When Life Turned Purple Read Online Free PDF Page B

jaw. “I. Know. Guys. And I don’t care if you’re talking gay, straight, or amoeba. If he screwed you, he deserves no pity. Believe me—he enjoyed himself just fine. Maybe he’d have preferred a dude, but just trust me on this one—he was perfectly okay with doing you .”
    Lia’s mouth shut and she blinked.
    Russ shifted around in his seat and rammed his fingers through his hair, blowing out his breath again. At times like this, Emma used to tell him, “Whoa there, Russ. I think somebody needs to caaaaaalm down here. You’re getting a little bit too worked up, okay? So let’s work on getting that testosterone into balance, ya think? I mean, you’re coming off as reeeeeal aggressive now.” And not just Emma, either. He cursed softly to himself. Lia was so delicate, she probably wanted to take off now. Damn. He’d ruined everything.
    But when he looked over at Lia, she just sat there with her chin in her hand, gazing out the front window. Then she looked at him as if he hadn’t been scary at all and said, “You know…I never really liked it. You know? I mean, there were parts that I really liked—parts that I really liked a lot. But the actual act—it could really hurt. Or at best, was just kind of uncomfortable.” She paused. “I didn’t do it so much. And just with a few guys.” She sighed. “I just didn’t like it. They were always pressuring me and telling me how the other girls they’d dated did this or had done that, and I’d feel like ‘Oh, then I’d better do this, too’ because I didn’t want to be abnormal or something. Or I didn’t want him secretly missing the other girls just because I wasn’t giving it to him. Or just in general, I hated feeling like I simply wasn’t measuring up. And listening to all the other girls talk, they really did seem fine with everything and I didn’t want there to be something wrong with me.” She slid her hand to the side of her neck and cocked her to that side as she looked at him. “But maybe there is. What do you think?” Her eyes were liquid as she gazed up at him. They winced a little as she asked, “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
    His eyes widened. “No,” he said. Then without thinking, he blurted out, “Nothing that I couldn’t fix—if you’d let me.”
    Her eyes popped, then she burst out laughing, her hands dropping to her lap, her body leaning forward and shaking with laughter.
    But it didn’t seem like jeering laughter, so Russ relaxed enough to smile along with her.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “But you’re so funny! And there’s something very likable about you. I feel like you understand me—or maybe you don’t. But either way, I definitely feel like you’re on my side.” Then she leaned her elbow on the door and rested her cheek on her fist. Her other hand rested on her knee, her fingers tapping it. “You know, I tried to be like everyone else and have fun with it and all that, but then I realized that I was fragmenting inside. Like, guys are so nice when they want you, but then somewhere in the middle of everything, you start feeling like you’re not enough. Like you don’t measure up to the girls who came before you—or to their favorite porn is probably more like it. So I stopped. But that feeling like maybe I’m defective somehow? It doesn’t ever go away.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Russ repeated.
    “How do you know?”
    “Because. Like I told you. I know guys. It’s the guys who were the problem, not you.”
    Her eyes were large and dark as she looked at him and the hint of a smile hovered around her lips.
    Russ felt like he’d won some kind of victory. He straightened up, twisted the key in the ignition and said, “I guess we’d better start heading back. But we can keep talking.”
    He glanced at Lia as he pulled out and she was still gazing at him in the same luminous way.
    They rode together along the shiny black road and Russ was feeling warmer and more