The woman invited the man over for dinner and a movie and while they did eat dinner, she’d made a roast chicken with potatoes and string beans, they skipped the movie and instead started talking about their lives: what they were doing for work, where they’d travelled, things of this nature. She wasn’t sure if this was a date, as she hadn’t seen the man in well over a year. She wasn’t sure if he was single or seeing someone or what she might expect from him, if he’d make a pass at her. When they’d first met he pursued her diligently, attempted to woo her in an old-fashioned way she wasn’t used to, as he brought her flowers and held her hand while they walked to dinner. But this was three years ago now and she couldn’t quite remember what had happened between them or how it happened. She was mindful of living in the present now. First they discussed tennis, which had been a common interest and how they’d met three years ago. They had played together a few times and it was always an enjoyable experience, as he was a good player who didn’t take the game too seriously. He didn’t want to keep score or play games and was content with rallying back and forth at a leisurely pace. She knew he was better than her, stronger and faster, because she’d seen him play against men and it was clear he wasn’t hitting the ball as hard as he could, which she considered gentlemanly, but he also wasn’t disrespectful or treating her like a novice. It was clear to him that she could play, had a strong and consistent forehand and an entirely respectable two-fisted backhand that she wasn’t as confident in so she would run around it whenever possible. She lamented that she hadn’t been able to play as much lately due to a hamstring injury, which was slow to heal. She’d taken solace in her yoga practice, which she does nearly every day. She suggested he do yoga and he said he wasn’t flexible and she said yoga helps with flexibility but she knew she wasn’t going to convince him to try yoga. He wasn’t the type to do yoga and she knew he wasn’t the type to get talked into anything. She wasn’t sure what type he was, but could tell what he wasn’t into and she wasn’t sure she was attracted to him and she wasn’t sure why that was the case. They’d met three years ago at the tennis courts and he asked her out that very evening. He suggested a drink or dinner and asked for her phone number or email address. She can’t remember how he contacted her that first time because they’d communicated both via email and text message. He was always flirtatious in either medium and would suggest she holler when she was ready to get together. She actually enjoyed typing the words, I’m hollering, and she enjoyed his responses, too, which were always quick to arrive and seemed genuine. She remembered thinking that perhaps this was a red flag, that maybe he was too eager. She even suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t reply quite so promptly to a text message or email. She said there was something about mystery and elusiveness that was appealing to her. He responded that he wasn’t into games and didn’t like to play any. He said he was too old for such things. They had sort of dated when they’d first met but it was fraught with uncertainty, full of stops and starts, and it ended abruptly after a night when they tried to have sex but couldn’t. Something wasn’t right between the two of them sexually, there was a lack of chemistry. She’d had this issue before with men, had been hesitant when it came to new lovers, uncertain what to do or how to do it. She’s always been in her head when it comes to sex and dating and this is something she has talked about in therapy for years. She sees her therapist weekly and credits her with the extraordinary improvements she’s made in her life, including those in the sexual arena, but it has yet to bear any tangible fruit. Like every other person who spends years in therapy she still has the same exact problems, makes the same mistakes. The only difference is she has a new language to talk about it after the fact. She once considered making an appointment with a sex therapist but decided against it. This was after someone called her frigid, and she never spoke to that man again, throwing him out of her house before he could get fully dressed. This was something she’d tried to work on, as well, a sufferno-creeps-or-fools mindset while constantly asserting herself regardless of circumstance. It was true she was working out who she was as a sexual being, as she didn’t think of herself as especially sexy or sexual, though she was good-looking and in great physical shape and possessed what she considered a typical female libido, although perhaps it was waning now that she was in her early forties. As for the man, he was charming and respectful and quick-witted and handsome in a rugged, athletic way. He was short but well-proportioned and muscular. She thought she should be attracted to him and wanted to be attracted to him but couldn’t decide if she actually was, but maybe there was fear and uncertainty and some kind of inherited repression getting in the way, and she tried not to think about any of this as they had dinner and talked about tennis. Then the conversation moved to vacations and what was going on with their respective families and careers, he a lecturer who went around the country giving talks on the environment and she a private school Spanish teacher who was considering a move into administration. She said to him I’m not sure what we’re doing here and he said that makes two of us. Then he said I wouldn’t mind kissing you and she