That, and I find you almost irresistible, I thought.

She waved me off. “Anyway, I have a question.”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “Okay?”

“Do women really make those noises in bed?”

I stilled, grinning over at her. “What noises, Ziggy?”

She didn’t seem to realize I was completely f**king with her, and she closed her eyes, and whispered, “Like, ‘Oh, oh, Willll, I need your cock’ and ‘Harder, harder, oh God, f**k me, big daddy’ . . . and so on.” Her voice had gone soft, and breathy, and I was horrified to feel my dick lengthen. Again.

“Um, some do.”

She burst into laughter. “It’s ridiculous!”

I fought a smile, loving her natural confidence even on a topic I suspected she had little experience with. “Maybe they do need my cock. Wouldn’t you like to want someone so much you need their cock?”

She took a long pull on her iced tea, considering this. “Actually, yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone so much I would beg for it. A cookie? Yes. A cock? No.”

“That would have to be one hell of a cookie.”

“Oh, it was.”

Laughing, I asked, “What movie was it?”

“Um.” She looked up at the ceiling. Not blushing, not even a little embarrassed. “Frisky Freshmen? Something like that. A lot of college girls having sex with a lot of college guys. It was kind of fascinating, actually.”

I fell quiet, losing my thoughts down a weird trail from college coeds, to Ziggy at work in the lab, to Jensen’s hope that she would make new friends, to the bartender hitting on her right in front of me, to my still-lengthened cock.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing, really.”

She put her tea down, and turned on her stool to stare at me. “How is that possible? How can men say they’re not thinking about anything?”

“I’m not thinking about anything of substance, how’s that?” I clarified.

“We’re talking about  p**n  and you’re not even thinking about sex?”

“Strangely, no,” I said. “I’m thinking about how na?ve and sweet you are. I’m wondering what I’ve agreed to do here, when I said I would help you figure out the whole dating world. I’m worried I’m going to make you into the most vulnerable bombshell in the history of the planet.”

“You were thinking of all of that just now?”

I nodded.

“Wow. That’s something of substance.” Her voice had gone quiet, and soft. Kind of like her pretend  p**n  voice, but with real words, and real emotion. But when I looked over at her, she was staring out the window. “I’m not na?ve and sweet, though, Will. I know what you mean, but I’ve always been kind of obsessed with sex. Mostly the mechanics of it. Why different things work for different people. Why some people like sex one way, and others like it another. Is it anatomy? Is it psychology? Are our bodies really organized that differently? Things like that.”

I had literally no idea how to respond to this, so I just drank. I’d never thought about these things, had instead preferred to just try anything and everything that a given woman wanted, but I found that I really liked that Ziggy pondered all of this.

“But lately, I’m kind of figuring out what I like,” she admitted. “That’s fun, but it’s hard not having a way to figure it out firsthand. Hence,  p**n .”

She took a long drink and then grinned over at me. Two weeks ago if Ziggy had said something like this to me, I would have been secondhand embarrassed for her to be so open in her inexperience. Now I found that I wanted to protect it, just a little.

“I can’t believe I’m encouraging this conversation, but . . . I worry  p**n  might give you a false sense of what sex should be like.”

“How so?”

“Because the sex you see in  p**n  isn’t very realistic.”

Laughing, she asked, “You mean most men don’t have a Pringle can in their pants?”

This time I didn’t choke. “That’s one difference, yes.”

“I have had sex before, Will. Just not much variation. Porn is a good way to see what rings the old bell, if you know what I’m saying.”

“You surprise me, Ziggy Bergstrom.”

She didn’t respond for several long beats. “That isn’t my name, you know.”

“I know. But it is what I call you.”