Cherry

by Lindsey Rosin

  The Chat was blowing up: Layla had just seen Logan with his tongue in Vanessa’s mouth. It was very possible she was going to puke. Zoe and Austin had just sex for the second time. The whole thing was an upgrade from the first time even though Zoe still didn’t feel any fireworks. And the Millennium Falcon had just been captured by the Death Star’s tractor beam. Alex felt like it wasn’t going to end well. Alex had been live-texting the entire Star Wars movie. None of the girls had the heart to tell her they didn’t really care about Han Solo and his new hope or whatever. Emma tried to contribute to the conversation, but the texts were pouring in too fast and furious: Logan’s stupid lips. Zoe’s lack of fireworks. Princess Leia’s hair.

  “Let’s dance like no one’s watching,” Savannah said as she slid up behind Emma, “’cause, you know, they’re actually not, since everyone’s just on their phones all the time.” Emma looked up. Her face had, in fact, been buried entirely in her phone screen. “How’s The Chat?” Savannah asked knowingly.

  “It’s, um . . . drama,” Emma said as she texted Layla, asking where she was.

  “Dance with me,” Savannah said. She grabbed Emma’s hand and pulled her out into the backyard and onto the makeshift dance floor. “I like this song,” she yelled over the music.

  “Me too. What is it?”

  “No clue.”

  Emma started to reach for her phone so she could look up the song, but Savannah stopped her, reaching out to touch her hand. “Or . . . how ’bout let’s just appreciate that we don’t know?”

  Emma appreciated everything about Savannah all at once. And she felt like the feeling was mutual. And then all of a sudden Emma and Savannah lost track of time and space and got lost in the music and the moment, until everything else just seemed to slip away . . .

  . . . and even though Emma was very tipsy, and literally slipping and sliding across the damp grass, she felt grounded in this moment. Her drunken thoughts were crystal clear as she thought about all of the times she’d thought about Savannah’s lips and their particular shade of pink . . .

  They were perfect, Emma thought. Savannah’s lips are absolutely perfect.

  There was really nothing left to do but kiss them.

  113 days until graduation . . .

  LAYLA speared a heap of Sno-Caps with her spoon.

  “I don’t care about Logan and Vanessa,” she said, trying as hard as she possibly could to sound like she actually didn’t care, even though she knew that the girls—or Bigg Chill Aaron or any other stranger in The Bigg Chill who might be able to overhear her overcompensating—could tell that was a total lie. Everybody always knew when Layla was lying. Zoe, Emma, and Alex had all turned their attention back to their froyo flavors—vanilla, strawberry, and salted caramel chocolate, respectively. It felt like they were all trying to come up with a new topic of conversation, but before anyone could say anything new, Layla had already freaked out about Logan and Vanessa again . . . “Do you think they had sex in his car last night?”

  “No,” Alex said certainly.

  “How do you know? Logan has two condoms in his glove compartment, maybe he only has one now . . .”

  “I don’t know for sure that they didn’t, but I really don’t think so. It’s way more likely that she gave him road head on the way home.”

  “Alex—”

  “What?”

  “Not helping . . . ,” Zoe tried to whisper.

  “No. It’s okay, she’s probably right,” Layla agreed, “but they are probably going to have lots of sex, and I’m just not—and that’s . . . that’s fine, that’s just how it is . . .”

  “Wait, you’re ‘just not’ what?” Zoe asked quickly.

  “I don’t know . . .” Layla exhaled, not wanting to say something she’d regret. She turned her attention to Emma. “Was Savannah upset we left early? I just couldn’t deal.”

  “Oh no, she wasn’t,” Emma said. “I don’t think.”

  * * *

  EMMA hadn’t really talked to Savannah since that moment on the dance floor.

  That moment where she kissed Savannah on the dance floor.