said then you probably should and so they kissed and it was enjoyable and passionate for a minute or two. This is when he tried to remove her top and she asked him to go slower, which he did. They kept on kissing and after a few minutes he asked if it was okay now and she laughed and said yes and he removed her top and started kissing her breasts and belly, up and down, slowly and tenderly. She enjoyed the feeling of his kissing, but it also tickled her and she was trying hard to suppress the laughter. This is when he stopped and asked if he could take a shower. She didn’t think he was serious about wanting to take a shower. She said, for real, a shower and he answered that he was, in fact, for real. She walked down the hall and fetched him a fresh towel from the linen closet and directed him to the shower. She told him how to turn the handle all the way to the left to get the water hot and left him alone. She went back into the living room and picked up a magazine. She couldn’t decide if this was off-putting, but she figured he was sweating and wanted to make himself fresh for her. She noticed he’d wiped his brow with a handkerchief during dinner, but she neglected to ask if he was uncomfortable, if it was too warm. She is unpracticed as a host but would like to do more entertaining in the future, be it for potential dates or friends. She tried to concentrate on the magazine article, which concerned the forthcoming presidential election and the field of candidates who were sometimes inspiring but all the time tedious. This is also what she thought of her students and her job as a whole, which is why she was considering a move out of the classroom and into administration. The administrative position would likely prove tedious, too, with its own particular dramas and complications, but at least it would be something different and she wouldn’t have to be in front of a roomful of ill-mannered children four times a day, going over conjugations and sentence structure and saying Me llamo Miss So and So and quantos años tienes y pues nada y nada. She wondered what he was doing in the shower, if maybe he was masturbating because he’d mentioned he enjoys it as a routine activity, then realized he probably wouldn’t do that with her waiting for him. For a quick minute she considered joining him in the shower, figured it would be received as a sexy maneuver, but she wasn’t the type to make such bold gestures and she didn’t enjoy the prospect of sex in the shower, if that’s what he’d expect or propose. Also, the man hadn’t seen her naked yet, and she didn’t want to be naked in front of him under the bathroom light. The first time they tried to have sex and failed the lights were off, so he couldn’t see the look on her face and vice versa.

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She put the magazine down on the coffee table but picked it back up again when she heard the bathroom door opening. He returned to the living room wrapped in the towel she gave him from the linen closet and sat down next to her. The woman thought it a good idea to pretend not to notice. She thought it would be playful, the insouciance. She remembered another time when she’d hosted a man on a date, but this time the man had bussed in from Baltimore for the occasion and was slated to spend the entire weekend with her. They’d met at a conference and had hit it off and exchanged information about six months prior to these plans unexpectedly coming to fruition. She figured she’d never hear from him again, as they hadn’t so much as kissed during their brief time together at the conference, but he reached out via social media and they began a correspondence that turned flirtatious and after they each invited the other up or down for the weekend he called her bluff and showed up on a Friday evening. That first night together they went to dinner and talked about their lives as people do on first dates and at the end of the evening, she showed him to the guest room where she’d made up the bed for him. They shared a gentle kiss goodnight and she went to bed thinking it was a good first date and sure it was weird that her date was spending the night, one tiny room away from her own, but they lived three hours apart and there was no other choice. The next day they went to a museum and she took him on a tour of the city and by the end of the evening she found herself back at the door of his bedroom, giving him another chaste kiss goodnight. She realized the man was either shy or awkward and reluctant to put a move on her, which she sort of wanted him to do and was sort of relieved that he didn’t. Later that night, though, she knocked on his door and climbed into bed with him, where he was naked and awake. She made a joke that she knew she’d get him naked and made a gesture of patting her own back. Then they made out and he caressed her back and buttocks and breasts through her nightgown, but never made a move to remove it or reach up underneath it. She never touched him while they kissed and hugged under the covers, so she didn’t know if he’d had an erection or not. Still he didn’t put his hands near her genitals or try to guide her hands toward his and she wasn’t one to make that sort of first move, even though she thought her going into his room and climbing into bed with him qualified as a first move. They never did have any kind of sex that night or any other and never saw each other again romantically after that, although they did run into each other the following year at the same conference and exchanged pleasantries and vague plans to reconnect once they got home.

