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Natalie, 32, public park
“Natalie speaking.”
“Natalie—hey. Hi.”
She doesn’t recognise the voice, but something about its familiarity tells her she should. Baby Joshua burps a little, and pureed banana slips out of his mouth. Natalie crams her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she wipes at his chin. “Sorry—who’s this?”
“Buck. Evan Buckley?”
Natalie frowns. The name vaguely rings a bell, but…
“I’m a firefighter. We, uh.” He coughs, a little self-consciously. “We hooked up in, like, 2018.”
Oh shit—of course. 2018—she and Dylan went on a break while he sorted himself out and she tried dipping her toe into casual sex for the first time. She only ended up hooking up with a few people, because she later discovered she wasn’t nearly as ready to properly end her relationship as she’d thought she was and called him on the way home from the fourth casual fuck, which had been—
“We hooked up behind a tree,” she says aloud in realisation. Joshua burbles happily at her like yes, mommy, you sexually liberated icon, or potentially he just wants more banana. She feeds him another spoonful. “You had a… birthmark?”
“Yeah!” The guy—or Buck, she supposes, she remembers that being his name—sounds pleased she remembers. “Yeah, that was me.”
“Well, shucks.” She and Dylan are on a no-swearing-around-the-baby policy; the first person to lose every week pays for date night. It’s only Monday, and she really wants a new dress. “How do you still have my number?”
“I haven’t really cleared out my phone in a while.” Joshua burbles again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your morning—”
“No, it’s okay. Just feeding the baby.”
The ensuing silence is defeaning. “Is it… it isn’t…”
Christ. “No, Buck,” she says. “He isn’t yours.”
“Oh,” Buck says, and she has to smirk a little at the incredibly obvious sigh of relief he lets out over the line. “Okay. Phew. Sorry. Just—had to be sure.”
“Mm.” She smiles down at Joshua, who gummily beams back at her. “Well, then, what can I do for you, then, Buck-with-the-birthmark?”
Buck sounds like he’s steeling himself. Natalie can’t possibly imagine for what, until he comes out with, “Were you… satisfied?”
She frowns at Joshua, who impatiently starfishes his hand at her in demand of more banana. She mechanically feeds him. “What?”
“Like. With the sex.”
“Was I… satisfied with the sex?”
“Yes.”
“The… one time we had sex five years ago?”
Buck doesn’t seem to pick up in her voice the insinuation that this is a legitimately insane think to ask, because he says, “I just want you to know that I’m really sorry if you weren’t. I was a different guy back then, and I’ve realised a lot of the sex I was having was probably really phallocentric and only focused on my own pleasure rather than my partner’s—”
“Oh my God,” Natalie says.
“I just wanted you to know that I’m really sorry if you felt unsatisfied.”
Natalie can only stare down at Joshua. This is possibly the most bizarre phone call she’s ever had in her life. “Yom Kippur isn’t for months,” is all she can say.
“What?”
Jesus. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Uh. Buck. Listen. You were fine, okay?”
“Fine?”
“Look, I genuinely can’t remember. I’m really sorry if that’s not what you want to hear, but it was so long ago and I’ve lived a lot of life since then so I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about the one-night stands I had along the way.”
This is evidently not what Buck was intending to hear. “Oh. Uh. Okay.”
She sighs; decides to throw him a bone, anyway. “If I can’t remember you then I’m sure it was good. The only stand-outs are the really bad ones.”
“Or the really good ones.”
“Yes. Like my husband.”
“Ah,” says Buck. Unbelievably, that seems to be the fact to perk him up more than anything, like he understands why now another man has taken precedent over his own sexual prowess. Natalie is telling everyone she knows about this. “Well, congratulations.”
She rolls her eyes. “Thanks.”
“Have a good rest of the day, Natalie!”
“You, too,” she says, and hangs up. Then she looks down at Joshua still happily chewing around his plastic spoon. “What was that, honey? Huh? Can you confirm that just happened?”
“Who was that on the phone, babe?” Dylan calls from the other room.
“I’ve just had the weirdest fucking call of my life,” she calls back.
“Jar!”
Honestly, she’s not even mad, she thinks, as she dumps a twenty dollar bill in their swear jar. If there’s any excuse to drop an f-bomb in front of their baby it’s this one.
