Rikki

by Abigail Strom

I smiled at the ceiling. “No. Tamsin and I are about 180 degrees apart when it comes to… well, everything.”

  My smile faded, and after a moment I sighed.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “You sighed. What were you thinking about that made you sigh?”

  Not being able to move meant I couldn’t shrug. “Nothing major. I just feel like the dorm prude sometimes. I complain to Tamsin about her smoking and about Oscar always being there and I love studying and going to class and I’ve never smoked pot or had sex or—”

  I froze.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  What was it about Sam? When I was thirteen, I’d announced to him that I’d never been kissed. Now he knew I was a virgin. Did I have some kind of compulsion to share embarrassing secrets with Sam Payne?

  I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. The silence should have gotten more awkward the longer it went on, but instead, I found myself relaxing a little. Maybe Sam would pretend he hadn’t heard, which would be fine with me.

  At least five minutes went by before he spoke again.

  “Do you object to cigarettes or pot on moral grounds?”

  “What? Oh, no. I mean, I think your body is healthier if you don’t smoke, but I don’t have any judgment about it.”

  “So you just don’t like the smell of cigarette or pot smoke.”

  “I hate it. I always have.”

  “Well, then, you’re not a prude. Not by definition, anyway. Do you object to sex on moral grounds?”

  I could feel myself blushing. “No.”

  “So again, you’re not a prude. You’re just a person who hasn’t had sex yet. There are probably more of us around than you realize.”

  “Us?”

  “I haven’t had sex yet, either.”

  Silence.

  I almost asked him to repeat himself, but I knew my hearing wasn’t the problem.

  I’d heard him correctly. I just couldn’t believe it.

  After a while I managed to start a sentence. “I didn’t think…”

  Pause.

  “What?”

  I cleared my throat. “I didn’t think guys…”

  Pause.

  “You didn’t think guys what?”

  Now I had to finish the sentence. “I didn’t think guys stayed virgins. I thought they had sex as soon as humanly possible.” I paused again. “Oh, God, that sounded awful. I didn’t mean that guys… that all guys…”

  “It’s okay.” I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he was smiling.

  “So, then… you and Mena. You haven’t…”

  “Not yet.”

  I wanted to ask a hundred questions. It would be Mena’s first time with a guy—was that why they were waiting? Did he think they’d have sex soon? Had they talked about it?

  But there was no reason to think he’d answer me—or that I’d like his responses if he did.

  It was time to change the subject. “So how much longer do I have to stay like this? I’m getting a stitch in my side.”

  “You are? I’m sorry. I’ll wrap up now. Can you pose again in a couple of days? Say Thursday or Friday at the same time?”

  “Friday would work.”

  “Great.”

  After another minute Sam said, “Okay, all clear to move.”

  I shifted slowly, since my muscles were a little cramped. Once I was in a sitting position I looked over at Sam. He’d covered the block of clay with a damp towel, so I couldn’t see what it looked like or how far he’d gotten. He had his back to me while he pulled on his sweat pants and T-shirt.

  I scooted over to the cabinet to put my clothes on. Then I grabbed the cushions from the stage and put them back where they belonged.

  By the time I turned around again, Sam was standing behind his block of clay.

  “I think I’m going to do a little more work after you go,” he said.

  “Can I see it?” I asked, coming closer.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t look like anything yet. Thanks for doing this, Rikki.”

  I felt like I was being dismissed. Did he regret telling me he was a virgin? He looked a little embarrassed or uncomfortable or something, so maybe that was it… but he hadn’t seemed self-conscious when he told me.

  “You’re welcome. See you later, Sam.”

  “See you later.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jason sat down next to me at dinner that night.

  I was at one of the big round tables with Claire and Julia and Will, and there were four empty chairs. He could have sat at any one of them, but he picked the chair next to me.

  “Hey,” he said to the table at large.

  “Hey,” the table at large said back.

  Then he draped an arm over the back of my chair and leaned over my tray.

  “Is this all you’re having for dinner? A salad?”

  “I, um, had a big lunch.”

  “You need more sustenance than that with all the studying you do.”

  He knew I studied a lot?

  “I don’t want to put on the freshman fifteen,” I said, wincing internally at the lameness of the comment.

  Claire looked down at her tray, which was replete with two burgers and an enormous plate of fries. “I think I’m going to put on the freshman forty-five.”

  “No way,” I said quickly. “You have a perfect body and an amazing metabolism.”

  Claire smiled at me. “Wow, that’s sweet. I wish my boyfriend could be that sweet.”

  Will frowned at her. “Your boyfriend isn’t sweet to you?”

  She shrugged and opened a ketchup packet. “Oh, he’s fine. We’re just having a thing.”

  “A thing?” Will asked.

  “It’s not important. So you have a game on Saturday, huh?”

  “We have a game every Saturday,” Will explained patiently.

  “Not everyone knows the ins and outs of the football program. You do know most people in Bracton aren’t jocks, right?”

  “I am aware of that fact.”

