By early evening we were finally finished and just stood in the middle of it.
“Thank you, Mom.” I laid the hugs on thick. “Thank you, Fa.”
“Let’s take a picture!” Mom grabbed her camera and analyzed angles. We snapped a few shots, and I asked if I could borrow the camera. “Sure honey. What for?”
“I told some of the people at school that we were doing this, and they were curious about what it would look like. I just wanted to post them.” I flipped through the shots on the screen.
“Is that safe, all that picture posting?” She had a mom’s neurosis about the internet, basically seeing it as a huge pool where pedophiles swam and lured unsuspecting children in their little floaties to the scary deep end.
“It’s just pictures of the room, Mom.” I tried to sound comforting. “I would never give out my address or anything.”
“Okay.” She looked a little guilty. “Honey, Thorsten and I were thinking of going on a date tonight. Would it be too weird to leave you to hang here?”
“No! I just got those new books I ordered and look at this room.” I gestured around. “Go out. Have fun. It will be totally fine. And, remember tomorrow is a day off, so you can stay out late.”
Thorsten smiled and gave me the thumbs up behind Mom’s back. I gave him a conspirator’s thumbs up back. She was a worrier, and we both loved her for it, but it made life hard to live sometimes. Poor Thorsten! Mom still acted like I was in elementary school. The man could hardly get a date.
I sat in my room and uploaded pictures to Facebook. There was nothing interesting going on online, so I clicked my laptop off and grabbed a new book. A big, thick Barbara Kingsolver was waiting for me. I promised myself I would reread the assigned Lord of the Flies chapters in a few hours. Monday morning at the latest.
Mom ordered me a pizza and fretted over me before she and Thorsten left, but they finally did go, and I was happy to watch them pull out of the driveway. They were good together; loving, respectful, kind. It gave me hope that people could get married and still be in love years later.
I turned my mind off of love! I didn’t want to think about any of it. The conversation I had with Jake the night before left me feeling dizzy, but I couldn’t think about it too much or my mind would go crazy obsessing. I lay in my room, and the delicious new décor made it feel so much more my own. I got completely dragged into Kingsolver’s world when I heard the whine of an engine outside my window. It sounded almost like a weed whacker, but those weren’t exactly used much in New Jersey in the autumn.
For a split second I experienced the kind of panic that comes from being a gullible weenie about horror movies. I’ve told myself a thousand times that the point of a horror movie is to try to scare the person watching it, I’ve watched the behind the scenes stuff and read interviews the (living) actors gave about their gory onscreen death scenes, but they still scared the crap out of me and there was no getting around that.
So for a long, cringe-worthy minute, I was sure the whine I heard was a chainsaw and a thousand blood-splattered images blew through my mind.
Then I saw a dirt bike. It sailed out of the woods behind my house and landed neatly in my back yard. The driver parked under my window and pulled his helmet off.
Jake!
I opened the window and stuck my head out. My bedroom was on the first floor, but the bottom sill was still a good five feet off of the ground.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped. “You didn’t ride your dirt bike all the way here from the lake, did you?”
He smiled at me, and my heart melted into a puddle inside my chest. I loved his sweet smile, his never-neat hair, and the rough skin on his hands. I wasn’t going to go so far as to say I loved Jake, but put together everything about him that I loved and you got a pretty intense emotion.
“I finished work and thought I’d come over. I don’t want to bother you. Or your parents.” He looked from side to side, and chewed the inside of his cheek, obviously nervous to get caught here.
“My parents aren’t home.” I realized once the words fell from my mouth that they were pretty much the standard ‘come in and have your way with me’ words in the realm of teenage romance, but I didn’t mean them that way.
Something flashed in Jake’s eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“I just wanted to say hello.” He offered me his crooked smile.
“Wait here.” I moved through the house, my heart thudding like mad, positive my mother and Thorsten would absolutely in no way approve of this, and I promised myself that I would make sure Jake only stayed for a little while. I opened the front door and waved him in.
