He blushed, and I realized I’d been gazing at him, at his body, his sculpted abs and further down, to where a bulge gave away what we were both aware of.
“Shit—” Kyle said, and rolled away, covering his face, clearly embarrassed. “Nell, I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened—”
I giggled. “Kyle, I’m pretty sure we both know that’s bullshit. I know what happened, and so do you. We kissed. We made out. And you got…excited.”
He pulled the waistband of his running shorts away from his body briefly, adjusting himself. “Yeah, but…it’s just embarrassing.”
I rolled to my stomach and leaned over him, as he had me. “Kyle, it’s fine. We’re not kids. I’m…I know—I mean, yeah, it was a little odd for a second, but—”
“This changes things between us, doesn’t it?” Kyle asked, interrupting me.
I cut the words short, stunned silent by his abrupt question. “I guess it does, yeah,” I said.
“Are we still friends?”
I panicked. “I—yes? I mean, I hope so. I don’t know what happened, why we kissed like that, why you got so jealous and why I couldn’t go out with Jason. I mean, I know…but I don’t understand why now. You know? Kissing you, it felt…right. And you’re still you. I’m still me. We’re still us, Kyle and Nell. But…just more, I guess.”
Kyle sighed in relief. “I was afraid…I mean—I didn’t mean to kiss you. It just kind of happened. It was amazing, and I didn’t want to stop.” His gaze finally met mine, his fingers toying with a lock of my hair. “I want to kiss you again, right now. But…I’m afraid I’d never stop.”
“Who said I wanted you to stop? I kissed you back, Kyle. I don’t know what this means for us, what this makes us. I mean, are we boyfriend-girlfriend now? I don’t know. What will our parents say? Everyone has always thought that’s what we are anyway, right?”
Kyle’s tongue ran over his bottom lip, and I knew he was thinking about kissing me. I beat him to it. I leaned down, my hair draping over our faces and blocking out the world, everything except the kiss. Kyle’s hand skated up my arm, rested awkwardly on my shoulder, and then down my back. He hesitated, and I did, too. The kiss broke, but our lips barely parted. Our eyes met, and I could see him wondering, thinking, wanting but unsure. I moved slightly, but enough so more of my weight was on him, my hands resting on his chest. I’d seen this position in a movie before, and now I understood it. It was intimate. Comfortable, but…suggestive.
I felt worldly. Adult. Grown-up. Full of desires I didn’t quite understand and didn’t know what to do with. I felt the hardness between us, and Kyle’s hesitant gaze told me he was as achingly aware of it as I was. What was I supposed to do? Move away? In the movies, this was where the kiss would naturally and easily move to other things. In True Blood, this was where Eric would skillfully get Sookie’s clothes off, and then the scene would change and he would be above her, all male muscle and long lines and motion, and they would be making love…fucking…and they’d both know exactly what they were doing.
I wasn’t so sure about all that. Seeing him without his shirt on was suddenly enough to have me blushing. Feeling the skin of his chest beneath my hands, his palms on my flesh beneath the strap of my sports bra had me tingling. But…the rest?
I wasn’t ready.
Kyle must have sensed my turmoil, or felt the sudden hammering of my heart. He pulled away and sat up, forcing me to do the same.
“We should slow down, Nell.”
“Yeah…yeah.” I shot to my feet and picked up my shirt from the grass.
It was sopping wet, so I didn’t put it back on. I felt my muscles pulling, my back twinging. I stretched, arching backward, my arms above my head with my palms facing the sky. As I eased out of the stretch, I felt Kyle’s eyes on me. On me in a guy way. Seeing me, really looking. I blushed.
“What?” I asked, even though I knew.
“Nothing.” Kyle’s eyes darted away, and I couldn’t help my own gaze from raking over his sweat-gleaming muscles, the still-apparent telltale bulge in his shorts, which only made me blush harder.
