She nodded, looking serious, ice cream sitting on her spoon. Her nipples were hard.

You started to laugh again.

“It gets better,” she said. “Trust me.” She climbed up on you, straddling your chest. Her scratchy pubic hair tickled you. Her cunt was still wet, sticky against your breastbone. Her breasts swung above you. An incredible hottie. Way out of your league. She put the spoon against your lips. “Are you sorry?”

You ate ice cream. You swallowed. “Uh, no. No.”

She took the next scoop in her mouth, and then she bent down onto you and kissed you, sliding the ice cream into your mouth. She reached up and put the ice cream carton on the side table.

“Can I eat you out again?” you said. “Until you come?”

She licked the spoon. “Oh yeah. Let’s move to the bed.”

The guys couldn’t stop talking about her—how the hell had you ended up with this piece of ass? They even asked right in front of her, over cans of Coors at the bar, the usual place, that place that girl had laughed at you, the second time you took her there. “No offense meant, but how the fuck does a guy like Gary—?”

She didn’t let on about the Program; she was a total sport. “Hey, he looks like a slob, but you know, Gary has certain talents….”

Hoots and slaps on the back, and the guys made some remarks, but she wasn’t offended, she just kidded them back. She could hold her own.

And you’d been afraid she’d look down her nose at the place, at your life—being an egghead and an Upper West Side rich girl and all—think it was scummy and blue collar. But she ate it up, played foosball and drank Coors and watched the game on TV and laughed as loud as a guy. And god she looked good. Every other broad in the place was giving her the evil eye, and she liked that too; you could tell.

But she liked sleeping at her place better. Understandably. So you hustled down there on the train after work, and got up early to hustle out of there. Every place to eat around there was fucking expensive, and you sure as hell were not letting her pay for you—you didn’t even like to go dutch, really, because fuck, what the hell were you bringing to the relationship, certainly not the looks or the smarts. But it was only the second week, and maybe her paying half was her way of showing independence or whatever. There was something about that in the seminars. Anyway.

It still hurt to fuck, and she liked that it hurt.