I lie back and pull her to my chest. I really hope I didn’t cross a line with her. I mean…I did cross a line, I just hope it was okay. She seemed okay…she seemed more than okay. But I won’t let myself forget what she went through a couple of months ago. I don’t want to be anything like that guy. I want to be on a different planet from him.
She splays her hand out on my chest and runs her finger back and forth on my shirt. I kiss the top of her head. She’s still catching her breath. Words can’t describe what seeing her come apart like that did to me. I think I had more fun than she did.
She eases her hand down my t-shirt covered torso and slides her fingers underneath the band of my boxers. Her hand connects with my skin, and a jolt runs through my dick.
“Chloe,” I say, and her hand freezes.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not trying to ruin the moment, but I need to ask you something.”
She hesitates. “Okay.”
“Have you ever done this before? What you’re trying to do now?”
She pulls the side of her bottom lip into her mouth and lets it pop back out. “I actually hadn’t figured out yet exactly what I was going to do.”
I pull her hand out of my boxers and set it on my stomach. “You don’t need to do anything.”
“But it’s…”
“It doesn’t matter what it is. I just need a minute.”
She frowns. “Really?”
I look down at her, forcing her to meet my gaze. “Yeah, really.”
She buries her cheek into my chest. “I don’t want you to think I’m not willing to…reciprocate.”
“We’ve got plenty of nights together ahead of us. We’re going to take this one step at a time.”
“I just don’t want you to be…uncomfortable,” she says.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m more than fine.” Lies. All lies. But I won’t let her feel bad the whole night. This was my idea.
Her face opens in a smile against my chest. “Guys like you don’t exist. You really are perfect.”
I really wish she would quit calling me that. “I’m not perfect because I don’t expect you to get me off. That just makes me not an asshole, at least when it comes to this.”
She squeezes me like she can’t get close enough to me. I feel the exact same way. I want to tell her I love her, but I’m not going to let her memory of the first time I said those words to her be of us lying in bed. I want to tell her that in the middle of some sort of romantic gesture, over dinner, or on the beach at sunset—some time other than the one where I practically mauled her trying to get her as close to me as I could possibly have her.
“How did it go with your dad tonight?” I ask.
“It was going okay, but your mom showed.”
I roll my eyes in frustration. Why can my mom not see Chloe needs alone time with Derrick? “I’m sorry she did that. I don’t know what she was thinking.”
“It’s no big deal. He probably invited her. I’m sure he did.”
“She still could have said no,” I say. “I’m going to talk to her.”
“Please don’t. Your mom is sweet. I think she has good intentions.” She rolls off of me and props herself up on her elbow, her face soft in the candlelight. “Tell me about school. Are you living in the dorm?”
The idea of living anywhere Chloe is not sends a shot of unease through me. My slow brain has yet to process the fact she’s going to be back home states away from me in less than a month.
“That’s the plan,” I say.
“Will you have a roommate?” she asks.
“Yeah, some guy from Tallahassee. He’s on the wrestling team, too.”
She narrows her gaze at me. “You told me once you chose wrestling over football because it was the easy route. What did you mean by that?”
I sit up a little on my pillow. The cat’s already out of the bag with my dyscalculia. I guess there’s no reason not to be honest now.
“Football is a lot more challenging for me from a numbers standpoint. I can’t hear numbers being shouted by the quarterback and make sense of them.”
“How did you play in high school then?” she asks.
“My coach and my teammates made concessions for me. Our quarterback used no numbers at all in his calls. Commands were assigned colors. Players were assigned nicknames.” I huff a laugh in memory. “We even used Greek god names for plays one year.”
She laughs. “That’s awesome.”
“We got made fun of by some of the public schools.” I give her the eye. “But we kicked ass so they weren’t laughing too hard at us.”
She shakes her head. “Man, you love football, don’t you?”
I nod, still trying to let go of my dream of playing Division 1. “Yeah.”
“You’re good?” she asks.
I raise a cocky eyebrow.
She grins. “Of course you’re good.”
I shrug. “I’m pretty good.”
“Good enough to make a college team?” she asks.
I flatten my feet on the bed. “I got a couple of recruitment letters, but I didn’t follow up.”
She widens her eyes. “Recruitment letters. You must really be good.”
As much as I’d love her to think that, I have to come clean. “They send out thousands of them. It’s no guarantee, but it’s a start. My dad begged me to follow up. Put together a video and everything.”
“Why wouldn’t you follow up?”
I shake my head, the frustration of my limitations eating at me once again. “I’d fail epically. I’d trip over my own feet trying to figure out what the numbers they were calling meant.”
She gives me a sideways look, probably trying to figure out how stupid I really am.
“It’s not like I couldn’t figure it out if I were sitting here,” I say. “But the pressure of the situation would get to me. A stadium full of people watching. National television.” I shiver at the thought. I’m not putting my dyscalculia on display for a whole nation to see.
