I’m not the type of person who ever thought I’d have a friend with benefits. I thought all my sex would happen inside relationships. But life doesn’t always work out that way, which is why I was so sad when the guy I was pretty smitten with said he wanted to be just friends after several months of dating. We did actually stay friends and kept hanging out pretty often, which is probably why I offered something extra that one evening when I was feeling a certain way and just needed to be touched. Maybe if we’d had a clean break, I wouldn’t have ended up in bed with a guy who was very explicitly just a friend, not my boyfriend.

And if it hadn’t happened that one time, it probably wouldn’t have kept happening. But it did. We’d hang out and I’d quietly lead him to my room or I’d text him asking him to come over. And he almost always did. Almost.

The first time he didn’t come over when I texted him, he couldn’t because he was on a date. Maybe it’s because I’d been horny in anticipation of his visit, but I sat in my bed, staring at the text, “I’m on a date,” and I felt more and more aroused. I couldn’t stop picturing it, him with a girl, making her laugh, making her cum. Turning on his immense charm for her. I’d never felt horny like that.

So the next time he and I hung out, I tried to be sly. I tried to ease into it. But really I just blurted out “how did your date end.” Not how did it go, but how did it end. Because that was my focus. The end of the date, the climax. After some conversational beating around the bush, he must have realized why I asked because we ended up in my room, him inside me as he described being inside her. And I loved it.