Free Real Men Will by Victoria Dahl Page B

complete fraud could delight a store full of willing students. Beth didn’t exactly consider herself a master in the art of fellatio, either, but she’d received lots of happy emails after that little seminar.
    Speaking of which…Beth ducked back into the store. “Cairo, are you doing the column for next Wednesday?”
    “Yep. I’ll send it to you tomorrow.”
    “Thanks. You’re the best.”
    The columns. The classes. It was too much. Annabelle Sanchez, the owner of the store, was coming up with all sorts of new marketing ideas, which would’ve been fine if she weren’t on a worldwide tour to help her find her “inner goddess.”
    Beth sighed as she drove her car toward home. Sometimes she wanted to kill Annabelle. She really did. Granted, Annabelle was her best friend and the owner of the White Orchid, and Beth loved her like a sister—a New Agey, slightly overbearing sister—but her world tour of self-exploration had gone on long enough. If she wanted classes given at the White Orchid, she should be the one giving them, not Beth. If Annabelle wanted a sex column written for the local alternative paper, she should write it. Because Beth certainly didn’t know enough to contribute a new topic every week.
    Thank God the other girls in the shop had agreed to help. Now they split the column up amongst them, Beth edited it so that the style of each was consistent, and the column was posted under the name Ms. White.
    Beth had hoped that slight remove would protect her, but her plan had backfired. Her employees had been so excited that they’d had the first column mounted and framed. And the second. And third. Now all four of the columns were hanging on the wall of the White Orchid, and Beth was widely believed to be the author of all. Her reputation for sexual knowledge was only growing, and none of it truly belonged to her.
    Annabelle was supposed to have returned months ago, and if she would just come home, everything would be fine. She could lead the classes. She could write the columns. But Annabelle kept extending her trip. First by sixty days. Then ninety. Her latest stop was in Egypt, to study the sex beliefs of ancient Egyptians.
    Beth was pretty sure that half of her impatience with Annabelle was that Beth wanted to be the one traveling to other countries to study their cultures. After all, her major had been anthropology before she’d transferred to women’s studies. Then again, exotic countries weren’t really her cup of tea. No doubt Annabelle was striding around the teeming streets of Egypt with complete confidence. Beth would be constantly worried about being mugged or kidnapped or simply standing out too much.
    She needed to grow a pair. “Of ovaries,” she told herself. But she was trying. She was. Unfortunately, her biggest risk-taking success had been Eric, and look how that had turned out. It had been a disaster. A lovely, bone-melting, burning hot disaster.
    Beth groaned and set him from her mind. It was late, nearly ten o’clock, and dark as midnight by the time she pulled up to her apartment, and she still had work to do.
    Thirty minutes later, Beth was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling in frustration, the specialized G-spot toy clutched in her hand like a broken tool. “There is no G-spot,” she told the ceiling, letting her feet slide down until her thighs touched the mattress. Guilt immediately washed over her. Whether she had a functioning G-spot or not, plenty of her friends talked about it. Could she discount the experiences of other women just because of her own experience? That was the worst kind of condescension.
    Beth tossed the toy to the far side of the bed, shoved her book on female sexuality out of the way and reached for the drawer of her bedside table.
    There were rows of toys inside. Models that retailed for two hundred dollars. Shapes that might make the layperson frown in confusion, but Beth ignored them all for her innocuous, unimpressive, tiny silver bullet