Have a Little Faith in Me

by Sonia Hartl

  “So what you’re saying is, it’s basically like the rest of the world? Because there are nice people and assholes in every walk of life.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” He frowned. “Though there is usually a higher concentration of assholes in Christian circles.”

  “Fair enough.” I nudged him. “I just wish I had something good to tell them about sex.”

  “Do you want to hear my opinion about it?”

  “No, you’ll just say sex is awesome. You’ve told me that enough, thanks.”

  He leaned back on his hands. “Did I ever tell you how scared I was the first time?”

  “What?” I crossed my legs and faced him, my chin in my hands. “You were scared? Of sex? I don’t believe it.”

  He looked around, like someone was hiding behind a tree, just waiting for him to confess his long-held fear. “This doesn’t leave this rock.”

  I zipped my lips. “I swear on the guy who used to date your mom.”

  “The first time, I was terrified I’d be … well, I’d be like Ethan.”

  “You could never.” My eyes widened. “But were you bad at it?”

  “Probably.” He laughed. “I could tell Lara wasn’t enjoying it, so I asked her if she wanted to stop. She said she wanted to keep going, but I, uh, finished right then.”

  “Oh my God.” That didn’t match anything I’d heard about Paul in the locker room. He was the most experienced person I knew, and I used to be curious about the details, how it all worked, but he’d never said much beyond the basics.

  “That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking I’d go to school the next day and she’d tell everyone I’d been a two-pump chump.”

  “Lara’s not like that.” She was my favorite of Paul’s ex-girlfriends. She was one of the few who didn’t act like I was a problem she had to get out of her way.

  “I know.” He stared off with a half smile on his face. “But that kind of stuff gets in your head. I hate saying this, but it didn’t occur to me to help her finish, so she left frustrated and I left embarrassed, and the whole thing was kind of a mess.”

  “But it couldn’t have been that bad. You guys did it again.”

  “Would you have done it with Ethan again? If he hadn’t turned out to be a bag of dicks?”

  “Yeah.” I rested my weight on my elbows. “But not because I liked it. I thought I’d done a bad job, and I would’ve done it again to, I don’t know, cancel out what happened before. I would’ve kept doing it until I felt like I’d done it right.”

  “That’s fucking tragic.”

  “Tell me about it. Remember the summer I trained myself to dot every i with a heart? And then I went to school the first day and got in trouble and had to unlearn it all? It was kind of like that. I was trying to train myself into seeing little hearts when I had sex.”

  “Jesus.” He swept a hand over his stricken face. “I wonder if it was like that for Lara. If she just kept doing it until it became tolerable.”

  “Maybe at first.” When he paled, I hugged his arm. “But she must’ve eventually enjoyed it, because she never said a bad word about you.”

  “I probably owe her an apology for all the bad sex.”

  “I think she’s over it.”

  “I hope. We’ve both moved on, but damn, this conversation is bringing up my insecurities all over again.”

  I tapped a finger to my lips. “They say you never forget your first time, but I wonder if it’s because the shame sticks with you forever and ever.”

  “I sure as hell hope not.” He shuddered. “I definitely got better at it though. It’s a small comfort, but I’ve got that, I guess.”

  “How did you get better? Does practice make perfect?”

  “Um, it’s not like dotting an i with a heart, if that’s what you mean.” His eyebrows drew together as he got lost in his thoughts. “After all the lectures from my mom about how to respect girls and what consent means, I learned how to listen.”

  “Listen to what? Are you saying you’re a vagina whisperer?”

  “Yes. Vaginas talk to me and tell me their secrets.” He gave me a bland stare. “I mean, I listened to my girlfriends. Asked them what they wanted, if they liked something, and it became a lot more enjoyable for both of us.”

  “Girls talked about you. In the locker room. Like, all the time. It was annoying.”

  His chest puffed up, and I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. “What did they say? ‘That dashing stud Paul, he’s an amazing lover’? Or ‘He’s ruined me for all other guys’?”

