“What, from 24HourCondoms.com?”

“They deliver, don’t they?”

He smirked, “I don’t think they even exist.”

My shoulders slumped in disappointment.

“Don’t worry, Samantha. Everyone has sex. No one’s going to judge you for buying condoms. Last time I checked, safe sex is cool.”

“Yeah, but the cashier will be looking at me thinking about how I’m going to be having sex with you later. Maybe we could ask the cashier to join us? Maybe film it?” I joked nervously.

“Isn’t there some slogan like, ‘If you’re afraid to buy condoms, you shouldn’t be having sex’?”

“I think it’s, ‘If you need condoms, ask your boyfriend to buy them while you wait in the car.’”

“Mmmm…no.” He smiled compassionately. “Let’s go.”

“All right,” I sighed. “But I’m wearing a ski mask.”

“They’ll think you’re going to rob the place if you do that.”

“That’s a great idea!” I beamed. “They’ll never know who we are! And we can steal them! Do you have a gun? We’ll need it for the stick up.”

He shook his head. “Uh, no.”

“You don’t have a gun? Okay. Maybe Walmart is still open?”

“No.”

“Are they closed?” I asked, worried. “It’s not that late.”

Christos rolled his eyes. “No, we’re not buying a gun. Let’s go.”

“We’re just going to shoplift them? Five-finger the condoms, one for each finger?”

“No, Samantha. We’re going to pay for them. Like adults.”

“Fiiiiiine,” I groaned. I grabbed my purse and we went out the door together.

SAMANTHA

I drove us in my VW to the grocery store. Holding hands, Christos and I walked down an aisle until we stopped at the condom display.

“Which ones should we get?” I asked bashfully.

He scanned the packages hooked to the display. “I’m looking for my favorites.”

“You have a favorite?” I grimaced

“Yeah, why?”

“That’s so weird!”

“Do you have a favorite tampon?” he said cockily.

“Yeah?”

“Exactly,” he grinned.

“That’s different!”

“Really?” he said thoughtfully. “How?”

“Because I go through a dozen tampons a month!”

“I go through more than that.”

Confused, I said, “you don’t wear tampons!”

“Nope.” he smiled that stupid cocky smile again.

“Oh,” I grimaced, “…are you talking about rubbers?”

“Yep.”

“That you use when you’re—!!”

“Yep.”

“Christos!”

“Samantha!” he mocked.

“How much sex do you have?! Wait! Don’t answer that!” I jammed my fingers in my ears.

He pulled my fingers out of my ears. “Since I decided I wanted to be more than your mentor? None.”

Phew. That definitely made me feel better. But there was still the issue of quantity to consider.

“Let me get this straight.” I started ticking off on my fingers the number of times he…you know…per month. I gave up. I didn’t have enough fingers. “You have sex, what, every day?”

“Usually. Until I knew you were the woman I’d been waiting for my entire life.”

Swoon. Wait, he was getting me off track. “So, since you started dating me, you’ve gone from doing the deed daily to never? For months? Isn’t that like, physically impossible for men? To go so long without, you know?”

He hung his head pathetically. “It’s been a rough two months.”

“Oh, Christos,” I placed my palm on his cheek consolingly, “you must be like a parched man in the desert begging for a glass of water.”

His cocky grin spiraled into a dimple. “More like a guy with two hand grenades between his legs with their pins pulled out, or two swollen balloons filled with—”

“I get the idea!” I said, jamming my palm against his chest. “If the pressure isn’t released soon, your boilers are gonna explode or your volcano is going to erupt,” I mocked.

He grinned. “It isn’t that bad. I do have a hand,” he said calmly.

“You are such a perv!”

He chuckled some more.

Despite my semi-disgust at this topic of conversation, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining his now-defunct harem of harlots parading around the site of where his manly edifice jutted up mightily from God’s green earth. I pictured a large circle of cavorting concubines with flowers in their hair and wearing short Grecian dresses while they held hands and danced around King Christos’ fleshy obelisk, preparing to sacrifice their virginity to the God of Love. All while a sweltering sun illuminated the ritual from the sky above.

Yeah, I was ready to change this subject.

Heedless of the fact we were in the middle of a grocery store, I said, “So, we came here to grab condoms so we could have sex. But now I’m feeling like I’m at the back of the unemployment line, waiting to pick up my check, and I’m the girl who gets to the counter last thing before closing, after five hundred other women who’ve already received payment from you have come and gone. Is that supposed to be romantic?”

“No payment ever changed hands, I swear,” he smirked confidently. “But I do accept tips.”

“It’s not funny, Christos,” I sulked.

He sighed. “Samantha, if you want to wait, that’s okay with me. But my history is never going to go away.”

I simmered.

“I’m sorry, Samantha. But that’s the facts. It’s who I am. Had you come into my life sooner, things would’ve been different. What can I say? I dropped all the women in my life the second I decided I was so deeply in love with you that I couldn’t live without you.”

I liked that last bit about him not being able to live without me, but I didn’t want to tell him that the phrase “dropping all the women in his life” made me imagine him coming home from the grocery store cradling paper grocery bags in his arms, the bags overflowing with dozens of miniature naked women, each with a label that read:

Step 1: Add water to create a full-sized floozy. 

Step 2: Insert tab A into slot B.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 until desired result is achieved.

Step 4: Have fun!

I took a deep breath and let it out. I knew Christos was right. I had to accept him as-is. He was used goods. Or pre-owned, as the luxury car dealerships liked to say.

Hold on. What was I thinking? Christos wasn’t an object. He was a person. And people were messy things. I was a recovering hot mess myself. I leaned into him. “You’re right, Christos. I’m sorry. I’m being totally lame.”

“It’s okay. I understand, agápi mou. But I want you to know that the last thing I thought about when I realized I was crazy in love with you was how we were going to work out the sex thing. I just thought about the fact that I desperately loved you and needed you in my life, no matter what. I figured everything else would work itself out if we loved each other. You love me, don’t you?”

I gazed into his mesmerizing blue eyes. They swallowed my heart every time. I also realized that this man standing in front of me had heard my darkest secrets, yet he still accepted me unconditionally. How could I give him any less of myself than everything?

“I do love you, Christos. I love you more than I ever thought I could love another human being.”

“You two are so darling together,” an old woman standing behind a grocery cart loaded with cheap wine said to both of us, her eyes twinkling.

OMG, How long had she been listening? She pushed her cart past us.

“Mmm, mmm,” she hummed, “young love gets me every time. You better hold onto this one,” she said to me as she squeezed my arm gently. “They broke the mold when they made him, I can tell you. I’ve been around the block once or twice in my time, and they don’t usually look like him. Mmmm, mmmm,” she shook her head. “And I suggest you buy the extra large,” she nodded toward the condoms.

I gasped. How the hell would she know that?

“It’s the hands,” she whispered surreptitiously, “I can always tell.” She nodded confidently as she walked away. “The hands,” she mouthed silently before turning the corner.