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  “This is…amazing. Holy shit.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, most people agree.”

  Jessica looked up at me. “I’ve never…I had no idea. What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I told her, honestly.

  I had done the things that I knew she liked, but I hadn’t been trying to get her to have an orgasm. I had just been trying to show her a good time, make every moment good and worthwhile. As she’d said—the marathon and not the sprint.

  “But,” I added, “I’m glad that you got to feel that. It’s amazing, and you’re amazing, and you deserve to feel amazing. So.”

  Jessica smiled up at me, her hand sliding around the back of my neck to pull me down for a kiss.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you!” I said, pulling back. “I’ve been applying for actual OB/GYN jobs. I want to go legitimate again. That was why I got into this profession, was to pay off my bills so that I could help people the way that doctor helped my mother. I lost sight of that. But I want to get back into it, and I have some interviews.”

  “That’s really great,” Jessica said sincerely. “Did you do that just for me?”

  “Partially for me, but partially because I knew that my girlfriend wouldn’t like me sleeping with other women.”

  Jessica smiled, and it was as bright as the sun.

  “No, I don’t think she would. I hear she’s kind of jealous when it comes to you.”

  “I hope she would be, seeing as I’m a little jealous when it comes to her.”

  A strange look passed over Jessica’s face. “I think that’s it.”

  “What is?”

  She sat up and looked at me. “That was why. Asher, I’m in love with you.”

  “Good to know, seeing as I’m in love with you.”

  “But, don’t you see?”

  Jessica smiled again. I’d do anything to keep that smile on her face all the time, constantly.

  “For the first time, I had sex with someone where I wasn’t feeling pressured to have an orgasm to please them. I was with someone that I knew—without a doubt—loved me for me and would never judge me or expect anything more from me. Someone who didn’t think that I was anything other than perfect the way that I was. And that finally allowed me to relax, and feel special, and I think, I really think that’s it, Asher. I felt loved. And I had an orgasm.”

  I lunged forward, causing Jessica to fall into the pillows as I kissed her madly and deeply. I loved her, and she loved me, and she felt that love so completely, she was finally able to relax and fully enjoy sex. Was this what being in a relationship always felt like? Because this was amazing.

  “You know,” I admitted, pulling back a little, “This is my fist real relationship.”

  “Wait, really?” Jessica searched my eyes, probably trying to find out if I was joking.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve had a lot of one-night stands, especially in college, which I told you about. That was what helped me when I started this Dr. O thing. But I was really shy in school, and then in college I didn’t have time for romance, and then I was doing this, and what did I need a girlfriend for when I was getting everything I needed as Dr. O?”

  Jessica nuzzled into me, kissing my neck.

  “You know that you’re my first serious relationship too, as my parents kindly disclosed.”

  “Then we’ll figure this out together,” I promised her. “You and me. Together.”

  Jessica curled up into me and I wrapped my arms around her, protecting her. Keeping her safe. She was never going to feel broken or inadequate again, not for any reason. Not on my watch.

  “I like that idea,” Jessica whispered, and I could feel her smiling into me.

  Chapter 16

  Jessica

  Mary’s honeymoon ended the next week, much to her annoyance. She had wanted to stay for an entire month, but neither she nor Josh could afford to be away from their jobs for that long, so back to Pittsburgh they came.

  “I’m retiring to Hawaii,” Mary announced when she called me at the office upon her return. “And I’m so glad that Josh and I lived together before we got married. Can you imagine coming back to work and trying to move in together at the same time?”

  “Nope,” I said, making a mental note that if Asher and I were serious we should probably move in together soon.

  It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I liked Asher’s apartment way better than mine, with its massive shower and balcony and a living room finally big enough for all of my friends to come over and have a movie night. Nope. Nothing at all.

  “So, I was thinking,” Mary said, her voice a little muffled as she continued to unpack from her trip, “Why don’t you and Asher join Josh and me for dinner tonight? If you’re free?”

  I had told her about how Asher and I had made up, and Mary had squealed on the phone about that for what felt like hours. She was still pretty giddy about it, if the tone of her voice rising an octave just now was any tell.

  “We should be free,” I said, simultaneously typing out an email to Asher.

  Now that he was working in an actual hospital, he wasn’t as free all the time, but we were making it work. He’d admitted to me that he had planned on ducking out of the wedding early with an excuse of being called in for a patient in labor, so that he could avoid meeting Mary and continue his ruse. He hadn’t wanted to disappoint me and miss the wedding, but he had also wanted to avoid getting caught out. The fact that he had been caught out so spectacularly—well, that, he hadn’t predicted or planned for.

  I got an email response back a moment after it sent. Asher must have been at his desk, then.

  “Yes, we’re free!” I told Mary, who gave a whoop of delight.

  “I can’t wait to see what you two are like together!” she gushed. “I’ve never gotten to see you when you’re a part of a couple, Jess; this is going to be great!”