  “Pssh, please. No.” I shoved him. “After you and Lara broke up, they all talked about how there was just something about you, and blah, blah, blah.”

  “I feel like you’re leaving out the good stuff with the ‘blah, blah, blah.’”

  “Hardly.” He really didn’t need the encouragement. “And they constantly asked me if I’d be cool with them asking you out, like I was your keeper or something.”

  He tensed beside me. “What did you say?”

  “I said I didn’t care.” I suddenly took a great amount of interest in the dandelions at my feet. A fruit fly landed on one of the petals and crawled inside. “What else would I say?”

  “Nothing.”

  The silence stretched between us, and it felt like he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I played with the string on the front of my hoodie. “Nothing?”

  He took a deep breath but wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I mean, I don’t know why they’d ask. Everyone knew you were with Ethan.”

  Even from beyond the grave of my dead feelings, Ethan lingered like the worst kind of ghost. Not the kind with unfinished business, but the one who just refused to go away. “Ugh, I fucking hate that guy.”

  “Finally.” Paul let out a deep, rumbling laugh.

  “I’m serious.”

  “By all means, let it out. I’m here for this.”

  “God, it feels good to say that out loud. I hate his ugly shirts and how he’d wear black socks with sandals, and he’d take me to the same field to make out but didn’t always bring a blanket. And I really hate how he picked his nose that one time, and wiped it under his truck seat like I couldn’t see, but I totally saw it, and I almost broke up with him right then.”

  “Forget everything I said about coming to camp. This was worth it.”

  “Most of all, I hate how much I wanted my first time to be special, and how I made him special because of it.” I’d been more honest in just over a week at camp than I’d been with myself in months, and it left me feeling drained and my heart sore. “How could you stand to be around me before I figured this out?”

  He traced my jawline with his fingers and cupped my face with a gentle hand. “Because I always knew you’d come back, lioness.”

  I turned my head to hide my smile. We’d been touching each other in different and more intimate ways ever since we’d started fake-dating, which made the ruse more believable, but maybe it had started to become a bit too believable. Maybe that was why we hadn’t had our official breakup yet. Though I still wasn’t sure if my feelings were real, or if I’d created them. I liked being Paul’s temporary girlfriend. I liked the way it made me feel. But was I really willing to risk our friendship over a few inconvenient butterflies?

  Paul stood and stretched his arms over his head. “We should get back. We have another exciting round of workshops ahead of us before dinner.”

  I groaned. “Tell me again why I wanted to stay?”

  “Because the Wells family budget requires you to be gone for three weeks. And I’m with you, even though I had looked forward to getting ripped working with my stepdad this summer.”

  “You’d be the worst buff guy ever. Your ego already needs a check, and you’d get bored with all the working out and try to hook up an Xbox to your treadmill.”

  “True story. Plus, I get my workouts in other ways.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  “That’s so charmin
g.” I gave him my sweetest smile. “And with all your good sex moves, it’s a mystery as to why you’re still single.”

  “Not really. That emotional investment you’re so fond of just makes it easier for people to walk out on you.” He shifted his stance and made quick work of changing the subject. “Are you going to bail on dinner to give more sex ed lessons?”

  “I’ve had enough of sex today. I’d rather have cheese.”

  “You’re in luck.” He grabbed my hands to pull me to my feet, and I jumped off the rock, sticking the landing right beside him. “I helped out in the kitchen earlier, and I might’ve spied a giant block of Gouda.”

  I grabbed the front of his shirt. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Not kidding.” He carefully removed my grip. “I almost stole it, because I know how much you hate to share, but I spent way too long just staring at it while I tried to figure out how to smuggle it under my shirt. The chef sort of caught on.”

  “Your efforts are noted.” I laced my fingers and held them against my chest as I fluttered my lashes. “What would I do without you?”

  “Eat less cheese, probably.”

  We came around the corner of the chapel, where Astrid, Sarina, and Mandy lingered outside the next workshop. They all had equal amounts of shame on their faces. I guess Astrid hadn’t come up with the scheme on her own, but at least they knew they’d screwed up.