*
Sasha, 26, Saddle Ranch bathroom stall
Morgan’s in the middle of telling a story when Sasha’s phone goes off with the caller ID of the last person she expects.
“And it was like,” Morgan says, “I didn’t know he’d served a prison sentence when we first started hooking up, and by time I found out we were, like, committed, you know—”
“Yeah, okay,” Sasha says distractedly. “Uh, give me a second here—”
Morgan huffs, but Sasha ignores her and answers the call anyway, turning her back. “Is this a butt dial?” she says.
“Sasha!” Buck—Evan Buckley, probationary firefighter, the guy who helped her figure out she has a thing for being fucked against walls—sounds remarkably pleased to hear her. Sasha wonders if he has the wrong person. “Hey, good to hear you!”
“Uh… yeah,” she says. “You know who this is, right?”
“Yeah, of course. Sasha Bailey! You were a bartender at Saddle Ranch. You had pink hair.”
A little touched, Sasha sweeps her now-blue bangs out of her eyes. “Well, I’m a manager, now.”
“Hey, congrats!”
“Um, thanks,” she says. This is totally insane that this is happening, but as they speak she’s remembering him clearer and clearer—he’d been a total player, good-looking enough to get away with it, but aside from the huge arms, she’d been drawn to him because he was earnest, too, genuinely marvelling wide-eyed when she flipped one of the cocktail shakers. “How long has it been? Five years?”
“Six, maybe,” Buck says. “Time flies, huh?”
“You’re telling me.” She leans a little on the podium; Morgan rounds it and raises an eyebrow at her. “What’s the occasion today, then? Is it our six-year anniversary?”
Buck laughs a little. “Uh, no, I just wanted to check in. See how you were?”
Sasha turns away from Morgan so she can raise her own eyebrow. “You got back in contact to ask how I was?”
“…Okay, guilty,” Buck confesses, and she laughs. “Um. Maybe weird question, but was I… did you…”
She patiently waits as he stops and starts at least another five times. Finally, he says, “Did you come?”
“…Excuse me?”
“When we—had sex.”
“Did I—Buck.” She touches a hand to her forehead. “What?”
“I read an article—”
“No, don’t explain it, that’ll make it worse.” Loathe as she is to admit it, though, she’s a little charmed, too. It’s the earnestness that she’d liked so much back in full force—getting in touch over nearly half a decade to double check that she’d had a good time. Maybe that’s why she’s honest. “Yeah. I did.”
“You did?”
“Why do you sound surprised?”
“I read an article—”
“So you said.”
“About how the female orgasm is actually harder to achieve than the male orgasm and how often it gets neglected or overlooked in intercourse.”
Sasha frowns down at the floor. “Did you—aren’t you a firefighter? Why are you talking like a fem gen major?” It says a lot about her that it’s kinda a turn-off, to be honest. Look, she doesn’t hook up with customers because she likes polite, gentlemanly sex, okay? Yeah, Buck had been earnest with a nice smile, but he also had arms the size of her head and a filthy mouth.
Buck sounds a little sheepish when he says, “I’m just… making sure.”
“Well, yes, Buck, I did come.” Morgan, who does another rotation to face her again, stops and stares at her, at this. “You don’t have to worry. Very satisfied. Would fuck again, to be honest.”
(That filthy mouth is still in there somewhere, right?)
When Buck laughs again, he sounds flattered but also a little bashful, too. “Um, well, that’s very kind of you, but I’m kinda not really doing that anymore.”
“What, fucking girls?”
He chokes at that. “Um. I mean—well. I meant casual sex, but. Or—that’s not the point! But, um. Thank you for the offer.”
Eh. Worth a try. “Well, you have my number.”
“I do,” Buck says, though it sounds like he’s probably gonna delete it after this. “Nice to hear from you again, Sasha. Congratulations on your promotion again. Have a good day.”
“You too, Buck,” she says, and hangs up. Morgan is all but goggling at her. “Don’t even ask.”
“I have so many questions,” Morgan says. “Number one being who that was.”
“Weren’t you telling me about your murderer boyfriend?”
Bingo. “Okay, he’s not a murderer, the judge legally declared it manslaughter,” Morgan defends hotly, and the conversation swiftly moves on.
