by Allen, Jacob
“I’ll come doggy,” he said. “And you will too.”
Bold. But you’ve already done that twice. Who am I to resist?
I quickly got on my back, sticking my ass in the air. He smacked it twice first, once on each cheek, which felt much better than I ever would have expected.
“And you hated this at first.”
I actually laughed at that, but the laughter quickly turned to moans when he put himself inside me, grabbed my hips, and railed on me. He was right—he was somehow managing to get more of me, pushing me to orgasm faster and faster.
“Oh, fuck,” I moaned.
“I’m so close,” he gasped.
Only a minute had passed, but he had me right there again!
And then, in conjunction with me, we both came. I could feel my pussy pulse on his quivering cock, expelling his seed into the condom. I buried my head in the pillow in front of me, barely able to contain the enormous pleasure rushing through my body.
The only thing I disliked was that it had taken me this long to experience something like this. Better fucking late than never, though.
When Nick finally finished coming, he took a few breaths. I looked back to see a man depleted not just of his seed but of his strength, utterly sapped by the moment. I smiled, and he smiled back.
He pulled out, I turned on my back, and he collapsed next to me. We shared a brief kiss before I sat up on him, resting my elbow on the side of the bed as I looked at him.
“So,” I said, asking the only question that came to mind in that moment. “What now?”
20
Nick
“You want to know what now after I just had some of the best sex of my life?”
Samantha didn’t believe me. I could tell that by her facial reaction. But I was being completely serious. She had blown me the fuck away with how good that sex was. I couldn’t even begin to guess why, but I had a sneaking suspicion some of it had to do with the way I felt about her. Something about my emotions for her was making me like her.
“Yeah,” she said with a guilty smile. “I enjoyed this, but I don’t want it to be the only time we do this.”
“Oh, don’t worry, that’s not going to be the case, there will be more of this in the future,” I said.
With sex that good and head that good, I’d be crazy to pass up future chances.
“I have to admit, maybe way back in the day, there was a point where it just felt like you should be mine because Adam had Emily and Kevin had Jackie. But now that you’re with me, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about ‘completing’ us all together. I just care that I’m with you right now.”
“Aw,” Samantha said, leaning over to kiss me. “I’m not the sappy type, but damnit, you have me feeling like a little school girl here. Though, I did wonder why you drove like a maniac out of school.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said with a chuckle. “That was mostly about trying to get you to loosen up in one way before I tried to loosen you up in this way.”
“Loosen up, eh?” Samantha said, but it wasn’t accusatory—it was almost flirtatious.
“I had to do it myself, you know.”
Samantha kissed me on the cheek.
“Do tell, if you can.”
“Well, for so long, the idea of being an athlete defining me was something I held on to with sheer force. I didn’t want to let it go. Especially among the Broad Street Boys, I’m easily the most athletic. But it was also because my brothers set such a high standard. I actually had to get into a full-fledged brawl with them over spring break for things to come to a head and for me to realize that maybe I didn’t have to do any of that.”
“Really,” she said. “I never would have pegged you as a fighter.”
I struggled to tell if she was being sarcastic, perhaps in reference to the things I had done to her or something else of that nature. But as I had done so much during today, I reminded myself that it didn’t matter what had happened in the past—only that I was here with Samantha now.
“In any case, I eventually figured out that I didn’t just have to be athlete, athlete, athlete. And like you, you’re intelligent and a dork, but you’re much more than that. You’re a great person. Even if, well, you know, I may not have acted the greatest to you.”
Samantha laughed before kissing me on the lips again.
“Still hard for you to say I’m sorry, huh?”
“Always will be,” I admitted. “Lockes are not exactly known for their humility and admittance of when things go wrong.”
“We’ll work on that,” Samantha said.
A peaceful silence came over us as we just laid there. I stole a look at the clock on the wall—it was barely after four. We couldn’t stay like this forever, obviously, and a round two was bordering on questionable depending on how reliable her parents’ return at five was, but we weren’t in any urgent rush for me to sneak out of the house.
“By the way,” Samantha said. “I meant more in the way of, what now, now that we’re trying to figure out schools? Are you going to come to Harvard?”
“Well, I take it you’re going there?”
She nodded.
“Shit, you’re going to kick some ass while you’re there.”
“Thanks, but we know the real wild card here is you,” she said. “You’re the one who has to figure out where you go to school. And while I’ll get if you go to Princeton… I’m going to be real pissed if you do.”
I laughed, but she remained completely serious. I felt a little guilty and tried to assuage her with a kiss, but the look on her face said it all. You can make jokes about it, but you just took her virginity. You went through a lot in the last couple of months, and if you have any sense of respect for her, you won’t hurt her like that.
“A lot has happened in the last few months in which I know I have acted irrationally,” I said. “I owe it to myself, as a result, to make the most rational choice possible. I… can’t make a rational statement when we’re like this. But I promise I’m not going to keep you waiting.”
“How long is waiting?”
“How does Sunday morning sound?”
Bold? Maybe. Rational? It would be.
