by Alison Ryan
He took my face in his hands, and kissed me, passionately, with more desire than he had ever kissed me. I leaned into him, dizzy.
“Everything,” I whispered against his mouth.
“Do you want to climb the tower today,” he said, “or just stay here in the truck?”
I laughed, “I’d rather stay in this truck for the rest of my life, are you kidding?”
It was the right answer. We both opened our doors and practically ran to the back. He pulled down the tailgate and I gasped. He had set up a bed with blankets and pillows and an actual picnic basket.
“Surprise!” he said, looking at me. I jumped into his arms, kissing his entire face, only pulling away to say, “Thank you! This is so amazing! You planned this?”
“Yeah. I mean this is probably kind of lame, but it’s about as romantic as I’ve ever been. And I wanted to make up for the other night. And this is probably our last night together for a while, so I pulled out all the stops. Well, all the stops I could in the Rut.” He helped me climb into the bed of the truck.
I sat down and pulled him down with me, kissing him for a long while before even thinking about digging into the food. With every kiss he’d pause and smile at me. One time he even said, “You really are the prettiest girl, you know that?”
This was the kind of thing that happened on Beverly Hills 90210. I felt like Kelly Taylor.
After a make out session so long that it was starting to get dark, I finally opened the picnic basket.
“Boone’s!” I exclaimed, pulling out a bottle. “Fuzzy Navel. I’ve never had that flavor.”
“Bode hooked me up,” Ryan said, rubbing my arm. “And my mom made us sandwiches. I wasn’t sure what you liked so she made turkey, ham, and peanut butter and jelly.”
“Your mom is adorable,” I said, leaning over and kissing his nose.
“She’s pretty great,” he said. “When we’re both back from our respective trips, she wants to have you over for dinner. Which is kind of nerve-wracking.”
I looked down at my hands, “You don’t think she’ll like me?”
He shook his head emphatically, “No! You’re not the part I’m worried about. Who wouldn’t like you? I’m worried you won’t like my parents. Or my dad, really. Everyone loves my mom. But my dad is an asshole on his best days.”
“Well,” I said. “It clearly doesn’t run in the family. You must take after your mom.”
He was laying on his side now and I joined him. I was facing him, our mouths inches apart.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I whispered.
“Not at all,” he said. “I can’t think of anything except how much I love kissing you.”
“Just kissing?” I asked, not recognizing the huskiness in my own voice. “We can do more than that if you want.”
His eyes widened like he’d just been handed the keys to a brand new car.
“I mean,” he said. “Of course I want to. I just don’t want to be a skeeze.”
I shook my head, “Never. You’re the kind of boy I’ve dreamt about doing more than kissing with since I thought about doing anything that involved kissing.”
He laughed, “Yeah? Well, coming from you, that’s a pretty damn great compliment.”
“It’s just true,” I admitted. “I want you, Ryan Kidson. In all the ways I can want someone.”
I was wrong about the kiss in the truck. The kiss he gave me after I said that was the most passionate, intense, and fervent kiss of my entire life. Not that I had many to compare it to, but out of all the kisses he’d given me, this one said the most.
It said he wanted me too.
After that, things were much more urgent. There was fumbling of clothes. At first he tried to help me take mine off while at the same time I was trying to pull his shirt off. Both our hands were shaking and we were nervously laughing, both completely unsure of what we were doing.
I also realized in the midst of it that no one had ever seen me naked. An obvious thought but also a terrifying one. I was barely able to glance at myself in the mirror in my underwear, and the sudden realization that what we were about to do did not usually include clothing made me incredibly nervous that he would take one look at me and immediately run for the hills. Or worse, lose his fervor. Something I could never live down, not for as long as I lived. I’d sooner become a nun than have another man look at me again.
So all of these thoughts were hitting both of us at once. By then his shirt was off, but I was still dressed.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “We don’t have to-“
“No, I want to,” I said. “I’m just afraid of being naked.”
He took my face in his hands, “Addie. Look at me. You have no reason to be afraid of that. Or of anything. I see you. You’re beautiful, Addison McCurtis. Can’t I convince you of that?”
I felt so stupid, like a child. My heart raced beneath him.
“I’m a girl. I’m told by television and magazines on a constant basis everything that’s wrong with me,” I admitted. “And now you’ll see all of it.”
He kissed me, “We don’t have to do this. Maybe it’s not the right time.”
“No!” I said, remembering what Kyle Joel did to McKenna. I’d told her he was a jerk for dismissing her, for not giving him what he wanted. But at the same time, in this moment, I understood why she’d felt so terrible. I had this awful feeling that if I wimped out now, I might not have a chance again. And the truth was, I did want Ryan. So badly. I felt it everywhere. I was just scared of being so open to someone.
“Ryan,” I said. “I have to tell you something. Before this happens.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice a little apprehensive. “Anything, Addie.”
