But before she could, her phone buzzed. It was the girls, getting anxious.
“They’re waiting for me—to watch your porn collection,” Alex explained.
Joey smirked and then pulled her in for another soul melding, mind crushing, body bursting kind of kiss.
Alex’s phone buzzed again.
“Ugh. Okay.” She smiled. “To be continued . . .”
“Please stay?” Joey said as if the words had escaped through his lips without permission.
“I can’t,” she said. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. Not right now. “Chicks before dicks,” Alex added with a little laugh, knowing it would drive him crazy.
It did. And she liked that.
“All right, fine . . . ,” he said with an adorable shake of his head. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Me and my ‘dick’ are gonna go take a cold shower.”
79 days until graduation . . .
EMMA woke up the next morning with a hangover.
It felt like a happy hangover, but still, her head was throbbing.
The girls had an incredible time last night. They drank and ate and giggled and watched porn. They spent some time in the Reeds’ Jacuzzi, laughing about the warm jets and how if they positioned themselves just right on top of them, it might set off a fireworks display. It had been perfect—except for the fact that the hours they spent together might as well have just been a few minutes. Their time felt like it was flying, dripping away, and there was nothing any of them could do to hold it or stop it.
Emma’s stomach was growling and her heart felt strange. All she wanted to do was be with Savannah. And talk to her. And maybe dance with her. Or maybe even kiss her again . . .
. . . but Savannah had stopped responding to her text messages ever since Emma had been stupid enough to forget to invite her to dinner.
Clearly, Emma should’ve handled the whole situation better, but she hadn’t. She’d messed up.
Emma went home and took a nap and woke up to a flurry of new texts in The Chat. Layla had sent a whole string of new inspirational quotes, as Layla so often did, and the last one was particularly pertinent for Emma’s current state of mind. It was a picture of a bike along with the words: to keep your balance you have to keep moving.
Emma felt that.
For months, basically all year, she felt like she had been out of balance, entirely unsteady. But now she realized that maybe she was going about it all backward. Maybe her unsteadiness came from the fact that she was effectively attempting to stay in the same place. Everyone around her was moving forward. Because that’s what people did. They moved. They evolved. Despite her fears Emma wanted all that too. But first she needed to find her balance.
All Emma wanted to do was jump on and pedal to Savannah’s house.
So she did.
In her car, this hill leading up to Savannah’s house just seemed like a little incline. Now, on her bike, it might as well have been a mountain. When Emma finally did make it to the top, she was covered in sweat. This certainly wasn’t how she envisioned this moment with Savannah, but she didn’t work so hard just to chicken out now.
She took a few deep breaths, attempting to steady herself, but she knew the only way she was going to find steadiness or balance or whatever she wanted to call it was to actually move forward.
So that is exactly what she did.
She walked up the steps and knocked on Savannah’s front door.
“What are you doing here?” Savannah asked, stepping outside to talk to Emma and closing the door behind her.
“You said I didn’t need to make up excuses to hang out with you. . . .” Emma smiled, which made Savannah smile back too. And then Emma could feel why she was there. This, she thought as she looked into Savannah’s eyes. This is what it was supposed to feel like. The hormones. The racing. This moment felt like everything she’d heard Layla and Alex and Zoe talk about. This was good. And it wasn’t like Emma hadn’t felt good before, because she definitely had. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t been aroused before . . . she had. But all of that? All of that before? It simply wasn’t this.
She could feel that much for sure.
Emma could also feel her blood and her boobs and the butterflies and all of the sweat, still dripping down her back and neck and knees. She could see it all from the outside and feel it all from the inside, and she knew she owed Savannah an apology and more honesty and a grand gesture, too, and so she stepped forward, onto Savannah’s welcome mat, and kissed her perfectly pink lips.
This kiss was long and hard and on purpose.
This! Emma thought.
This was balance and movement all at the same time.
“Look at Emma O’Malley, kissing in public and everything . . . ,” Savannah said after Emma pulled away.
Emma laughed. “Does it count as being ‘public’ if there’s no one around to see it?”
“I don’t know. What if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around to hear it?” Savannah asked, joining in on Emma’s laughter.
This, Emma thought again as she caught Savannah’s eyes.
“So. We can agree this is good, right?” Emma asked, repeating Savannah’s words from the water polo match.
“Emma. If you’re trying to expectation me right now . . .”
“I’m not expectationing anything,” Emma said, smiling with her entire face.
After a few more kisses on the front step, Emma found herself pedaling home even harder and faster than she had on the way there.
I kissed a girl and I liked it, she texted The Chat as soon as she got home.
OHMIGOD YES, Zoe texted back almost immediately.
I love it so much, Layla texted.
Lucky Savannah, Alex added.
Lucky me, Emma thought.
* * *
ALEX’s thoughts had been entirely consumed by Joey Reed.
