Authors: Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
He doesn’t waste a minute. I lean my head back and put my arms on the counter to steady myself. A low moan escapes my lips. Evan Brown could definitely learn a thing or two from Zach about how to handle a girl’s breasts.
Today, neither of us lasts long. Zach has the distinction of being the only guy who has ever gotten me off, although I’d never tell him this. I don’t even want to know what that would do to his ego.
“God, Mercy,” he says, collapsing his upper body on me. “You’re amazing.
We’re
amazing.”
“Mercedes,” I say, heaving him off me and straightening out my skirt. “My name’s Mercedes.”
He frowns. “Even after four months of this?”
I kiss him on the cheek and mock gasp. “Has it been four months? Is today, like, our anniversary?”
He clenches his jaw, an indicator that Zach is about to get serious. I turn away and survey the handprints—and butt prints that could be passed off as handprints—on the countertop with pride, half hoping Kim notices and cares enough to ask me what happened to her pristine kitchen.
“Seriously. It could be our four-month anniversary. I’d treat you right.” He grabs my arm and twirls me around. “I think I’m in love with you.”
I zip up his fly and buckle his belt. Everything in reverse. I hate this part, the part where the physical act is over and the mental act begins. This is the part where one of my secrets is most likely to slip out and I’m more likely to stop being Zach’s dream girl and start being something else.
“That’s your orgasm talking,” I say. “You’re not really in love with me.”
“You can’t tell me how I feel,” he says. His voice gets quiet, trails off at the end. “I could be your boyfriend.”
Zach hasn’t told me he loves me before, but I sensed it building up. I dreaded hearing the words, knowing they’d be the end of our Wednesday lunch dates. I can’t have a Wednesday date with somebody who loves me. Not when I don’t love him back.
I look Zach squarely in the eye. He’s making his sad puppy-dog face, which makes me feel even worse. The stakes of our relationship—remaining chemistry partners and nothing else—depend on the delivery of my next line.
“You can love me like a friend,” I finally say. I almost wish I could relent and give him what he really wants—relationship status. When I started with the virgins, they were my excuse to keep Zach at bay. There was no way I could have a boyfriend. But now my pay-it-forwards are done, completely finished. There’s no real reason, besides the nagging feeling that I know I’m going to let him down, and letting him be my boyfriend would just end badly for both of us.
“I thought we weren’t friends?” he says, his mouth turning up at the corners.
I sigh. “We’re chemistry partners. But I guess there’s no reason chemistry partners can’t be friends.”
“I’m going to call you Mercy, then,” he says. He squeezes me in a tight hug. I can tell he’s smelling my hair, but I don’t stop him. “You so love me, too.”
I find his balled-up shirt on the floor and drive it into his stomach. “I so don’t. Now let’s get out of here before we’re late for school.”
“No way,” he says, dangling my panties in the air. “You can’t go back without these.”
I head for the door and grab my backpack. “Sure I can,” I say. “But I bet you can’t get through the day knowing I have nothing on under my skirt.”
He pulls his shirt over his head and shakes his head. “You’re evil,” he says. “What do you say about a sequel to this, after school?”
I shut the door behind us and give him a soldierly pat on the back. “The sequel’s never as good as the original.” He staggers and pretends to fall over. “Besides, I’m busy after school.”
“Busy doing what?” he says.
“Big assignment. Group project. Not in chemistry,” I add quickly.
“Can I come?” he asks.
“No, Zach,” I say. “But I think you already did.”
He laughs and slings his arm around my shoulder. “Next Wednesday, then,” he says.
“Until next week,” I say, trying to keep the relief out of my voice. Next Wednesday is part of our routine, another chance to spend lunch hour doing it somewhere else in Kim’s immaculate house. Maybe on the white leather couch next time, the one she loves too much to even let me sit on. Zach wanting to see me next Wednesday is almost like Zach asking me on a date, if I were a regular girl wanting a regular relationship.
But I’m not a regular girl. I don’t want to hold hands in the hall at school and slow dance at prom and see a movie with Zach. I don’t want to be the girl he dates senior year and loses interest in when he goes off to college. I want to be just fast enough for Zach to have to run to catch up, because if I stay ahead, I won’t ever have to see his retreating back.
