Page 53 of Demitri

She nods, not taking her eyes off her plate.

“Mia?”

“It’s nothing,” she says quickly.Tooquickly.

“I’ll be here when you’re ready to tell me whatever it is you need to tell me.”

“I know. I’m trying to figure out where to start.”

“We’ve had this discussion, haven’t we? You start at the beginning.”

She rolls her eyes, sighing like I’m the bane of her existence. I grin at her.

“Fine. I have a band-aid, and I don’t know how to peel it off.”

“Huh? Where do you have a band-aid?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Demitri. I have something hard to talk to you about, and I’m afraid. How about that?”

“Just say it?” I ask, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“I asked Dr. Malcome how to find my orgasm.”

And now I’m choking. Chest pounding, gasping for air, there’s a giant lump of bread and cheese in my throat, and I know my eyes are bugging out. Mia sits there, a smirk on her face as if to say ‘you said just spit it out’ and this is now all my fault. I might die by a grilled cheese and never find out what her doctor told her to do about the missing orgasm.

I finally get the food down my throat and take a drink of water, holding my finger up so she doesn’t speak again while I’m drinking. After a few deep breaths and cracking my neck, I finally look at her.

“Now, what did you say?” I rasp.

Her smirk turns into an honest grin, and she waits a beat to make sure there’s nothing to kill me.

“I asked her how to find my orgasm. Why can’t I have one?”

“And she told you what?”

“She told me I needed to tell you. To explain why I can’t.”

“Okay. Why can’t you, Mia?”

“Because I’m ashamed,” she quietly replies.

I reach my hand across the table, lying it next to hers, letting her know I’m there. Not touching, but close enough that she can feel the warmth. She looks at our hands, mine scarred and still tinged with oil and engine grime, hers strong and callused fromworking at the bar. When she stretches her pinky out to rub mine, I feel like we might be making progress.

“What happened? Can you tell me?”

“It’s about Brett. I know, shocking, right?” she tries to joke.

“Don’t. Don’t hide behind the humor,Krasotka. Be real with me, okay? Just me.”

She looks at me, tears in her eyes, and nods.

“When he would…when I had to…when he would rape me, sometimes I would have an orgasm.”

I don’t react. Fuck, I don’t even know what to say to that. The silence lingers, and I know she’s waiting for me to make the next move. To either stay or run away. One day she’ll figure it out, right? That I’m not going anywhere?

“Mia,” I say quietly. “I don’t understand why that’s shameful. Can you explain it to me?”

She still won’t look at me, but she nods. “If I had an orgasm, it means I enjoyed it, right? And that’s wrong. I never enjoyed what he was doing to me. Not after he started hurting me.”

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