“Couldn’t your teammates do the same thing your high school team did?”
I can’t help a laugh at that. “Asking my doofus friends at Hilldale to work with me is one thing. Asking a team of Division 1 college players to call out names of Greek gods instead of numbers isn’t happening.”
She buries her gaze into mine, and I see Ashley all over again. That look of wanting to help me…save me…make everything stand upright. I don’t want to talk to her about my weaknesses anymore…ever if possible.
“Wrestling’s cool though,” I say. “You’ll have to come see me. You can bring the swizzle stick in there, too, if you want.” I point to their bedroom.
She giggles and won’t look at me.
“What?” I ask.
“She’ll kill me if I tell you this.”
I lift an eyebrow.
“Jenna thinks wrestling is hot,” she says. “Two guys rolling around on the floor together.” She hides her face with her hand.
I wait for her to look at me. “Do you think it’s hot?”
She laughs hard now and rolls over on her belly. “Maybe,” she says into the pillow.
I poke her in her side. “Is that what turns you on? Me and some other dude?”
“Stop it,” she says, still face planted in the pillow. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I want to hear more.”
She pulls her head out of the pillow and faces me, flushed. “It’s not a turn on. It’s a very serious sporting event.”
A smile tugs at both sides of her mouth.
“This is great. Now when I wrestle, I’ll be thinking about how my girl’s all hot for me and my opponent.”
She nods, trying her best not to smile and doing a terrible job at it.
I can’t resist her
any longer. I climb on top of her. “So should I call up my new roommate, or will I be enough for you?”
She runs her hands through my hair, turning serious. “You alone will always be enough.”
I let a smile infiltrate my face. “It’s a damn good thing.”
Chapter Forty
Chloe
Holy. Freaking. Heaven.
I haven’t slept tonight, not really. Landon and I stayed up until after three o’clock talking and…well…
We decided I should come to my own bed for the rest of the night rather than risk missing the five o’clock alarm we usually set. We can’t set it too loud for fear it will wake up our parents, and if we slept through it and were discovered, we’re both afraid Jenna and I would be exiled back to Cliff Ridge. I’ll sacrifice two hours in his arms for the rest of the summer here with him.
I fell asleep sometime around four o’clock, I’m guessing, but R.E.M. sleep evaded me, and I lay here wide awake a little past six.
I stare at Jenna, willing her to wake up. I’m desperate to talk to her about last night. Although I have no idea what I’m going to say to her. In a strange turn of events, Jenna is quite private when it comes to her own sexuality. I have no idea how far she’s gone. She could be a virgin whose only ever been kissed, or she could have ten conquests under her belt for all I know.
I don’t want her to think I’m a slut, but there’s no way I can keep this information inside of me any longer. I had no idea a world existed in which a person could experience such a breathtaking moment…make that moments.
I’m still a virgin, although if Landon would have asked for more, I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t have given it to him. But he was a gentleman the whole night. Of course, my mother wouldn’t think that was an accurate statement, but all things relative, he was.
Jenna rustles, and I sit up on the edge of my bed.
She furrows her brow at me. “Did you have sex last night?”
I jump over to her bed. “No.”
She rubs her hands over her face and then focuses on me. “Did you have an orgasm?”
“Jenna!” I stage whisper and put my finger to my lips.
She sits up and pulls the covers to her stomach. “I’ve never seen you like this. Something epic must have happened.”
I roll my eyes, a smile plastered to my lips. “Okay, maybe it was that second thing. Do you think I’m a slut?”
She pulls her knees to her chest. “Yes, you’re a huge slut who messed around with your serious boyfriend. No, dork.”
I grab her calves and squeeze, releasing some of my excited energy.
“You’re like me or something this morning,” she says. “He must have had the magic touch.”
I cover my face. “Shut up.”
She settles in and wiggles her fingers. “All right. Details. Did you see him naked?”
“No, that’s the thing. He wants to take it one step at a time.”
“So he stayed dressed all night?” she asks.
“Well, he took his shirt off.”
“And you didn’t see anything?”
I shake my head.
“Did you touch anything?”
A shiver shimmies up my chest. “Maybe accidentally a couple of times.”
She gives a maniacal grin. “Accidentally on purpose.”
I shake out my hands, both wishing I would never have started this conversation and that it would never end all at the same time.
She narrows her gaze at me. “So it was…good?”
I’m full of thoughts of him and me tangled up, kissing, the touch of his hands on my skin. I nod.
“Phenomenal?” she asks.
I nod faster.
“Earth shaking?”
I take a deep breath. “I told him I loved him.”
She widens her eyes. “Oh my God. Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
She grabs the sharpie off her nightstand and runs over to the poster board that hangs from the wall and marks off number six on our list. Express your true feelings to someone.
She turns to me. “Did he say it back?”