He stood in the front hall and looked around. “Nice house.” His eyes took it all in slowly.
While he looked around, I took the opportunity to look at him. I appreciated the way I could see his muscles under his clothes. I noticed he had kicked the dirt off of his boots before he came in, and I could also tell from the way he shuffled his feet nervously that he wanted me to ask him to take them off so he didn’t have to track mud through my house, but I didn’t. Just in case Mom and Thorsten came home early, Jake was going out my window, no questions asked, no booted evidence remaining.
“Mom ordered me a pizza before they left,” I said. “You want some?”
“If you were going to eat alone, I’ll have some with you. You know, to keep you company.”
I grabbed the box of pizza, the soda, and two glasses and led him to my room.
“Wow. This is your room?” It was a simply stated fact, but the way Jake said it you could hear the “so” that he had wanted to attach to the beginning of that sentence. Like, Here I am, finally in your room, which I’ve been wondering about for awhile.
“We just finished it a few hours ago. That‘s why it still smells a little like paint. Nice, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed and we plopped down on the floor. He poured me a glass of soda first and then poured one for himself, which I thought was really sweet. Then we started to eat, and Jake wolfed down the pizza so fast I had to check my urge to laugh. I was glad Mom bought a large pie. She and Thorsten knew that when I wanted to, I could eat most of a pizza on my own. They would never even ask if they came home and there was nothing left but some grease and crumbs in the bottom of the box.
“Do you like Folly?” I asked. He nodded, his mouth full.
I got up and put my iPod in its base and pushed play on the Folly album that Saxon gave me. It was weird to listen to Saxon’s mix with Jake, but it also felt disloyal to Saxon, and that was a big bonus as far as I was concerned.
We ate in happy silence, and when I couldn’t force any more pizza on him, I put the rest in the fridge and left him in my room for a few minutes. I thought that was particularly considerate of me. I always loved to poke a little in a person’s room, just to get a feel for what they liked. Of course, Jake had the disadvantage of my room having been just redone and perfectly neat and bare, but he could still look at my books and check out my photos.
When I came back, sure enough, he was looking at my bookshelf, his hands crammed self-consciously in the front pockets of his faded jeans.
“You’ve read all of these?” He jutted his chin to my books, carefully arranged by height and size.
I shook my head. “The top shelf is new stuff on the right and stuff I feel like I really should read, but haven’t gotten around to reading, on the left.” I moved close to him while I talked, and it was the first time I’d stood near him since he showed up.
I dipped my nose close to his neck and took a deep, long breath. He wore some kind of good-smelling guy cologne, something sharp and clean. But he also smelled like the outdoors and a little like sweat, which was sexy though I couldn’t put my finger on why it was.
“Are you smelling me?” He glanced over his shoulder at me and grinned.
“I thought I was being pretty discreet about it. I guess I wasn’t?”
“Nope.” His voice did that low and
sexy thing. He reached out, carefully, like I was a wild animal that would bolt the minute he got too close. But I held dead still and let him pull me closer. In fact, if I could have become a specialized Jake magnet I would have. Maybe I did, because he seemed attracted to me. He put his hands on my waist and pulled me close, and it was like we just clicked together.
The room receded, the colors, the music, all of it faded into the background. “Are you going to kiss me?” I blabbered stupidly.
“I’m working up the nerve,” he said softly. His t-shirt was thin and faded, too. I could see the lines of his shoulders and pecs. His lips were dry, like he needed chapstick. He skin was nice and smooth, tanned and clean.
I sighed. “Your nerve is making me crazy. I’ll just kiss you.”
And I did. Jake Kelly’s mouth was hot and sweet. This time he took his time, pressing his lips to mine with steady pressure as if he were testing his ability to keep himself from giving in to anything wilder. I opened my lips slightly, and brushed my tongue over his mouth.