*
Sophie, 29, his car in an IHOB parking lot
When BUCK (DO NOT ANSWER!!) flashes on her screen for the first time in five years, Sophie is ready. And by that she means she answers. (Do Not Answer was always more of a philosophy than a strict rule, really.)
“Hi, is this Sophie?” says Buck.
“I’m surprised you still have my number,” Sophie says crisply.
Buck sighs a little. “Yeah. It’s you.”
“Five years, Buckley. Five years it’s been since you walked out and promised to call me back—”
“In my defence—”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”
“I nearly died?”
Sophie rolls her eyes. “That’s what they all say.”
“They do?”
“Yes, actually.”
There’s a pause. “Have you considered,” Buck says, “that maybe if men around you are habitually faking their deaths—”
“What do you want?”
“Was I a good lover?”
She gapes. “Excuse me?”
His voice is a little contrite “I just wanted to make sure—”
“Of course you weren’t!” she says. “You never answered my texts, when I went around to your place you didn’t answer the door even though all your lights were on so you were obviously in, and you never even gave me back my nice bra! I read a whole WikiHow article about how leaving a piece of clothing behind was a good conversation starter but you’re so stupid you didn’t even fall for it!”
“Was it pink and frilly?” says Buck. Sophie nods, though he can’t see. “Ah. Um. I may have given it to a woman’s shelter?”
“What?” she shrieks. “That cost me fifty bucks!”
“Women always left bras behind! I didn’t know what to do with them! I just had a whole box sitting around my car!”
“They wanted you to call them back!”
“It was a one-night stand! And none of them told me that!”
“You told me your last name!”
“Because that’s what I go by!”
“Ugh!” she says, and hangs up. Moments later, she gets a text.
Buck (DO NOT ANSWER!!): I’m aware this is probably bad timing but did you achieve orgasm in bed
Sophie: DO NOT TEXT THIS NUMBER AGAIN! I’M BLOCKING YOU!
(She does not, in fact, block him, but DO NOT ANSWER!! gains one more exclamation mark. Blocking is more of a suggestion than it is a concrete action, after all.)
*
“Well,” Eddie says, surveying the list. “The probability checks out in your favour.”
Buck chews at his thumbnail. “It’s not great.”
“Well, it’s also not eighty-percent. Of the… many, many woman you slept with whose numbers you still have, the amount who reported being unsatisfied or not finishing was…”
He turns to Buck at this, probably to take advantage of his new super-calculator skills, but Buck just feels morose when he says, “Twenty-six point eight percent.”
“Which is like, a quarter of the predicted amount,” Eddie says. “So if anything you should be proud.”
“But I finished every time,” Buck says sadly. Well—nearly every time. There was one girl whose boyfriend came back in the middle of it, which had been a pretty effective boner-killer, and another who meowed at him halfway through sex, but he’d deleted both their numbers so they hadn’t participated to the data set. “I just feel bad.”
Eddie takes another long swig of his beer. Buck decides this is unrelated to the matter at hand; there is no way Eddie would rather be spending his Thursday evening than working out the proportions of women Buck successfully pleasured vs didn’t. “Buck. This was years ago.”
“Sometimes Taylor didn’t finish,” Buck says. Taylor wasn’t the kind to fake orgasms; she’d let him know if he’d done a poor job. “But then we’d just use a vibrator. Wait, does that even count?”
Eddie rubs his head like he has a headache. “Buck.”
“Maybe we should arrange them in date order,” Buck says, of the data set currently before them. It would require another round of phone calls to see what tattoos the women had remembered him having, because it’s the only way he can tell the passing of time, now, but if it would improve the validity of the data then it would be worth it. “I started consistently going down on women a few months into starting at the 118—that could have factored in somehow.”
“Buck,” Eddie says again, a little more insistently, and for the first time Buck falls quiet. “Why are you so obsessed with this? You’re not an anomaly for having left a few sexual partners unsatisfied; that’s kinda par for the course of having sex with women.”
His eyes are soft and a little gentle on him. Buck sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess—I mean, when I was having all this sex I was kinda in not a great place. Like I enjoyed sex, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think I was doing it for the right reasons. You know—to feel useful. Like my body worked for something. To get even a moment of companionship. And I didn’t really get how that might look for the women until Bobby said something to me about it, in my first year of working at the station; you know, how I was disrespecting them. And they all consented and stuff, but… I don’t know. It’s something I’m just aware of, now. Like I was kinda self-destructing as I was having all this sex and I didn’t realise that I may have been using them in the process.”