I wasn’t lying to Zach. I really do have an assignment after school. I’m meeting with two other people from my French class, people I have to work with not by choice but by where my name falls in the alphabet. Adams, Ames, Ayres.
“Adams” and “Ames” are friends outside of class, which makes me feel like even more of an outsider. Adams—whose first name is Laura—went to my elementary school and we actually used to be friends, before life got complicated by boys and boobs and the hierarchy of high school popularity. I toyed with the idea of inviting Laura and the other girl over to do the assignment at my house but chickened out. Anything could go wrong at my house. They could stumble upon my negligee collection or my condom stash. So I suggested the library instead, which screams (actually, whispers, since screaming is disallowed) professionalism.
Or, is supposed to, until Laura shows up in tears, interrupting the silence at our table.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” Ames—Britney, “spelled like the singer”—jumps to her feet and wraps an arm around her sobbing friend.
“I think Trevor is going to dump me.” Laura wipes her face on her sleeve. “We had this whole plan. For this weekend. You know.” She drops her voice, as if she’s just now noticing I’m here and realizing she hasn’t spoken to me in years. I lower my eyes and pretend to be intensely interested in the list of French verbs we’re supposed to be conjugating.
“You can talk in front of Mercedes,” Britney says as Laura slumps into the chair across from me. She opens her mouth to say something else but shuts it promptly. I know what she was about to say.
You can trust Mercedes—she’s a prayer group geek
. I arch my eyebrow at her serious face but try to soften my expression.
Laura looks up at me through her tears, as if deciding whether I’m an ally or an enemy. I smile weakly, not sure myself.
“So, what happened to the big plan? Did your parents decide not to go away? Or did Trevor get cold feet?” Britney chews the top of her pen.
Laura drops her head onto the table. Her hair spills onto my pencil case. “All I told him was that I was nervous. I was scared it was going to hurt. And he wasn’t sensitive at all.” She looks around, even though the tables beside ours are empty and there’s nobody in sight besides Mrs. Woods, the ancient librarian. “He kept saying all these positions he wanted to try. I guess he was watching porn and got these ideas, and I just freaked out.” She frowns and looks directly at me. For a terrifying second, I think she knows everything.
“Sorry. I’m sure you don’t want to hear all this.” She half laughs, half sobs.
I shake my head and shrug at the same time in an attempt to look both nonchalant and considerate. Laura would flip out and most certainly violate the library’s vow of silence if she knew that I specialize in hearing stories like hers.
Britney pats her friend’s arm sympathetically. “I remember my first time. It does hurt. But Orlando was, like, so sweet. He kept saying how beautiful I was.” She flutters her eyelashes.
I rest my head against my palm and pretend to take study notes, but my jaw is tightening. I taught him that, told him to say beautiful when he really meant hot. There’s only one Orlando at Milton High. I remember him as the Watcher, because of the way he stared at me before, during, and after I took his virginity. Except he wasn’t with Britney then. He was with a girl named Clara, a girl he told me he loved. I helped him make a special night for her, even told him a romantic out-of-the-way hotel to take her to. He told me he planned to be with Clara forever. I guess forever didn’t even last halfway through senior year. I don’t know if I’m angry or disappointed to hear that Orlando and Clara are over, or if I even have a right to be either one.
Orlando was number five for me. He was supposed to be the last one.
Until six happened.
“Anyway, I don’t know if I can be with a guy who doesn’t care about my needs.” Laura wipes her face, leaving streaks of smeared mascara behind.
Both Laura and Britney seem to have forgotten I’m here, which is part of where prayer group comes in handy. Everybody assumes I’m still a virgin, so they’re never going to ask to hear my first-time story. Which is probably for the best, because I would never tell them, and they wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“Just give him another chance,” Britney says, rubbing Laura’s back. “He’s probably nervous, too.”
Somehow Laura calms down enough to get through our list of French verbs. By the end of the hour, Laura and Britney are even laughing, comparing stories about their boyfriends’ penises.
“I’m glad I at least saw Trevor’s first,” Laura says. “I don’t know if it’s big or small since I have nothing to compare it to.”