This night the man in the towel picked up on her cue and retrieved a different magazine from the coffee table and started to page through it. This went on for a minute before they both broke out laughing. Then he leaned into her and they started kissing in earnest and it was clear he was somehow invigorated by the shower as he removed the top that she had put back on and started to take down her shorts. The woman tried to resist, but he looked up at her with big eyes and said it was okay, that they’d go slow and take their time and wouldn’t do anything she wasn’t comfortable with, but they should be naked together now. She liked the way he’d framed it and looked him in the eye and they both smiled. She shimmied out of her shorts and underwear and led him into the bedroom. She wanted everything to be okay and she wanted to be normal and she wanted to have sex like everyone else in the world. But the same problem happened as before, as the man couldn’t get aroused, or rather, he would get aroused but quickly lose his erection. This is when he changed tack and begin kissing her all over desperately, working his way up and down her body and between her legs to pleasure her, all the while manipulating his penis in an attempt to regain his erection. She wished he wouldn’t do that, wished it wasn’t that important to him, but she knew that men are sensitive to this sort of thing and she wanted to help him, but felt herself recoil at the prospect of touching him there or going down on him. A few minutes later, when he suggested she do just that, she wanted to say no but she wasn’t sure why, he’d done the same to her and he was sweet and kind and gentle and as far as penises go he had a nice one, it was actually pretty, if such a thing is possible, and she didn’t know what was wrong with her. She thought of her friends who had no problems with sex, who could do anything and everything, but as much as she tried it wasn’t in her, she was different, locked up somehow, inhibited, and she wasn’t sure why, though she suspected it had to do with her first experiences which were crude and unsatisfying, and maybe it had to do with her mother who never talked about sex and seemed entirely asexual and disapproving of sex, and it was also her body and how unhappy she was with it. Sure she was taut and lean and had shapely legs and buttocks, which is where the tennis and yoga had yielded obvious results, but she was always embarrassed about her breasts, which fit into an A cup bra with room to spare as there was hardly any breast tissue surrounding her nipples. Still, the man appreciated her there and kissed and gently touched her nipples and breasts and never said a single word about them, though others in the past hadn’t been so kind. So she took him in her mouth and he grew hard and they quickly changed positions and he seemed in great haste, but when it came time for the man to enter her he couldn’t. She’d readied herself for that initial spasm of pain and hoped it would subside quickly, but they never got that far. After two or three attempts at penetration the man fell back on his haunches and said, I can’t believe this, I’m sorry. No one said anything for a solid minute until the man got up and did a lap around the room. This is when he collapsed in bed next to her and said that this happens all the time, that they had to get used to each other, that it would be better when they tried again. The woman agreed with him and tried not to think of this as a failure, tried not to think she was a failure and would never be able to have sex with anyone again, so she concentrated on everything that was good about the evening, the chicken and the banter and the magazine business, and wondered if they would indeed try again and when that might be, and then she thought about her morning yoga class and how she promised to meet her friend Esperanza for coffee beforehand. She didn’t know if he was going to spend the night or if she should invite him to stay, but he said he needed to wake up early as he got up from the bed and started dressing. She told him that was just as well because she had an early coffee date and it was important she keep it because her friend Esperanza had been going through a hard time recently and needed to talk.

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From The Best People by Robert Lopez. Used with permission of the publisher, Dzanc Books. Copyright © 2025 by Robert Lopez.