The first problem was the fact that she didn’t like beer. The second problem was that Zoe wasn’t good at drinking quickly, no matter what the liquid happened to be. The third problem was the flipping, which was the entire point of the game. If the objective had been to flip the cup over and not have it land upside down, Zoe would’ve won every single time. As it was, she was a complete and total failure.
“You are so far away from doing this right, I think you might be close,” Austin teased before pulling Zoe in for a big kiss. Zoe’s heart skipped a beat every time Austin kissed her, but it skipped twice whenever he did it in public. Austin would kiss her anywhere: in the hallway at school, in the senior parking lot, or right now, in the middle of Trevor Morgan’s party. As he should, Zoe could hear all her girls saying, but this was new for Zoe.
“Wanna go upstairs?” Austin whispered in her ear.
That kind of question was new for Zoe too.
Zoe nodded and Austin grabbed her hand, interlacing their fingers, and together they made their way up the staircase. Halfway up, Zoe turned back, glancing down at the party below. She caught the gaze of a girl she didn’t know for a moment, but then the girl darted her eyes away quickly, not wanting to make it look like she had been staring. Zoe had never seen this girl before, but Zoe had definitely been her before. So many times. The girl watching another couple walk up the stairs and not wanting to be caught. The girl longing to trade places but not wanting to admit it. At least for now Zoe didn’t have to long for anything. She was with Austin, holding his hand, and heading toward an empty bedroom.
The first door Austin pushed on at the top of the stairs was locked, no doubt already occupied by another happy or drunken couple. After trying a few more locked doors they found the last one at the end of the hallway unlocked and unoccupied. Austin pulled Zoe into the room, kissing her as soon as he shut the door behind him. It occurred to Zoe, as they moved toward the twin bed, that maybe he had more on his mind than just kissing. . . .
They could’ve made out downstairs or outside in the backyard.
Here, now, they had a bed and a dark, quiet room.
Here, now, they could get naked if they wanted to.
Austin pulled off his shirt. Clearly, he wanted to . . .
Zoe pulled him in for another kiss. She could taste the beer on his tongue, which made her wonder if she tasted like beer too. And here, now she was drunk enough to ask him.
“Do you taste like beer?” Austin repeated back to her as if he were seriously considering the question. “I don’t know, but I know how to find out . . .”
He leaned in for another kiss.
And then another one after that.
He never answered Zoe’s question, but it just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
After a few more minutes of kissing, Austin reached for Zoe’s shirt, pulling it off. Honestly, Zoe had wanted to do that herself, but she hadn’t been able to get up the nerve to take it off. Austin was more than happy to help. Zoe noticed that the sheets on the bed were pink and ruffled. There was a white floral pattern around the edge. They looked like the sheets she had on her bed when she was in elementary school, which made her feel small and also more drunk than she’d been even just a few moments before. She pushed her attention back to Austin and his kisses. He moved his lips down to her breasts and then even farther down onto her stomach. She moved her hands along his chest and up onto his shoulders. She couldn’t help but giggle as she thought about how good it felt to have your shoulders rubbed. Obviously, it was not the same kind of good that caused orgasms . . .
Zoe and Austin kissed for a while longer, hovering right around second base, and just when it started to feel like it might be time to make a move toward third, the door swung open and a bright light flooded into the room.
At first Zoe couldn’t see who had opened the door, but she heard the drunken giggles . . . And she could recognize that laugh anywhere—at least the male half of it.
Once Zoe’s eyes readjusted, her suspicions were confirmed and she saw Dylan standing in the doorframe.
And he saw her, too.
This was not how Zoe had imagined Dylan would see her in her bra for the first time.
Not that she had ever really imagined that sort of thing.
Or maybe she had?
It was hard to tell what was just the beer in her brain talking and what she was really feeling.
The truth was, right now, it didn’t matter either way. She was with Austin. And Dylan was holding the hand of a girl who Zoe didn’t recognize. She was probably a sophomore or maybe even a freshman. She was thin and blond. Her hair was too long and her skirt was too short. Zoe didn’t necessarily care about any of those details, but they were impossible not to notice.
“You mind?” Austin finally managed to ask.
“No, sorry, buddy . . . ,” Dylan stammered before stepping back out into the hallway and closing the door behind him.
It was only after he was gone and Austin’s tongue was back inside her mouth that Zoe realized Dylan had been stuck staring at her for all that time.
Now she was the one stuck thinking about him.
His eyes had been glassy and his cheeks were flushed, probably because he was drunk, but maybe from embarrassment, too. But either way, it didn’t really matter. Zoe was kissing Austin. And Austin’s hand was under her skirt. And anything else she had been thinking about—Dylan or the awkwardness or his new girl of the moment—all of it, was overshadowed by the way Austin’s fingers felt inside of her.
It was exciting . . . and also scary.
But mostly Zoe just liked it.
And she liked that, too.
133 days until graduation . . .
EMMA was still the reigning champion of mixed emotions.
