Page 12 of Stags

But Rora only shook her head. “I know I’m not the most attractive woman in the universe or anything, but I also know that people who are less attractive than me find people to love them. I don’t think that’s the reason.”

“Okay, well, that’s all I was saying,” said Tawny, looking a bit chagrined. “You really aren’t chubby.”

Rora shrugged. “I mean, a little, maybe.”

“Well,” Eiren said to Rora, “I hope this weekend proves to you how desirable you are, and how little there is wrong with you. I really hope that.”

Rora gave Eiren a wistful look. “I wish for that to be true, too. But I’m afraid it isn’t.”

“Oh, sun and moon,” groaned Tawny. “Stop that, stop acting like there’s something wrong with you.”

Except they all thought it, Eiren knew.

She didn’t bring it up, because she had sensed that Tawny thought she was hiding the fact that she thought she was damaged. Tawny projected an air of toughness to the world, acting as if nothing fazed her, and a lot of people probably believed that was true. Eiren happened to know, however, that everyone felt fazed now and again.

But Eiren wondered.

What if there’s nothing wrong with me either?

There had been a time when she kept ruminating on the idea that people didn’t seem to want to commit to her for some reason, and she’d had a string of bad boyfriends who were extremely aloof, it was true.

But then, somewhere along the way, she’d clicked on enough of those videos on Tiktok claiming that if you fell for the wrong sort of man, it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, that you’d keep being attracted to men who didn’t want you.

So, she started noticing, then, that there were men out there who seemed interested in her. She hadn’t been selecting them as part of the pool of men because she was never interested in those sorts of men.

She had a horrifying realization one day that perhaps she was only attracted to men who didn’t want her, as if that was a prerequisite to her feeling any kind of attachment. And if so, she was setting herself up for misery.

She resolved, at that point, to start giving these men that she wasn’t interested in a chance.

So, she did.

But they always seemed sort of pathetic to her, no matter how she tried to argue with herself that it wasnotpathetic to be attracted to her, that it did not mean that something was wrong with someone just because they wanted her.

After forcing herself to stay in two of these relationships for four months each, waiting for some kind of attraction to develop, she began to think that attraction was a thing that could not be forced.

You either wanted someone or you didn’t.

Maybe it was a scent thing, like Rora was saying.

No amount of getting to know someone made her hot for him. That was something she just knew, within minutes of meeting a guy.

She hoped she wasn’t getting hot for a guy only because she was picking up on how much the guy didn’t want her, though. That would be tragic on a whole other level.

But, well, she was really doing the same thing as Rora was.

She had thought to herself,If it’s true that I’m doomed to never want someone who wants me back, then maybe I can make the best of it.

This, the rite, it was a way to get sex without having to wade into all of that. It made things simple. It took out all sorts of awkward elements. It cut to the chase.

“I think something’s wrong with me, too,” said Eiren with a little shrug. “You know, I’m almost thirty. If I were going to have had a committed relationship with a man, wouldn’t it have happened by now?”

“Oh, whatever,” said Tawny dismissively. “Just because a thing hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible. How would the Wright brothers have reacted to hearing that, huh? New things happen everyday.”

Eiren felt herself smiling. “You know? That’s very true.”

“After all,” said Tawny. “Here we are doingthisfor the first time.”

“Yeah,” said Rora.

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