The café smells like burnt espresso and poor life decisions. So, basically, my natural habitat.
Gemma is already at our usual table, aggressively stabbing a croissant like it personally offended her. She spots me and her face cycles through approximately seventeen emotions before settling on murderous concern.
"You look like death warmed over and then microwaved again for good measure," she announces as I slide into the seat across from her.
"Good morning to you too. I see we're leading with compliments today."
"Alex texted me." She abandons the croissant massacre. "Something about how he's finally free of your—and I quote—'emotional black hole of a personality.' I'm going to need you to explain why I shouldn't drive to his flat and commit several felonies."
I flag down the waiter and order the largest coffee they're legally allowed to serve. "Because orange isn't your color and prison jumpsuits have zero tailoring options."
"Lottie. What happened?"
I give her the highlights. The sex that wasn't. The phone grab that was. The wall that my phone met at approximately sixty miles per hour. The greatest hits of insults, culminating in 'frigid bitch' as his parting gift.
I deliver the whole thing flatly, without self-pity. At some point during the night, I ran out of tears and moved directly into acceptance.
Gemma's knuckles go white around her fork.
"He threw your phone? He actually physically threw your phone at a wall?"
"In his defense, it was a very sturdy wall. The phone, less so." I pull out my ancient backup device, the one I kept in a drawer for emergencies. "Had to resurrect this dinosaur just to function like a human being in society. Pretty sure this thing still has Snake on it."
"This isn't funny, Lottie."
"It's a little funny. In a tragic, my-life-is-a-disaster-film kind of way."
Gemma reaches across the table and grabs my hand. Her nails are painted electric blue today, which feels aggressively optimistic given the circumstances.
"He's wrong about you. You know that, right? You're not cold or broken or any of that bullshit he spewed."
Here's the thing about Gemma: she believes what she's saying. Completely and without reservation. That's what makes this next part so hard.
"What if he's not entirely wrong, though?"
"Excuse me?"
My coffee arrives. I wrap my hands around the cup, grateful for something to hold onto. The warmth seeps into my palms while I figure out how to say this.
"Gemma, I've never had an orgasm with a man. Not with Alex. Not with David before him. Not with that guy from university whose name I can't even remember anymore. Not with anyone, ever."
She blinks. "Never? Not even when you—"
"Never. I've tried everything. I've guided their hands, given detailed instructions, drawn actual diagrams on more than one occasion. Nothing works. My body just... doesn't respond to them. Not in any way that actually counts."
"Maybe they were all just terrible at it."
"Three different men, spanning six years of my adult life, all independently terrible? At some point, Occam's razor suggests the common denominator is the problem."
I take a long sip of coffee. It's bitter and too hot and exactly what I deserve.
"I think I might be asexual. Or broken. Possibly both. Maybe my wiring is just fundamentally wrong and I should accept that I'm going to die alone, surrounded by cats who will eventually eat my face when I keel over."
"Okay, first of all, dramatic much? Second of all, you're not broken." Gemma leans forward, her expression shifting into something I can only describe as scheming. "And third of all, I know someone who can help."
"If you're about to recommend a therapist, I've already considered—"
"Not a therapist. A man. His name is Oliver."
I raise an eyebrow. "You want to set me up with someone? Gemma, I literally just got dumped twelve hours ago. My phone is still in pieces on my bedroom floor. This seems like spectacularly bad timing."
"He's not a date. Well, not exactly." She's doing that thing where she chooses her words carefully, which never bodes well for me. "He's a former gigolo."
The coffee I just swallowed makes a valiant attempt to exit through my nose. I grab a napkin and try to maintain some dignity.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"A gigolo. You know, a man who—"
"I know what a gigolo is, Gemma. I'm just trying to understand why you think hiring a prostitute is the solution to my intimacy issues."
"First of all, sex worker is the preferred term. Second of all, he's retired. And third of all, he specialized in exactly this—helping women who had trouble experiencing pleasure. He was apparently legendary at it."
"How do you even know someone like this?"
She waves a hand dismissively. "We met at a party a couple years ago. Had a one-night thing. Very skilled, emotionally unavailable, moved on quickly. But we stayed friendly."
"Of course you did."
"The point is, this isn't about paying for sex. Oliver is selective about who he helps now. He only takes cases that interest him. And your situation? Definitely interesting."
"I am not a case, Gemma. I'm a person with apparently defective genitals."
"Your genitals are not defective. You've just never had someone who actually knows what they're doing." She squeezes my hand again. "Let me reach out to him. One meeting, that's all I'm asking. You can have coffee, talk, see if there's chemistry. If you hate him, you never have to see him again."
"This is insane."
"This is intervention. There's a difference."
I stare at her. She stares back. The croissant lies forgotten between us, a casualty of this increasingly surreal conversation.
"Fine."
"Fine? Really?"
"One meeting. Tomorrow evening. And if this blows up in my face spectacularly, you're buying me a new phone and all the wine I can drink for the rest of the calendar year."
Gemma's face splits into a triumphant grin. "Deal. I'll text him right now."
She's already typing before I can change my mind. Her thumbs move across the screen with frightening efficiency.
I finish my coffee and wonder what exactly I've just agreed to. A former gigolo who specializes in unfixable women. It sounds like the setup for a bad joke or a worse romance novel.
But here's the pathetic truth: I don't actually expect anything to change. Three men have tried and failed. My body has made its position abundantly clear. I'm doing this for Gemma, to prove I'm willing to try, to check the box before I resign myself to a lifetime of faking it.
The notification pings on Gemma's phone.
"He's in. Tomorrow night, eight o'clock, the wine bar on Pemberton Street." She looks up, eyes sparkling with excitement. "This is going to change everything, Lottie. I can feel it."
I seriously doubt that.
But I don't say it out loud. Instead, I steal the rest of her croissant and pretend my stomach isn't twisting itself into complicated knots at the thought of meeting a professional pleasure-giver while still wearing the emotional bruises from Alex's parting words.
Frigid. Broken. Unresponsive.
Tomorrow night, apparently, I'm going to find out if he was right.