Poked

by Naomi Niles

  “Well, I’m sure there are videos you can watch. I know you’re worried because you’ve never been thrown out of a plane before, but if you want to get close to Darren, I think this is a great way to do it.”

  “No, because I’ll end up wearing my parachute backward and he’ll realize he wants to go out with some other girl who actually knows how to fall out of a plane and is smart and brave and adventurous. I can only pretend to be brave and adventurous for so long before he figures out the awful truth.”

  “Well, you outran a squadron of police cars last weekend, so I’d say you bought yourself some time. And think of it this way: If this goes well, you could end up doing more than skydiving together on Saturday.”

  Judging by the look on her face, I think she expected me to know what she was hinting at, but I had no idea what she was hinting at. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Penny, don’t make me spell it out for you. Darren clearly likes you, and this is sort of a romantic, boyfriend-and-girlfriend thing that people do together. If it goes well and you don’t plummet to your death, it could lead to more…boyfriend and girlfriend things that night. I’m just saying.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Nic winced in frustration and breathed a quick prayer to her late grandmother. “Sometimes when a guy is really passionately interested in a girl—”

  “Oh, you think he’ll try to sleep with me?” I said in alarm.

  She threw her hands up in relief. “I’m just saying that after you land, you’ll both be coming down off a high, and you’ll have that adrenaline running through you, and one thing could lead to another.”

  “But this is all just speculation. You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I’m not saying I’m a prophet, but I think it’s probably what he’ll want. And you might be surprised to find that you also want it.”

  I scrunched up my nose in disgust. “Why would anyone want that? Especially after you had just gotten off a hot, sweaty airplane?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t want it!” said Nic with a wicked smile. “Don’t glare at me with those big, innocent eyes of yours like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know you have sexual feelings for boys.”

  “I do,” I said sadly. “I do have sexual feelings. But I don’t think we necessarily have to act on them.”

  “But haven’t you ever wanted someone—like Darren, for example—to hold you and kiss you and nail you until you had to crawl out of bed?”

  “Mmmm, not necessarily. When I think about being with a guy, like Darren, I imagine there being a lot of snuggles. I think I would want him to cuddle me and place his hand under my chin and maybe kiss me on the mouth. Maybe. I don’t know about the kissing. I’ve never actually been kissed. It could be gross.”

  “It’s not gross,” said Nic. “If you’re going to sleep with a boy, you ought to at least get used to the idea.”

  “I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice. But when I think about sleeping with a boy, I don’t think so much about the part where he’s…drilling me, or whatever.” I could feel the heat flooding into my face at the mere suggestion. “I think about the parts where he’s tender and romantic and tells me he loves me and that I’m the best person he’s ever met.”

  “So, it’s more about the intimacy, and the romance, and the snuggles for you.”

  “Exactly. I want him to romance me. I’m sure intercourse is great and all, but I think I would be disappointed if that’s all it was, if it was just some sweaty boy ramming himself against me. He could do that at home by himself.”

  “I suppose. Though for the record, some of us actually like that kind of sex.”

  “I know, and I love you, but I will never understand you.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll find out which one Darren prefers. You’ve still got a few days before you have to be ready, so I think we ought to take Friday off and go out.”

  “Seriously, again? We’ve already taken one day off this week.”

  “I know, but this is an emergency!” cried Nic, grabbing me by the wrists and shaking my arms. “We’ve gotta get your hair fixed and your nails done, maybe buy you some new clothes that you wouldn’t mind being naked in, and if you decide you want to get laid on Saturday after you finish plunging to your doom, then you’ll be ready.”

  “You almost make it sound like something that’s exciting and not terrifying,” I replied, resting my hand on my tummy.

  “It’ll be both,” said Nic. “This is going to be way scarier than going skydiving, but I have a feeling you’re going to enjoy it more.”

  “If you say so,” I said, and then I went back to scrubbing down the counter.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Darren

  When I awoke on Saturday morning, I experienced a brief moment of panic. Despite the air of assurance I had presented in the store, I had never actually been sky-diving. And as much as I enjoyed being with Penny, was it really worth risking my life? As I got dressed and made breakfast, I listened for the buzz of the phone, half-hoping she would text and say she had changed her mind. Or maybe she had forgotten, and when I arrived at the store, I would find it empty.

  But I wasn’t so fortunate. When I pulled into the parking lot at noon, I found her standing in the doorway chewing on a slice of orange and scanning the overcast horizon with an impish look.

  “Hey, you made it!” she said in an excited tone as I emerged from my car. “I was beginning to think you were going to bail on me.”

  “Me? Never,” I said with a shake of my head. “Anyway, I would never be able to look you in the face again if I backed out. Especially after your performance last weekend, I feel like I need to prove to you that I, too, can look death in the face.”

  “I believe that you’re brave,” said Penny. “If there was a mouse in the store, I would trust you to catch it before I would trust Nic. And if I was a singer in a girl band, I would want you to be my bodyguard.”

  “Thanks! No one’s ever told me that before. For the record, if you were in a girl band, I would want to be your bass player.”