Eddie’s eyes are gentle. “You said they all consented.”
“Yeah, to have sex, not to be used as a way to hurt myself.”
“So what, if they orgasmed it makes it okay?”
“I’m just trying to be a feminist, Eddie,” Buck says, and unbelievably Eddie snorts at this. “Don’t laugh at me. I’m just trying to make up for any potential disrespect.”
“And how exactly are you planning on remedying the twenty-six point eight percent? Are you going to go and have sex with them so they get their orgasm five years later?”
“…Well, I haven’t thought it that far through,” Buck says, and Eddie snorts, taking another swig of his bottle. “I don’t know. Probably not. I’m too old for that now.”
“You’re literally thirty.”
“Yeah, and my knees hurt, and if I don’t do yoga in the morning my back cracks, and I have to start taking fish oil now.” Buck involuntarily scrunches his face at even the thought of it—man, fish oil fucking sucks. “I can’t go back to having sex in cars and parks and carparks again. I’d have to roll out my hamstrings beforehand.”
“Here’s a wild idea,” Eddie says. “Try having sex in a bed?”
Buck rolls his eyes.
“No, I’m serious,” Eddie says, and runs a finger down the list. They tore out a sheet of one of Christopher’s notebooks to do it, which feels a little sacrilegious, because when Eddie’s finger stops on a random line, Krystina, 26, porta-potty (Coachella, 2018—yeah, that was a good year), it’s next to a printed dinosaur. “Were any of these horizontal?”
“Uh, yeah,” Buck says. “The porta-potty tipped over.”
Eddie stares at him.
“I’m kidding,” Buck says. (He’s not. It had been kinda gross, to be honest.) “I’d have sex in beds sometimes.”
“Was the bed ever yours?”
Buck deflects, “Do blow-up mattresses count?”
“No,” Eddie says, and Buck shrugs, taking a sip of his own beer. “Why? I know you had a place to live.”
“Yeah, but it was a houseshare, and I…” Buck shrugs. “It’s not like I didn’t try. You know—I mean, aside from Sophie, who I’m pretty sure stole the fucking air freshener from my car—it was a nice one, too, I spent a whole four dollars on it—I’d always stay for breakfast, see if they wanted to do something the next day, but they all said no.”
Eddie’s eyebrows have been progressively climbing higher and higher throughout the whole conversation, but they gentle a little, at this. “Kinda sounds like you were the one being used more than anything,” he says, soft.
Buck shrugs. It’s a thought he’s had once or twice, but it makes him feel a little too skinned raw to properly dwell on, that he was vulnerable enough to have been used. “I’d invite them back to mine, but I’d mention the roommates and they’d spook,” he says. “Like, I lived with seven guys; the house was never empty. But the idea of meeting one always had the girls freaking out. You know, and that was if we got talking that long—most the time we’d flirt for like, three minutes, and then we’d fuck in bathroom. After a while I figured it was just easier to stop offering.”
“…That’s kinda sad, Buck,” Eddie says, but his eyes are so, so gentle when he reaches over to touch his hand. “For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you that you’re not hurting yourself like that anymore.”
Buck snorts. “Yeah. Old habits die hard, apparently.”
Eddie pulls a face and pulls back, taking another long, long swig of his beer, probably remembering the one evening he had to talk Buck off the metaphorical ledge of buying Taylor an impulse engagement ring over the phone. It’s not Buck’s proudest moment. “And at least you’re only calling them all back now to be gentlemanly.”
“I do miss it, though,” Buck says. “You know. Sex.”
“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Eddie says, and then, immediately, “What do you mean?” It’s a good mix of him being a supportive friend and, at his core, a bitchy little man who loves to gossip.
“I mean just that,” Buck says. “I haven’t had sex in—Christ.” He actually has to think, which is embarrassing. “Like… over a year? Not since Taylor.”
Eddie snorts. “Well, you’re beating me. I haven’t had sex since Shannon.”
“You—what?” Buck balks. “You and Ana never…?”
