7 Years Bad Sex by Nicky Wells Page A

at Sasha’s flat for a girls’ night in while Alex and Myles went to paint the town red. Blue Heart was having a rare weekend off.
    Casey crinkled her nose. ‘I had an allergic reaction. I spent the rest of the night in a tepid bath trying to soothe my skin. It was red and blotchy, and it looked like it would flake off in big strips. It was awful. Alex very nearly took me to the hospital.’
    ‘An allergic reaction?’
    ‘Yup. Apparently I’m really sensitive to rubber, even the anti-allergy stuff that they sell in the shop.’
    ‘What shop?’ Sasha was confused.
    ‘You know. The shop where I bought the outfit. It was meant to be hypoallergenic. Yeah, right.’
    ‘You bought a hypoallergenic rubber dominatrix outfit in a kinky shop to play bedroom games with Alex, and you had an allergic reaction?’ Sasha repeated.
    ‘Yup, that’s the long and short of it.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘Because I’m allergic to rubber, and I didn’t know.’
    Sasha grabbed a sofa cushion and whacked Casey with it. ‘No, silly. Why did you buy the outfit in the first place?’
    ‘Oh. Yeah. That.’ Casey could feel a blush spread across her face. This was the moment she had been dreading. It was also the moment she had been working towards. If she couldn’t unburden herself to her best friend soon, she was sure she would implode. But now that the time was upon her, she felt reluctant to breach Alex’s confidence.
    On the other hand, she needed to talk to someone . She needed some help. They needed some help.
    She gulped. ‘Okay. Here goes. But you must swear on your mum’s life never to share this with anybody .’
    Sasha adopted a serious look and raised her right hand. ‘I solemnly swear.’
    So out tumbled the whole story, starting with the wedding day and ending with her near-trip to the hospital after the rubber experiment.
    Sasha was horrified. ‘You mean—you’re saying you can’t have sex with each other?’
    ‘That’s about it, yeah.’
    ‘But why not?’
    ‘We don’t know!’ Casey’s voice was a near-wail. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you all this if I had the answer.’
    Sasha sipped at her wine. ‘Have you Googled this?’
    ‘Have I Googled this? Sasha, we’ve both been all over the Internet. We’ve bought self-help books. We even downloaded a copy of the bloody Kama Sutra. Oh, and “The Joy of Sex”. But we can’t do it.’
    Sasha giggled. ‘You’ve got a copy of “The Joy of Sex”?’
    Casey rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, we’ve got a copy of “The Joy of Sex”. But it ain’t helping us one bit.’
    ‘So you’ve actually read it?’
    Now it was Casey’s turn to thump Sasha with a cushion. ‘Yes, we’ve actually read it. Together. In bed. Completely naked and ready to follow instructions. But it’s not bloody working for us, and I’m a desperate woman. Wanting to make love has become the big white elephant in the room. It’s always there, but we pretend we don’t see it.’
    ‘Wow.’
    ‘Yeah. Wow. Not sure “wow” is the best word, but it’ll do. Wow.’ Casey grimaced some more.
    ‘What a bummer.’
    ‘Eloquently put. Anything else you’d like to say?’
    Sasha turned serious. ‘I’m sorry, Casey. I don’t mean to be callous. I’m simply—I’m so stunned. You two have always been like the incarnation of true love…’
    ‘I know, I know,’ Casey waved her arms. ‘I’m sure we were sickening in our perfection, but we’ve got our come-uppance now.’
    Sasha scratched her head. ‘There must be some sort of reason.’
    ‘That would be good, because then we could fix it. Right now, we daren’t even look at each other for fear of getting horny and not being able to do it— again .’
    ‘More wine?’
    Casey giggled. ‘You’re incorrigible. Yes, more wine please.
    ‘It’s like you’ve been cursed,’ Sasha ruminated.
    ‘Hear, hear,’ Casey mumbled through a mouthful of wine. ‘Don’t think I haven’t Googled that too. But I don’t believe in curses, and,