I want to do that forever with him.
“I love you.” I snuggle closer, the bliss of my orgasm still washing over me.
“Are you hurt?” Sawyer’s voice is hesitant.
My head shakes. “Only a little. Mostly, it felt … amazing.”
“That’s all I wanted.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Was it, was I, good for you?” I’m insecure because he’s been with other girls.
Knowing he isn’t a virgin and I am is part of what held me back, and I pray that Sawyer felt the exact same way as I did when we were connected.
He brushes a kiss over my lips. “No one else compares to you.”
I shouldn’t need to hear that, but my ego puffs its chest out, nonetheless.
I trace figure eights into his abs, and he squirms a little from the sensation but doesn’t tell me to stop. Physically, there is nothing we have left between us to resolve. Every last shred of unknown is gone, and all I want to do is feel what we just did over and over and over again.
But emotionally, there is still one domino left that I need to topple over, even if I don’t want to.
“Why did you write it in the first place?” My voice is quiet as I ask it, and I’m glad I’m lying in his arms so that I can’t look him directly in the eyes.
I’m not sure I want the answer, the real answer, but I know I need it. I’ve always needed to get to the heart of the truth before I can move past it, even if it’s going to hurt like a bitch.
Sawyer is quiet for a moment or two, his thumb smoothing up and down my bare arm. And then he starts.
“I was a dumbass kid who was afraid of his own feelings about his best friend. About the girl he’s known since childhood. I was confused, and trying to sabotage anything that could have happened between us. Also, they were private thoughts.”
I can hear the disapproval in his voice, and I blanch. “I’m sorry. I know part of this is on me, I never should have been snooping.”
He sighs. “No, you shouldn’t have. You were snooping and it led to the end of our friendship. But, I wrote them. The thing is, I barely thought any of those cons. I was trying to come up with reasons not to pursue you, because I wanted to so fucking badly.”
My heart flutters but weeps at the same time; how much time have we wasted? We’re both to blame, but I can’t help but think about what the past two years would have looked like if we were busy falling in love with each other. Now, our clock is ticking too quickly with college looming on the horizon.
Sawyer tightens his hold just a little, drawing me closer to his naked chest. “You took those innermost thoughts and used them against me without ever explaining why. I was hurt, B. Losing you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“We were both so immature.” The knot in my throat threatens to dissolve into a fit of tears. “I never should have done it the way I did. I should have yelled, I should have screamed at you. The way I cast our bond aside was so wrong. The only thing I can say is that I was so hurt, I could barely see straight. I’m sorry, too, Sawyer.”
I press a kiss to his chest, right where his heart beats beneath.
“The night of that party? I was going to kiss you in the closet. I couldn’t believe my luck, that the bottle landed on you. It was finally the excuse that gave me enough courage to man up and do it. I’d wanted to for so long. I remember being so goddamn nervous leading you into that closet. And then …”
A cloud of regret and despair settles over us, even after the intimateness we just shared. He doesn’t let go of me, but I can feel him becoming more and more distant.
“So do it now. Kiss me now. Tell me everything you would have in that closet.” I prop up on an elbow and lean over him, my lips all but grazing his.
I watch as those full lips transform into a smirk, the dimple in his right cheek making an appearance and doing wobbly things to my insides.
Before I know what’s happening, Sawyer flips me, coming down on top of me until I can feel him hard against me, right at my center.
“Already?” I gasp.
“I’ve wanted to touch you, taste you, be inside of you for so long, I don’t think a lifetime of this will satisfy me.”
I don’t get to respond, because his mouth captures my lips, my heart, and then my brain just shuts off completely.
34
Blair
The weather warms, being an unseasonably nice April, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Almost the entire senior class is congregating in the parking lot of the high school, except today is Saturday, so it’s a strange sight to see.
“As you all know, we are not bailing anyone out of jail. Do not mention the scavenger hunt if you get arrested. We’re also not down with vandalizing property, nonconsensual acts, or fucking with the principal’s house. Just disclaimers. Don’t any of you fuckers get us in trouble.”
Benji, a senior and nose tackle on the football team, stands above the crowd on the bed of his pickup truck. He is the organizer of this year’s senior scavenger hunt, a forty-eight hour free for all of debauchery and danger. No, that’s not just the way he described it when he sent out the list of tasks, that is really how the next two days are going to unfold.
Every year, the seniors put on a scavenger hunt. You get a team of four to eight people, contribute your fifty-dollar team fee, and are sent the list of a hundred to a hundred fifty tasks to complete within the designated weekend. Tasks range from kissing a stranger to getting the Pythagorean theorem tattooed on your body, and the dicier tasks obviously have more points attributed to them. At the end of the weekend, Benji and a jury of four others, appointed by the class, will go through all the video footage and crown the champions. They then win the whole pot of money, which is over five thousand dollars.
The school has absolutely nothing to do with this half-cocked insanity-fest, but the parking lot is the best place to meet at five in the morning. Sawyer is hugging me from behind, his hands in my sweatshirt pockets, and I’m gulping down the extra-large coffee we picked up on the way over.
