“I believe so…yes.” She looked up at him. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, I don’t think you need to worry about him making any moves on her.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I’ve just never met someone in that situation. I’m legit curious. It’s totally cool if you don’t want to talk about it anymore, but you can understand why it piques my interest.”
“How ’bout this?” Whitney said. “Three more questions and then we change the subject, never to speak of it again. I’ll answer honestly, unless I lie. In which case you won’t know the difference anyway. What do you most want to know about 1-2-3?”
“What’s 1-2-3? You call it 1-2-3?!”
She’d never encountered a fellow human looking so pleased.
“Are those your first two questions?” she said.
“No way!” he said. There was a new energy all around. It was as though the red neon had clung to them, a spiderweb stuck to their skin and clothes. She felt a heat in her hair. She felt static in her stomach and thighs.
“Can I ask a pre-question?” he said. “Like a warm-up question?”
“In addition to the ones you’ve already used up?” she said. “How ’bout I decide after you ask?”
He smiled. “You really hadn’t been with anyone else for the whole seven years?”
She breathed in through her nose. “I guess it’s related to what I was saying before. It wasn’t even just that it wasn’t something I’d considered, it’s that I was crazy about cheating for a long time.…After that thing I mentioned, after that one shit-faced slipup of Will’s, I just became this zealot. I couldn’t stand the thought. I couldn’t hear stories about cheating. I felt sick when I’d watch shows or read scripts with affairs. I’d stop talking to friends if they were screwing around. It just…twisted me up in a way I can’t even articulate. Then as the years built up, something relaxed. Or maybe it was more like deadened nerves. I started to think of 1-2-3 as this very adult thing. This hedge against future problems. Mitigating the derailment of the relationship down the road by going through with the arrangement now. I’d never have done anything without being on the same page as Will. But it made me realize how dumb it had been of me to project onto other people for so long. Nobody has any idea what’s going on in someone else’s relationship. I guess that’s one thing to come out of this: I don’t know shit about anyone else’s sex life, just like they don’t know about mine.”
“Except me, now…” He smiled. “And I’ll take that as a…no—one person in seven years?”
“Is that your second question?”
“No way, you didn’t even answer definitively!” he said, grinning. “I’m just looking for some context. If one since senior year, then how many before that?”
“Is that your second question?” It had started light, but the way it was going was starting to irritate her. “What’s so interesting about a girl’s number, anyway? I’ve never understood it. Nobody gives a shit the other way around so long as it’s, like, more than two and less than a thousand.”
“I withdraw the question, then. I didn’t mean to waste one.”
“No, no. It’s out there. There’s gotta be some penalty for this sloppy line of questioning.”
He zipped his lips with his fingers. He wasn’t going to waste another shot.
“Six before,” she said.
“Oh—” he said.
“Is that Oh a question or Oh an exclamation?”
“It’s neither, it’s just: Oh.”
“I can’t tell if that’s too few or too many for you,” she said. “It can’t possibly be either?”
“I have no idea,” he said, raising innocent hands. “We’re talking about numbers at twenty-two? Who cares?”
“Exactly, yes,” she said. “It’s one of those questions that means everything for a while and nothing after a certain point. Every year I realize there are things like that that killed me for what felt like eternities, and that are meaningless now.”
“Like what else?”
“Well, let’s see: going back, you know.…Did you make varsity or junior varsity? Did you make the Haney Hawks travel team? Have you ever kissed anyone? Have you ever given a hand job? Then, you know: virginity; college admissions; GPA; career; title; salary; what you’ve made; where you’ve been; where you’re going. Then you get to a point, and I feel myself hurtling toward it, where nobody seems to give a shit about anything anymore. About what boxes you’ve checked, about how high up you got or how pure the work was or wasn’t. It’s just less important. It becomes about comfort. About doing what it takes to just be happy enough. Fewer concerns about whether something’s cutting edge, or cool, or art, or selling out. At least in TV. But also for other jobs, for other friends.…Everyone seems to just want to be content enough. And you know what? That’s okay with me. Because nobody knows anything, it turns out. Most people are just feeling around in the dark, trying to do their best…”
“Haney Hawks travel team,” he said. “I love it.”
“I lost you way back there, huh?”
“No, no,” he said. “I hear you on the rest, too. At least, I think I do. I just—I can’t relate, totally. I feel completely removed from so much that’s going on with my friends. I wish I knew more about it—about titles and promotions and office gossip or whatever. When I’m home, I’m embarrassed how much I like hearing about people’s dumb problems at their offices. They care so much! They catch themselves and say they’ll stop talking about it, but they really want to keep going on about the boss, their reports, the guy who does less work and gets paid more. They talk about it all night. And I’m totally into it! It’s just not my world. Not yet. Senior Associate. CMO. PowerPoint deck. It all sounds goofy to me, but I love it. They probably say the same thing about my world.”
“Slam dunk. Bottle service. Jersey chaser.”
“Oof, you make me sound