  By the time Layla walked over, with her cheeks all red and her lips still quivering, Emma and Savannah were done kissing and had mostly stopped dancing too. They were just standing and staring at each other. Emma hadn’t been sure what to do next, and Savannah hadn’t said or done much of anything, but Layla was saying and doing more than enough for everyone. Logan had followed her outside, and he wanted to talk to her, but all she wanted to do was leave. Immediately. So they did. Emma felt bad about the kiss-and-run, but she had to take care of Layla. It was her fault she was at Savannah’s party in the first place.

  Once Emma got home, after spending some time on Layla’s trampoline, letting her ugly cry and angry jump, she texted Savannah to say that she was sorry and that she hoped she had a good birthday and a good night. Savannah had texted her back that it was all good—and that was it.

  Since then, Emma estimated, rather conservatively, she’d replayed their dance floor kiss about a million times.

  It’s possible it was the very best first kiss she’d ever had.

  Or it might’ve just been drunken and sloppy and confused.

  But definitely one of the two.

  Or possibly both.

  Whatever it was—or wasn’t—Emma didn’t mention it at the froyo table.

  After the girls left The Bigg Chill, Emma found herself driving over to Savannah’s house. She didn’t know what she was going to say or do exactly, but she knew she needed to go there. She had to. She pulled to a stop in front of the house and sat for a minute, still processing all of her thoughts. All of which were about Savannah. Most of them were about her lips. She could still taste her cherry ChapStick, and, yes, she could basically hear the girl-kissing pop song playing on repeat inside her head . . . but this wasn’t just a song.

  It was real.

  The most real.

  Most of the time when Emma kissed someone, she felt like she was giving something away to the other person. And not just, like, her literal spit and saliva, but something beyond that. Something intangible. Like her emotions or her expectations, maybe.

  But this kiss felt different.

  Yes, it was only one kiss.

  And yes, it was drunken and fast and maybe a little bit stupid . . .

  But it also felt like . . . more.

  Yep.

  That was it.

  Emma felt like she had pulled away from her kiss with Savannah with so much more than she had leaned in with in the first place.

  But, then again, a lot of that “more” might simply be confusion.

  Savannah knocked on Emma’s window, disrupting her rambling thoughts.

  Emma rolled down the window.

  “What are you doing here?” Savannah asked. Before Emma could answer that, Savannah followed up with. “How was froyo?”

  “Good. Really good.”

  “Yeah? What did the girls have to say?” Emma felt like Savannah was asking specifically what they said about their kiss or maybe what they said about her, but either way Savannah could see the answer on Emma’s face. “You didn’t tell them . . .”

  All Emma could think to say was that she was sorry.

  “For what?” Savannah asked with a laugh.

  Such a good question, Emma thought.

  For not knowing the answer exactly?

  For feeling too many feelings at once?

  For being an absolute mess of a person.

  “I don’t want it to be weird,” Emma said after a moment.

  “I think it’s a little late for that.” Savannah smiled.

  “Yeah, no, I mean, obviously I’m weird . . . I just don’t want you to think that every time we’re, like, sitting at the computers in the yearbook room or on the school bus or wherever, I’m suddenly gonna lean over and kiss you . . .”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Or that I’m even thinking about kissing you . . .”

>   “I thought you were always thinking about kissing everyone.”

  Oh, yep.

  Now, that was it.

  Emma felt a strange sense of relief, as she realized that Savannah was absolutely right. She was always thinking about that. Always. So maybe the kiss wasn’t just drunken and sloppy—and maybe it wasn’t the best, either. Maybe it wasn’t even really a kiss after all. Maybe it was just Emma and all her inside weirdness spilling out into the real world and onto Savannah’s lips. That didn’t necessarily mean that it was about Savannah’s lips. Or at least not the fact that they were her lips. Whatever it was, Emma was really glad that she and Savannah had been able to talk about everything and straighten everything out. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, once Emma had driven away and had a chance to replay the whole conversation in her head, that she realized they hadn’t straightened anything out.

  Honestly, they hadn’t even had much of a talk at all.

