did try!” I say, feeling defensive. “Well, I tried. It wasn’t one of the finer moments of our relationship. She gave me this little packet of things to try with Ryan, and we did for a while, but it was weird, and he seemed really uncomfortable. So I decided I’d figure it out on my own when I had time to focus on it.”
Everyone is staring at me. Finally Butter says, “And how’d that work out for you?”
My brows furrow. “I just sort of lost track of time, I guess.” If I weren’t so annoyed by the look they are all giving me, I’d have to laugh at the perfect unison in which they all started giving it.
Shannon’s face looks like she’s trying to solve a complicated math problem in her head. “Wait, your second anniversary? Is that why you told him you weren’t ready to live together?”
“Could you for once not remember every tiny detail of everything?”
She gasps. “Is that it? I figured you were just being stubborn about commitment!”
“Oh, stop it. It’s not that. But when we tried the therapy stuff, it was so goddamn awkward, and I just wanted to be super sure that when we do try again, it actually works. All the failed attempts didn’t do wonders for my self-esteem.”
Shannon frowns. “I can see that. You need to be comfortable when you go for it.”
“See? It’s not like I didn’t want to get it sorted. I just didn’t have the time to invest. Now it’s been nearly two years, and Ryan is supposed to ask me to move in together, and I want to say yes, but I can’t until I fix this, and I’m five months away from thirty, and I don’t want to end this decade with a broken vagina, you guys. I just really don’t.”
“That’s not good decade juju, no,” Butter adds as I suck in a lung-piercing breath.
“And you can’t just say yes and actually take the damn time to work on it while you’re living together?” Shannon asks.
“No!” I yelp, surprising even myself with my vehement tone. “When you move in with someone, it’s supposed to be all happy and exciting and horizontally mamboing on every surface of your new place. Not awkwardly sleeping together, wondering when one person is going to get their nethers back on track. I don’t want that hanging over us if we do this.”
Butter is lightly pulling the bristles of her glitter brush back and forth across the top of her station. “So, you and Ryan aren’t doin’ it, but you’re—I mean, you guys do the other stuff, right?”
For the first time in this conversation of horrors, I blush. “Not exactly,” I mutter.
“Kat.” Shannon looks astounded.
“It’s too weird!” I shriek. “Okay? It’s bizarre. We’d kind of hit that comfortable relationship place where there wasn’t like, a ton of making out and stuff, so it felt too random to do that stuff knowing how it wouldn’t end.” I realize Ryan and I never discussed it, but somewhere along the line, we definitely stopped doing anything in the sex category in a mutual way. “That’s why this is so important! I don’t know how it all got so messed up, but I have to fix it. Now. This is not how relationships are supposed to go, and this is on me.”
While Shannon and Butter consider my stance, Liz swallows hard. “Is it possible it just...fixed itself?”
I stare at her, dumbfounded that I haven’t considered this possibility sooner. “Um. I don’t think so? I’m not sure. Can that happen?” A tiny flicker of hope appears.
Butter looks around desperately. “Look, I didn’t even know you could break a vagina!”
We all turn to Shannon, who looks perplexed. “Come on,” I say. “You’re the resident vagina expert, apparently. Can it?”
Shannon closes her eyes and makes a face that I am pretty sure I’ve seen her give her kids a few times. She calmly pulls her phone out of her apron pocket and starts typing. I know she’s hitting Google hard. We all squish over into her station to read over her shoulder.
“Okay,” Butter says, reading from medical websites as Shannon scrolls. “It’s like you said—there are therapists, and therapies you can do yourself. This is something that is almost one hundred percent treatable. So, wow. Like you said, the muscles just sort of...clenched up there, didn’t they?” I close my eyes and take a deep, calming breath as that flicker of hope poofs away, and Butter looks slightly hurt at my expression. “Well, sorry. I’m trying to catch up. And the disorder keeps you from letting anything, ahem, in, so that’s what the therapy does. You just keep training the muscles until they are used to, erm, the in things. It doesn’t say anything about it just going away, but I guess the only way to know would be to...check.”
“So,” Shannon says plainly, “grab Ryan tonight and go for it.”
I blink at her. “As much as I am in desperate need of getting some—and I definitely considered the grab-and-go option—I refuse to give it the old college try with him just to have it not work. Again. I can’t do that to either of us.” I wave my hand at the phone. “I’ll just have to go a different route.”
“How are you going to do that without your boyfriend?” Liz whispers.
I fight the urge to pat her head while Shannon stares at her. Butter is gaping.
Clearing my throat, I delicately say, “There are boyfriend substitutes, you see.”
It takes her a second, but she gets there. Her face turns bright red, and she takes a large drink of her coffee.
“You sweet summer child,” Butter says, shaking her head. “So, Kat, you do that, and then you’ll know!”
“Unfortunately,” I reply, “I’m lacking the appropriate stock for these experiments. That’s not exactly my style.”
I’m getting the side-eye from Shannon. “Really? You’ve been boinkless for that long and you don’t have any...gear?”
I scoff, “What? I’m more of a right-click-your-mouse than power-up-your-hard-drive kind of gal. So?”
Liz makes a noise, and I’m certain she’s going to faint.
“Sweetie,” Shannon says, putting her hand on Liz’s shoulder, “if you want to leave this conversation, I swear none of us will hold it against you in the slightest.”
“No!” Liz insists. “I’m okay! I just...my friends don’t normally talk about this stuff. But I’m fine, really! I want to help.”
Shannon pats her on the back. “Teamwork. I admire that.” She turns back to her phone. “When I was doing my own therapy at home, I had a stash of things I could use that weren’t that far off from what one might use to ‘power their hard drive,’ as you say, so maybe you can kill two birds with one dildo.”
Butter snorts into her coffee and starts choking spectacularly.
“You did not just say that.” I shake my head.
“Pumpkin, I’ve got two kids. More people have seen my vagina with a human being coming out of it than I care to admit. I haven’t peed alone in nine years. I have no shame. This stuff happens. When I had my gallbladder out last year, you were right there bringing us food and watching the kids and manning the shop and being the best damn friend in the world to me and mine. We don’t pick our challenges. You’re like family and I love you—you have a problem and I’m here to help. If that help involves dildos, bring it on. I’ve fucking got this.”
This is certainly our liveliest employee meeting to date.
After the shop closed for the night, Butter and I hit up the Naughty Market over on Fourth Street. Then I raced home and, with the help of a newly acquired phallic device, made the discovery