by Frankie Love
I cross my arms. “I could be bringing home guys when you’re on the road. Maybe you just miss all of my action.”
“Yeah, right.” he says, coming out from under the sink and sitting on my tile floor.
Trying to change the direction of the conversation I ask. “So, can you fix the sink?”
“I think so. I just need to order a part online.”
“Really, you know how to do all that?”
“You forget I’m a man’s man.” He grins the kind of grin that makes my stomach flutter. Perfect. “Well,” he adds, shrugging. “And my dad was a plumber. All you need, Gracie Lithe, is a drain flange.”
Impressed, I walk to my desk and grab my laptop. Cooper follows and we sit on my couch. “I didn’t know that. You’re from Missouri, right?”
“Yep. Born and raised.”
I type in my password and my email, the last message I read last night, is on my home screen.
Dear Grace Lithe,
As your Women’s Studies Advisor, I am writing with a New Year’s reminder. Your graduate-level research paper, What Happens When Women Take Charge of Their Sexuality, is due this May for you to complete your graduation requirements. You are scheduled to meet with me on January tenth in my office at 9:30 am for a mid-year check in.
I look forward to meeting with you and seeing how your research is going. This paper needs to provide an in-depth meta-analysis of the topic and a comprehensive conclusion to your hypothesis.
As we discussed, try and take it to the next level, Grace!
Sincerely,
Trisha MacKernly
Women Studies Professor
New York State College
I still can’t believe Professor MacKernly gave me that topic. I couldn’t be less qualified to write it.
Which is one of the reasons my sexual repression is weighing so freaking heavily on me.
I want to do well on this paper. I need to do well on this paper. My entire future is pretty much hanging in the balance.
“Sounds fancy,” Cooper says, bringing me back to reality.
“Very.” Our eyes meet and I wonder what he’s thinking. He got drafted right out of high school, and never went to college. “Big year for both of us, right? I’m finishing my degree and you’re going to be a free agent come December.”
Cooper grins. “You read about me?”
I shrug, clicking on the browser. “Maybe....”
I don’t say anything more because I’m pretty much mortified by what pulls up.
I know that I googled daisy chains and fudge swirls (Which, no, that’s not actually a sex thing. It’s a flavor of ice cream.) ... but I don’t need Cooper knowing that.
“What do we have here?” he says, grabbing the laptop from my hands. I close my eyes, shaking my head as he begins to read. “Kinky Resolutions for The Sex Kitten Within. Have you ever wanted to make this year the most memorable yet? Look no further, because this list will revolutionize your sex life.”
He stops reading and looks over at me, but I can only see him through my fingers since I’m covering my face with my hands. He seems to find this incredibly funny.
“Stop,” I moan.
“Gracie, I just had no idea. I was wrong about you. Maybe this entire time we've been hallmates you’ve been doing devious things when you leave this apartment.” He pulls my hands from my face. “So where did you really go last night?”
I smile, laughing at the truth. “To a sex party.”
Cooper's eyes narrow. “For reals?”
“For reals.” I leap for my desk, grabbing my actual resolutions list before he gets all riled up. “But the party actually solidified a few key things for me. One, I need to stop letting Bridget plan our nights out, and two, I need to become less ... prudish. I mean, you’re right. I’m all vanilla and I think it’s time I got fudged.”
“Fudged?”
“Well. Whatever you wanna call it. Being an adult is fine,” I say, looking around my magazine-spread-worthy apartment. “But I’m a woman’s studies major for goodness sakes and I’ve never even had a proper orgasm.” I shake my head flustered. “So, I made this list.” Taking a risk, I hand it to him.
He looks it over, frowning. “I don’t get it. You read this blog post and ended up with this? Your list is about as vanilla as it gets.”
I huff. “What do you mean? Number four is pretty sexy.”
“Have sex with the lights on?”
“It’s a start,” I say defensively. “Look. Whatever. I have no idea why we’re talking about this. You are clearly not the person I should be getting advice from.” I grab my list from his hands, but he’s not letting go.
“First, Gracie, I’m the exact person you should be getting advice from. I’m the player, remember?”
“And secondly?” I sit back down on the couch feeling vulnerable but also sort of relieved that he isn’t making fun of me or judging me. He is looking my list over and then consulting the website I was on.
“Secondly,” he says. “I need a pencil. I’m gonna help you with this list.”
Cooper begins scratching things out and making notes. Anal beads. Butt plugs. Pearl necklace.
“Cooper,” I say, scrunching up my face. “Don’t get carried away.”
He faces me, looking me over, but not in scrutiny. With consideration. “You want your sex life to be more exciting than Bridget’s?”
“Maybe not more. I mean, Bridget’s one step away from Craigslisting her next hook-up.”
“But you want to try new things, you want to push yourself?”
“Yeah,” I admit, my fingers twisting the tassel on the pillow in my lap. “Do you ever just feel sort of stuck?”
Cooper draws in a long breath. “Yeah. I do.” He hands me the revised list. “This is going to give you a year you’ll never forget.”