  * * *

  ZOE was tired of talking about orgasms.

  She wanted to have one.

  Now that she’d had sex twice, she was absolutely certain that having sex and having an orgasm were not the same thing. Not even close, unfortunately.

  Her second time with Austin had been better than the first. It lasted a little longer and hurt a little less, but it wasn’t . . . well, it still wasn’t as much fun as she wanted it to be—or as much fun for her as it seemed to be for Austin.

  He looked like he was having a lot of fun. With his body . . . his face . . . his eyes . . .

  Zoe wanted to look and feel like that too.

  Apparently, she was going to have to take matters into her own hands.

  Literally.

  And so . . .

  Zoe lay in bed that night—and laughed at herself. Zoe knew a lot about her body. She knew which foods tasted good or what gave her an upset stomach, but she ­honestly didn’t have the first clue about what would make her orgasm. And that’s what was making her laugh.

  Okay, she thought to herself after the laughing had stopped. How hard can this be?

  She put her right hand on right boob and her left hand on her left boob, cupping each one. She squeezed . . . and squeezed again . . . then simply had to laugh some more.

  She wanted to ask if she was doing this right. And she did ask, in her head anyway. But that only made her laugh even harder, because she certainly didn’t know the answer—she was the one asking the question in the first place!

  Zoe realized pretty quickly that whatever she was doing with her boobs wasn’t actually doing much of anything for her hope of future fireworks, so she moved her fingers onto her nipples . . . which got hard quickly when she squeezed and rubbed them, so quickly, in fact, that it seemed strange to Zoe that her nipples didn’t get hard more often or that they weren’t just somehow, like, automatically hard all the time. After a little more touching and rubbing and attempting to listen to her body, Zoe finally—fi-nal-lyy—felt like she was getting somewhere.

  Zoe felt good. And soon her whole body felt good. And she could tell which parts of it wanted more attention than others. And right now, all of that “good” made her reach down into her pajama pants and then into her underwear and actually into herself, which seemed like an odd way to be thinking about what she was doing with her fingers, but it was also an entirely accurate description of the situation—­and the more she did it, the better it felt, which was the whole entire point, so Zoe tried as hard as she could not to be critical of herself and her feelings. . . .

  And then: her phone rang.

  She ignored it.

  She was far too focused for phone calls.

  It was probably just Austin. Or one of the girls. Even though . . . she couldn’t help but think that none of them ever actually called her.

  Whatever.

  Whatever it was, it could wait.

  But then, her phone rang again.

  Zoe glanced at the clock.

  It was exactly 11:11.

  Of course it was . . .

  She touched her hand to her lips and then to the clock and then back to her lips again, and that’s when she realized, thanks to a slightly salty aftertaste, that the last thing she’d touched with her hand had been her vagina, and all of a sudden she was overwhelmed by a bout of giggles . . . and all the while, Zoe’s phone was still ringing, and the clock still said 11:11, and her hand still smelled like her underwear, and life was totally strange and ridiculously amazing, and she was both proud of herself and embarrassed for herself at the very same time, and all the while she couldn’t seem to stop laughing . . .

  Somehow she managed to glance over at her phone and see Dylan’s name on the screen, and she was already missing him and their phonefalls and everything, and so without overthinking it any further than she already had, she picked up the phone.

  “Hello,” she said with a giggle.

  “Hey . . . ,” Dylan said. “You okay?”

  “Oh yeah . . . I’m . . .” Zoe tried to control her laughter, but her blood was all still pumping faster than usual.

  “What are you doing?” Dylan asked, sounding as if he had almost managed to put the pieces together.

  “Um, you know, I’m just . . . ,” Zoe said, focusing on slowing down her breathing. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  Dylan heard the breaths, and the tone in Zoe’s voice and suddenly it clicked. “Zoe. Reed,” he said deliberately. “Sorry if I’m . . . interrupting.”

  “What? No. There’s nothing . . . you’re not . . .”