Eddie pulls a face. “Never could,” he says. “We tried, once or twice, but I, uh… just couldn’t do it.”
Buck’s not sure if he means go through with it or get it up, but he gets it, kinda. The last few months with Taylor had been something similar; wondering why her hands on him felt so cold, all of a sudden, why he’d feel the need to go on a run afterwards like he needed to fix his head back to his body. “Damn,” is all Buck says. “The lack of sex in this room is, frankly, appalling.”
Eddie raises his bottle.
“We should have sex,” Buck says. Hm. Maybe he’s too drunk for this conversation. “Think about it. We’d be ending not one by two dry spells.”
“Convincing,” Eddie says dryly. “Have you ever thought about going into persuasive coaching?”
“I’m serious. We’d be so good at it. I mean, look at this.” Buck points at his list. “Think of my success rate.”
“That’s just women.”
“Well, I know when men come,” Buck says. “I’ve never had a problem with that.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. Buck doesn’t think he’s imagining the way his eyes darken. “No?”
“No,” Buck says.
For a moment they just watch each other. Buck’s heart is kinda pounding in his ears.
“Okay,” Eddie says, finally. “Give me one more reason.”
“What?”
“Rule of three. Give me one more reason why we should have sex.”
Buck’s mouth is kinda dry. “Because I’ve kinda been in love with you for years?”
Eddie’s expression cracks, a little. “Buck.”
“I’m serious,” Buck says, quietly. “This isn’t—I wouldn’t joke about something like that. And we don’t—we don’t have to have sex. But it would maybe be cool if we did. And then stay together for the rest of our lives if that’s something you were interested in, too.”
Eddie stares at him for so long that Buck thinks his knees might just give out. Then finally, Eddie says, “Take off your shirt.”
Buck’s breath whooshes from him in an avalanche. “What?”
“I’m convinced,” Eddie says. “Take off your shirt. And I love you too, or whatever.”
“Oh my God,” Buck says. “Really?”
“Am I gonna have to ask you three times to get naked, Buckley—”
“Oh my God,” Buck says again, and strips probably faster than he ever has. Eddie blinks, kinda impressed, or maybe it’s because Buck is currently dick-out in the kitchen, which is fair, but it is Buck’s kitchen, so he can do whatever he wants in. And now, whoever he wants. “Yes. Let’s have sex. You too, now.”
“No way,” Eddie says. “We are going upstairs. We are not doing this on the counter.”
Buck pouts. “But think how sexy it would be.”
“No. We are going to have a nice romantic first time on a mattress where both our backs don’t kill us tomorrow, or we’ll both be bed-bound with ice-rollers.” Fair. “Okay, move it, I know I’m being glib here but if your dick isn’t in me in the next minute I might die.”
“You’re so sweet,” Buck says, but he’s also never run up the stairs to his room faster.
*
Eddie, 36, bedroom
Eddie is awoken the next morning to Buck trilling.
“Brring, brring,” Buck says, and Eddie squints his eyes open at him and wonders if he’s fallen into an alternate universe where he finally gets to have the man he’s dreamed of for his whole life but at the cost of his voice, like a reverse Little Mermaid. Then he notices Buck is miming a phone and realises he’s just being a dork. “Brring, brring, Eddie.”
“I didn’t know my phone knew my name,” Eddie says.
“Pick up,” Buck insists.
Eddie rolls his eyes, but mimes a phone of his own. “What.”
“Good morning.”
“Morning. Is there a reason we’re not currently giving each other good morning blowjobs at this point in time?”
Buck’s pupils blow wide, and Eddie smirks a little. “…In approximately thirty seconds, no,” Buck says. “But I had something to ask you.”
“Go for it.”
“…Did you achieve orgasm?”
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Eddie promises, and tackles him to the bed over the sound of Buck’s echoing laughter. They’re both still naked from the night before, sheets pooling around their waists, Buck pliant and happy and golden beneath him, and even though he’s the worst person he’s ever met he might also a little bit be the best one, too. “You know what, I can’t actually remember. You might need to give me a do-over to jog my memory.”
“I think that can be arranged,” Buck says. “Need to get that percentage down to twenty-five, after all.”
Eddie rolls his eyes, but when he leans down they’re both smiling too wide to kiss.