The last time she saw him was about twelve hours earlier as she’d snuck up into Zoe and Joey’s Jack and Jill bathroom to say good-bye before she went home after the sleepover. She’d said hi—and then he’d said hi—and they’d been stuck staring at each for a moment until Joey said he had to see her again before he went back to school. And then he kissed her, and it rattled her soul, and it took every single ounce of self-control in Alex’s body not to melt into a puddle on the floor right then and there. And then somehow she’d manage to survive the rest of the day and most of the night. As soon as her parents went to sleep, she’d texted Joey to come over. He’d snuck out of his house and now here he was, tiptoeing into the Campbells’ kitchen through the back door as quietly as he could.
At first sight Alex wanted to kiss him everywhere and all at once, and the urge was so strong and overwhelming it had the exact opposite effect: It stopped her in her tracks. Alex felt like once she started to kiss him, she might never be able to stop, and the thought was absolutely terrifying and amazing all at once.
“I know . . . ,” Joey said, as if he could read her thoughts.
“You know?”
“You’re bad news, Campbell,” Joey said, grinning.
Alex led him up the stairs and into her bedroom, slowly closing the door behind her. “Hi,” she whispered, not wanting to wake up her parents or Max.
“Hi,” Joey whispered back. Then he laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“I feel like I’ve been with you all day because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. And now that I’m here, literally looking at you, I already miss you . . .” Joey laughed at himself. “So much for playing it cool, huh?”
“Cool is overrated,” Alex said with another smile.
“Thanks . . .” Joey laughed.
“You know what I mean,” Alex said. Besides, she felt the same way.
Alex and Joey spent the entire night kissing.
Basically just kissing.
There was some touching, too, but mostly they were just running from first base to second base and back again, in the most e
njoyable circles. They’d stop every once in a while to laugh or hold each other or share a secret or tell a story, and then they’d inevitably start kissing again.
And again and again . . .
And again and again it felt like things might escalate physically, and they could’ve, certainly, but Joey and Alex just didn’t seem to be in that kind of a rush. For Alex, the girl who had been known to get bored with a boy before the end of their first make-out session, the girl who felt like she was always rushing, the girl who was always trying to move faster—to literally break speed records—this was an incredibly important moment of stillness. Of slowness. Of general now-ness. Most of the time Alex felt like she was being pushed and pulled and prodded to be something she wasn’t . . . Right now with Joey, the only thing she had to be was herself.
78 days until graduation . . .
ALEX and Joey managed to kiss until the sun came up . . .
. . . but it still didn’t feel like nearly enough time.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Joey whispered. He smiled with a little pink in his cheeks, as if he were surprised that the words had come out of his mouth.
“I’m gonna miss you, too,” she said, thinking it was strange, considering how little time they’d actually spent together, but knowing it wasn’t strange at all considering all the feelings she was feeling through her whole body.
“I miss you already,” Joey said, laughing at his own corniness.
“Same,” Alex replied, all full of sincerity and a little bit of sadness.
She’d known Joey for about twelve years, ever since she and Zoe had been friends, and even though they’d formed their own friendship through the track team, they’d never really spent any time alone together.
Until now.
And it felt like the most natural thing in the entire world.
Being together, with their lips and everything touching or their fingers and legs intertwined, felt right. But Joey had to leave. He had to sneak out of Alex’s house and back into his before Zoe or his parents had a chance to notice he was gone.
So he kissed Alex good-bye one more time. Softly and slowly.
He said he’d text her as soon as he got back to his dorm room at Berkeley. And he did.
Hi, he said simply.
Hi, she texted back.
I miss you, he added. And then, also: Ugh.
Alex felt exactly the same way . . . all the way down to the Ugh.
I miss you too, she texted back.
She really did miss him. It was actually almost physically painful. Alex wasn’t sure how to explain her feelings for Joey because they came on so fast and strong, but if she knew anything, anything at all, it was that they were the most real feelings she’d ever felt. For eighteen years, she’d had this space inside her, below her heart and above her stomach—maybe it was the place where the butterflies and the fireworks live—but it hadn’t really registered before now. Like, if she’d walked through an X-ray machine, even just yesterday, there would’ve only been blank space inside her. But now . . . ugh, she thought, which was both the best and worst feeling all at the same time . . . now Joey Reed—and his spiked hair and those teal glasses and that wink—were all sitting inside of her, filling a space that she didn’t even know existed.
Now she didn’t want to even consider feeling any other way.
74 days until graduation . . .
ZOE was starting to worry that something was seriously wrong with her.
She and Austin were still dating. And they were still sleeping together semiregularly. And it was mostly fun, and she liked it, but she still hadn’t had an orgasm. “Maybe I’m, like, physically incapable of having one,” she’d proposed at froyo last week, but none of the other girls were willing to humor her.
It’s totally gonna happen, they all assured her.
“Trust the process,” Emma had said, giggling.
Zoe did trust the process—sort of.
But she decided she also wanted some professional reassurance that everything was working down there the way it should, so she’d made an appointment with her gynecologist. Also, she figured it was probably a good move to go on the pill. She and Austin had been using condoms, but still.