  “Can we talk?” Astrid asked.

  “I’ll catch up with you at dinner,” Paul said.

  “Wait. Which workshop are you going to?” I asked. “Waiting for Marriage.” He stuck his tongue out and dashed off.

  I turned back to Astrid, a laugh still on my face. “We can talk.”

  “We are so sorry,” she said. Sarina and Mandy nodded next to her, even though they hadn’t been there. “We never meant to put you in an uncomfortable position. We still think sex education is important and necessary, but we won’t ask you to participate.”

  “We understand how that looked, and we can’t apologize enough,” Mandy said.

  “We know a little bit,” Astrid said. “Not a lot, but enough to keep the secret workshop going, we think. But we’ll warn you when it’s happening so you don’t walk in to that again.”

  “I can cover”—Sarina’s face flamed—“what to do when you touch you-know-what for the first time, and at least warn them that it is definitely not like milking a cow.”

  I looked them all over, finding nothing but sincerity. Astrid had irritated me by leading me into that situation without talking to me about it first, but she also put her entire camp experience on the line to defend me in Pastor Dean’s office. She wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t actually care. Paul was right. These girls were the real deal.

  “Thank you,” I said. If Mandy could forgive me, who was I to hold a grudge? It’s not like any of them had purposefully tried to steal my boyfriend. “Seriously. I love you guys.”

  “We love you too.” Mandy brought us in for a group hug. “We’ve felt terrible all afternoon, and if you didn’t forgive us, we’d understand, but it would’ve killed us.”

  “Cabin eight girls don’t give up on each other so easily,” I said. “I’m not comfortable talking about sex with strangers, but if any of you have questions when trying to do the workshop, I’ll do my best to answer.”

  “No.” Astrid shook her head. “You’ve already done enough. We’ll cover it from here.”

  Mandy and Astrid headed inside, but Sarina hung back from the group, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. She’d worn a similar expression right before she’d told me about Milk-Gate. Whatever she had on her mind, I hoped it didn’t involve another injury.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” Sarina pulled me against her, like she didn’t want anyone else to overhear.

  “Sure.” I walked with her around the side of the building. “What’s going on?”

  “Astrid said Autumn was at your sex workshop?”

  “First of all, it wasn’t my sex workshop—”

  “Was she there?” Sarina continued to chew on her lip as she glanced around.

  “Yeah.” Okay, this had officially gotten weird. “Why?”

  “Did she say anything about me?”

  I figured Sarina knew Autumn the way everyone sort of knew each other at camp, but I’d never seen them hang out. “No. Am I missing something?”

  Sarina glanced around again and lowered her voice. “You can’t tell anyone. Not even Mandy and Astrid. No one knows.”

  “No one knows what?”

  “We kissed last summer.”

  “Nice.” I went to give her a fist bump, but she stared at me, stunned, like she couldn’t believe she’d said those words out loud. “Come on, Autumn is sweet. At least she doesn’t think I’m going to burn in Hell, so that’s a plus. Do you like her?”

  Sarina had a faraway look in her eyes. “Not anymore. I used to, but she seemed horrified afterward, and that’s not exactly the response you want when you kiss someone. This place makes it hard to just exist, you know? There is all this pressure on us to be examples in our communities, examples for younger Christians, and they never make room for people who don’t fit their mold. I can’t really talk to anyone about it.”

  “You can talk to me. And I bet you could talk to Mandy and Astrid, too, but if you don’t want to, I won’t push it.”

  “Thanks.” She walked with me back toward the workshop. “Sometimes I think it’s easier for me, because I like guys, too, but it’s really not. Pretending is never easy, is it?”

  I gave her a lopsided grin. “Preaching to the choir, my friend.”

