The rag stopped mid-arc on the steam wand.
The bell above the door hadn't finished ringing before he registered her: a woman crossing the empty café with the kind of stride that claimed space before her body arrived. Bob swinging. Arms folded. Eyes scanning the menu board like she owned it.
"You're Liam, right?" She didn't wait for him to set the rag down. "Isabel's friend."
It wasn't a question.
He set the rag on the counter anyway, buying time. The smooth skin of his forearm caught the light—hairless, moisturized, the result of a ritual he'd performed since he was fifteen because that's what boys did now. She was watching him notice himself watching her. He could feel her reading him: the crop top, the necklace, the way he stood with his weight on one hip because it made his ass look better under the apron.
"Yeah," he said. "You're Diana. She told me about you."
Diana Webb unfolded her arms and planted her palms on the counter. Her fingers were strong, the nails short and unpolished. There was a fine dusting of dark hair on her forearms. He noticed it because he was supposed to notice it—the counter-signal to his own hairlessness, the statement she was making without saying a word.
"I'm writing a paper," she said. "On how your generation grew up with the GirlCock. What it felt like to never know sex without it." Her hand lifted off the counter, palm up, an invitation or a test. "You want to tell me?"
The espresso machine hissed steam behind him. A timer beeped somewhere that he'd already forgotten to check.
"I'm closing in ten minutes," he said.
She didn't move her hand.
"I'll wait."
He should have said no. He should have said he had to wipe down the pastry case and count the till and lock the back door. But she was still looking at him with those warm brown eyes, a sharp edge underneath the softness, and he was already nodding. Like his head had decided before his brain caught up.
"Give me fifteen," he said.
Diana straightened, hooked a chair from the nearest table with her foot, and sat. She pulled a laptop from her bag and opened it without looking away from him. He felt watched. Not in a creepy way—in a way that made him want to move slower, more deliberately, make sure she saw the line of his back when he bent to check the under-counter fridge.
He wiped down the steam wand. Counted the till. Locked the back door. Each task took exactly as long as it needed to, and each time he glanced at her she was still there, still watching, her fingers poised over the keyboard but not typing.
When he finally came around the counter and sat across from her, the café smelled like cleaning solution and the last dregs of espresso. The single bar light above the register hummed. The rest of the room was shadow.
"You want coffee?" he asked.
"I want your story." She closed the laptop. "Coffee's secondary."
He laughed, surprised. "Isabel said you were intense."
"Isabel says a lot of things." Diana leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms again. "She also said you're a virgin."
The word landed like a slap. He felt heat climb his neck, up into his cheeks. His hand went to his nose ring, a nervous habit, and he twisted it.
"She told you that?"
"She tells me everything. I'm her thesis advisor's research assistant. She's one of my interview subjects." Diana tilted her head. "She also said you're embarrassed about it. That you've only—what did she say—'sucked girls off.' Her words, not mine."
"Great." He dropped his hand from his nose ring and stared at the table. "So you already know I'm a freak."
"I know you're a boy who hasn't been fucked yet." Diana's voice was steady, clinical almost. "In this generation, that makes you unusual. In mine, you'd be normal. It's exactly the kind of data point I'm looking for."
He looked up. "Your generation?"
"I'm twenty-three. I remember when the GirlCock came out. I was in middle school when it went mainstream. By the time I was in high school, the boys who shaved were the popular ones. The ones who didn't were considered—" she made air quotes— "'unhygienic.'"
"That's how it's always been for me," he said. "I don't remember a time before it. I was—what, six? Seven? When it hit critical mass. By the time I was old enough to know what sex was, it was already—" He gestured vaguely. "This."
"What's 'this'?"
He frowned. "You know. Pegging. Or—the GirlCock. Whatever. It's just what women do. What they want. And what boys—" He stopped. "What boys are supposed to let them do."
"Supposed to?"
"I mean—" He ran a hand through his hair, messing up the curls. "It's not like I have a choice. Every girl I've ever been with—every girl who's been interested in me—she's had one. Or wanted one. Or assumed I'd be into it. And I am. I mean—I don't know if I am, because I've never actually done it. But I've sucked enough girls off that I know what they like. What they expect. And they always, always want to—" He stopped again. "They want to fuck me. That's just what sex is now."
"And you've never let them?"
"I've never had the chance." He laughed, hollow. "I get nervous. I freeze up. I keep thinking about what it'll feel like and then I can't—I can't just—" He spread his hands. "I'm still a virgin. At twenty. In a world where every girl expects to fuck you on the first date. It's humiliating."
Diana was quiet for a long moment. Her eyes hadn't left his face. She wasn't typing, wasn't taking notes, wasn't doing anything except sitting there, present, watching him confess.
"Tell me about the first time you went down on a girl," she said.