“I’m pretty sure Orlando’s is huge,” Britney says with a giggle. “He told me it was nine inches.”
I cough into my hand.
Nine inches?
Orlando is definitely not the guy he was when I slept with him, when he was kind and considerate and eager to learn. And he was definitely not nine inches of anything. I wish there were a way I could take the Watcher off my list, but that’s the thing about sex. Once it happens, it can’t unhappen.
I’m relieved when the project is done. Laura and Britney are more than happy to let me do the grunt work of typing it up and putting our names on it, and I’m so glad to get rid of them that I don’t even care. My heart is pounding and I’m nowhere close to figuring out what just happened. I sit in the library until I’m the only one there, and Mrs. Woods comes over to tell me she’s about to close up. The look she gives me from behind her bottle-cap glasses—a mixture of pity and annoyance—makes me want to cry, although I don’t know why.
The lights are dimmed in the hallways as I head to my locker, so I don’t notice the tall, lanky kid until he’s almost right in front of me.
“Sorry,” I say under my breath, holding my books protectively over my chest. But he doesn’t move out of my way and doesn’t let me past.
“You’re Mercedes, right?” he says. I look up, wishing my face wasn’t in such close proximity to his armpit. He’s wearing gym clothes, and the basketball under his arm means he’s probably on the team, although I don’t recognize his face. It’s a good-looking face, though, with a strong jawline and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose and really dark eyes, the kind where you can’t tell what color they are until you’re inches away.
“Yes,” I say, letting him trail behind me to my locker. I open the door and busy myself putting my books in. I can tell from my locker mirror that he’s staring at my chest.
“I hear you can do things. You know. Help guys like me.” He crouches down to my height, like he’s afraid someone will see him, even though we’re the only two people in the hall.
“Guys like you?” I say innocently, not meeting his eyes. I know exactly what he’s talking about, but I’m not letting anything on. Yet.
“I’m a virgin.” He says it almost inaudibly. “And I could use some help.”
I close my locker door with more force than I have to. I don’t exactly know how to tell him that my legs are closed for business. Ten guys was my absolute ceiling. It’s in the double digits.
“I’m sorry,” I say, slinging my backpack over my shoulder. “I can’t help you.”
He looks down at his scuffed sneakers. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate,” he says in a small voice. “It’s just, Laura expects that I’m this stud now. I talked myself up to cover up how scared shitless I am that I’ll disappoint her. I think I made a huge ass of myself.”
I turn to leave, not wanting to look at his face. I can’t get attached to his story, but I’m anchored in place at the mention of her name. Laura. My former friend, the one who still wanted to play with her Barbie Dreamhouse long after I outgrew toys.
“What’s your name?” The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“Trevor,” he says. “Trevor Johnston.”
I know I should keep walking down the hall and let Trevor Johnston figure things out for himself. He made a rookie error by pretending to know what he’s doing and might have ruined things for good. It’s not my problem. But when I think about Laura’s teary voice and the smudged mascara wiped across her cheek, I talk myself out of it. Laura might be a bit flaky and she’s terrible at conjugating verbs, but she deserves a perfect first time. Maybe if I help Trevor, he and Laura will have the future Orlando and Clara apparently won’t. It’ll be a double-pronged good deed: I can erase my loathing for the Watcher and do Laura a favor at the same time.
Besides, Trevor’s cute. This won’t be a complete hardship.
I clear my throat. “Trevor Johnston,” I say. He looks up hopefully.
“Five twenty-four Silverberry Run. Be there at nine tomorrow night.”
He breaks into a huge smile and extends his arms like he wants to hug me, but I keep walking, and when I’m far enough away I smile, too. It’s not like going from ten to eleven is going to make
that
much of a difference. The line will still be basically intact.
I’ll just blur it a little.
I’m surprised to see Kim’s car still in the driveway when I get home, parked haphazardly, the wheels on the right side halfway into the flower garden, which would mean nothing except the dining room lights are on, too. Coming home to a darkened house is part of my routine, but that doesn’t change the flurry of hope in the pit of my stomach when the lights are on. Maybe Kim has finally realized that I’ll be out of the house after this semester, so if she doesn’t get to know me now, she might never get a chance to.