No Strings. Cara Lockwood

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СКАЧАТЬ waved her fork in the air. “Wait, you do get off, don’t you?”

      Emma felt her face flush red. “Um... Yes. I do.”

      Just, you know, with only two guys. Ever. In her whole dating history, but Sarah didn’t need to know that right now.

      Sarah pushed up her sunglasses on her nose and leaned back, lifting her face to the fall sunshine coating the small patio of the restaurant. “Good. I thought for a second you were one of those poor souls who’d never had an orgasm.”

      Emma glanced around the restaurant, suddenly worried someone might overhear. Sarah just shook her head at her friend. “Orgasm!” she cried, louder, and a father of two glanced over at their table and frowned.

      “Hush!” Emma commanded. Not that it would do any good. Sarah spoke her mind. Their server appeared then, placing delicious-looking plates of food in front of them. Sarah dug in, while Emma focused on the app.

      “This is what is wrong with us. Anonymous one-nighters? I mean, you are seriously going to have sex with a man and all you know is his handle is...” Emma peered at her screen. “Hot4U?”

      Sarah laughed a little. “Who cares about love when he’s got abs like that?” she said, pointing to the man’s six-pack.

      “And enough tattoo ink on him to write War and Peace,” Emma pointed out. “He’s got two arm sleeve tattoos.”

      “You just have to fuck him, not marry him,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes, as she forked a mouthful of spinach quiche into her mouth. “And bad boys are very good in bed. Live a little, Em. Seriously. You know you settle too fast for just about any guy who buys you a drink. Then you end up in a two-year relationship with them while they bore your friends to death.”

      Emma knew she was talking about Devin, her last boyfriend with the less-than-sparkling personality. He’d been the only other guy she’d seriously dated other than her high school boyfriend.

      “Not all of my exes are that way.”

      “You need to date around. Hell, sleep around. Not just commit to the very first guy who shows up. You know I’m right.” Sarah studied her friend.

      Emma twirled a loose tendril of hair around her finger and sighed. She glanced down at her flowy, flowered peasant top and her modest jeans and tried to imagine herself meeting up with Mr. Tattoo and taking all her clothes off. She simply couldn’t.

      “I need romance,” Emma declared. “There’s no romance in this. This is what men want. It’s not what women want.”

      Sarah snorted. “How do you know if you’ve never tried it?”

      “I know that this is just one more way men are manipulating us into thinking that what they want is somehow us being liberated,” said Emma, her women’s studies major coming out in blazing good form. “This is just Girls Gone Wild in sex app form.”

      “Em, can you spare me the feminist rant until after I’ve finished my mimosa?” Sarah held up her champagne glass.

      “No...this is what I do for a living.” She wrote freelance stories about women’s issues for a women’s online magazine, and she had a small but loyal following. “And because clearly you’re being manipulated by the patriarchy,” Emma declared and grinned. She knew what she sounded like: a militant femi-Nazi. But honestly, she felt like she was the only one who could see it—the fact that the wage gap was still a thing. And that the US was the only industrialized nation not to offer paid maternity leave, and...now there was Nost. Like Tinder, but in its most extreme form. The app men didn’t have to even try to get laid. She was all for the sexual revolution, but not when it meant that the advantage went entirely to men.

      “This is just...this is just one more way men have tricked us into getting what they want. Sex and no commitment.”

      “Fine, so delete it,” Sarah said, sighing, showing her exasperation, as she finished off the last of her meal. Emma, who had already devoured her blueberry waffle, wondered, not for the first time, how she and Sarah, so total opposites, ever got along. Their random pairing as college roommates had set off an unlikely friendship: Sarah, the impulsive redhead, who never flinched at a dare, and Emma, the bookworm, who one day hoped to run for elected office. If she were honest with herself, finding Mr. Right ranked somewhere between growing her blog readership base and putting money in her IRA. Dating just didn’t seem important at the moment—she was just twenty-eight. She had plenty of time. At least, that’s what she told herself. After her last disastrous relationship, where her boyfriend, Devin, chose a new job in Seattle over her, she just wasn’t too into the idea of putting herself out there again.

      “Actually,” Sarah said, sipping her mimosa. “You don’t even need to delete it. Your profile will become invisible to the guys on your screen in forty-eight hours.”

      “What? Why?”

      Sarah put down her fork, and looked exasperated. She flipped her dark red hair off one shoulder.

      “Because the whole point of it is not to have a relationship longer than that. Every two days, you get a whole new slew of potential guys and the old ones can’t find you. Every time, it’s new, and the best part is, there’s no awkward follow-up. You have sex and then—whoosh!—you disappear. It’s ghosting, but the app does it for you. Everybody knows the score. Nobody gets hurt.”

      Emma put her head in her hands and groaned. “Are you kidding me?” She peeked at Sarah from her fingers. “The profiles become invisible?”

      “That’s the point,” Sarah said. “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Emphasis on the bamming part.”

      “Sarah! What about rapists? Serial killers?” Emma couldn’t believe her friend was even seriously suggesting anonymous sex. Wasn’t that beyond sketchy?

      “The good ones already have a background check. See that little v next to ‘Hot4U’? He uploaded a background check. No felonies. Nost verified him. So, you don’t have to.”

      Emma blew bangs out of her eyes. “What about...STDs?”

      “See that little c next to him?”

      Emma nodded.

      “That means he’s been tested in the last month. He’s clear.”

      “I guess they’ve thought of everything. You know, except real human intimacy.”

      “Ha. Ha. Very funny. Don’t knock it till you try it.” Sarah pointed at Emma with her fork.

      “Seriously, though, how can you do...this?”

      “I’m busy. I work sixty hours a week because those commercial buildings aren’t going to sell themselves. And, yeah, it’s kind of hot.” She took a swig of her mimosa, finishing it, and glanced back at Emma. “And, a one-night stand? I mean, who hasn’t had one of those?”

      Emma froze. She hadn’t, actually. She could never imagine herself getting naked in front of a stranger. She’d only ever had sex with her high school boyfriend, whom she’d dated three years before they’d even had sex, and then СКАЧАТЬ