Read Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn for Free Online Page A

Except for these." He holds up the underwear. "And she says, looking right at me, It's time.'"
    Cullen jumps up and sits down, jumps up and sits down, delighted. Nicholas nods and smirks with real pleasure. Gid had been willing himself to say that Danielle said, "I want you to do it to me." But he chickened out. He's glad they're enjoying the story, but he can't help kicking himself, wishing he had the balls to embellish, make it even better.
    "So was this the first you'd heard of it?" Cullen asks. "Were you like, 'What's it time for, cookies and ice cream?'"
    "Oh no," Gid says. "I knew what she meant. She had said, 1 want my first time to be with you.' But I thought that was, you know, for some future date."
    Nicholas and Cullen nod to each other. Gid senses vague, if not entirely genuine, approval. He also hopes this is over.
    "How many girls have said that to you?" Nicholas asks Cullen.
    "I don't know, eight? But each time I hear it, it's like the first time all over again."
    "That's not true," Gid says, before he can control himself.
    "Which part?" Cullen asks. He smiles. Gid watches him. His smile is innocent. This is a guy, Gid realizes, who could persuade a girl to part with just about anything.
    Everything about Cullen suggests that Gid is one hundred percent right about this.
    "They all say the same thing?" Gid asks.
    "No," Cullen whispers. "Each one says the same thing very differently."
    I would bet my place in Gideon's head that Cullen is lying.
    "Did you two do it or not?" Nicholas asks. So it's not over.
    Gid can't run away from the truly interesting, incriminating part of the story any longer. This is bad for him but good for the story. "We...started to, I mean, that was definitely the idea. I mean, I tried to get it off her, and then, you know, I couldn't, so we just kept doing it, but I kept fussing with the underwear, and..." He trails off. "I don't know how to say this."
    "Let me help you," Nicholas says. "The underwear, and not what the underwear promised, ended up being the thing that ultimately drove you...urn...over the edge. The underwear, and not the thing that the underwear promised, was the place where this particular spasm" —he lets the pure phonetics of the word sink in for a second, the soft S coming up against the harder M— "of passion found its final resting place."
    "What ever!" Cullen says. "I come on girls' underwear all the time."
    Gid winces.
    "Dumbass," Nicholas says. "It's because he's a virgin."
    "No way," says Cullen. "That sucks."
    "I don't think I am technically a virgin," Gid protests.
    Gid knows he told a good story. But good story or not, this virgin label, if at all possible, has to go.
    He reaches for the bourbon, hoping to loosen the tightness growing in his rib cage.
    "Not so fast," Nicholas says. "It's not Mountain Dew."
    Cullen takes a few shirts to his bureau and drops them in a drawer. Everything he owns is old, cotton, and ripped in such a way so as to casually display his incredible physique. Gid decides that he likes Cullen, but that his particular brand of cockiness is going to become extremely annoying. "1 don't think I am technically a virgin," he repeats.
    "None of this matters," Nicholas says shortly. "What matters is what you, or rather we, do with these underwear. And I say, these underwear are a challenge."
    Cullen agrees, "Yes! A challenge. Absolutely!"
    Nicholas continues, "These underwear don't ask a question about the past. They ask a question about the future. Who cares whether you sort of got laid? When are you definitely going to get laid?" Nicholas paces the room, warming to his subject. He stops, facing Gideon with almost military precision. "I say the end of the year. June. It seems like a long time, but really, when you think about the fact that you have the rest of your life to have sex, it's not so bad."
    "December!" Cullen shouts. "No, fuck that. He's going to get laid by Halloween." Cullen leaps onto the bed on his stomach again and humps it.