The next thing I knew, he grabbed me hard under my butt and pushed me onto my new bed with the red poppies, and his mouth was hungry and quick on mine. We kissed and pulled back, kissed again and stopped to breathe. I could feel his long, hard body pressed on mine, and it felt so good, so exciting I couldn’t resist pulling his head down to mine again. His hands ran over my face, pressing into my hair. He pulled away and his fingertips traced my eyebrows and ran so lightly over my lips that they tickled. He touched my face like he was trying to memorize it with his hands.
I finally pulled him back to my mouth, kissed him deeply and ran my hands over his back and his ribs. His body was solid and warm against mine.
“Brenna, we have to stop.” I could feel, then, that he was hard and was pressing into me. “I’m not used to going slow. I don’t want to mess this up.”
It was shocking and exciting to hear him say that. Turning him on made me giddy, and it made me feel a kind of power I never really imagined I could hold over a guy.
“Alright.” I pushed away from him, but he snatched me back and held me tight before I could get too far.
“Do you mind if I hold you?”
I relaxed against him and realized that my wish from the night before was being somewhat fulfilled. He was incredibly warm, and being in his arms meant that I was surrounded by him; his skin was all I could smell, I could hear his heart beat and his breath pull in and out, and I could see his face, so handsome it made me understand why there had been a small army of willing girls. There was very little not to like about Jake Kelly.
“I like it,” I said, and he snuggled me closer in response to my declaration. I felt a happiness like a thousand bubbles in a shaken soda threatening to burst out of me.
“So, I’ve been reading your book.” His breath tickled my ear.
“Which book is mine?” It was weird to be having this semi-normal conversation wrapped in his arms. How were we ever going to be able to go back to just sitting across from each other in class?
“You know. Lord of the Flies.”
“Do you like it?” I looked at his silvery-gray eyes. They were watching my lips. I smiled, and he mirrored my smile, then he looked up into my eyes, and I had to remind myself to breathe. In and out, one breath at a time.
“Yeah. It’s a little dense, and the guy reading it is really slow on the book-on-tape thing, but I like the idea of the island as a microcosm.”
“My English teacher said it’s supposed to be based on the world during World War II, or that’s one interpretation.” I willed myself not to be surprised that Jake knew a word like ‘microcosm.’ Wasn’t I the one always defending his intelligence?
“That makes sense in a scary way.” He ran his fingers along my hip and down the side of my thigh, then dragged them back up, over and over.
I moved my fingers over his features, the way he had with mine. I smoothed his eyebrows with my thumbs, brushed over his eyelashes, outlined his nose, and traced his lips.
“Did you like any of the girls you slept with?”
His eyes popped wide open. “How did we get from Lord of the Flies to this?”
My hand was on his jaw. I slipped it off of his face and picked at a loose thread on my comforter instead. “We didn’t really. I just wanted to know. That’s all.”
He swallowed hard, avoided eye contact, and nodded slightly, like he was about to face a firing squad. “They weren’t bad girls,” he said finally. “They weren’t sluts or whatever people would say. They were just looking for a good time the wrong way.”
“Because sex isn’t a good time?”
He took my hand in his and linked ours together, closing his fingers over my hand. “No.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Not when you don’t love the person.”
“Have you ever had sex with anyone you loved?” I tried to push away the sting of jealousy that poured through me.
“No.” Jake’s eyes held mine. “I can’t wait for it to happen,” he said, his voice husky, the words almost whispered and a little shaky. “I know it’s going to happen one day, and it will make all the other times seem even more insignificant than they do now.”
It occurred to me that Jake really wanted to be right about this. Maybe sex hadn’t been all it was cracked up to be for Jake. Maybe he was going to pin all his hopes for sex on his true love’s shoulders. Maybe Jake thought that I was his true love. Excitement and nervous fear clawed and twisted in my heart.