  We went inside the workshop, which I hadn’t bothered to look up on the schedule. Astrid informed me it was another one on how to talk to non-Christians about Jesus, which meant it was the perfect time for me to catch another nap. They had a sprinkling of other topics, but a large number of workshops seemed to focus on converting other people. Maybe it had something to do with their dwindling resources, but if Pastor Dean really wanted to get more campers, he’d fashion it a lot less like a cult.

  Chapter 18

  After the workshop, aka my afternoon nap, and my rotation at the nurse’s station, aka an hour of my life I’d never get back, I headed to my cabin. I pushed open the door to find Mandy, Sarina, and Astrid sitting on the braided rug with about a thousand condoms and three cucumbers. “Should I leave you alone with your … dates?”

  Sarina yelped and threw her cucumber with a condom clinging to the end. It hit Astrid and fell to the ground. The condom got tangled in her hair. Astrid pulled it out of her curls, dropping it to the side with the other unwrapped ones.

  “Where did you get all of these?” I picked up a box sitting on Astrid’s bed. “Magnum, huh? You guys have really high expectations.”

  Mandy shifted her gaze, as if she expected a counselor to Kool-Aid-man it through the wall and bust her. “We raided Pastor Dean’s storage cabinet.”

  “Ew.” I did not want to think about why Pastor Dean had so many condoms on hand.

  “They’re not his.” Astrid laughed. “It’s all the condoms he’s confiscated from room searches over the years. All Magnum. I don’t think any of the guys who brought them actually thought they’d get to use them. They just wanted to say they needed the big ones.”

  “Boys are ridiculous.” I picked up a cucumber. “But if you’re trying to figure out how to roll on a condom, I wouldn’t use these. You’ll never meet this person. And if you do, run like hell, because wow.”

  “We thought bananas would be better, even if they’re curved,” Sarina said. “But one of the freshmen has a banana allergy, so there aren’t any at camp.”

  “Even if they’re curved?” I tossed the cucumber between my hands. “Surprise, sometimes people can be curved down there too.”

  “Was Ethan …?” Mandy’s face screwed up. “Nope. Forget it. I don’t want to know.”

  “No, God, that’s just a thing everyone knows,
” I said.

  They all gave me blank stares. Okay. So maybe everyone didn’t know. At least it wasn’t a known thing at Jesus camp, but that wasn’t really saying much.

  “I mean, people like me,” I said. “Who live in the real world.”

  “Are you saying we don’t live in the real world?” The hard edge to Astrid’s tone caught my attention. I’d never seen her mad like this before. Her eyes got brighter, but not a sparkly bright, more like a fire she could barely contain. It was equal parts terrifying and awesome.

  “I mean, you know, social media and secular movies and things like that.” I fumbled over my words as Astrid’s gaze continued to cut into me. “I know you’re on social media, but your interests are pretty tailored, and there’s a bigger world out there.”

  “Oh yeah. Those things are all so real.” Astrid crossed her arms. “Because people are their truest selves online and everything happens like it says in the movies, right?”

  My cabinmates knew I wasn’t a Christian. They accepted me anyway, without judgment or a hint of thinking of me as less than them, and I’d thrown it back in their faces, like I was somehow above them. I’d never been more annoyed with or ashamed of myself as I was in this moment. “You’re right. I’m sorry—I screwed up. It won’t happen again.”

  My conversation with Paul gnawed at me, where he said the girls at camp were starved for information. Hadn’t I wanted the same thing? I knew enough to use condoms, but didn’t know how to put one on. I knew romantic gestures felt nice, but didn’t know they were just icing on a well-established cake. I knew saying yes meant consent. I didn’t know pressure or fear of losing the guy negated the yes. I didn’t know consent involved saying yes more than once, or that it was okay to take it back.

  There was so much no one had ever talked to me about. And I had regular Internet access, unlike Mandy, and watched R-rated movies, unlike Astrid, and had a mom who held a pretty realistic worldview on teenage sex, unlike Sarina. I had the ability to get all the information I needed, but didn’t bother to look up, because I assumed so much was common knowledge. Turned out, when it came to sex, knowledge wasn’t all that common.