I remembered the one time Jill and I had watched a porno she’d found on the Internet—simply out of curiosity and the rush of knowing we shouldn’t watch it. All I could think of was how the men had looked, huge and veiny and hairy and…shudder. It hadn’t been fun, or hot, or attractive. The women hadn’t looked real. It had been ugly and shocking and kind of scary. We’d turned it off not even halfway through and vowed to never talk about it again. We’d turned on a Jersey Shore repeat and tried to pretend we both didn’t have those awful images burned into our brains.
And now, of course, six months after Jill’s and my failed experiment with porn, all I could think as I tried to force my eyes away from Kyle’s crotch, was whether he’d look like them, if I’d be turned on by how he looked naked, if he and I were to do it together.
“We should head back,” Kyle said. “We’ve been gone a long time.”
The sun was setting as we struck out across the field back toward the main road. I jogged down the steep hill ahead of Kyle, and again I felt his eyes on me, and this time I knew he was staring at my butt. I ignored my blushing embarrassment and twisted to look at him over my shoulder, trying to look coy and sultry. I swayed my hips at him as I slowed at the bottom of the hill.
“You were staring at me, Kyle,” I said in a low voice when Kyle approached.
“No, I wasn’t.” He was fighting a grin, but his cheeks were pink, giving away his lie.
“Yes, you were. You were staring at my ass.”
“I—” He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck, then looked back up at me, grinning lopsidedly. “You know what, yeah, fine. I was. Okay? I was staring at your ass. Is that a problem for you?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say I had a problem with it.” I wasn’t about to admit that I liked it.
We walked side by side in silence after that, a little awkward, a little hesitant. Kyle broke the silence finally.
“You know, I’ve been trying not to look at you like that for-fricking-ever. Every time we ran together, I had to run in front of you so I wouldn’t stare at your ass. Or watch your boobs bounce. Even when you wear that bra, your boobs bounce a lot, and it’s really fricking distracting.”
“Kyle!” I nearly fainted, I blushed so hard, and I couldn’t stop giggling, suddenly.
“What? I’m just telling you the truth. You’re my best friend, and it felt wrong to be looking at you like any other girl. I mean, I try not to ogle girls anyway ’cause that’s rude or whatever, but you’re different. But…goddamn, Nell. It’s so hard to not look at you. You’re hot.”
I stopped walking and turned to face him, abruptly. “You think I’m hot?”
He threw my words from earlier back at him. “You know you’re hot, Nell Hawthorne, so quit fishing for compliments.” His grin faded into an intense gaze, serious and rife with emotion. “But…‘hot’ isn’t the right word. I mean, every guy in school thinks you’re hot—except Thomas Avery ’cause he’s gay. But I think you’re beautiful. You’re lovely.”
I shifted uncomfortably under the intense scrutiny and prickling heat in his eyes. “Thanks?”
He thinks I’m…lovely? The idea that Kyle thought I was not just hot, but lovely, sent pangs of something like fear through me, an intense pressure in my heart.
We walked home, and at some point his hand ended up tangled in mine, fingers threaded as if they’d always been there. We arrived at his driveway first, and his mom was at the end of the driveway flipping through the mail, her cell phone stuck between her ear and shoulder, probably talking to my mom.
She saw us stroll through the motorized wrought-iron gate, hand in hand. Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline, and she trailed off mid-sentence, mouth open in a shocked “O.” I knew my hair was a ragged, sweaty mess, my shirt was off and so was Kyle’s…and suddenly my lips tingled with the memory of his kiss, and I wondered if she could tell we�
��d been kissing, if she thought we had been—
“Rachel? I’ll have to call you back. Our children just walked in…holding hands. Yes. I know. Already.” Olivia Calloway hung up and turned to us. “So. You two were gone a while.”
She glanced down at our joined hands. We looked at each other, exchanged a long, meaningful glance. I squeezed his hand, indicating I wasn’t going to let go. I wasn’t ashamed of this, or trying to hide anything.
Kyle nodded at me subtly, then turned to his mom. “Well, we went for a run, then stopped up by Keller’s Ridge to talk.”
Mrs. Calloway narrowed her eyes at us, taking in our state of undress and the tangled mess of my hair. “To talk, hmmm? And this?” She gestured at our hands.
