by Allen, Jacob
“Adam,” Emily said, putting her hand on her arm.
I owed her a ton of credit for looking past my asshole statements like that. I didn’t know how she did it, other than to call her a saint.
“Need I remind you that you already looked like the world’s biggest pussy outside of homecoming,” she whispered into my ear. “So you can’t look like any more of a pussy than that.”
I groaned. She was going to hold that shit over my head forever, wasn’t she?
“Got it, I apologize,” I said.
I couldn’t look her in the eyes when I said that, but it had the desired effect. Emily placed her hand on my far cheek, pulled me in, and kissed me.
And damn if it didn’t feel really good.
“We’ll get you to stop acting so macho eventually.”
Eventually. I’m still a man, remember. Let’s not get carried away sacrificing myself for some recycled ass.
OK, Adam, come on, even you know she’s much more than that.
At that moment, Nashville scored a goal, and the crowd went wild. Emily jumped out of her seat, clapped her hands, and shouted “wooooo!” I laughed as I saw that, but I remained in my seat. Soccer still sucked.
But Emily pulled me up out of my seat, actually grabbing my hands and forcing me to clap, and I had a laugh at that.
“You’re really going to force me into this, aren’t you?” I said. “I don’t consent to this.”
“You will soon enough,” Emily said. “Just enjoy it! Get yourself into it. Put your judgments about soccer aside and try to enjoy it.”
I took a deep breath, rolled my eyes, sat back down, and did exactly what she said.
And wouldn’t you fucking know it, it was actually kind of enjoyable.
For one, the game was entertaining when I stopped evaluating it solely on the basis of goals scored. The tension reminded me of watching the Nashville Predators play hockey, and the crowd’s enthusiasm was something that was virtually impossible to ignore. It was truly an experience, and once I stopped trying to act like I was above it, I began to have a blast.
At halftime, Emily actually cuddled up on me, leaning her head into my shoulder.
“I missed this,” she said. “The good Adam. I don’t miss asshole Adam and I never will. But this Adam?”
I hadn’t heard anyone say that, either. It was startling how much her words could affect me, even if I had treated her like such horseshit over the past three years.
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “I’m still a smartass, though.”
“I know,” Emily said. “Just don’t be a jackass.”
I tried to kiss her then, but she still only gave me a cheek.
“You don’t remember that I dislike PDA, do you?”
“And you don’t remember that I don’t care, do you?”
Emily smiled, but she still only gave me her cheek.
“Patience, Adam.”
What is this, Jedi training? But I didn’t fight her, instead turning my attention back to the second half which had just begun.
Probably the most surreal part in all of this was the fact that I just didn’t feel as angry and stressed as I once had. Don’t get me wrong, I still thought my stepfather was a fucking crazy man, and I still had resentment to my mother. Even looking at Emily, there was still the fear that this was all going to unravel in ugly fashion, and we’d be even worse than when we started it.
But the fact that I caught myself actually jumping along with the other fans, high-fiving Emily, and standing as close to her as I could without knocking her over probably said much more than anything I could actually say to her. And frankly, maybe, that was for the best. I wasn’t the kindest person when I spoke; that was a fact that I was all too aware of.
Even with my newfound interest in soccer, though, the idea of going to overtime wasn’t appealing to me. I had other plans for this evening—Emily had allowed me to plan part two in exchange for taking her to the soccer game—and the longer those had to wait, the more frustrated I was going to feel.
The clock struck 90:00, with the score tied at 1-1, and I resigned myself to an extra fifteen or thirty minutes of staying here, I didn’t know how long it went.
And then the players kept playing.
“Isn’t regulation time over?” I asked.
“You weren’t paying attention at the end of the first half, were you,” Emily said.
I shrugged.
“I’m not here for soccer, I’m here for you.”
“Aw, even when you’re mocking my date choices, you can be sweet,” Emily said half-jokingly. “This is extra time now. The ref just said we have three minutes.”
“Oh, and then if—”
But before I had a chance to ask about how long overtime was, Nashville scored, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Emily lost her mind. Even I raised my arms in triumph, shouted “yes!” and turned to Emily.
And I didn’t care how much patience she wanted me to have. I was going to kiss her.
I leaned down, grabbed her by the hips, lifted her up, and kissed her tightly. Not only did she not turn her cheek, she seemed to embrace it, pushing back harder on my lips than I had started on her. I had to say, for our first sober kiss, I liked it a lot better when I didn’t have a Fireball hangover in my head.
“Not a bad way to end the game,” she said with a sweet smile.
“I was worried about it going to overtime,” I admitted. “Didn’t want us to—”
But Emily just started laughing. What did I miss? I really didn’t like the feeling of something going on without me knowing.
“What’s so funny?”
“There’s no overtime in soccer, Adam,” she said. “Only if its an elimination game would it go to extra time and then penalty kicks. The game would have just ended in a tie.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling pretty dumb. “That’s stupid. Every game should have a winner and a loser, damnit.”