  “And yet you come here for dinner almost every night. Why aren’t you eating with the other jocks?”

  “This isn’t high school. We don’t have to eat by clique.”

  “But don’t you get sick of having to explain everything about your arcane existence to us?”

  “Football isn’t arcane. Music, on the other hand, is arcane.”

  “Music isn’t arcane.”

  “Are you kidding? You and Andre had a conversation about pentatonic scales yesterday that was totally incomprehensible.”

  “More incomprehensible than that football play you and Andre were talking about? With the inside and outside linebackers?”

  “What’s incomprehensible about that?”

  “Oh, please. You illustrated it on a napkin with all those X’s and O’s and lines going everywhere—”

  “Right. And reading sheet music is a piece of cake?”

  Jason leaned in closer and spoke in the neighborhood of my ear. “Have you noticed that Will and Claire have been arguing a lot lately?”

  His breath against my skin made me shiver. “I guess so.”

  “Methinks they both protest too much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He leaned closer still, and now his arm moved from the back of my chair to drape over my shoulders.

  “I just think there’s something going on there.”

  It was hard to think with Jason so close. For some reason I kept conflating the feeling of his closeness now with the feeling of Sam’s closeness in the art studio, and I didn’t like it. Guys weren’t interchangeable, after all. I wished my body could pick one to react to and stick with it. And since my mind had chosen Jason as the guy I was interested in romantically, and placed Sam in the guy-I-used-to-hate-but-was-now-becoming-friends-with category—a rarefied category of one—I wished my body would get with the program.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” I said, ho
ping my voice sounded natural. “Claire seems pretty into her boyfriend. And doesn’t Will have a girlfriend?”

  “Sure, back in Ohio or Indiana or whatever. But you don’t think being in a relationship means you stop being attracted to other people, do you? I mean, I have a girlfriend back home, too. She’s still in high school. But we agreed before I went to college that we’d see other people, so—”

  “Without breaking up? I mean… you’re still together?”

  “Yeah, we’re still a couple. But neither of us was naïve enough to think we wouldn’t want to date anyone else while we were three thousand miles apart.” He grinned at me. “So I’m available.”

  Jason was available.

  Okay, that was a come-on. Wasn’t it? It had to be.

  Which meant there was a response I could make that was cool and flirty and subtle and sexy. And I had about as much chance of coming up with it as Claire did of throwing a thirty-yard pass into the end zone.

  His arm was around my shoulders and his head was close to mine and my heart was going a mile a minute and it was hard to breathe normally. And then I saw Sam coming toward our table and I couldn’t breathe at all.

  Our eyes met, and he started to smile. Then he noticed Jason and he stopped smiling.

  He hesitated a moment. Then he deliberately took a left turn and headed for a different table.

  Or maybe he’d always meant to sit at that table and I was just imagining things.

  Maybe I was imagining that Jason was coming on to me, too.

  And maybe the problem was that I wasn’t capable of translating any of this, any more than Will could read music or Claire could understand football plays.

  I decided the safest thing to do was to bench myself until I had a better grip on things. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, glanced at the screen, and jumped to my feet.

  “I’ve got to take this call. Back in a minute.”

  I hurried out of the noisy dining hall while pretending to talk into my phone, keeping up the pretense until I was safe in the lobby. Then I stuck my phone in my pocket, leaned back against the wall, and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

  Jason was cute and charming—at least in my opinion—and a talented musician. Something about him had appealed to me from the moment I first saw him. But of course he had his faults, like any human being, and one of them was a very short attention span.

  He was still involved with his high school girlfriend but apparently they hadn’t even considered staying exclusive. And according to Tamsin, he’d already hooked up with three different girls here at Hart.

  I might never get another chance like the one I’d just blown. By the time I felt comfortable enough to respond to his overtures, he might have moved onto another girl.

  My friends were always telling me to take more chances, be more spontaneous, live in the moment. My parents, too—especially Charlotte. The problem was, as soon as I was in an actual moment, I panicked.

  The guys who’d asked me out in high school hadn’t made me nervous. I hadn’t been crazy about any of them, for one thing… and they were kids I’d known for years. Because of that, and because we were still in high school, I never felt pressure to have sex or even go beyond kissing if I didn’t feel comfortable.

  This was different. This was college, and Jason was experienced. He would expect more than kissing.

  Of course I would never let a guy’s expectations make me do something I didn’t want to do. But having that conversation wouldn’t be fun, and I couldn’t imagine it would make him more interested in me.

  Unless I liked Jason enough to sleep with him.

  But how could I know that unless we actually went out?

  Then it occurred to me that he probably wasn’t looking to go out in the old-fashioned sense. He probably just wanted a hookup.

  Suddenly I saw our conversation that morning in a whole new light. I’d made such a point of being sex-positive… what if Jason thought I’d been coming on to him? That I was actually looking for a hookup?

  And then I had the most radical idea of all. I honestly did believe that if people wanted to hook up, they should hook up—provided that both parties wanted the same thing and took steps to protect against pregnancy and STDs. So why shouldn’t I benefit from my own philosophy and hook up with a guy if I wanted to?