I look down at what he’s written. He’s scratched out New Year’s and replaced it with KINKY.
My list of Kinky Resolutions.
“Seven things?”
He shrugs. “Not impossible. Besides,” he grins again as if he knows something I don’t, “some of them are going to uh, stretch you in more ways than one.”
I push him playfully in the arm. “You are so bad.”
He holds my elbow, not letting me go, and for a split second, I swear he’s going to kiss me. But then he lets go, and we both sink into the couch.
I bite my bottom lip considering this potentially grandiose sexual awakening. Suddenly it feels crazy hot in here. I may have taken a dozen AP classes in high school, taken every advanced level course I could in college –– but this list is the most daunting syllabus I’ve ever seen.
“Most people make a grand list of resolutions,” Cooper says. “And then forget about them a few weeks later. But you’re not most people, Gracie. You’ve got this.”
I sigh, shaking my head. “It’s not the actual list that terrifies me. It’s the dating that it requires. I mean, some of this stuff is pretty ... intimate.” I point to number five in particular. “It seems kinda scary to do all this with people I don’t know.”
Cooper closes my laptop, then leans back on the couch, stretching his arms overhead. The hem of his t-shirt raises just enough that I can see a glimpse of his abs.
“I could help,” he says, not meeting my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I could do this list with you.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve probably done all these things already.”
Cooper sits up straighter, this time meeting my eyes. “That’s not the point. I don’t want you asking random guys to help with, say, number two.”
“Oh, you suddenly care about what guys I date?”
Cooper shakes his head, almost too quickly. “No, date whomever you want, of course. I just meant ... I could do this list with you if it made you feel less ... sketchy.”
“If we did number seven you’d never look at me the same way again,” I tell him.
I swallow, knowing that if I was ever going to have a chance to really go all in ... this was my time. Cooper Beckett, Mr. Yankee, was literally offering me a year of his sex-pertise. I’d be insane to say no.
“Maybe this whole thing is stupid,” I say, not wanting to appear too eager.
“Or maybe it’s fucking amazing.”
I nod, laughing, appreciating that Cooper isn’t making this awkward.
“You have nothing to lose, Gracie. And a hell of a lot to gain.” He grabs his groin and lifts his eyebrows suggestively.
“You are such a guy, Cooper.”
“True. But for the next year, I am also your sex-god. Feel free to get on your knees and bow down whenever you want.”
“If we’re doing this, we need some ground rules. No booty calls. No worshipping your whatever ... we’d be sticking to this list.”
Cooper nods with mock-seriousness. “Understood.”
“We’d methodically be going through this list, one by one, and no funny business.”
“Well, number six might be kind of funny.”
I scowl, wagging my finger. “No funny business.”
“In that case.” Cooper takes the list from me and pulls out his phone. He takes a picture of it before I can tear it away. “I’m in charge.”
“You don’t get to be in charge.” I cross my arms, knowing how childish I sound ... but the truth is ... being in charge is one of the hallmarks of my existence.
“Then no deal.”
“You’re playing hardball?”
“Are you seriously going to use baseball metaphors on me?”
A laugh escapes me again, and I wonder when Cooper and I became so friendly. I guess it’s all been building up to this for three years.
“No sports metaphors,” I tell him, raising my hands in defeat.
“And no asking questions about the when and the where and the how.”
“Umm…. ok… I can’t believe I am doing this...”
“Deal?” He offers me his hand and we shake, officially agreeing to complete my Kinky Resolutions. Together.
“Now what?” I ask. “Do we just start with number one?”
Cooper shakes his head, pulling open the laptop. “Not today, besides you don’t get to know the order in which the lessons occur. These things take time, young grasshopper. And right now, I’ve got a sink to fix.”
3
Batter Up
January 2017
The day after Cooper fixes my sink, he swings by and tells me he’s going to be out of town for a while, visiting family before he needs to report to the team.
I don’t want to be all type-A ... like I always am, so I nonchalantly give him a nod and wish a safe flight.
And now I can’t help but wonder about when he is going to get home. What is he going to tell me what item we are checking off first?
I’m both terrified and ecstatic. And completely preoccupied.
On NYE I saw, in a way, I couldn’t ignore, that Bridget could do exactly what she wanted, without regrets. And that the Milan-bound lady friend of Cooper’s? She could get the guy with a self-confidence I don’t even sort of understand.
I’m ready for a sexual revolution of my own.
And the fact that this resolution revolution is happening with perhaps the sexiest man I’ve ever known ... ups the ante.
I realize my bush is retro. And not in a sexy way.
I go to the place I get mani-pedis and ask for a Brazilian.
“Oh, honey,” the waxer evades as she looks at my goods. “That’s a big change.”
“Just do it,” I tell her, my grip tight against the white sheet draped over the table, my eyes burning as she rips me raw. I figure this year I’m going for broke ... and if I’m seriously going to do some of those things with Cooper ... then I need to be physically prepared for him to see all of me.