I furrow my brow, remembering. I want to tell her about the learning disability stuff and how intense it all was, but I realize that’s not something he probably wants me telling her. He kept it a secret from us both all summer, so I assume he doesn’t want her to know.
“He didn’t say it back, but it was okay. It was an…intense moment.”
She eyes me. “So you’re okay with everything?”
“I’m perfect,” I say.
She collapses back onto the bed. “Then my work here is done.”
Landon and I lay on connecting beach towels facing each other, my iPod between us. We each have one earbud in as we listen to my absolute favorite band, the Arctic Monkeys.
“So this is your favorite band?” he asks. “Are you sure you want to commit to that?”
I scrunch up my face. “Yes? Well, them and Editors. And I’m really loving DMA’s. And I’m totally into Beach Slang right now.”
“You don’t have to pick, you know.”
I grin at him. “Thank God.”
He messes with a lock of my hair hanging down. “Is this your natural hair color?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I’ve never seen hair this color. Sometimes it looks brown and sometimes it looks red. Not like bright red, but reddish.”
“My mom has this same exact hair, except she’s starting to get grays. But they look kind of cool in a weird way.”
He narrows his gaze. “She must be who you get your good looks from, because I don’t think you look too much like your dad.”
I give him a look. “Jenna thinks my dad’s hot.”
He winces. “Gross. Jenna sounds like a horn dog. She thinks everyone’s hot.”
I giggle. “She’s totally not. I think she’s actually very saintly when it comes to sex.”
He squints at me. “Did you use the words saintly and Jenna in the same sentence?”
“Point taken. Oh, I love this part.” I close my eyes and let the beat wash over me.
He runs his thumb over my wrist. “Thanks for sharing your music with me. It means a lot.”
I meet his gaze. “I love that you’ll listen to it with me.”
He starts to smile, but then he furrows his brow. “I didn’t like music before you. You gave it back to me. Thanks for that.”
I cock my head to the side, trying to figure him out. “You’re welcome.”
He looks down at his thumb on my wrist. “When I listen to my playlist, sometimes it feels like a part of you is with me.”
My stomach takes off in flight. “It is. Always.”
I reach over to him and give him a kiss, and then settle back into my spot.
“Where does your dad think you are right now?” he asks.
“The outlet mall. I’ve been shopping there quite a bit as far as he’s concerned. Apparently it’s a new hobby of mine. What about you? Where does Cynthia think you are?”
“Work. It’s not a total lie. I was scheduled till six but they let me off at four.”
“Two extra hours with me,” I say. “I’ll take them anywhere I can get them.”
His text alert dings, and he reads it. He types and then sets it face down on the towel.
“Are we busted?” I ask.
“No. It was Monica.”
“Oh.” I try not to let her presence ruin the moment, but I’m only human to be feeling a hint of jealousy. Not so much that he’s interested in her romantically—they’ve known each other forever. I think if that was going to happen it would have already. But she shares a portion of his life I can’t be a part of. That stings a little.
“Do you need to talk to her?” I ask.
He
shakes his head. “No. We had talked about hooking up tonight to study, but I’m good.”
I furrow my brow. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll hook up with her tomorrow. Aren’t you working tomorrow night?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Cool.” He turns toward the sky. “I think it’s sunset time.”
I sift through my iPod. “I’ve got a perfect sunset song for us. This band’s a little more chilled than my normal stuff.”
I pull up Civil Twilight’s “Letters from the Sky” and turn over on my back. I reach back for him, and we clasp arms. We lay there in silence as the sun takes its leisurely descent into the ocean. I can’t imagine a person I could love or trust more in the entire world. A wave of contented bliss floods my chest, and I know I’m ready to round another corner in our relationship.
“Landon,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“I think I’m ready.”
Chapter Forty-One
Chloe
Today is my birthday. It’s my seventeenth, so it’s not a real significant one, but still. Everyone has gone all out making it special. Jenna started out by serenading me in my bed with a version of “Happy Birthday to You” that would be too over the top even for the cast of Pitch Perfect. Cynthia made chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate sauce as syrup. Then my dad took us all out to a late lunch at The Back Porch on the beach where I stuffed my face with fried shrimp.
The only person who hasn’t made a big deal yet is Landon. He and Jenna both have been very secretive about where we’re going tonight. I trust them, but if I didn’t, I’d be a little nervous.
Jenna has my hair pinned up, and I’m wearing easy, natural makeup. It’s pretty cool having your own personal live-in stylist. She’s got me in a sundress that Cynthia brought home for me on one of their shopping trips together. Strangely, it’s just my style, a caramel color with a nature pattern running through of little birds. The sleeves are capped and a satin ribbon cinches the waist. I almost fainted when I saw the price tag and thought I would be too afraid to wear it anywhere, but I figure tonight is as good an occasion as any.
Landon knocks on our open door. He’s so handsome in his preppy straight-laced clothes. He’s got on long, khaki shorts with a sort of teal oxford shirt.
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