Emily shook her head as she grabbed my arm and leaned into me.
“Not everything is a competition, Adam,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s good to just let things be and not try and win.”
I felt sure that she had said those words for a reason; they felt a little too rehearsed and a little too well-said for her to have just made them off the cuff. But if she had a reason for me hearing them, I couldn’t attune to it, nor did I particularly care to. It was kind of hard to think about such things when I could still taste her strawberry lipstick on my lips.
Less than two minutes later, the ref blew the whistle, the crowd roared in victory, and the players applauded the fans back. Emily had us stay in the stands a little longer than I cared for, as apparently it was the last regular season home game for Nashville SC.
Still, any time with Emily was a great time.
I had planned the second part, but already, the first part was enough to make me wonder why I’d pushed her away for so long. My home life really didn’t deserve to affect my life with Emily. True, she had to show me trust as much as I had to show her some, but…
Whatever happens tonight, take it slow. Don’t rush intimacy. She has to prove you can trust her as much as the other way around.
We got in my car, and Emily leaned over to again kiss me.
“Where did this Emily come from?” I said when she finally pulled back.
“She’s always been here,” she said. “You just scared her off for a bit.”
“Babe, I’m like a pitbull. I look scary as shit, but I’m not that scary.”
“Babe?” Emily said, arching an eyebrow, though she seemed more pleased by what I’d said than alarmed. “And that pitbull has bitten me a few times. But I’m willing to put my hand back there and try again.”
I don’t know why. But I can’t even begin to express how happy that makes me feel.
I began driving to our second destination, a spot I refused to tell Emily of. However, I knew as soon as we got off the highway exit, she knew where we were headed to.
�
��Mama’s Ice Cream?” she said.
I nodded.
“Why?”
“Well, last time we were there didn’t go so well, did it?” I said. “I figured we were better off making good memories there instead of shit ones.”
“So does this mean that we’re going to go to all the places you bullied me and we’re going to make better memories?”
“Only if one of those includes the women’s locker room.”
Emily rolled her eyes.
“Don’t push your luck, Adam.”
But I could see the smile on her face. She knew I was kidding—somewhat.
When we pulled up, as usual, she got her mixed strawberry and pecan ice cream. But tonight, wanting to mix things up a bit, I got cookies and cream instead of chocolate and peanut butter.
“Woah now, rebel alert!” Emily said.
“I know, so scandalous for me to change what ice cream flavors I had. Throwing big house parties? Not bad. Mocking my stepfather in front of everyone in the school? Decent. Changing ice cream flavors? Oh my God, called the Washington Post, it’s a national crisis!”
I loved moments like these, when I could get Emily to just crack up laughing and not say anything else. It hadn’t happened yet since our moment last Sunday, but it used to happen all the time when we were dating. They were moments that had me feeling like a Chris Rock, able to get anyone and everyone to die laughing at any single moment.
“By the way, that does make me curious,” Emily said. “What did end up happening with your stepfather?”
“Oh, same shit as always,” I said. “He talked a big game Saturday, gave me a lecture Sunday afternoon, and then by Wednesday I was able to talk my way into going out again.”
“So you asked me out not sure if you’d escape your grounding—”
“Nonsense,” I said, waving a hand. “It’s the old man’s style. All he does is act real tough, but when it comes to actually following through and being a dad, he doesn’t put the effort in. He’s just there because he thinks my mother is hot and he knows that no one else her age is going to fuck him.”
“Uh, wow.”
“I mean, I’m not wrong.”
“I know you’re not, it’s just… how do you feel about it?”
Oh, that question had an encyclopedia’s worth of answers if I was fully honest. Let’s see, where to start—I hated that he used my mom just for sex; I hated that he not only didn’t care about me and Ryan, he never even bothered to hide he didn’t care in private; I hated that he was a cheating backstabber; I hated that he came after my real father; I hated that my real father was also a cheater and had died because of that…
“I’m used to it.”
“You know people care about you, right?”
I turned to Emily, whose hand had gone to my shoulder. Her smile was the softest I had ever seen it. I felt safer with her than I ever had with my parents.
That. That is why I like this girl.
“I care about you.”
I smiled. I felt all of my concerns for Emily fade.
All, except for the one that this was destined to fail because of how relationships went.
But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to enjoy the moment.
I leaned in to kiss her again. This time, we didn’t just kiss; it was like our tongues were trying to taste as much of the other’s ice cream as possible. We even started giggling like school kids when we were doing this. It was ridiculous, but it was ridiculously fun.
Emily pulled back first, but only to say the words that made my night, words I had really waited to hear since three years ago.
“Let’s go someplace more private.”
17
Emily
This was faster than I’d ever intended to go.
I’d never thought that I would suggest to Adam that we go someplace quieter until at least our third date, if not more. I wanted to make him wait.
But there was a problem with that. I couldn’t wait. I struggled as much with waiting as he did. It wasn’t that I had any sort of guideline for how to go about it; I just knew that when I knew, I knew.