But then I don’t hear from Cooper for two weeks.
Two long weeks.
I go to class because that’s what I do Monday through Friday, but on the weekends, I pretty much stare at the list Cooper made. I had it pinned to my corkboard until I realize Bridget is coming over for Thai take-out and Bravo TV. That’s when I stash it in my nightstand drawer and try to forget that this year will bring the big O.
Except Bridget calls and cancels our dinner plans last minute, telling me someone name Guadalupe invited her to a poetry reading and that I should totally come with.
I roll my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. “Not gonna happen. I have backup plans anyway,” I tell her.
“With whom?” she asks. She may be a selfish flake, but she is still territorial. She’s been my person for four years, calling dibs when no one else did.
If there was ever going to be an easy time to muster up the courage and tell Bridget, this is it.
But I chicken out.
“With no one. I’m going to keep working on my research paper. I’m finally making headway.” Which was a double lie because I hadn’t made any progress with my paper.
Which is a major issue.
I’ve never failed at anything in school.
“Gracie,” she whines. “You should come out. Maybe you could meet someone. You need to get laid. It’s a fact that if you go over a year without any action you are 78% more likely to never have sex again. Ever.”
I scowl. “That is the most BS statistic I’ve ever heard.”
“Maybe,” she laughs. “But I’m a women’s study grad student too, and I know that paper is not as complicated as you’re making it out to be. It’s a flimsy excuse.”
“Maybe for you,” I tell her, carrying my laptop to my bed, and plopping it down on my duvet covered in pink and red roses, ready for a solo trip to Orange County to hang with the Real Housewives. “But you’ve slept with your advisor. Twice. You are guaranteed a passing grade.”
“True.” Bridget laughs. “So maybe you should sleep with your advisor, at least then you’d have some fun.”
“Right. Because that will solve my problems.”
“Problems? Gracie. You are a pretty, twenty-three-year-old woman with a trust fund in New York City. No one cares about your problems.”
She’s right of course. My biggest problem is wondering when my neighbor is going to call me and do something filthy to my body. Not exactly third world.
“Gah. I know. I’m being obnoxious. And you know I love you even though you’re ditching me, right?”
“And I love you even if you’re boring as fuck.”
We both laugh before hanging up. I send her a kiss face emoji after the call is ended, not really annoyed with her. Honestly, I’m kind of relieved.
The topic randomly assigned to me What Happens When Women Take Charge of Their Sexuality, feels personal ... and I’m not getting all conspiratorial ... but I think my advisor has it in for me. I think she gave me this topic because she thought I was some repressed girl.
Which, I am.
But I don’t need my advisor giving me silent commentary.
Still, I need my advisor to love this paper. I need her to think it is the most bomb-diggity thing she’s ever read. Because at the end of the semester, I need to apply to a post-doctorate program and I need her stamp of approval in the form of a glowing recommendation.
I need to start this list of Kinky Resolutions if I want to have anything to add to this paper besides random anecdotes I find on message boards and dated articles that are irrelevant to the general public.
I’m not saying this paper is my motivation for this list of resolutions.
But it does contribute to my willingness to make it happen.
I also want it to happen because New Year’s Eve was a low point. It was an in-my-face-can’t-ignore-it-anymore moment.
Later in the week, Bridget
stops by on Saturday afternoon asking if I want to go out with her and a friend–some guy named Juan DeMarco who does installation art–I look at her with so much confusion she asks what my problem is.
For the second time in as many weeks, I almost tell her about the list. But then she launches into a story about the guy she met last night and how he had “a massive ding-a-ling” (her words, not mine) and I remember why I haven’t told her.
She’d be all over this Kinky list ... but I also think she’d make it her thing instead of mine.
“Sometimes I just wonder why we’re friends,” I tell her as we walk into my kitchen. “I mean, I love you, Bridget ... it’s just ... don’t you think we are really different?”
She opens my fridge, grabbing a bottle of Chardonnay. Unscrewing it–because I’m classy like that –she pours half the bottle in a wine glass. “We are friends because without me you wouldn’t have any anecdotes to share when you go home to Connecticut and sit around your daddy’s dinner table. I’m the comic relief you need in your life.”
“Then what am I to you?” I ask, watching her taking a massive chug of wine.
She licks her lips and laughs. “You are my constant. My compass. You are the person who reminds me that we have to go to class or to get a flu shot.”
Bridget and I were roommate’s freshman year–which is the only way the two of us would have ever come together. And I’ve always been the parent in our relationship.
“I just wonder what would happen if I wasn’t playing the role of your mother anymore.”
“Whoa,” she says setting down my glass, without a coaster. “Where is all this coming from?”
I shrug, knowing exactly where it’s coming from. I am tense as hell. It’s been two weeks since I heard from Cooper and I’m ready to get this show on the road.
“Sorry. I’m PMS’ing.”
“Bullshit. You hate it when women use that line. You’ve told me about four thousand times that every time a woman blames her mood on her biology it’s giving men the upper hand in gender politics.”