  She sounded almost as excited as my parents had when I’d explained the entire story to them—with certain parts heavily edited. As far as they knew, Asher had been assigned by Mary to ‘lighten my mood’ since I was stressed with work. He had fallen in love with me, but had been unable to find a way to tell me the truth of how we’d met, and then the whole thing with the wedding had happened.

  They hadn’t minded the whole subterfuge aspect, stating that he clearly was in love with me the entire time—they could tell from the dinner they had accidentally crashed. My mom wanted him to come over so that she could cook us a proper meal and learn all about him—as if they hadn’t done all of that already at the restaurant.

  “I’m sure we’ll all have fun,” I told Mary, and then relaxed—because this would be fun.

  It was my best friend, her new husband who I really liked, Asher, who already knew and liked Mary and who I was sure would get along well with Josh…what was wrong with that picture?

  Absolutely nothing.

  We decided to eat at the Italian place that Asher had taken me to for our first date, since we’d both enjoyed the food and Mary wanted to give it a try.

  The first thing she said when we sat down was, “I am so sorry.”

  “Mary,” I chastised her. “How many times are we going to go over this? You can stop apologizing.”

  “But I know how much you hate being the center of attention,” Mary said. She then leaned in towards Asher. “Don’t propose to her in public; she’ll kick your balls straight up into your throat.”

  Asher blinked, then nodded, and I laughed at the look of mild horror and confusion on his face.

  Mary turned back to me.

  “I humiliated you, and I’m so sorry about that. I’m sorry to Asher as well, for outing you in that way, but mostly to you, hon. You know I love you and I was just trying to help. But you’re right—it was manipulative, and I want to do whatever I can to make up for it.”

  “Mary, honestly,” I said, grabbing her hands. “It all worked out. Asher and I are together now and in love!”

>   A grin slipped across my face before I could stop it, and I wondered if that would always happen when I talked to someone about Asher and me.

  “It’s all water under the bridge. Really, it is. You’ve been such a good friend to me over the years. This is nothing.”

  “Okay,” Mary said, reaching over and giving me a hug. “But you’re letting us pay for dinner.”

  “Deal.”

  The rest of the evening was lovely. Josh and Asher got along well, as I’d hoped; their minds worked in similar ways, since they both had a passion for science. They also both had similar taste in television, and by the time dinner was over, they’d made plans to have a viewing party together for their favorite show’s season premiere.

  Mary looked over at me, beaming.

  “It seems that things are going well for you two.”

  “They are,” I said. “I mean, we’re still in the beginning stages, and we’re both still really new at this, but we love each other and we’re making it work.”

  There were times when we had to do things that neither of us had anticipated. We had different schedules, and sometimes one of us would be in the mood for sex and the other one wouldn’t, or Asher would find my piles of cosmetics in his kitchen annoying, or I’d hate how he sang in the shower at five in the morning, waking me up. But there were also the times when I woke up to him singing and loved it, and he’d see me with my products all spread out and he’d take a picture, laughing and calling me adorable.

  We were making it work.

  “So, when you two get married,” Mary began.

  I heard Asher choke a little on his gnocchi.

  “You’re going to make me the maid of honor, right?” she asked.

  I looked over at Asher.

  “It’s a little soon to be talking about marriage,” I pointed out. We weren’t even two months into our relationship, and we hadn’t even really been calling it a relationship for most of it.

  “Anything could happen,” Asher said, taking my hand and smiling.

  He was always good on the recovery.

  “We’re taking things slow, since this is my first serious relationship and it’s Jessica’s first as well. We’re kind of figuring things out together. But never say never.”

  “We’ll see,” was all I said, leveling a mock-glare at Mary.

  She’d be the kind of person to start planning my wedding right away in her head.

  Then, Asher squeezed my hand, and I found myself smiling again. It didn’t matter if Mary and my parents were kind of rushing things, or that we were still figuring it all out, or that we were not even two months into this thing. It was like I had seen with Mary and Josh at the altar, and had felt with Asher holding me as we’d watched everyone dancing at the reception.

  It was as if nobody in the world existed except for Asher and me, staring at each other and just feeling, and being, together.

  Epilogue

  Asher

  Two years didn’t seem like a whole lot of time as it was actually passing us by. While we were in the thick of it, it felt like a very short amount of time, like each day was quicksand through our fingers, and we were blinking, and it was gone. There were never enough hours in the day to take care of patients, to have get-togethers with friends, to work on projects for Jessica’s boss, to move in together.

  But when I looked back on it, standing in my tuxedo at the altar, it all felt like a very, very long time. It was like an eternity had passed since I had first gotten the text from Mary and had agreed to give Jessica her first orgasm. I had succeeded in that, although not at all in the way that I had intended, and along the way, I had earned the best part of my life.

  Mary had been right about Jessica destroying my manhood if I tried to propose to her in public. Cooking seemed to be the way to Jessica’s soul—well, that and golf—so I had planned it all out.

  On that Saturday, we slept in, and then I took her to play golf. She was still far better than I was, since she continued to go every week and I only went with her when my shifts at the hospital allowed.