  Jason had a girlfriend, after all. That pretty much ruled out the two-straws-in-one-milkshake going steady kind of dating. If I was really interested in him then hooking up was the only possibility, wasn’t it? Or a friends with benefits kind of arrangement? At least then I could get the whole losing-my-virginity thing over with.

  All at once I felt depressed, and confused, and way younger than eighteen.

  I didn’t want to just get my first time over with. I wanted it to be special.

  I went to the door of the dining hall and looked in. Jason was talking to Will, and—

  My stomach tightened. A few tables over, Mena was sitting next to Sam. She was trying to feed him a bite of something, but she was laughing so hard she was having trouble finding his mouth with her fork.

  I took a deep breath and went back to the lobby.

  I couldn’t go back into the dining hall. I wasn’t hungry anymore, and I didn’t want to deal with people. All I wanted to do was go back to my room and bury myself in a different time—the Civil War or the War of 1812. The comforting thing about historical conflicts was that they were all decided long ago, and the outcome was no longer in any doubt.

  I was still about ten feet from my door when I heard evidence of a more current conflict. Tamsin and Oscar were shouting, and it didn’t sound like they were close to a resolution.

  I set my jaw and kept going. I’d been pretty generous about giving them their space, all things considered, but tonight I wanted to spend time in my room. I didn’t want to go to the library or the common room or anywhere else.

  Before I reached the door Oscar burst through it, his expression furious and then embarrassed when he saw me standing there.

  “Hey, Rikki.”

  “Hey, Oscar.”

  “I said get out!”

  That was Tamsin’s voice, and at the sound of it Oscar’s face was all anger again.

  “Bye, Rikki.”

  “Bye, Oscar.”

  He blew down the hall and disappeared into the stairwell.

  I stepped into the room expecting to see Tamsin on her feet blazing with rage, but she was lying on her bed with her face buried in her pillow, sobbing wildly.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. I stood there for a few moments, waiting to see if she’d notice I was there, but when she didn’t I went over and sat on the edge of her bed. When that didn’t elicit a response I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  She rolled over and stared up at me, her eyes red and swollen. Her mascara and eyeliner were running in streaks down her face and she looked completely miserable.

  This time I didn’t hesitate. I pulled her up to a sitting position and gave her a good hard hug.

  The sobbing started again and her head was on my shoulder. Between the snot-filled tears and the mascara-and-eyeliner mixture I could probably kiss my T-shirt goodbye, but I figured this was one of those times when human decency trumped crass materialism.

  “What happened?” I asked gently, once the crying had subsided to the hiccupping stage.

  “We broke up,” she said, her voice muffled against my shoulder.

  “But why? I thought things were going great between you guys.”

  “I thought so, too,” she said, pulling back and using the hem of her shirt to wipe her eyes. That didn’t improve things appearance-wise, but I didn’t think she cared about that right now.

  “So what happened?”

  She took in a lungful of air and let it out in an enormous gusting sigh.

  “I made the mistake I always make. I thought he could handle knowing about my sexual history.”

  “But… I don’t understand. He knew you we
ren’t a virgin, didn’t he?”

  Tamsin scooted back on the bed, propped her pillow against the headboard, and sat with her knees drawn up to her chin.

  “Of course he knew that. But today we were talking about exes, and he asked how many guys I’d been with. And then, like an idiot, I told him.”

  I still didn’t understand. “So what? How many guys have you been with?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  My mind reeled for a moment, but I recovered quickly.

  “Twenty-three. Well. There are lots of women out there who’ve been with more guys than that.”

  “Forty-year-olds, maybe.” She smiled a little. “Have I mentioned lately that I really like you, Rikki? You weren’t even fazed when I told you my number.”

  “I was a little fazed,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you. Your sexual history is your sexual history. It’s a part of you. And if you like who you are now, you can’t hate anything that got you there—including your past.” That was something I’d heard Beth say once.

  “I like that,” Tamsin said. “It’s encouraging.”

  “One of my moms is a psychologist.”

  “No wonder you’ve got such a wise-beyond-your-years vibe.”

  “Me?” I snorted. “I just ducked out of the dining hall because I was feeling stupider-than-my-years. Or just younger-than-my-years, maybe. I don’t know anything about relationships, Tamsin. I’ve never been in one.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I’ve dated, but I’ve never had an official boyfriend.”

  “Well, you must have had a few friendships. You’re really good at those.”

  “Thanks. Now finish telling me what happened with Oscar.”

  She ran both hands through her black hair, which was just starting to show a lighter brown at the roots. “I told him my number and he freaked out. He didn’t call me a slut or anything, but he said I must have been lying about how good the sex between us is.”

  “Were you?”

  “No! I totally wasn’t! He’s wonderful in bed. Which I told him. But then he asked if I ever faked orgasms with him, and—once again putting on my idiot suit—I told him the truth.”

  It was hard to imagine Tamsin pretending about anything. “You faked orgasms with Oscar?”