.” With a frown directed squarely at me, she adds, “Which is what I assumed Ryan would be.”

I glare at her. “Will you stop? This is hard enough without added guilt from you. He seemed okay with the situation.”

I think he was, anyway. And I think I am.

I am, aren’t I?

We are all standing here, sipping coffee and contemplating what Shannon has said when the back doorbell dings. Morning deliveries. Shannon sighs and sets down her mug, giving it a longing look before she heads out to sign for everything.

Liz, her white-blond hair pulled back tightly into a chignon today, starts fiddling with a ball of lavender-colored fondant. Butter takes her brush out of her apron pocket and pokes at the inside of a nearly empty glitter pot on her station. Both of them are clearly avoiding my gaze, which is more than a little awkward.

Then Shannon comes running back in with a mischievous smile on her face and a stack of boxes in her arms. She’s practically skipping as she sets them down on her station.

“Whatcha doing?” I ask.

“What’s up with you?” Butter asks. “You didn’t even finish your coffee.”

“They came,” Shannon says gleefully, bouncing on her toes.

Butter gasps. Liz blushes. I glare.

“What came?”

They fly at the boxes, and suddenly it’s like Christmas morning, but with powdered sugar dust flying everywhere in lieu of snow. There’s a rustling of paper, squealing, a gasp from Liz, and a few seconds later, Shannon and Butter emerge, hands clutching a variety of sex toys.

“Oh. My. God.”

“Look what we got!”

I shake my head and rub my temples. “I see what you got. Why did you get them?”

“Well, seeing as you waited two years to take matters into your own hands,” Shannon says with an exaggerated wink, “we decided we’d step up and give you some motivation. I remember all the things my doc suggested I use, so we ordered you everything! There are dilators, different kinds of lubes, faux-penises in varying sizes, natural and synthetic materials—all the things a gal could possibly need to stroll her vagina down the road to recovery!”

She and Butter are standing there in our tiny kitchen, a dildo and bottle of lube in each hand, held proudly over their heads in triumph, looks of absolute glee on their faces. Liz’s face slowly drops its look of horror as she edges closer to the boxes and peeks inside.