“You should call Greg,” said Miranda, after Mrs. Forte began nagging her to get off the phone and go to bed.
“Yeah probably.” But then she thought about what that conversation would actually require, considering she’d failed to mention the interview to Greg at all, not to mention Greg’s dislike for Chris before the piece ever aired. “Actually, I’ll just talk to him in the morning.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m exhausted. If he’s concerned, he can call me. But he probably didn’t even watch the story. He thinks local news is bigoted.”
Miranda laughed. “Whatever. He’s so weird. Hot, but weird.”
As Jessica shut her eyes in bed only a half-hour later, she instantly knew the questions surrounding Greg and Chris and Miranda and Eugene would keep her awake. She doubted talking to Greg would go well, but she knew it had to be done, so she imagined herself broaching the subject the next morning and visualized it going well. But her tired mind kept veering off topic, to the conversation she would need to have with the other person directly affected by Eugene Thornton’s bogus story, leaving her with a nagging question that she still hadn’t found an answer to by the time her mind finally slipped into sleep: Why do I keep thinking about Chris?
Jessica dreaded everything about school that Monday morning. An early morning text from Miranda had provided a helpful heads up that the news clip was making the rounds on social media, meaning there was probably no way Greg hadn’t seen it by now. After a night of almost no sleep, Jess was ill prepared to talk to him about it.
So the morning seemed about as awful as every other Monday morning.
The first person she recognized as she walked into Mooremont was Chris, whose locker was within spitting distance of the front entrance. He caught her eye, and she was spared having to worry about his reaction when he simply laughed and shook his head.
“I was wrong,” he said once she made it over to him, “you definitely should’ve smote Eugene.”
The commiseration forced Jess to laugh, too. She hadn’t expected to laugh this morning, but this was nice. At least she had someone else in the line of fire with her, even if it was just Chris.
“You’re not mad at me, right?” he asked.
Jess shook her head. “Please. Not at all. Eugene’s the asswipe.”
Chris looked at her strangely. “Asswipe? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word before.”
“It’s actually God’s word for him, not mine.”
It took a beat for that to settle on Chris, but then he bent at the waist and guffawed, and Jess couldn’t contain her own laughter, though she was only half sure what they were laughing about.
The stress relief brought a tear to the corner of her eye, and as she wiped it away and looked down the hall past Chris, she spotted Greg, glaring daggers her way.
Shoot.
Her mirth screeched to an immediate halt.
Chris noticed, and, still chuckling, turned to follow her gaze, but he quickly turned back around to face her. “Oh shit. Have you talked to him yet?”
“Nope.” She stalked past Chris, making a beeline for her boyfriend, who’d begun walking in the opposite direction.
She grabbed his arm to get his attention. He turned to face her but didn’t say anything, which she took as her cue. “Hey. I should’ve called you last night. I’m sorry. I was exhausted. But listen, that story, the reporter made up every bit of it.”
Greg didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Okay.”
Jess moved to stand in front of him, so he’d look at her directly. Maybe that way he’d see she was being honest. But his eyes focused vaguely above her left shoulder. “Seriously,” she continued, “he was mad because I wouldn’t kick field goals for him after how rude he was in the interview, so he had to find some other angle to make it interesting. Nothing is happening between Chris and me, and we’re definitely not young lovers.”
Greg chuckled dryly. “Don’t worry. I didn’t buy the lovers bit, especially considering we’ve been together for months and you get antsy if I try anything beyond making out.”
“Whoa, what?”
But he stepped past her and proceeded toward his first period class, leaving her standing there bewildered. Where did that bitterness come from? She thought he liked making out with her. He always said so. Sure, he’d tried to put his hand down her pants a half dozen times and tried in vain to move her hand down his a half dozen more before, but he’d always assured her it was perfectly okay that she wanted to go slow. Now he was going to play the guilt card on her?
I have to go down on him.
Ew. No, I can’t.
She’d think of something. She hurried to her first period class, not sure where things could go with Greg from here.
And as the week marched on, torturously slow with only brief glimmers of positivity during lunch or football practice, she still couldn’t come up with a solution. Greg was civil with her in their classes together, but not warm. Maybe it would just blow over. Maybe he would realize what a jerk he was for trying to pressure her into something she didn’t want to do.
But that didn’t happen, and by Wednesday she’d accepted the fact that there was really only one solution if she wanted to keep Greg, and that was forcing herself to be okay with having sex.
No big deal.
She was fifteen, and both her parents had made it abundantly clear that there was nothing wrong with teen sex. She heard new rumors daily about people she knew having sex with each other. It was the topic that occupied most of the rumor mill’s bandwidth. She should just try it. If everyone was doing it, it couldn’t be all that bad.
But her body had some getting used to before she could take the plunge. And that meant that after her homework for school was completed on Wednesday night, she locked her bedroom door and did her homework for sex.