“Have fun. Do dumb shit. Don’t get caught. Be back here with your tapes on Sunday at midnight.” Benji blares a horn sound through his phone, and everyone races off.
“Get in the van, now!” Matt orders us.
It’s Matt, Sawyer, Glavin, Nate, Laura, and I on a team, and Matt has volunteered his Mom’s van as our vehicle, house, and headquarters for the next forty-eight hours. Since the scavenger hunt has tasks in multiple locations up and down the coast of New Jersey, and even into New York City, we’re going to be on the road for the majority of this. While we’re in the car, we’ll get some of the sedentary tasks done.
Matt is steering us toward the shore, the destination we mapped out to tackle first. Tasks include playing a boardwalk game and winning a stuffed animal, taking a picture in front of the Jersey Shore house, running into the frigid ocean naked, eating an entire bucket of boardwalk fries, and getting a piercing at one of the bodega stands.
“Is anyone willing to get the theorem tattooed on themselves. It’s worth the most points in the whole hunt, and whichever team does it will probably win.” Laura scans her gaze down the three-page list in her hands.
“We’re not that dumb.” Glavin snorts.
“The fact that you’re saying that means we’re really not doing it.” Nate laughs.
“All right, so what can we get done on the hour car ride?” Glavin snatches the list from Laura.
We begin some of the tasks, with Glavin burping the National Anthem for fifteen points, two of our team members making out—obviously Sawyer and I—for ten points, Laura flashes the camera for a whopping twenty, and Matt drives blindfolded for a minute while the rest of us hold our breath because we might just die.
Sawyer does the spoonful of cinnamon challenge for a grand total of fifty points, then vomits into a plastic bag. Nate prank calls his grandmother for ten points, and I round out our little trip by eating an ent
ire pack of Oreos in thirty minutes for thirty points.
By the time we get to the Seaside boardwalk, I feel like I might hurl at any moment. We all complete the task of standing in the ocean barefoot for a minute for five points each, Matt is the one who dives in naked and subsequently yells that his balls are going to freeze off, and Nate gets his cartilage pierced.
I play a ring toss game and give Sawyer a giant stuffed monkey, while Laura rides the bull in one of the bars, killing two birds with one stone because she also got in using a fake ID. All in all, we’re racking up points and there are still a ton more tasks to complete.
We pull up to Lucy the Elephant, the world’s largest elephant structure, and have to climb all the way to the top to snap a photo. It’s no secret that you’re not allowed to climb all the way up there, but this is where the no arrests talk from Benji comes in. We have to be stealthy.
Unfortunately, we’re not the only team here.
“Well, well, well.” Hailey strolls up in the tightest yoga pants and crop top I’ve ever seen, while myself and Laura are traipsing around in oversized sweats.
Her team is behind her, a bunch of the other cheerleaders, and they look exhausted and pissed off. These girls don’t have true friendships to begin with, so being stuck in a car together for hours on end must have them all about to rip each other’s hair out.
“Let’s beat them to the top!” Matt yells, and he and Nate take off for the elephant.
Our team already decided on those two doing this task, and I know they’ll get it done the fastest. Laura strikes up a conversation with one of the girls she is kind of friendly with, and Glavin begins flirting with another.
“How you holding up, champ?” I turn to Sawyer and wrap my arms around him.
“We both have stomachs of steel, eh?” He smirks.
“You threw up and I’m on the verge of it, so I wouldn’t exactly say steel.” I chuckle.
He’s planting kisses on the side of my temple, and I’m just burrowing into his comfort and warmth, when a voice interrupts us.
“Sawyer, I just have to kiss you. We have to tick off kissing an athlete.” Hailey flutters her lashes in his direction and manages to wriggle in between us.
I’m forced to step away from Sawyer because of her proximity, and Nate and Matt come down from completing the task at that very moment.
He just points to his friends. “Glav and Matt are right there.”
No other explanation needed, he just shuts her down.
Unfortunately, in true Hailey fashion, she doesn’t go quietly. “Well, oh, um, they probably already did that with someone else. And you can’t kiss the same athlete as another team.”
“That’s definitely not a rule.” Laura glowers at her.
“So, it has to be you!” Hailey keeps talking as if my best friend never said a thing.
My blood is boiling, I just ate way too many Oreos, and my feet are still numb from the challenge where we had to stand in the frigid Jersey shore ocean for a minute plus.
I round on Hailey, my finger all but in her face. “Back off. You’ve been trying to nab my boyfriend the entire year, and he’s too kind to say this, so I will. He’s. Not. Interested. He wasn’t interested when we weren’t together, he wasn’t interested when you threw yourself at him, and he’s definitely not interested now. You can hate me all you want, go ahead. But stop trying to get with him, because it’s never going to happen. Back. Off.”
The look on Miss Mean Girl’s face is so priceless, I almost snap a picture and submit it as one of the scavenger hunt tasks. I don’t even know what that would fall under, but it has to earn us some kind of points.
“You … I … wh—” Hailey is floundering, sucking on air like a fish flopping around on dry land.
