BROWN CHICKEN BROWN COW
Some of her high school friends were already doing it. Her mother, ever the pragmatist, didn't give her the typical talk. The Talk wasn't about purity or saving yourself or morality or religion. It was practical. Scientific.
It was simply about how when you experience a very emotional event – good or bad – images imprint on your mind. She explained about endorphins and all that. She said that connected images swirl into mingled memories. The good time and the bad break up would be remembered together.
Kate halfway listened and exaggerated her boredom. She knew her mother was always honest with her, but that sometimes would leave out information that she didn't think Katie should hear.
So Kate believed her friends and her hormones over her mother. Her parents were too old to remember how powerful the instinctive pull was, anyway.
Over time and through relationships, she began to see some of the truth in The Talk.
When she tried something with a new boyfriend, how well (or how badly) the last boyfriend did it was remembered. When a guy would say or do something sweet, she'd think of the last guy who had done that then gone and proved himself to just be using her.
After Johanna was killed, it got worse. She didn't have anyone to ask the hard questions. Her friends who had been in True Love Waits only held out six months longer than the rest of the college girls. She knew almost no one who wasn't having sex. It was normal.
And it was a good time, usually. It felt good, it was fun, it was a release. So why did it make her question herself, her value to these men, and make her feel like she was missing out on something more?
The answer came to her during her first night in Richard Castle's bed, with him lovingly holding her in his sleep. Even then, she questioned if they would last. If they would blow up. If the memory of this night would become her most painful, because of the magnitude of what she had lost. Sex wasn't supposed to be so scary. No matter how much they loved each other, this act would always be coupled with fear of rejection if she didn't make the commitment her mother said was supposed to go along with it.
She knew her mother was right, after all. That's a lot easier to admit to in your early 30's than in your early 20's.
She nuzzled his neck and kissed his jaw. She trailed kisses across his chest until he began responding and pulled her up to kiss her. When their lips parted, she moved back only enough to look in his eyes.
"Rick," she whispered, "we're finally here." His eyes smiled. "But it's not enough."
His face registered fear first, that she was ending them before they really even started. But her smile and the look in her eyes, searching and waiting for him to understand, made him realize that she meant she wanted more. With him.
He weighed the thousand different responses racing through his mind and settled on one. "Of course it's not. I never said it was."
The sex that night was amazing. The promises he made her were even better. And she knew that one day soon, this night would pale in comparison to when the commitment was finally made in front of everybody, and there would be no more room for doubt.
It turned out, she was the one who had no idea. They now wore matching bands on their left ring fingers; both inscribed with the same word.
No doubt. No fear. No risk of rejection. Only forever.
Sure, she knew the divorce statistics, but she refused to become one of them. This was it. She was done.
And she was right about it making the sex even better.
One thing she wished that her mother had been wrong about, though, was the endorphine-induced memories. If only she had no memories of being with other men. That his body had been the only one she had memories of. That ideas of what she wanted and enjoyed didn't come to mind with the face of another man attached and the memory of their downfall.
Time would eventually create more memories of Rick's lips, Rick's hands, Rick's body, so that it would eventually be easy to only have him come to mind. If only she didn't have to wait for that.
She smiled at his sleeping naked form, and wished she had listened to her mother.
A/N: I though I was done at Ch.3. But no. As always, please feed my addiction to reviews. They're addictive like... hmmm. Since all my thoughts are now sex-related, I can't finish that sentence!