I already had an idea of how this was going to turn out. I just needed to make sure I told her perfectly.
“It sounds like it’s about 40 hours too far away,” she said. “But I suppose if that’s all the time you need, then I can wait. Just don’t keep me waiting too long.”
“Trust me,” I said as I leaned in to kiss her. “You won’t.”
21
Samantha
I usually like this whole waking up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday thing.
Today, though, was a decision that, perhaps 48 hours ago, I wouldn’t have given a second or even a first thought to. It was the time for Nick to make a college decision, to determine if he’d join me at Harvard or go on his own way for Princeton. And because we’d finally broken down the barrier from before, because we’d finally had sex, I was now way more into it than I wanted to be.
I spent a great deal of Saturday kicking myself for sleeping with him this late in the game. It would have been a very Broad Street Boy move to have hooked up with someone in early April, knowing that just a couple of months later, they’d never have to interact with them again. The only thing “better” for them would have been to have waited until the week of final exams or maybe even just throwing a party in the summer.
Of course, this was ignoring a whole host of evidence to the contrary that Nick wasn’t the evil asshole I made him out to be, that he cared about me and that he valued me. But if ever there was something that was dominating and defining my life over the past couple of months, it’s that all the evidence in the world could exist in one position, and if emotions and feelings didn’t fall in line with it, it didn’t matter.
Stupid emotions. I will never stop hating the fact that it doesn’t make sense.
When I woke up, I immediately went to my phone. Somehow, Nick had sneak
ed a text past me around 1 a.m., when I’d finally fallen asleep just moments before.
“Meet me at the library at 11,” he wrote.
That was it. No hints, no signs that he might go one way or the other. Just “meet me at the library at 11.”
Is he trying to bring it full circle? Because the start of that circle was him turning into a mess and trying to kiss me. Can we pick something maybe a little bit nicer, a little bit less awkward?
But I wasn’t going to reject his request. Not when it could give me something fantastic and magical on the other line.
“OK, sounds good.”
I wanted to add a bunch of emojis and hopeful smiling faces, but if this blew up in my face…
God, I was being awkward, wasn’t I? Awkward until the end. I couldn’t wait to see how awkward I was even by Harvard standards. At least I would be the most awkward of the awkward—that had to mean something, right?
I quickly put my clothes on, some mismatched combination of shorts and a top. I headed to the car, even though it was only 8:15. Thanks to getting into Harvard, my parents had magically transformed into the world’s softest, most easy-going parents ever; I could have come home at 3 a.m. and they wouldn’t have cared.
This meant that when I passed them, they smiled, said good morning, and didn’t ask me where I might be headed. They knew the answer was eventually “Cambridge” and so the rest didn’t matter.
I got in my car, turned the engine on, and immediately started heading downtown. Yes, it was extraordinarily early. Yes, there was no traffic in the area. And, yes, this was unnecessary.
But all of the “what ifs” danced in my head as reasons I wouldn’t have made it, and with that in mind, I felt it necessary to get there and then I could kill time.
Which, of course, meant that for the next three hours, I just walked aimlessly around downtown Nashville. I wish I could say that I had some nostalgic trip, some sort of walk down memory lane, some sort of feelings that provided me profound insight, but that would be a lie. I didn’t go out in downtown Nashville. My family didn’t go out in downtown Nashville. The skyline looked cool, but that was about it.
In other words, I felt as connected to the city of Nashville as I did, say, the city of Memphis. Maybe a little more, but not by as much as a lot of people who lived there.
I mostly just listened to music, read articles on my phone, and just paced around like a nervous child on Christmas, waiting for permission to open her presents.
Finally, the library opened. I dashed in. I had a feeling I knew where he already was.
And sure enough, when I got into the same reading room where I’d first encountered Nick, I saw him working on something on the computer. He had his headphones on—he even had the same clothing on as the first day we’d sat near each other.
This time, though, I didn’t wait for him to stop me outside the entrance of the library. It couldn’t be too similar to the opening day.
I tapped him on the shoulder, using the opportunity to look over. He had on his screen the Harvard and Princeton logos. He turned and smiled.
“Hello beautiful,” he said.
He stood up and kissed me. Getting kissed in a public library felt all sorts of scandalous… and it felt kind of good, actually.
“Hey,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “Walk with me to Mike’s Ice Cream?”
“And then what, join you by the river?”
Nick patted the side of my hip with a shrug.
“Don’t guess the plot of the movie beforehand if you don’t want it spoiled,” he said as he closed his computer and took my hand in his.
I’m pretty sure if he’s being this affectionate that he’s going to say he’s going to Harvard. But then again, he could just be really aloof. He could just be flirting with me, then saying he’s going to Princeton, and just wanting things to be lighthearted. Talk about painful and terrible.
When we got to the ice cream shop, Nick almost ordered me the usual, but this time, I changed it up.
“Chocolate and strawberry,” I said. “Harvard colors.”
“Oh, thank God,” Nick said. “I was wondering when you’d get something more normal.”
“Do you really want me to be normal?”