“Ryan, I love you.” I paused for a moment, “I love you. And if you don’t love me, I don’t think I can do this. And it’s okay if you don’t love me, because it would be crazy, right? We haven’t known one another that long, and there’s plenty of flaws I have that you don’t know about, but I always promised myself, if I ever did this, I mean when I did this, I would love the man. Or boy. Or man boy. Shit. You know what I mean. Anyway. I love you, and if you love me back I’ll give you everything I have. My heart, my virginity, my very life. But I can’t give any of it unless I know you love me back. It’s just the rules I play by.”
My stomach was in a knot so tight, I feared I would throw up. It seemed like it took two hours for him to respond.
He cupped my chin with his hand. His eyes met mine, blue as the sky had been earlier that day.
“Addie,” he said. “I love you too.”
Most people think about that kind of moment their whole lives. I never thought it would happen when I was sixteen years old, if it ever happened at all. I certainly hadn’t imagined it would happen like this, in the middle of a field in Virginia, coming from a boy who looked like something out of an American Eagle commercial.
But it was happening.
We kissed again, in a way that was different than before. I let him slide my tank top over my head. He continued to kiss me as I slid out of my jean shorts and kicked off my foam flip flops. I shivered. It wasn’t cold, but I was so nervous I could barely keep still.
“Addie,” Ryan said, holding me against him. “You’re shaking.”
I buried my head in the crook of his shoulder, “Sorry. I don’t mean to. I’m just so naked right now and so much is happening, I guess my body is trying to play catch up with my heart.”
He laughed against my head, “You are the cutest thing on the planet, Addie McCurtis.”
He pulled back from me and I laid down on the blanket as the day’s last light hit us. There was no hiding who I was now, or what I looked like. He stared at me, his eyes wide. I had never felt so exposed and susceptible to complete emotional annihilation in all my short life.
“What?” I asked when he didn’t say anything for a while. Was he disgusted? Was he about to run away?
“Holy hell, Addie,” he said. “You’re the
most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
There’s pretty much nothing that a woman would want more than to hear that. But of course I had no idea how to respond. If it had been any other person in the world, I would never have believed it.
“Just come back down here and keep me from passing out,” I said, my arms reaching out for him.
We rolled around in the bed of that truck for at least half an hour, neither of us really sure what we were supposed to do next. I mean, there was only so much left to take off and we were both clearly in heat, two hormonal teenagers who had just told one another we loved each other. This was when it happened, right? I couldn’t have set up a more perfect scenario.
Yet I couldn’t stop shaking. My nerves wouldn’t allow me to relax, and I had the hunch that when you were having sex for the first time, you should be pretty relaxed. I had never wanted something so much yet been so scared of it at the same time. Even knowing I was loved and desired couldn’t stop me from being so anxious. Ryan could sense it.
“Addie,” he said, after a long marathon of kisses down my bare neck and shoulders. “We’re not doing it tonight. We’re not ready.”
My heart fell. I had messed it all up. And, horrifically, I began to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You’re probably never going to speak to me again.”
He pulled me close to him, “Why the hell would you think that? I just told you I loved you.”
“But McKenna told me what Kyle Joel did to her when she didn’t do it.”
Ryan pulled back from me, a half grin on his face, “And I’m like Kyle?”
“You’re nothing like him,” I said, sniffling. “But boys need things.”
Ryan chuckled now, wrapping the blanket we’d been laying on around my shoulders.
“Boys don’t need shit,” he said. “And men know that it’s only great when a woman is ready. I’m not interested in making you do anything and my desire for you doesn’t depend on it. If anything, it makes me love you more, Addie.”
I looked up at him, my heart so full I could barely stand to look at him.
“Ryan,” I said, “I truly want to. And only with you. I guess I just need more time.”
“We’re sixteen,” he said, kissing my head. “Time is what we have plenty of.”
He dropped me off around midnight after a couple of hours of kisses and mumbled words. Once you say you love someone for the first time you can’t help but keep saying it. It starts to seem so easy and you wonder why you were scared to say it at all.
“I love you,” he said as we pulled up to my house. “I’m going to miss you so much, Addie.”
Tears stung my eyes, “I know. Me too. I’m going to be miserable without you.”
“No way!” he replied. “You’re going to be too busy getting tan and having fun with McKenna to even think of me. Just don’t fall in love with anyone while you’re there, okay?”
I shook my head, laughing. “I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I love you.”
He gave me a long last kiss, something to remember him by.
“Well,” he said. “Don’t let anyone fall in love with you. Try not to be so damn pretty.”
I rolled my eyes, “That shouldn’t be hard.”
He walked me to the porch. Mom or Grandma had left the light on. He held me against him and we listened to the crickets chirp for a few minutes.
“I hate to leave,” he finally whispered, his chin resting on my head. “I’ll be thinking of you. My mom gave me a phone card, I’ll try to call you when I’m in Las Vegas.”
“Good,” I said. “Goodnight, Ryan.”
“Goodnight, Addie. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I watched him saunter away, his footsteps slow and heavy, like an invisible something was dragging him back to his truck. When he climbed in he looked back at me. I held up my hand to wave and tried my best not to cry, but it was no use. He hopped back out of his truck and ran to me, lifting me up and kissing me again, hard.
“I just can’t leave you crying like that,” he said.