The Internet was an invaluable resource for finding sex to watch, but most of what she found was unequivocally terrifying and only left her more certain she was not ready for it. The videos she stumbled upon with only a few clicks of the mouse made the sex scene from Cutthroat Times look like a chaste handshake one might give the Dalai Lama.
So after a few hours of trauma, she gave it up on the idea of actually enjoying sex and figured she should try out her body for herself, like one of the women in the videos seemed to enjoy doing. Except Jess wouldn’t be cruelly insulting the size of a man’s penis while she did it.
She laid in bed and put her hands where she thought they should go. Immediately, she felt like an idiot, so she resigned herself to closing her eyes and pretending it was Jameson Fractal’s hands on her. That almost worked a couple times before it stopped working at all. How was she supposed to figure out how to orgasm if she’d never experienced one and didn’t have the slightest clue what she was looking for?
This is impossible.
But on Thursday night, when she tried again, she finally found success.
That’s what sex can feel like? Holy shit.
She slept like a baby that night, and awoke the next morning feeling more refreshed than she could ever remember feeling, which was good, since they played their district rivals that evening.
And as she sat down next to Greg in biology, she found herself looking at him through a new lens. The orgasm lens.
Blow jobs still seemed horrible, and the porn had only validated her deep-seated fear that there could be a lot of gagging involved with them, but maybe she would be willing to brave one if it meant Greg would reciprocate somehow. Maybe that’s all sex was, in the end: doing horribly unpleasant favors for a man in exchange for having wonderfully pleasant things done back to you.
“Hey,” she said, leaning close to him.
He glanced at her sideways. “Yeah?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’re right. I’ve been kind of a prude, I guess.” That seemed to shock him, and his head hitched to the side. Good. She had his full atten
tion. “I didn’t know it bothered you that much. I’m sorry.”
He seemed to understand the implications without her having to say it. He suppressed a smile. “Okay, cool.” He leaned forward and stole a quick kiss from her. “Oh hey. I’ve been meaning to ask … My parents are going out of town this weekend; you want to come over Saturday?”
This was it. Saturday would be the day she lost her virginity.
Then it occurred to her that while she knew Sandra had done some things to him, she didn’t know if Greg was still actually a virgin.
“Jess?”
“Huh?”
“Saturday. I mean, if you don’t want to come over…”
“No! Of course I do. Yes. Yes, I’ll come over to your place.”
He nodded. And she plopped down on the stool next to him at their table.
So they were good now. She should’ve felt relieved, right? Why didn’t she feel relieved? Instead, the kiss and the plans for Saturday felt like signing on the dotted line for a contract she still wasn’t sure about. Had she just jumped the gun completely? If she changed her mind now, could she still back out without it meaning the end of their relationship?
One thing could be said for the news story: it’d drawn interest in Mooremont High football like never before.
It was an hour and a half before the game, and already the stands were packed. Jess peeked out from the tunnel leading from the locker rooms out onto the open field and didn’t recognize any of the faces. Who were these people? She thought she knew or at least recognized everyone in Mooretown. The unfamiliar faces must have been out-of-towners. Maybe they were Carthage High fans, but she thought it more likely they were just folks from the surrounding area who came to see the freak kicker.
There was one face she recognized right away, though. Eugene Thornton and his crew were camped in the front of the stands. He stood facing the camera, clutching the microphone, practicing or perhaps filming an intro. He sure was determined to get footage of her kicking. Well, he’d get it tonight. They’d had yet to play a full game without Jess having to kick in at least two field goals, but more often it was four or five. And then there were extra points, which weren’t exactly spectacular, but were more footage than she wanted to give the Channel 6 team.
“Dammit.” She hated losing to someone like Eugene. Maybe she could just skip warm-ups. It wasn’t like she needed it anyway.
Chris walked up behind her. “That asswipe, eh?”
She waved her hand over the expanse of the stadium. “All those asswipes. Do you even recognize any of them?”
Chris squinted out into the crowd. “No, I guess not. I usually never even bother looking out there. It only makes me nervous. Maybe you should try it, too.”
She nodded.
He called over the second-string quarterback, Jack Dungee, who was already warming up on the field.
“Hey, do us a favor and hold for Jess while she practices some field goals without the ball.”
Jack, a senior whose starting position had been usurped by Chris this year, narrowed his eyes. “What the fuck, Riley. Not only do I not take orders from you, but I don’t take retarded-ass orders from you.”
“God dammit! Just fucking do it, okay, Dungee?” Chris’s upper lip curled like he’d smelled something rotten.
Jack looked like he wasn’t going to, but then he said, “Fine, but because I like Jess, not for you,” before jogging out to the field.
“God, I hate that guy,” Chris mumbled, clearly more to himself than Jess. He inhaled deeply and then let it out with a whoosh. “Anyway, some ball-less field goals should piss off Eugene.”
“Perfect,” Jess added. “Ball-less field goals are sorta my thing.”
She trotted off after Jack before the joke landed on Chris, and she grinned once she heard his surprised guffaw behind her. Joking around with Chris was good for her nerves.