  “But then it wouldn’t be a girl band,” Penny pointed out. “It would just be a band.”

  She flashed me a mischievous grin as though defying me to think of a comeback. Instead, I stood there thinking how cute she looked in the gray half-light. She was very plainly dressed in a thin gray shirt and a pair of faded denim blue jeans that were torn at the knees, her hair combed and parted down the middle, and her freckles an even darker shade of red than usual.

  We had known each other for about two weeks, and by this point, I ought to have seen her naked; the fact that I hadn’t yet filled me with an unquenchable curiosity. Her shirt rose just over her belly, revealing her midriff and the abs she had worked so hard for.

  I supposed if I ever managed to see her naked, I would find that she was more or less pear-shaped, with legs that were unusually small, wide hips, and a head that seemed just slightly too large for the rest of her body. She was so different from the type of girl I normally fell for—my last three girlfriends had all been large-boobed brunettes—but I had a miserable feeling I would go on wanting her forever unless and until we slept together.

  Penny grinned shyly. She seemed to have sensed that I was looking her up and down and was trying to decide whether she liked it or not. “I know I should’ve dressed better,” she said as she followed me to my car. “But I figured we would be hot and sweaty, and we would be jumping out of a plane, and I didn’t want to ruin my one pair of nice clothes.”

  “Girl, you look amazing,” I said before I had even thought about it. “I mean, look at me—I’m not exactly dressed for a wedding, either.” I was wearing a gray flannel shirt over a white undershirt and a pair of dark denim jeans.

  “I think you look very nice, actually,” Penny replied. “You look like you ought to be sitting in a coffee shop listening to Mumford & Sons and drinking organic chai while a woman takes pictures of you and your gorg
eous fiancée.”

  “Too bad I don’t have one of those,” I sighed.

  “Really?” said Penny in a tone of surprise. “So I shouldn’t expect any girlfriends to show up while we’re out there?”

  “If they do, I didn’t invite them.” I opened the door and climbed in. Penny was beaming as I unlocked the passenger’s side door, and she climbed in next to me.

  “So how does this work, exactly?” she asked as we drove down a lonely and deserted stretch of highway under a gray and cloudy sky.

  “In that case, you must be braver than I thought. Basically since this is your first time, you’ll be doing a tandem dive. That’s what it’s called when you’re linked with another person, in this case probably with me. After they push us out of the plane, we’ll freefall for a bit and then I’ll open our parachute. It’s really not that dangerous. I don’t know how easily you scare, but there’s really nothing to be scared of. We’re just falling through the air for about a minute, and assuming our parachutes work, we should land without any trouble.”

  “I can’t believe people actually pay money to do this over and over again,” said Penny. “I plan on doing this exactly once and then bragging about it into my old age.”

  “I mean, you may change your mind once you get up there. Especially if you love driving fast cars and almost going to prison, you might find that you enjoy the sensation of plummeting out of an airplane. For those of us who are adrenaline junkies, it’s an exhilarating feeling, and you can easily become addicted to it. My brother Zac has done it five or six times. One time he parachuted out of an airplane into the jungle in the dead of night and was almost immediately ambushed by a small army of terrorists.”

  “I feel like I should be going skydiving with him,” replied Penny. “That’s unbelievable.”

  “He says it was pretty terrifying. As far as I know, there won’t be any terrorist insurgents waiting to ambush us once we land, so we should be good.”

  As it happened, though, Penny’s bravery surpassed my expectations. When we reached the skydiving facility, she unflinchingly entered the small plane where our instructor was waiting and informed him that neither of us would need tandem parachutes because we had both been skydiving before. It was the most bold-faced lie, and I couldn’t figure out why she said it.

  She seemed to be enjoying herself, though. She grinned at me wickedly as her parachute was being strapped on, as though daring me to tell our instructor the truth, but I kept quiet out of a grudging sense of respect. She must have known she was risking her life, but she didn’t seem to care. The thought crossed my mind that maybe she wanted to die or wouldn’t have minded dying, but there was no way that could be true. She seemed so in love with life.

  After that, it all happened rather fast. The instructor pushed open the door of the plane, letting in a blast of cold air. He shouted something that I couldn’t hear over the howling of the wind.

  Then I felt a tug at my back, and with a sickening lurch, I was plummeting through the sky. Already, the earth was rising to meet me at an alarmingly fast rate. If I failed to get the parachute open, or if it somehow malfunctioned, I would be dead in less than a minute. But once it opened, my descent slowed, and I was able to observe, with a growing sense of awe and appreciation, the miniature world below me.

  Penny must have gotten her own parachute open, too, because I didn’t see her flailing beneath me. In another minute, she came drifting down out of the sky like a spider on a long strand of gossamer web, her eyes wide with surprise.

  But then as the world expanded to meet us, it felt like we were accelerating again. I shut my eyes tight and braced myself for the impact. I had flown on airplanes, and the jolt of landing always sent an awful shudder through my body; this was even worse because there was nothing to mediate between the ground and me.

  It was a relief to be back on the ground, breathing in the air and marveling at the fact of my continued existence. But ow, did my ribs and arms hurt.