  “You sure about that?” Dylan laughed.

  No.

  Zoe wasn’t sure about anything.

  She wasn’t sure what she was doing or if it really felt good or even why she’d picked up the phone exactly. “I just . . . I’d been wanting to talk to you, and I saw you were calling.”

  “It’s cool,” Dylan said without any judgment in his voice. “And . . . whatever you’re doing right now, I think you should know that I, um, I like it, and I’m gonna let you get back to it.”

  Zoe wanted to say that she didn’t want to get back to it or need to get back to it, but that would’ve been a lie. She wanted to. And so she would. And a very small part of Zoe also wanted to ask Dylan to stay on the phone with her while she did, but she couldn’t say that, either.

  Extending that kind of invitation would mean crossing an uncrossable line.

  She wasn’t going to do that right now.

  Not to Dylan. Not to Austin. And not to herself either.

  110 days until graduation . . .

  EMMA had expected things would go back to normal with Savannah . . .

  . . . but they still hadn’t.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the dance floor kiss itself or the conversation they’d had in front of Savannah’s house the following afternoon that had thrown everything out of whack, but something between them just wasn’t the same anymore.

  It used to be all easy and effortless.

  Now everything felt rather strained and calculated.

  Savannah stayed after school on Wednesday to cover the varsity water polo match for the paper. Emma stayed too. To take pictures for the yearbook. The girls spent most of the match standing only about ten feet apart, watching the game and taking notes and snapping pictures, but the distance between them might as well have been a mile. Afterward, Savannah headed back to the yearbook room to type up her notes. Emma followed after her. “My HD card is full,” she said out loud as an explanation.

  “You don’t have to make up excuses to keep hanging out with me.”

  “What?” Emma asked, hoping Savannah would stop and talk to her for a minute.

  She didn’t.

  Instead, she kept walking and talking, forcing Emma to pick up the pace. “You have an open invitation to hang out with me. If you want to stay for the water polo match, if you want to come to the yearbook room, if you want to sit and do nothing, then fine, let’s do it, but you don’t have to make things up,” Savannah said
all at once. It wasn’t her usual tone of voice or the usual kinds of words she used to talk to Emma, and Emma didn’t like the way it sounded as it came out of her mouth. But when Emma opened her mouth to try and respond, all her thoughts just came out with the sound of a giant whistle. It was the whistle that finally made Savannah stop walking. She turned back to look at Emma. “What is happening?” she asked, clearly exasperated.

  “What do you mean?” Emma asked just as sharply.

  “I mean, what the hell are you doing right now?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t ever know what I’m doing! Ever!” Emma shouted. “I don’t even know why I was just shouting,” she added, lowering her voice again.

  Then.

  After what felt like the longest silence in the history of silences, Savannah finally managed to say what they were both thinking:

  “It wasn’t weird.”

  “The kiss,” Emma whispered back. The two little words came out of her mouth so softly she wasn’t sure Savannah would even hear them.

  “You don’t have to pretend you didn’t like it,” Savannah said, using her normal voice volume again.

  “I’m not pretending. I’m here—”

  “Yeah, you’re here, but only because you’re making excuses—”

  “Okay, okay,” Emma said, stepping closer to Savannah. She reached out and touched her arm, as if to make sure she wasn’t going to walk away again. “I’m . . . you know, I’ve been having a hard time with senior year and everything . . .” Savannah waited for Emma to find some more words, but after a few moments she could only manage two more. “It’s not . . .”

  “What? It’s not you, it’s me?” Savannah teased. “You’re such a giant, boring cliché, Emma O’Malley.”

  “So maybe I am. But high school is almost over, and I feel like I know even less now than I did when I started, even though it feels like everyone is expecting me to just, like, magically be this whole person all of a sudden . . .”

  “Emma. Stop. Look . . . I hate to have to be the one to break this to you, but you’re already a whole person. It’s not ‘all of a sudden.’ It’s already happened. Like, right now, in this actual sudden—”