Kyle lifted his chin. “We’re together now.”
We hadn’t exactly decided that, per se, since we’d started kissing without actually agreeing to anything official. But I wasn’t about to say any of that, not here, not now. And we were together, even if we hadn’t made it “official.”
“I see,” Mrs. Calloway said. “You’re together now. Are you sure that’s a good idea? You’re both so young.”
Kyle frowned at his mom. “Seriously? Colt had a girlfriend at sixteen and I don’t remember you guys saying shit to him about it.”
“Watch your language, young man,” she said, her voice hard. “And for the record, we did say something to him. The same thing I’m saying to you now. Just because you didn’t hear the conversation doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You were, what, eleven? Your father and I would not have had that conversation with your brother in front of you, Kyle.”
Kyle sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But—”
“Just be careful, okay?” Mrs. Calloway cut in over her son.
“Mom, no, we weren’t—I mean we haven’t—”
“I’m not having that talk with you, Kyle. Especially not in front of Nell. All I’m going to say is, now and going forward, whatever you do or don’t do…be careful.” She turned away, tucking the mail under her arm, then stopped and glanced back at us. “And I mean that in an emotional sense, not just physical. You two have been best friends your whole life. Crossing the line into more…that’s a line you can’t uncross.” Something in her tone of voice and the way she stared into middle distance had me wondering if she knew what she was saying from personal experience.
“We know that, Mom. That’s what we were talking about, actually.”
“Well…good.” She vanished into the house, nose already buried in her phone.
I stood with Kyle in his driveway. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“No, but that was Mom. She’ll call Dad, and he’ll call me, and we’ll have ‘the talk.’”
I contorted my face into an expression of commiseration. “Yeah, I’ve probably got that talk waiting for me at home right now.”
He laughed. “Didn’t we already have this talk with them when we were kids?”
“No, that was different, I’m pretty sure. Then, they were explaining what’s what and what goes where and why. This is…” I trailed off, unsure how to finish the statement.
“Why we should wait? And how to be responsible if we don’t?”
“Exactly.” I was almost absurdly relieved that we’d gotten through that discussion without having to say anything overtly embarrassing.
Again, not ready. So not ready.
But then I felt his hands sliding onto my back to pull me into an embrace, and suddenly the idea of more with him didn’t seem so absurd.
More…eventually.
Chapter 2
Lucky I’m In Love
January
Kyle and I had settled into a comfortable but exciting relationship. In a very significant way, not much had changed between us. We were the same as we’d always been—we just held hands at school and kissed in the hallways, in his car, on the couch in front of the TV. Our parents did indeed have “the talk” with both of us about being safe, which was beyond mortifying. They didn’t even give me a chance to tell them we hadn’t even gone past kissing, or that sex wasn’t on our horizon as yet.
At least, it wasn’t on mine. Kyle seemed to be taking his cues from me, and I was content to let things stay where they were. I liked kissing Kyle. I liked making out with him on the couch. It was maybe a little like how I hadn’t wanted to push our relationship from friendship into dating, simply because I hadn’t wanted to change something I enjoyed.
In reality, deep down, I was scared. I might have psyched myself out a bit with all the shows and movies I’d watched with Becca and Jill that had sex in them. I was afraid the reality wouldn’t live up to my expectations. I mean, I knew in my head, logically, that TV and movies don’t portray things with any degree of accuracy to reality. Even the way characters kissed on screen wasn’t like kissing in real life. I couldn’t explain the difference, even to myself.
I couldn’t say any of this to Kyle, though. I wasn’t sure he’d understand, and I knew it would sound silly. It sounded silly even to me. But I just couldn’t shake the fears. I knew the facts, sure. I knew a girl’s first time wasn’t always that awesome, and that it hurt. I had plenty of friends at school who’d already had sex and had gotten the details from them. Becca, for example. Setting her up with Jason turned out to be exactly what I’d hoped. They’d been going steady ever since, and Becca had come over late one night, flushed and excited and glowing and fighting tears.