Zoe stood by the oak tree next to the senior parking lot, waiting for her mom to pick her up, when she saw Dylan heading toward her. Well, really he was heading toward the pool with a pack of water polo boys, but it was the closest they’d come to being in the same place at the same time in a long time.
She wasn’t even expecting him to wave, let alone walk over and say hi, but he did. Zoe didn’t realize how much she’d missed him until he was standing right there in front of her, but she didn’t realize the words were just going to tumble out of her mouth . . .
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said before her cheeks even had time to redden.
“I got into Michigan,” Zoe blurted out, realizing she hadn’t told him yet.
“Oh hell, yeah,” Dylan said. He’d already gotten early admission into Colorado. His older brother went there, and it was the only school he wanted to go to. And he got in. It was pretty undramatic as far as the college process went.
Zoe’s college applications had been that way too. She wanted to go to a big school where people rooted for things and wore face paint and went to frat parties, but she also wanted a theater department. Zoe thought Michigan would be the perfect fit. Luckily, Michigan thought so too.
Then, Zoe’s mom pulled up and waved. It was time to go. But before Zoe walked away, Dylan asked if she wanted to phonefall later that night.
Zoe had never said yes faster.
72 days until graduation . . .
ALEX and Joey had been texting constantly.
Ever since they’d spent the whole night kissing, they’d been continuously texting about anything and everything. Embarrassing stories. Childhood memories. Stupid jokes. They’d text back and forth about their hopes and dreams. About all their thoughts on God. About drugs and alcohol and rainbow sprinkles. About Alex’s running shoes and how they occasionally didn’t match. They texted about their daydreams and nightmares . . . Alex admitted that lately he’d been keeping her up at night, mostly just in the best possible way. She even texted him in the middle of the day just to say that she couldn’t stop thinking about him, which wasn’t the kind of thing she normally wanted to admit to a boy, or anyone really, but it felt like Joey already knew. He texted her back and said he felt exactly the same way. She already knew that too.
Alex couldn’t imagine having all of these text message conversations with anyone else. She’d never really cared what any boy thought about these topics, let alone what one particular boy thought about all of them. But with Joey, she wanted to know everything.
The only strange thing about all of their texting was that it accounted for a hundred percent of their communication. Alex liked texting much better than talking on the phone. She appreciated having the time and space to respond in exactly the right way.
But.
Considering the fact that none of these words had actually come out of her mouth and that she hadn’t actually heard any of them come of Joey’s mouth either, the whole thing was starting to seem like a strange dream. And to make matters worse, she still hadn’t told the rest of The Crew about Joey. She certainly didn’t want to lie to Zoe, not after all the Cameron stuff, but she knew how weird Zoe could get about things, especially things that involved her brother. She didn’t want to get all into it with her if things with Joey weren’t going to last anyway. Maybe that was lying by omission, but Alex wanted to figure out what was actually going on between them before she opened it up to The Crew.
Alex climbed into bed for the night and grabbed her phone.
Can I ask you a question? she texted Joey, innocently enough.
If it’s “what am I wearing?” it’s gonna be awkward, he texted back.
Alex smirked. That wasn’t what she was going to ask, but now she wanted to know.
(The answer is nothing), he added almost immediately.
She and Joey had texted for an incredibly long time without crossing into any sort of sext message territory, and Alex had recently started to wonder if Joey was ever going to make that sort of a move.
What about you? he texted after a moment had gone by.
The truth?
Alex was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and an oversized track T-shirt, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t the kind of answer Joey was hoping for. She lied, well, fibbed, and texted that she was wearing black panties. She hated the word “panties,” but “underwear” just didn’t sound sexy enough.
UGH, he responded in all capital letters. I want to take them off.
Yes, please, she texted back quickly.
And then, just like that, it was on . . .
. . . and they began turning each other on as a flurry of sext messages replaced their usual text message conversation. Joey told her where he wanted to touch her—her thighs, her neck, her breasts—and how he wanted to touch her—mostly with his tongue—and before Alex knew it, she really was touching herself and texting Joey about it. And Joey was touching himself, too, and texting her back . . . and pretty soon there were fireworks on both ends of the phone.
Or so Alex had to assume.
It was still hard to know what was actually happening.
She liked texting Joey, and she liked sexting him too, but all of that was only taking place on the glow of her phone screen.
Alex was starting to worry that it wasn’t real.
Part of the problem was that it simply felt too good to be true.
70 days until graduation . . .
LAYLA was still spending far too much time thinking about Logan.
It wasn’t that she was still mad at him anymore or hurt by him or anything like that, but she simply couldn’t get him out of her head for any extended period of time, and it was driving her crazy.
And now.
Logan and Vanessa were officially a couple, and they were almost always making out all over campus. And Layla was pretending not to notice or care, both of which were horrible lies. She was focusing on schoolwork mostly, still trying to get her grade up to an A in AP Lit, doing some extra credit assignments. She was also trying as hard as she could not to focus on the calendar or her to-do list and its due date. And so, for the first time all year, Layla had actually succeeded in losing track of time, which was very un-Layla-like.
Cherry Page 22