  That Saturday, though, I went with her. We played until even Jessica was starting to get tired, and then I drove her home and cooked her my risotto. It was still her favorite dish of mine, even after all of this time, and I liked putting little twists on it for her sometimes, like adding lobster or a touch of rosemary.

  After we ate, I revealed the dessert: a chocolate cake decorated as a putting green, complete with a golf ball.

  “The golf ball’s a little large,” Jessica noted.

  It was. Compared to the other parts of the cake decoration, the golf ball was huge.

  “Pick it up,” I told her, grinning.

  Jessica did, and immediately sensed that something was off about it. “The weight’s weird.”

  She bounced it in her palm, and then, suspicion dawning, she shook it close to her ear. I loved watching Jessica figure out a problem. She was clever, and good with puzzles, as her Sudoku streak in the newspaper every morning had proven.

  Satisfied that she was right and that something was inside, she proceeded to feel along the golf ball until she found the hidden button. It sprang open, and—while I wouldn’t know this until she told me later—Jessica smiled, expecting to find a necklace or something of that sort inside.

  Instead, it was a diamond ring.

  I heard her gasp as I lowered myself to one knee.

  “Jessica?”

  She was already nodding, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, her hand over her mouth to stop her jaw from dropping open.

  I took the ring and held it out to her.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I can’t ever be grateful enough that you gave me a second chance to be in your life. You’re the most incredible person I know, and you’re the bright star in my life. Will you marry me?”

  Thank God Jessica liked my sappy speeches, because she nodded frantically and choked out a, “Yes!” before letting me slide the ring onto her finger and tackling me with a hug.

  We ate the cake in bed, not caring at all if it got on the sheets.

  It had taken us nine months to plan the wedding, a fact that had many people cracking up, including Jane. Jessica had wanted just a small garden wedding, and I had wanted whatever Jessica had wanted, and so here we were.

  It was thanks to Mary that the entire thing had come together so quickly. Jessica had named her maid of honor, as she had promised at that first double date dinner. We had a lot of those, now—almost every week. Josh was a great guy, and through him I’d met a lot of other great people. I hadn’t realized how I’d lost most of my friends, having been so wrapped up in my work as Dr. O.

  Jessica brought meaning and zest back into my life when I hadn’t even realized that it had been missing, and I loved her for it.

  Mary had planned the wedding with an efficiency that was, in my opinion, kind of scary, but also amazing. Jessica had barely had to lift a finger. And since I didn’t care about anything so long as there was good food and I got to marry Jessica by the end of it, I had to do even less. I did help Jessica taste the different cake flavors, though. That was actually a lot of fun.

  Jane ended up being my best woman. I hadn’t suspected when I’d called her for help with winning back Jessica that she and I would end up becoming friends, but we did. We found that we had a lot in common, but that we especially balanced each other out well. We were apparently hilarious at parties, where Jessica would just smile and shake her head at us, pretending she wasn’t as amused as everyone else.

  When it came time to choose a best woman, I knew there was no one else I’d rather entrust with the rings.

  The music started and we all turned to watch the bridesmaids come down the aisle. There were only two of them: Amanita and Lanie. Jessica had joked about me ‘stealing’ Jane from her, but I knew that she didn’t really mind.

  Lanie caught sight of Jane and blushed as she walked up the white carpet we’d rolled out
to serve as the aisle, covering the grass. I’d gotten to know Lanie as well, meeting her at the movie marathons that Jessica would hold at our apartment, and I’d gotten to talking with her.

  It had taken a long time—and by a long time, I mean about a year—but eventually, she got around to accepting the fact that she liked women as well as men. After that, it took another three months to convince her that Jane did, in fact, still like her and wasn’t secretly resenting her for taking so long to get her shit together.

  “It’s been a decade,” Lanie would cry into my shoulder, usually after too much wine at said movie marathons. “She can’t possibly have waited that long.”

  But, as I’d once said before Amanita jokingly told me to never say again, Jane was my sister from another mister. I was going to get her with Lanie if it was the last thing I did regarding meddling in others’ romantic affairs.

  Finally, one night, Jane stumbled upon me comforting Lanie in our guest bathroom.

  “She does care about you,” I was saying. “Just tell her the truth, that you were scared and shoved it down so deep that you didn’t even know that was how you felt.” Lanie had shaken her head, looking terrified as I continued. “Jessica forgave me, and I behaved far worse than anything you’ve done.”

  “What’s going on?” Jane had said then, and Lanie had promptly dissolved into tears and started stuttering out apologies.

  I’d left them to it, so I’d never found out what was said, but it must have worked out because after that, Jane and Lanie were a couple. It was startlingly cute, how Jane with her sharp edges and harsh humor would go all soft around Lanie, smiling at her like she was something precious.

  I couldn’t judge. I was sure that I looked at Jessica the same way.

  The music swelled and the door opened, and I almost lost it.

  Jessica looked beautiful. She was wearing a simple dress with lace overlay, a small bouquet of white roses clutched in one hand while her other arm was looped with her father’s.