I sat with her on my bed and clicked the volume up on my TV so the sounds of Teen Mom would drown out our conversation. I waited, fiddling with the drawstrings of my pajama pants, knowing Becca would tell me what was on her mind once she’d gathered the right words. Becca was like that: She never spoke until she’d thought through what she was going to say. She’d struggled with stuttering as a child, and as a result of the speech therapy, she’d learned to plan out every word, every sentence before she spoke. It had a way of making her sound as if she was reading a script sometimes, which not everyone understood about her.
I did, though, because I’d known her since before she went through ST. I’d learned to listen past the stuttering to the words she meant to say, and learned not to rush her. Even after ST, you couldn’t rush Becca. She’d say what she meant to say when she was ready, and not before.
“I s-slept with Jason,” she said. And yeah, Becca still stuttered occasionally in moments of extreme emotion.
I jerked my head up, hair bouncing across my shock-wide eyes. Becca was half-smiling, tight black curls obscuring part of her face. I could see her blushing, which was tricky since she was half-Italian and half-Lebanese, and thus had dark, dusky skin and didn’t often flush.
“You what? For real? When? Where? What was it like?”
Becca twisted a curl around her finger and tugged on the springy lock of hair, a sign she was agitated. “It was everything we’d ever heard, Nell. Amazing, awkward, intense, and kind of painful at first. I mean, just like a pinch, not really bad or anything, and after it’s—it’s pretty incredible. Jason was very careful and very gentle. It was his first time, too. He was very sweet. It didn’t last long, though. Not like in True Blood, that’s for sure. It was good, though.”
“Did you bleed?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, a little. We told our parents we were going to Great Lakes Crossing to shop, but we actually went to a hotel. It wasn’t like I gushed or anything.” She grinned at me. “The second time was even better, and less awkward.”
I frowned. “What’s awkward about it?”
“Remember when you kissed for the first time? I mean, really kissed. Like, made out. Remember how it was completely natural, like you knew what you were doing somehow, but you still had to sort of figure out how to do it right? Where your hands went, and all that? Well, it’s kind of like that.” She looked out the window at the oak tree branches swaying in the winter wind, and I could tell her mind was back in that hotel room with Jason.
I sat with her in silence, watching Je
nelle argue with her mom on the TV. “Do you feel different?” I asked, eventually.
She nodded. “Yes. A lot. Like, it’s hard to explain how you see everything differently. Physically I don’t feel much different. A little sore down there, but that’s it. Inside my head, I feel older. Wiser. But that’s not it really, though. I don’t know. This part is the hardest to explain. I guess it’s like I finally understand what the big deal is.”
“Do you feel like you were ready?”
She didn’t answer right away. “I guess. I don’t know. I mean, I wanted to. I really did. We talked about it for weeks, planned out when and where. We went to dinner first, and it was romantic. But I was scared. Jason was, too, but I think not as much as I was.”
I met her eyes and saw the hesitation. “Did he pressure you, Becca?”
She looked away, then back to me. “A little? I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to. I just might have waited a bit longer, if it was only up to me.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “You were…safe, right?”
She nodded vigorously. “My cousin Maria is twenty-three, and she took me to get birth control from a clinic. And we used a-a—you know. Protection.”
“Could your cousin take me, too?”
Becca met my eyes. “I can ask her, if you’re sure. But wait until you’re sure you’re ready.”
She took a couple deep breaths, and then her shoulders shook and I pulled her into a hug. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged, shook her head, but said, “Yeah, I guess. I’m overwhelmed. I mean, I can’t believe I did that.” She pulled away and met my eyes. “I”m not a virgin anymore, Nell. I’m a woman now.” She laughed, the sound almost a sob.
“You weren’t ready, were you?” I whispered.
She collapsed onto me. “N-no. But I love him, Nell. I do.” She took a long shuddering breath, and then composed herself, sitting back and wiping her face. “I love him, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. And-and I knew we couldn’t keep skirting the line like we had been, you know?”
The Nice Boxset Page 8