She liked hooking up with Nick, especially that second time in the darkroom, but she wasn’t particularly excited about the idea of doing it again. Of course, Emma being Emma, she wasn’t entirely sure why she wasn’t excited, but she knew Nick was very excited, and for some reason that contrast wasn’t exactly helping things between them. She wasn’t cocky enough to think Nick was falling in love with her or anything, but it was clear that his feelings for her were stronger than her feelings for him. His initial friendly offer to “lend her his penis” had already been more than accomplished, but Nick still seemed to want more.
He was waiting for Emma at her locker when she got to school.
“Hi you,” he said, pulling her in for a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.
A public kiss, even just on the cheek, was a pretty bold move at any time of day, but especially at 7:55 a.m. on a Monday morning. It took a lot of self-control to keep Emma from wiping off her cheek. She turned down the hall, heading toward the yearbook room. Nick followed closely behind her, which wasn’t really evidence of anything as much as a by-product of the fact that they had their first period class together. “What are you up to this weekend?” he asked eagerly. “’Cause it’s . . . you know, Valentine’s Day . . .”
“Oh yeah, I don’t know,” Emma said, trying to stop him from asking anything else. “I don’t usually make a big deal about that.”
“Me neither,” Nick said. “But I guess it’s also, just, you know, Saturday, so if you want to hang out or whatever . . .” He said “hang out” as if he were putting quotations around the words. He might as well have just said, If you want to have sex on Saturday, let me know. Emma couldn’t help but think that if he had actually just said that, she would’ve probably been down.
Nick stayed right on Emma’s heels as she made her way to her computer station in the back of the yearbook room. Savannah was already seated at the computer beside hers. “All right, well, just let me know what you’re thinking,” Nick said rather awkwardly.
“Sure, yeah.” Emma nodded. And then she made sure to smile at him. She knew Nick well enough to know that he needed a little positive reassurance from her before he would feel like it was all right to walk away.
/> Once he left, Savannah leaned in close. “He looooves you . . .”
“No. He doesn’t. Not even close. He just . . . has a lot of expectations about the whole thing.”
“Yeah. You’re super weird about expectations.”
“To be fair, I’m super weird about a lot of things, but, in particular, yes, expectations freak me out.” Emma got lost for a moment in all of the thoughts swirling around her head. She didn’t know why expectations freaked her out so much or if Nick’s expectations were actually real or if she was just projecting her own feelings onto him or whether it was normal for high school kids to think about “projecting their feelings” or if that was only something Emma thought about because her father was a therapist . . . and all her thoughts started to blend together until Emma couldn’t tell where one stopped and the next one began . . .
Finally, Savannah’s smile caught her eye.
“What?” Emma asked uncertainly.
“Just trying to figure out how many thoughts you’re having at the same time. I can practically see all the gears moving in that pretty little head of yours.”
“Then you must know that the inside of my head is anything but pretty . . .”
“Well, aesthetically speaking, the brains and blood are rather gross, but they’re also incredibly complex and beautiful, so I think ‘pretty’ is a totally accurate description.”
“Twelve,” Emma answered. “I think it’s safe to say that I’m always having twelve distinct thoughts at any one time, give or take.”
“I’ll take it,” Savannah said, still smiling.
Good, Emma thought.
She’d take it too. Whatever it was.
132 days until graduation . . .
LAYLA had never been particularly good at falling asleep.
Once she fell asleep, she had no problem staying there, but turning her brain off in the first place was nearly impossible. This past week had been even more problematic than usual. She simply could not keep her head in the moment. Her thoughts would get so far ahead of her actual life, racing into the future, that she constantly had to remind herself to return to reality . . .
Her phone buzzed.
There was a new text from Logan: 4 DAYS!!!!
Four was Layla’s lucky number, and their V-card/V-day date was now only four days away.
Under normal circumstances, Layla would’ve loved everything about the text message: the number, the symbolism, the way Logan used the appropriate number of exclamation points. But tonight all her thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams were running on overdrive.
She didn’t know what to text back exactly, but she wanted to say something, so she responded with a red heart emoji. Normally, Layla didn’t like emojis, because she thought they were easily misinterpreted, but in this moment she could see the upside to ambiguity, to allowing the other person to interpret the communication in their own way.
Can’t. Wait. He texted back Can’t stop thinking about it . . .
Layla couldn’t stop thinking about it either, but she was pretty sure that her thoughts and Logan’s were remarkably different.
She was thinking about emotions and logistics and ramifications.
Last time I fingered you, you got so wet . . . Logan texted.
Clearly, he was thinking about that.
Layla couldn’t exactly blame him.
She realized it might’ve been stranger if he weren’t thinking about that sort of thing . . . but it made her realize that all the sex stuff was just different for boys.
Logan imagined it would feel good.
Layla was worried it would hurt.
Logan had good reason to assume that there would be fireworks.
Layla had already lowered her expectations accordingly.
Logan knew his friends would be impressed that he finally did it.
Luckily, Layla knew that her friends would be supportive of her, too, but if any of the other kids at school heard about it, they’d probably look at them both differently, even though they were doing the exact same thing together at the exact same time.
You’re the hottest and the best and I love you!! Logan texted when Layla didn’t respond to his last message about the last time he fingered her.