  Penny had landed with a heavy thud a few feet away in a patch of brown grass. “That was—that was so different from what I had expected,” she said in a breathy voice.

  “I’m just amazed you’re still alive,” I said as I crawled toward her. “When you told the man you had done this before, I really thought you were going to die. Why do you keep doing these things to yourself?”

  Penny shrugged. “I guess I get bored sometimes. You would be bored, too, if you spent all your time in a room alone writing books about fictional characters that no one will ever read.”

  “Maybe if you’d let me read them…” I said. But I knew that was never going to happen.

  By now, I had finally reached the spot where she lay. I was close enough now that I could count all the lashes in her eyelids. “Would you ever do it again?” I asked.

  To my surprise, she leaned up and kissed me on the mouth. “Only if you came with me.”

  Her kiss was the most surprising thing that had happened in a relationship that had been full of surprises. I was still puzzling over it as we climbed back into my car feeling sore and exhausted. For several days now, Dickie and I had been debating whether she liked me. Given the intensity of the kiss, I supposed the answer was yes.

  If my heart had been racing during the skydive, it was nothing to what I felt now. If there hadn’t been a police car behind us and if we had the road to ourselves I might have pulled over right then and made passionate love to her. As it was, I felt a wave of relief when she turned and said to me, “There’s a strip center up ahead with an abandoned parking lot. Go ahead and pull into it.”

  I didn’t have to be told twice. As the strip center came into view, I turned with shaky hands and sweaty palms into the parking lot. I brought the car to a halt, and for a moment, we sat there not daring to look at each other.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Penny

  For the briefest of moments, it felt like I was standing on a rope bridge over a canyon. The bridge was swaying perilously in the wind, and I had to decide whether I wanted to move forward or go back.

  It wasn’t an easy decision. I had never given myself to a guy before, and I still wasn’t sure I was ready. If I slept with him, it would feel like a violation of the values I had been living by since I was really small. I used to be so proud of myself for waiting.

  Darren must have sensed my hesitation, for he reached over and caressed my face with a concerned look. “You alright, babe? You look worried all of a sudden.”

  “It’s just—” I scooted back a few inches with my eyes on the ground. My breathing was shaky, and I wouldn’t have been able to hide my fear even if I had wanted to. “I’ve just never done this before. This was never quite how I pictured it.”

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted, apart from him. I’d spent so many years building up this moment in my head. What if I had built it up too much? What if it failed to live up to my expectations?

  “Look, I can understand if you’re afraid of being caught,” Darren said. “This is a pretty open space, and anyone might drive by and see us.”

  I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess that did worry me. That and the greasy rag lying in the back floorboard. “So what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t care where we do it, babe.” He reached out and stroked my face again; my body thrilled to his touch. “I just want you, is all.”

  “I want you, too,” I said shyly, in a voice no louder than a whisper.

  “Right now, I’m just so ready for you, I can’t stand it,” he said, his body tense with longing. “Feels like I’ve been waiting forever for this. Since the first day we met.”

  “I knew there was something different about you from the moment you walked into the store,” I replied. “You never talked down to me like other boys do—like Nic does. You treated me like a normal human being and someone with worth and intelligence. And you can make me laugh like no other. I just love talking to you. I feel like I can be myself around you.”

  “You do
n’t give yourself enough credit,” said Darren with a shake of his head. “You’re one of the smartest, funniest, most creative women I know. And I’m sorry other guys can’t see it, but if it means I get to have you all to myself, then I’m not gonna complain too much about it. You’re like a wonderful secret known only to me.”

  His words flooded through me like a warm liquid, restoring my anxious heart. I could have leaned forward right then and kissed him like I had kissed him after we made it back down to earth. I don’t know what held me back—fear, perhaps? Or maybe I had spent so many years not kissing boys when I wanted to that by now it was just habit.

  “Anyway,” he said, and he patted me gently on the knee, “this is your first time, and I think we ought to be in a fancy room, not bathed in our own sweat in the back seat of a car. When you remember tonight, I want it to be a good memory.”

  Slowly, I nodded. “I would like that. I would like that very much.”

  “Get in the front seat, then,” he said, and he began climbing out of the cab. “Tonight we’re gonna find ourselves the richest, fanciest hotel in town.”

  ***

  How had this all happened? I wondered as we ran up a flight of stairs with red padded carpet. Somehow Darren had sensed the source of my hesitation and had striven to make me feel better. I didn’t even have to say it; he had just known, and it filled me with a warm feeling of reassurance as he unlocked the door of our room with clumsy fingers and motioned me inside.

  Even though we had rented one of the cheaper rooms in the hotel, it was still quite a bit fancier than the back of his car. A vase filled with geraniums stood on a table beside the bed, and the back wall was tastefully decorated with paintings of flowers. The sheets themselves were uncommonly luxurious, the kind that you might be tempted to sink into and never come out of.

  “I’m amazed you can afford all this,” I said as I sat down on the edge of the bed. It was remarkably springy, and I bobbed up and down on its surface. “But then, I guess you did just win forty thousand dollars.”