The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison Page B

juice—social services had swung by a couple of days ago, so the fridge was actually stocked—and handed one of them to me as he flopped next to me on the couch.
    “What, not joining them?” I teased, and his blush deepened.
    “It’s no mystery that being with Hope is a little like having a time-share, but I don’t share at the same time,” he mumbled, and I snickered. Hope was exactly like a time-share, and proud of it.
    Topher was a model, maybe nineteen, who sometimes helped Guilian with the deliveries to make a few extra bucks. He was good-looking in that bland model way—you know, the kind of good-looking that seems really ordinary because it’s shoved in your face all the time? He was a decent guy, though. We talked about the matinee a whole slew of us had gone to see the week before, about a gig he had for a few days as a living dummy for a temporary museum exhibit, about one of our mutual acquaintances getting married, and whether or not it would last, all while Hope and Jason went at it screaming and giggling.
    So, pretty much a normal afternoon.
    Eventually, though, their fun had to end. “It’s almost four o’clock!” I yelled over the groaning. “You two need to get to work!”
    “Okay, I’ll finish him off!”
    True to her word, she had Jason grunting in less than thirty seconds, and ten minutes later, they’d both had a quick rinse in the shower and were off to work. Most of the girls were working that night, except for Noémie and Amber, who both had a night class on Wednesdays and wouldn’t be back until almost ten. Topher left for a little while but came back with takeout from Taki’s on the corner.
    I knew Hope’s usual invitation to sex was to kiss someone and shove her hand down his or her pants, but I wasn’t Hope.
    “Hey, Topher?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Do you want to teach me about sex?”
    I was a different kind of straightforward.
    Anyone else probably would have blanched, but Topher was a friend of Hope’s. Plus, he’d been there for some of the conversations. All he did was smile, and I was reassured by the fact that it wasn’t a smirk. “Sure, if you think you’re ready for it.”
    “I think so. I mean, we can always stop.”
    “Yes, we can. Just tell me if you get uncomfortable, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    He took the remains of our dinner and shoved them into the overflowing trash can by the door; Hope was supposed to take it out when she left for work. When he came back to the couches, he dropped down onto the cushion and gently pulled me to lean against him. “We’ll start slow,” he said. And he kissed me.
    We didn’t actually have sex that night; he called it Everything But. It was comfortable, though, and fun, and we laughed as much as anything, which in itself would have been strange just a year before when I’d first moved in. We kept the clothes on after Noémie and Amber came home from class, but he stayed with me that night in my narrow bed and we played more under the sheets until Noémie—in the next bed over—laughed and said if we didn’t shut up she was going to join us. It was a few days later that we had the privacy to go all the way, and the first time, I didn’t really understand what the big deal was.
    Then we did it again, and that time I did.
    We spent the next few weeks fooling around, until he met a girl at church he wanted to be serious with, but as easily as we’d become friends with benefits we went back to being friends, without any awkwardness or hurt feelings at all. Neither of us had fallen for the other, neither of us was putting more into it than the other. I loved when he came by the apartment, but not because I expected sex after he started dating his church girl. Topher was just a good guy, someone we all adored.
    It did not, however, make me understand my parents’ fascination with sex to the exclusion of all else.

    She unscrews the cap and takes a long drink of water, rubbing at her sore throat as she swallows. Victor is