He smiled, wrapped his arm around my waist, and again kissed me.
“I want you to be you,” he said. “But c’mon, the ice cream mixture that you had before? That’s the kind of thing that’ll make shop owners wonder if you’re on drugs.”
“It’s not that bad!”
“Stick to chocolate and strawberry.”
I playfully smacked his arm as he took out some cash to pay for our ice cream. He dug my spoon into my ice cream, took a scoop out, and then fed it to me.
“Really?” I said, though I took the bite of ice cream eagerly.
“What, am I not allowed to be cute here?”
“Only if there’s good news on the end of the line.”
He nodded in the direction of the river. Nervously, my feet wanting to take flight because they could barely coordinate steps, I headed over to the railing overlooking the river.
From here, about the only thing in view was the Tennessee Titans stadium. Otherwise, we just had a couple of bridges, clear skies, and a quiet city, still rousing from the night before. A couple of pigeons landed on the railing near us, perhaps hoping that we had bread. Nick put his arm around my lower back and pulled me in close.
“You know, the first time we were here,” he began. “I was confused as all hell about a lot of things. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, and that sort of extended out for a while. I wasn’t very well put-together, and I did a lot of stupid things that I kind of regret.”
I almost said “no kidding,” but for once in my life, I made the socially normal move and just stayed silent.
“I’m not gonna lie, I was pissed when you rejected my attempts at a kiss,” he said. “I just needed something in my life to go right, but looking back on it, that was probably the thing least likely to go right because of how I handled it. I was desperate, and when you said no, I got angry at you.”
He turned to me, and I to him.
“You can sometimes be awkward and a little quirky, but you’re never mean. You’re never deserving of someone targeting their anger at you. Nevertheless, I took it out on you. I guess… I guess you could say that I’m sorry.”
I smiled and put my hand on his cheek, feeling how warm it was.
“It’s OK,” I said.
“Well, it is now, because you accomplished your dream and I was able to properly recalibrate mine, but boy there was a lot of things that could have gone very wrong in that time. In any case, now we’re here, and you’re in a good place. I’m in a good place. So, you want to know where I’m going?”
“It’s why I’m here, right?”
“Can I show you instead of tell you?”
“This line again,” I said with a laugh. “As long as it’s not—”
That, again, was enough for Nick to move in and kiss me. I swear, if you say Princeton right now, I am going to throw you over the railing and into the river.
But with the passion and tenderness of the kiss, I already knew. I didn’t have to guess. I didn’t have any doubt. The longer the kiss went on, the more I knew.
“It’s Harvard,” Nick said, taking half an inch back. “And I want my girlfriend to be you. I want to say it’s you.”
“Really?”
Girlfriend? Already? Isn’t that fast?
“It’s not like we haven’t done the things that people would do in a relationship already,” Nick explained. “I like you a lot. I like your body. Scratch that, love your body.”
I blushed.
“I like your spirit. I like your mind. I like your inability to say anything but the unfiltered truth. I like your endearing awkwardness. I like how you choose the worst ice cream flavors ever.”
“Oh, stop.”
“Never. I like the way you scream wh
en I’m driving well over the speed limit. I like that you’re someone I had to fight for. I like you, Samantha. So, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to make the request again.”
I always knew this sweet side of you existed, Nick. I just needed to know that it was the norm and not the hidden.
I guess you had some work to do on yourself, like me. But it sure looks like you did all that work and then some.
“Well, luckily for you, Nick, you don’t have to make that request again. Yes, I will be your girlfriend. Yes, I am going to Harvard.”
“We already knew that.”
“Don’t interrupt my moment!” I said with a laugh. “Yes, I will be with you. I can’t wait to see where it goes.”
We kissed once more. I don’t know how long it lasted, but however long it lasted, it was just fine. There would be many more kisses to come in the days, weeks, months, and hopefully years ahead. We weren’t just a high school fling; hopefully, we could be a lifetime fling. We could be forever.
“It’s going to go all the way,” Nick said. “I just know it.”
Epilogue
“And so, as we embark on the next chapter of our lives, let us all remember to take care to define what our dreams are.”
I was nowhere near any of my friends. Thanks to having the very middle-of-the-road last name of Locke, I was seated far away from Adam Collins, Kevin Torres, Emily Zane, Jackie White, and Samantha Young at our high school graduation ceremony.
But no one was seated near Samantha Young. That was because she was currently up on stage, giving the valedictorian commencement speech, sending us off to our next chapter.
Somewhere in the audience, somewhere way behind me, my parents and my two brothers sat. Things had gotten a lot better in the last two months with them. Admittedly, my father was the slowest to come around to the idea of me not getting a scholarship, but the work of my brothers to support me had gone a long way to making sure that things would be fine in the Locke household.
Outside of the home, things went even better. Adam and Kevin, perhaps not surprisingly, had teased me about dating Samantha, saying it was inevitable after they started dating Emily and Jackie that I’d wind up with Samantha. If only they fully understood how far from the truth that was—and how, because of that fact, it meant that us actually dating meant so much more.