But by the time the team retreated into the locker rooms, her anxiety was back, and even worse than before. She couldn’t pay attention to any of the coaches as they went over the game plan with their players. Coach Rex nudged Jess, who sat on the bench just to his left. “You listening?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
“What’d I just say?”
“Uh … I have no idea. I’m sorry.”
He leaned in close. “This a hormone thing?” While he seemed to think he was being considerate, the fact that the rest of the special teams could easily hear him made it impossible for Jess to feel grateful.
“No, it’s not a hormone thing, Coach.”
He nodded slightly, leaned back, and dove into his speech again.
She tried to listen after that to avoid being called out again. But most of the information didn’t apply to her. She considered herself the specialist species of the team, while people like Quentin Jones were the generalists. You could put him anywhere on the field and he’d be able to make something happen. He could do it all. She was no generalist, though. If she wasn’t lining up for a kick, she was completely out of her element. She was the giraffe of the team, whereas folks like Quentin, Eddie, and Chris were the raccoons. Sometimes she wished she were a raccoon.
After the team meeting, when Jess was just about to head into the girls’ locker room to change into her uniform, Chris caught her.
“Hey, so I’ve been thinking. You know what I said the other night about not wanting you to hold back, for you to stop hiding and show the world who you are?”
“Yeah.”
“That doesn’t include Eugene Thornton. I can’t stand that guy, and I don’t think you should give him a second of usable footage tonight.”
She tried to figure out where he was going. “Right, I agree, but I can’t miss. You know that. It’s literally impossible for me to miss.”
“I get that. But if you’re okay with it, I have a plan. One that might work out for both of us.”
“Yeah, sure. I’m up for whatever.”
“But you have to promise that the next game Eugene doesn’t show up to, you’ll go out there and embrace it, all right?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“No more hiding … except for tonight, and only because of that dickwad.”
She grinned. “Yeah, okay.”
“Cool! Okay! See you on the sidelines.” He snapped and pointed at her before running over to grab the attention of Coach Rex in the corner, leaving her to wonder what the hell he could have up his sleeve.
* * *
The Carthage Crusaders received first and scored a quick touchdown. Coach Griffin lost it on the sidelines when the defensive line let the running back straight through for big yardage that landed him on the one, and he didn’t stop yelling until after the extra point had been made and special teams had taken the field to receive the kick off.
Jess waited by Coach Patterson on the sidelines, hoping to her Father that she wouldn’t be needed on this drive. As the offense took the field, Jess and the other teammates doled out the traditional butt slaps to the players hustling by. Jess gave Chris a swat and he turned around and winked conspiratorially at her. She immediately realized that not a single person in the stands would interpret that wink the correct way, and so she quickly slipped on her helmet and tried her best to hide behind the bodies of the large defensive backs who stood next to her.
Every person on the Crusaders’ defense looked like he’d been drinking protein shakes since the moment he left the womb, and they managed to stop all three of the Mexicans’ run attempts right out of the gate, leaving them facing a fourth and eleven. In a normal game, with all normal players, it would be an easy decision to punt. This this wasn’t a normal game, because Coach Rex and the Mexican had an ace up their sleeve in the form of Jessica McCloud, even if the ball was on the Mexicans’ own thirty-two. Their punter hadn’t gotten a shot all year because of that. So it looked like not only would she have to kick, but she’d have to make a field goal that was literally nothing short of a miracle (even though all of hers technically earne
d that distinction).
She waited for Coach Rex to call the offense off the field, but he didn’t, and instead they lined up to go for it on fourth and eleven at their own thirty-yard line.
“And the Mexicans are starting off aggressive!” came the voice of Solomon Simpson from the announcer’s booth, blaring out over the stadium speakers.
Jess looked down the sidelines and tried to catch Coach Rex’s eyes, but he was too fixated on the play to notice.
Chris dumped off a quick pass to Romeo, the running back, who easily got the first down and then a few more yards on top.
It was lucky. Suspiciously so …
Was that You?
No answer. Then she remembered hearing about a horrific mudslide in Bangladesh that had occurred earlier that morning. He probably had His hands full.
From there, the drive exploded with one huge play after another, until the Mexicans found themselves with a first down from the Crusaders’ two-yard line.
No field goal needed, so long as they could make it into the end zone in four downs.
Then she remembered. The extra point.
There really didn’t seem to be a way to win in her tiff with Eugene, but at least there was nothing particularly newsworthy about managing to kick an extra point. She hated the idea of giving Eugene even that much footage, but there seemed to be no way around it. At least she didn’t have to kick an eighty yarder.
Romeo somehow found a hole in the defensive line on second down and made it in. The stand erupted and the game was tied. Well, almost. Jess had to get the extra point, but since that was a given, in her mind the game was tied.
She threw on her helmet and was about to jog onto the field when Coach Patterson grabbed her by the shoulder. “Whoa. Where you going, champ?”
And It Was Good (Jessica Christ Book 2) Page 11