“Not that it wasn’t fun.” In one sentence, he dashed my warm excitement. Fun? “It just didn’t mean anything,” he added.
“That doesn’t seem possible.” I tried to pull my hand away from his, but he held tight.
“What do you mean?”
“If you were willing to do something that, I don’t know, intimate with someone, wouldn’t you have to feel something first?” I pressed. I couldn’t imagine that I would like any honest answer he gave, and I realized it was a tiny bit masochistic of me to ask.
“Sometimes it just happens. In the exact moment I guess it feels pretty good, but afterwards you just regret it completely, you know? And you think you won’t do it again, but it’s like you physically can’t stop it.” He looked at me hard, willing me to understand.
I turned my eyes down, out of the direct line of his gaze. Wasn’t that exactly what happened between me and Saxon? Given a few drinks, mood lighting, and an available bed, I might have been in a heap of trouble with more regret than my already tortured soul could sanely handle.
In the cold light of day the idea of taking my clothes off in front of someone, pressing against them, and not being freaked out by the wet, hard, messy aspects of it seemed crazy. But then so might sticking your tongue in someone’s mouth, or falling into their arms and kissing them crazy. Yet I had done that with someone who I never had any intention of doing it with. Maybe it wasn’t all that different at the core.
His voice interrupted my thoughts. “I know you can’t really understand.”
“I might better than you think. Listen, I was with…”
Just then my cell phone buzzed and almost fell off my desktop. As I flipped it open, I thought about warning Jake to be quiet, but I could see from the panic in his eyes that he was ready to bolt through the window.
“Hey, sweetie,” Mom said, and my guts twisted.
“Hey Mom!” I practically yelled, then wondered if she would hear something in my voice that would let her know what I was up to. Paranoia flooded over me.
“Thorsten and I just got out of the movie. I’m going to grab a Dairy Queen for him. You know Fa, he’s always starving! Do you want something?”
My churning stomach settled down. Dairy Queen was a good fifteen minutes away from our house. “Thanks, Mom, but I ate most of that pizza, and I’m stuffed.”
“Okay. Love you, baby. See you soon.”
“Love you.” I clicked off.
“I should go.” Jake stood up like a shot. “I don’t want to get yo
u in any trouble.”
I already hated the idea of him leaving. My bed even looked overly big and empty without him in it. I dragged my feet all the way to the door, then pulled him down on the steps next to me.
“Five minutes? Please?” I shamelessly bit my lip and pulled my eyebrows down. It was the best sad face I could muster.
“If I get caught here, your parents will hate me even more than they’re already going to.” But he sat next to me anyway and slid his arm around my waist.
“Why would they hate you?” I asked, even though I could think of a hundred reasons without thinking too hard. I leaned my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes against all the doubts and possible problems.
“If I were your parents, I wouldn’t let you date anyone. I’d keep you locked up in your room.” He pressed his lips to my hair.
“Why?” I tried not to concentrate too hard on his fingers, moving absently over my hip. This was also similar to something Saxon had said to me. It was strange how the two of them could be so different, but say so many similar things.
“Because you’re smart and awesome and really beautiful,” he said, and my heart thumped all over the place. I turned to look into his eyes, darker in the twilight and hungry on my face. “Just the things I’m thinking about you would get me killed if your parents knew.”
“What are you thinking?” I dared, nervous to know his secret thoughts about me.
Instead of answering, he kissed me, and his mouth licked and pressed at my mouth in a way that made little moans come out of my throat and answered some of the questions I had about his innermost thoughts.
He ripped his mouth from mine with a groan. My hand flew to my lips, which felt puffy and stung from all the kissing. “I’m going now.” His voice sounded a little choked. “Can I call you tonight?”
“Yes.” I didn’t want to let his hand go.
“Take care.”
I knew there was a lot more he wanted to say but didn’t. He pressed his lips to mine one more time, and then, way too quickly, he was on his dirt bike and rushing through the woods and fields behind my house.
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