Same and same and I love you too!!! Layla texted back, adding a bunch of exclamation points—but not so many as to look like she was overcompensating. Layla obviously spent a ton of time thinking about anything and everything, but she laughed at herself as she tried to calculate what percentage of that thinking time was dedicated to typing and/or analyzing her text message conversations. Far too much, she concluded.
Then Logan texted that he was going to sleep.
Layla wished she could say and do the same, but her brain still wasn’t tired yet.
Actually, her brain was exhausted, but it wasn’t ready to turn off. Layla couldn’t stop thinking about the importance of the number four and the V-card/V-day and the sex and the fireworks and how those last two thoughts were very much not the same thing. And then all she could think about was how her first time was going to be anticlimactic and firework-less, which was an extremely unhelpful and unsexy thought to be having before it even happened.
It was literally the opposite of orgasmic.
Layla knew that the odds of setting off fireworks the very first time she had sex were about as likely as spotting a unicorn in the wild, but she still hated the unwavering feeling that the outcome had already been decided for her. Like, no matter what happened, no matter what she did or what Logan did or what they managed to do together, it wouldn’t be as good as she wanted it to be. Not even close.
Maybe the truth was that nothing would ever be as good as she wanted it to be—but that couldn’t possibly mean that she shouldn’t try. And Layla wasn’t just thinking about sex, of course. Life was full of expectations and failures, but Layla knew she still had to try.
But, at the very same time, she also had to be prepared to fail and try again and fail again no matter what she was doing or when she was doing it . . . and then just like that, as always, her thoughts were racing off into the future.
She was powerless to stop them.
She could barely even keep up with them.
131 days until graduation . . .
ZOE hadn’t spoken to Dylan since he saw her in her bra that night at the party.
He’d been sick, apparently, and going to bed early, and she’d been distracted by Austin, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to talk to Dylan, too. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a real phonefall. “Why aren’t we talking?” Zoe asked Wednesday night once she finally managed to get Dylan on the phone.
“What? We’re talking. We’re literally talking right now.”
“I mean, for real. The phonefalls . . .”
“Oh. I don’t know . . . ,” Dylan said as if he hadn’t even noticed. But Zoe was sure he had. The last time she saw him, she had only been wearing a bra, and she was very sure he’d noticed that as well. “I don’t want to get in Austin’s way,” Dylan added.
“You’re not. I swear. He goes to sleep early. And I really don’t think he would care anyway.” Dylan didn’t respond right away. “What am I missing?” Zoe pushed again. “How many girlfriends have you had since Chem? Six? Seven?”
“Five.”
“Five, right, and I—we—outlasted all of them.” Dylan didn’t respond to that right away either. “You had no problem making me talk to you then—”
“Okay, Zoe, I’m so sorry I made you talk to me—”
“Stop it. You know that’s not what I’m saying—”
“I don’t, actually . . .”
Zoe took a breath, forcing herself to pause for a second. “Look. I like falling asleep on the phone with you. And maybe that’s weird, but it’s how we’ve always been. Ever since we became friends. And that doesn’t have to do with Austin. Or it shouldn’t, anyway. But if you don’t want to do this anymore . . . I mean, obviously you’re allowed to say t
hat—”
“Am I? Thank you for the permission,” Dylan said, sounding like an asshole.
“Whatever, Dylan. I’m just saying, be honest with me—”
“I am being honest—”
“No, you’re not. You’re blaming Austin. You’re blaming me. If you don’t want to talk to me in bed anymore, then you need to just say that.”
“I don’t want to talk to you in bed anymore.”
Dylan’s words were quick and sharp. Zoe let them hang on the phone line for a moment, engulfing the entire conversation in silence. But it wasn’t their normal, comfortable kind of silence. This felt decidedly different, and Zoe didn’t like it at all.
“Why not?” she asked, even though she could sense that Dylan wasn’t ready to answer that. “Is it just because I have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know.” Zoe could hear the honesty in Dylan’s voice. He was just as confused as she was, but it still hurt. “But I know I don’t want to do this right now,” he added.
And that hurt even more.
“Okay,” was all Zoe could manage to say before she hung up the phone.
She didn’t give Dylan a chance to backtrack or say “sorry” or even just soften the blow. She knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t going to, and she didn’t want to waste any more time waiting for him to say something she wanted to hear.
She’d spent too many years doing that already.
129 days until graduation . . .
LAYLA was in charge of the senior class’s red carnation table.
Every year the student council sold red carnations on Valentine’s Day in order to raise money for a local food pantry. Each flower cost a dollar. Students could buy as many flowers as they wanted, and then student council members would deliver them to the lucky recipients in their classes throughout the day. The whole thing was a giant undertaking requiring lots of organization and careful planning. Basically, it was Layla’s dream come true.
Layla spotted Zoe as she got off the school bus. Zoe waved at Layla but seemed hesitant to come over to the carnation table and actually say hi. Layla knew why. Zoe wasn’t a big fan of Valentine’s Day. She was scared from too many years of adolescent disappointment. Too many years of not having a valentine. But Layla already knew that this year was going to be different.
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