And it wasn’t like this was sleeping with someone on the first date. Our history together, our time together… even when he was bullying me, even when I was trying to fight back against him, we refused to leave each other’s orbits. If the opposite of love wasn’t hate but indifference, we proved it by transforming our apparent hatred into romance awfully quick.
Besides, Adam probably didn’t even realize the moment when I knew I wanted to sleep with him. It wasn’t when I said people cared about him. If anything, that was further reinforcement that he still had room to grow, as evidenced by his half-answer about being used to his stepfather being distant. It wasn’t even any spot when we got ice cream.
No, it was as soon as he embraced me back when I said it was OK for things not to be a competition.
He probably had glossed over the moment. I didn’t expect him to process it and write a journal entry about it. I just knew that he’d get it eventually. That he didn’t immediately reject what I had said as retarded or some other bully speak word was all I needed to hear.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “I’m only asking once.”
I smirked.
“You’re sweet. But yes. I—”
Adam didn’t waste another word. He grabbed me by the hand, grabbing both of our ice creams and throwing the remains down the trash can.
“I wasn’t done—”
“I’ll buy you five more later,” he said.
He took me to his car and practically shoved me inside. I’d seen Adam aggressive before, but like a dog with an electric fence, he always seemed to creep as close as possible without actually going over.
Now, though, I’d turned off the fence, and he was coming full bore onto me. But rather than bite me again, as he had in the pitbull metaphor, he was going to do something so, so, so much better.
When he got into his spot, he backed out and sped ahead so fast I could hear his tires screeching.
“Try not to kill us, please,” I said.
“You think when I’m this close to fucking you, I’m going to get us killed?”
“Adam,” I said. “I’m not one of your hookups. OK? Can you remember that? You don’t have to say making love if that feels too corny. Just… please don’t say fucking you.”
Adam bit his lip.
“Sorry,” he said.
Even though he had said “I apologize” earlier in the night, hearing him say “sorry” sober was about as much an aphrodisiac as anything else that night. Now here was Adam, finally acting as a real man, relenting and admitting he had done something wrong.
It was so much hotter than anything else I’d ever seen him do or hear him say.
“My place good?” he asked.
“My parents are out,” I said with a sly smile. “Can you take me to my house? I want it to be on my bed.”
What I didn’t say—the real reason I didn’t want to do it on his bed—was that I suspected his bed had had at least half of our class naked on it. I really didn’t need to be lying on my back, naked, knowing that about fifty other girls had lied there with Adam inside them in the last year.
My bed, I knew, was pure. No one but me had slept in it.
“You remember how to get to my house from the ice cream shop?”
“Duh,” he said. “You think I’d forget something like that?”
Yeah?
But that he considered it a stupid question was, in Adam fashion, kind of sweet. Even after all this time, it was something that he had in his head. He might have said a lot of terrible things, but he never forgot the good things.
As soon as we got to my house, I got out of the car and ran inside, just to make sure my parents weren’t home. They weren’t—just as I’d hoped. They’d said they were leaving that evening for a weekend trip to Louisville, but “that evening” was a pretty wide span.
Fortunately, no one answered
my calls. Which not only meant that Adam and I could finally have our moment together, he could spend the night—something we’d always say we’d do together for our first time, even if we weren’t willing to have sex then.
I turned at the base of my stairs to see Adam standing in the doorway, waiting for my command.
“The house is all clear,” I said, and he immediately stepped forward, leaving the door open. “Can you shut the door? It’ll—”
But Adam had no interest in the door. He scooped me up by my ass, lifted me up, kissed me, and carried me up the stairs.
“I’ll pay your damn AC bill if I can leave it,” Adam said. “I’ve waited three years for this moment, I’m not going to let another three minutes pass by.”
Damn, Adam!
He fumbled with my door knob until he finally got it open, forcing open the door. We stumbled to my bed, with Adam on top. He tore his shirt off like an animal in heat, all the while kissing me and my neck. I ran my fingers across his back, feeling the muscular bulges and the lithe frame. Adam was never the body-builder type, but it was evident that he kept himself in shape.
As soon as he had his shirt off, he motioned for me to sit up. Despite my having wanted this moment as bad as he did, if not more, I still sat up slowly. I was exposing myself to him, giving myself up to him. I couldn’t pretend that the last three years hadn’t scarred me in some way, even if not physically.
“Go slow,” I said when he had his fingers on the bottom of my top. “Please.”
Adam didn’t say anything, but I knew he got the hint. He slowed down his pace, kissing me on the lips and ramping down his hip thrusts into me. It was more a steady grind down below instead of just him slamming his hips into me.
He ran his fingers under my back, feeling for my bra, and I felt my heart rush. Adam had seen me in a bra in the locker room, but this was going to be a new area for me. What happened if he didn’t like my body? What if—
Adam popped my bra off, tossed it to the side, and kissed my left breast while squeezing my right one with his hands. Oh, damn, that felt good. That felt real good. He switched over to the other side, and my hips arched into him, needing him, craving him.