We stood on my porch for another hour, trying our best to say goodbye.
13
Sunday came quickly. I spent most of Saturday night staring at an empty suitcase, thinking about how much I didn’t want to go to the beach away from Grandma and Ryan. Mom peeked in around the time I should have been going to bed.
“Why haven’t you packed?” she asked, sitting on the edge of my bed. “The Holts want to be on the road by eight. You can’t go to sleep until you’re packed.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just not that stoked about this.”
My mother sighed, “What teenage girl isn’t excited about going to the beach for a week with her friend? For free? Without her mother around? I can think of none. Are you really that worried I can’t handle things here?”
I looked up at her, “It just seems wrong to go on a vacation right now.”
“Don’t think of it as a vacation. Think of it as a break. For both of us.” She ran her fingers through my hair. “I need to get things set up for Grandma, and with you gone it makes it easier. I don’t have to worry about you because I know you’ll be somewhere safe and fun. It’s about to get real tough, Addie.”
“I know.” I laid back on the bed. Mom joined me and we both watched the ceiling fan whirl for a bit.
“Is this about Ryan, too?” she asked.
“He’s gone this week and next,” I replied. “So, no. Why?”
“I know how this feels,” she said. “Falling for someone in the summer. Someone important, at least in the way a boy can be important in a town like Rutledgeville.”
“I’m not falling for him because he’s small town famous,” I said. “What does that even mean? I could care less about what he is to this town. I love him because he’s genuine. Because he transcends his situation. He’s important to me and that’s all he cares about.”
“You love him?” my mother scoffed. “You barely know him. You shouldn’t toss that word around so easily.”
“Neither should you,” I retorted.
She stood up, angry.
“I know you think I don’t know shit about what it’s like to be you, but I know more than you consider,” she said. “I was you not such a long time ago, thinking how I felt about someone was going to last forever. That I was in love, which meant everything would always work out in our favor, as long as everything stayed the same. But things can’t stay the same and they shouldn’t, not at your age. I just don’t want you to invest so much of yourself into something that is doomed.”
Now I stood, “I’m not you! And Ryan isn’t Mike!”
My mom looked at me, the anger leaving her face for a moment.
“How do you know I was talking about Mike?” she said.
“Weren’t you? Who else could you be talking about?”
She sighed, “One day you’ll know. You’ll know I was right, but I hate to think what has to happen for you to come to that realization.”
It had been a lousy way to end the night. I ended up throwing every article of clothing I owned into my luggage and sitting on it so I could zip it. When Mr. Holt picked it up to put it in the back of their station wagon, I thought he was going to throw out his back.
McKenna was bubbly, bouncing all over the place.
“Addie!” she squealed. “How excited are you!”
“Clearly not as much as you,” I said, laughing.
“Sorry. I drank a Josta this morning. I’m all hyped up! I brought tons of magazines for the drive and I packed my Caboodle with makeup so we can play around with our look. Also, Dad bought me the new Fugees CD!” She clapped her hands, jumping up and down.
“Awesome.” I smiled.
“But don’t worry, Addie,” Mr. Holt interjected. “I also made sure to bring Lionel Richie and Jimmy Buffet with me too.” He winked.
“Ugh, Dad could you be more Dad right now? We are so not playing either of those CDs
. You and mom can rock out to Margaritaville once we’re at the beach and a million miles down the shore, away from the ear infection that is Lionel Richie.” McKenna was clearly no fan of adult pop music.
“I actually kind of like Lionel Richie,” I said. “I mean, Hello?” I laughed at my own corny joke, which Mr. Holt seemed to appreciate as well.
McKenna rolled her eyes, “You are such a dork.”
Mom and Grandma sat on the Holts’ front steps, watching us pack the car. Grandma had insisted on seeing us off, even though I could look at her and see that she was completely exhausted. She’d also started having some very deep, choking coughs the last day or so. She would wave off my concern, but I could see in her eyes that they overwhelmed her.
When it was clear we were almost ready to leave, I ran over to both of them. I fell into Mom’s lap, my arms tight around her slender shoulders.
“I love you, Mom.” I looked at Grandma over her shoulder. She was smiling.
“You too, Addie.” We weren’t ones for a lot of affection, but she squeezed me back.
“And you,” I said gently wrapping an arm around Grandma. “You have to promise to miss me and talk to me every day. Mom gave me a phone card.”
“Of course, angel,” Grandma laughed. “And here’s something else for your trip. Spend it on something inappropriate and fun.”
She slipped a folded hundred dollar bill into my hand.
“Grandma!” I exclaimed. “I don’t need any money, especially this much.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “And I want you to spend every penny of it.”
We both had tears in our eyes. I brushed mine away, not wanting our last moments before being apart for a week to be sad ones. It hit me that as much as I would miss Ryan, nothing could compare to how much I would miss my Grandma.
We pulled out of the Holts’ driveway at eight o’clock on the dot. I was already flipping through a People magazine while McKenna flipped through the newest YM she’d just received the day before. Yasmine Bleeth was on the cover and a headline- The Ultimate Guide to SUMMER LOVE: He said the L word. Does he mean it?