Laura and Nate start cackling, and blood is rushing to my face. I’ve never put Hailey in her place like that, and after years of tolerating her abuse, apparently I am at my breaking point. I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t handle that as maturely as I could’ve, but you can only push a girl so far. After all of the advances she’s made toward Sawyer, trying to take a picture of me naked on New Year’s, and the onslaught of nasty comments I’ve always taken from her, it’s about damn time.
“We have to get in the car, it’s a three-hour drive to New York City and we’re burning daylight here,” Matt tells us, ever our commander.
Around me, I feel my friends and teammates moving on from this altercation and heading for the car. My eyes slide to the side, because Sawyer still hasn’t spoken, and I’m not sure if he’s mad at my outburst. Claiming him was rather ballsy, and dumb because we know what we have, but I’m just tired of Hailey.
When I turn to fully take in my boyfriend, he’s staring at me, an unreadable expression on his face. His perfect, pillowy lips are slightly open, he’s scrunching those emerald eyes at me, and his head is cocked to the side.
I’m about to open my mouth when he rushes at me. Scooping me up, I swallow a bit of a yelp when he sticks his tongue in my mouth. Sawyer’s hands are around my waist and in my hair, and I melt into the kiss. It seems endless, until one of our friends begins honking the car horn at us.
“Make out in the car, we have to drive!” Matt shouts.
Pulling back, I take in Sawyer’s expression. It’s the fiercest thing I’ve ever seen, and he’s eyeing me like he might tear off my clothes right here and start going at it. I have to admit, I’m well past the point of horny even with all the Oreos I just consumed sloshing around in my stomach.
“Yours.”
He whispers this, our noses pressed together, and there is nothing more he needs to say. We are each other’s, solely and completely.
Hailey is left standing there, still speechless, as we run to the van hand in hand. I have to giggle as we peel out of the parking lot and she is still looking in our direction, flabbergasted.
No one has ever stood up to her like that, that’s for sure. But that’s my man, and no one is treading on my territory anymore.
35
Sawyer
I lean against the hood of Blair’s car, holding a single red rose.
Technically, I skipped my tenth period class to come out here early, but a possible detention is worth it for this.
Last year, I took one of the most popular girls in our grade to junior prom. It wasn’t Hailey, but one of her minions, and the whole night was fucking terrible. The girl tried to cop a feel of my dick in front of my own mother during the pre-dance pictures, got way too drunk in the limo, and ended up puking on my rental tux by the end of the night. Not only was she a buzzkill, but the night didn’t feel anything like what it was supposed to. Everyone always talks up prom as one of the best nights of your high school life, but it hadn’t been for me.
Fast forward to this year, and I realize why. It’s because you’re supposed to take someone you actually like, not to mention love, as your date. Secretly, I’ve been thinking about taking Blair to prom since she made me watch the movie She’s All That in seventh grade. Picking her up in my car, watching her walk down the stairs in a gown molded to her curves, getting to sway her around the dance floor all night. And then, there’s the weekend, where seniors rent houses to get wasted in and make all kinds of bad decisions. If I have my way, Blair and I won’t be leaving whatever room we claim for those two nights.
Promposals have become all the rage in recent years. There are the ones with whole marching bands, handmade signs, balloon arches on the girl’s lawn, and everything in between. But for Blair, for my girl who has never wanted the popularity or cared about what others thought of her, I know what I have to do.
I’ve done the grand gesture. Remember when I stood on a table and professed my love to her in front of a cafeteria full of students? We’re serious now, end game serious, and we don’t need others in our business. Plus, this is a big ask, the one most girls, or so I’m told, wait for the entire four years of high school. I want this to be special and simple. She knows how deep
ly I care about her, so a genuine question and a beautiful flower is the way to go.
Either that, or I’m about to be turned down.
Inside the school the bell rings, and I watch as hundreds of students come streaming down the lawn and out into the parking lot. Some board buses, upperclassmen make their way to their cars, and all the while I’m sitting on my girlfriend’s car with my heart on my sleeve.
Blair is heading for the lot with Glavin and Nate walking next to her. My best friend is chatting their ear off about something, and Blair laughs. Her dark toffee-colored hair blows in the breeze, and I stop breathing for a minute. I’m always aware of how gorgeous she is, but sometimes it catches me off guard. I’ve seen her at almost all the stages of her life, and it’s rare that two people are as connected as we’ve become. I was a damn fool for not seeing that for so long.
“There you are! You weren’t at my locker.” Blair tilts her head to the side, because I usually wait to walk to our cars together at the end of each day. “Who is that for?”
She points one gray-painted nail at the rose.
“Blair Oden, will you go to prom with me?”
My gaze falls to her lips, as it tends to do, which are painted in a dark shade of red today. They split into a smile, and then she’s walking into me. She takes the rose, smells it, and then looks me in the eyes.
“Well, I was thinking about going with someone else—”
Her joke is cut off by the kiss I plant on her lips, my tongue sliding into her mouth before she can protest that we’re in public. Blair melts, sighing into the kiss, and then breaks it off.
Foes & Cons Page 17