The question was so direct, so clinical, that it took him a second to register it. "What?"
"The first time you gave a girl head. How old were you?"
"Sixteen." He said it before he could stop himself. "Her name was Maya. She was older. Nineteen. She asked me to come over after her shift, and when I got there, she was already—" He swallowed. "She was already wearing it."
"The GirlCock."
"Yeah." He could feel his face heating again. "She was just—sitting on the edge of her bed, legs spread, wearing this—this thing. And she looked at me and said, 'You know what this is, right?' And I said yes. And she said, 'Good. Then you know what I want.'"
"What did you do?"
"I went down on her. For like—" He laughed, embarrassed. "Forty-five minutes. Until she came twice. And then she said I was good and sent me home."
"She didn't fuck you?"
"No. She said I wasn't ready. That I was too nervous." He looked down at his hands. "She was right. I was shaking the whole time. She could probably feel it."
"And after that?"
"Same thing. Different girls. Always oral. Always—" He gestured. "I got good at it. Really good. That's what boys do now, right? We get good at making girls come with our mouths because that's what they expect before they fuck us." He looked up, met her eyes. "But I never got to the fucking part. I always chickened out. Or they got bored. Or I found a reason to leave."
Diana leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin on her hands. Her eyes were dark and focused and he felt like a specimen under a microscope—but not in a cold way. In a way that made him want to keep talking.
"What do you think it'll feel like?" she asked.
"Being fucked?"
"Being fucked by a GirlCock. Being penetrated. Being—" She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Being the one who takes it."
"I don't know." He shrugged. "I've used a plug before. On myself. To practice. I wanted to—I wanted to be ready. In case—" He stopped.
"In case?"
"In case I ever actually let a girl do it." He laughed, breathless. "I don't want to be bad at it. I don't want to be—" He gestured at himself. "A disappointment."
"You've been worrying about this for a while."
"Since I was sixteen. Yeah."
Diana sat back. Her hand drifted to her laptop, but she didn't open it. Instead she ran her thumb along the trackpad, a slow, thoughtful gesture.
"What if I told you," she said, "that you're exactly the kind of subject I need for my paper. A boy who grew up in the revolution. Who's internalized the norms. Who's anxious about meeting them." She paused. "What if I said I wanted to document it firsthand?"
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean—" She met his eyes. "What if I fucked you? For the research."
The words hung in the air between them. The espresso machine had stopped hissing. The bar light hummed. He could hear his own heartbeat.
"You're joking."
"I'm not."
"That's—" He shook his head. "That's not research. That's—"
"It's participant observation. It's ethnography. It's—" She smiled, sharp and quick. "It's a chance for you to lose your virginity to someone who's studying the phenomenon, not judging it. And it's a chance for me to understand what it feels like from your side. What the revolution looks like from the bottom."
"The bottom."
"Figure of speech." She tilted her head. "Unless you want it to be literal."
His mouth went dry. His hands were suddenly clammy. He pressed them flat on the table, trying to steady himself.
"You're serious."
"I'm always serious." But her voice had softened. "I'm also offering you a choice, Liam. You can say no. You can walk out that door right now and I'll find another subject. But if you say yes—" She leaned forward again, closer this time. "If you say yes, I'll take it slow. I'll let you tell me what you want. What you're afraid of. And I'll make sure—" Her hand found his on the table, her fingers warm and steady. "I'll make sure it counts."
He stared at her hand. Her fingers were callused, practical. The fine hair on her arm caught the low light. And he realized, with a start, that she was offering him exactly what he'd been too afraid to ask for. Permission. Patience. A way to stop being the boy who'd only ever gone down on girls and never let one inside him.
"Where would we even—" He cleared his throat. "It's almost midnight."
"I have an apartment ten minutes from here." She squeezed his hand, then let go. "And I have a GirlCock in my nightstand. Never been used." She smiled. "I was saving it for the right subject."
He should have said no. He should have made an excuse, locked the door, gone home, jerking off to the memory of this conversation and hating himself for being too scared to take what was offered. He'd done that before. Too many times to count.
But something about her steady gaze, her clinical directness, the way she'd called him a subject instead of a boy—it made him feel like this wasn't about being nervous. It was about being studied. Observed. Documented.
Like his fear was data. Like his virginity was a variable. Like he mattered as a case study, not as a failure.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go."
Diana stood, closed her laptop, and slung her bag over her shoulder. She didn't smile, didn't thank him, didn't make it weird. She just waited while he grabbed his keys and his phone and turned off the bar light, plunging the café into darkness.
At the door, she held it open for him. The night air hit his face, cool and damp, carrying the smell of rain on asphalt. She stepped past him, leading the way, and he followed—because that was what boys did now.
They followed where women led.