by Jen Klein
I run my finger down to his chin. Yep, the scratchiness is there, too, just a little. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with this.” I press my mouth to his again—a fast, fast kiss—and then settle into my seat. “I’m still waiting for the other options.”
“Okay. We could walk around downtown and see one of those movies we were looking at. We could go to the outdoor mall in Glendale. Or…” He pauses, glancing down at my hand and then lifting it, sliding his fingers between my own. “Or I could take you home, like I said before. It’s okay if that’s what you want.”
I gaze at him, not wanting that at all. My mother’s words of warning flash through my mind.
Don’t get yourself into a situation.
Boys want one thing.
Don’t give it to them.
And then those words are competing with others, also in her voice:
I never should have married you.
Go screw yourself.
I hate you.
It’s what she says to my father—and what he says back to her—when they’re in one of their screaming matches. It’s some of what Ardy heard as I frantically counted cash register bills and he moved away from the counter to be respectful.
I make a decision.
I squeeze Ardy’s fingers, pulling his hand up to my mouth and nibbling along his knuckles. “Let’s go to your house,” I tell him, knowing his mother won’t be there.
He swallows. “Okay.”
Ardy’s house is dark when he unlocks the front door and leads me inside. He immediately turns on an overhead light. “Do you want something to drink? We have sodas.”
“I’m okay.”
“All right. Um…” Ardy looks around like he’s not sure how to orchestrate any of this. “Come on.”
I trail him into the living room, where he flips on a lamp with a pale blue glass base. The room is cute—coral walls, steamer trunk for a coffee table, a large clock shaped like the sun. I bet that during the day it’s cheery and bright and open, but right now it feels small and cozy and warm.
And maybe romantic.
Ardy moves two green throw pillows from one side of the couch to the center. Then he moves them back. He sits where the pillows briefly were and looks up at me. “I don’t know a graceful way to invite you over here.”
“That’s okay.” I remember the other times I thought I was going to have sex, first with Elliot and then with Kai. If I’d really thought them through, how would I have gone about it?
I reach up to my hair, still in a ponytail from work, and slowly pull out the elastic band, shaking my head so my tangled hair tumbles down around my shoulders. I kick off my tennis shoes and wiggle out of my jacket, letting it fall to the floor by my feet. I reach behind to unhook my bra but then think better of it. I might be wearing the tank top in front of him, but unleashing the girls right out in the light like this would be…a lot to look at. I’m already trying to make peace with the idea that, in a minute, he’s going to be front and center for all of it. I drop my arms to my sides and, trying to project confidence and security and readiness, level my gaze at Ardy.
Ardy looks like he’s in a trance, his lips ever so slightly apart, as I walk to the couch and sink down next to him. I reach up to his face and gently remove his glasses, setting them on the steamer trunk. I stay there, waiting, while his eyes rove over my face, darting down to my body for a second and then back up again. “I want you to know…,” he whispers.
“What?” I whisper in return.
He doesn’t finish the sentence, because suddenly his mouth is on mine and the whole world is on fire.
It’s everything I had wanted on Hope’s tree house platform: my hands running up and down the tight muscles of his back. His hands sliding around my rib cage. Easing under the edge of my tank top, tugging me closer, pulling me along as he leans against the couch cushions. Sinking farther down, reclining all the way, taking me with him. We kiss and kiss and kiss—I have no sense of how long it lasts—while our bodies move against each other. Suddenly he lifts his hips, pushing me up and over, moving his body to the outer edge of the couch. Before I can figure out what he’s doing, or maybe ask him with actual words, he’s rolling me onto my back, rolling on top of me. He takes his lips away from my own and nuzzles his nose against mine. “Is this okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whisper, and then I gasp because his mouth is on the side of my neck, and the sound comes out before I know I’m going to make it. It’s an automatic response to Ardy’s touch, all my nerves tingling at the feel of him. His whole body is lean and hard, pulsing against mine, and now one of his hands is sliding back down my ribs, over my hips, plucking at the bottom edge of my skirt, dragging it upward….
And I freeze.
I panic.
Because—and this is awful because I already said yes—I don’t want to do it.
Although my body is responding to every movement Ardy makes, another part of me is not. I can’t tell if it’s my heart or my brain or my soul, but I know that some part of me is not ready. Not yet. Not this soon.
Yet here we are, alone in Ardy’s house, halfway to Naked Town.
A zillion excuses run through my head: my period, a foot cramp, a science project I remembered I have to do….
But this isn’t Kai. This isn’t Elliot. This isn’t a dozen other boys I have kissed and quit. This is Ardy, and he deserves the truth. So when he realizes I’ve stopped moving and he asks if I’m all right, I tell the truth.
“I don’t know.”
And because he’s Ardy, he rolls off me, landing on his side between my body and the back of the couch. He props his head up on his right hand, leaving his left on my abdomen, and takes a deep breath. “We can stop.”
I move his hand to my shoulder and then slide my own to his face. “Are you sure?”
“God, yes. I mean, I might need a minute.” Ardy drops his head to plant a firm kiss on my mouth before pulling away again. “I’m not ready to be seen in public at this exact moment, so let’s not run right outside….”
It makes me laugh, and then I stop laughing, because his eyes are so gentle and his pupils are so huge and his mouth is so beautiful. I stroke the side of his face with my thumb, a giant I love you bubbling up inside me. Which I don’t say—obviously—because it’s way, way too soon.
But if that’s the case, why did I think it wasn’t too soon for sex?
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“No.” Ardy’s eyes go superserious, and he touches my lips with a finger. “You don’t apologize for this, ever. You’re ready when you’re ready. Besides”—he gives me a giant grin—“I was just about to stop anyway.”
“Shut up.” I whap him on the chest. “You were not.”
“I totally was.” He’s still grinning. “You beat me to it, that’s all.”
I grab the front of his shirt and yank him down so I can kiss him, hard. It lasts a full minute, and when we finally stop, both of us breaking apart at the same moment, Ardy slides his arms all the way around me, pulling me onto my side so we can lie there, pressed against each other. I run my hand into his hair, teasing it between my fingers, while I work up the nerve to ask my question. “Have you done it before?”
Ardy becomes very, very still, and finally he answers in a whisper. “Yes.”
It’s not that my heart sinks, exactly. It’s more like a hot molten fire of jealousy volcanoes all over it. Which is not at all fair, and I recognize that, but I can’t help wondering who it was: Krista? Elle? Trissa? Someone else?
“Have you done it a lot?” I ask him. What I don’t ask is this: If and when we do actually do it, am I going to be the only amateur in the room?
“No.” He buries his face in my neck like he’s embarrassed. “Only twice. And it was a little blurry both times.”
I feel much, much b
etter. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.
Ardy doesn’t ask me the question, but since I know he has to be wondering, I go ahead and answer. “It was blurry the one time I did it, too.”
He pulls his face out of my neck, raising his head to look at me. “Let’s not be blurry,” he says. “I mean, if we ever do it. I don’t want to be even a little bit blurry with you.”
“Me either,” I assure him. And then we kiss some more.
Later, after he’s driven me home to arrive in my driveway five minutes before midnight, Ardy turns to me and says, “This might sound weird, but this was a perfect night.”
“For me, too.”
I see all the important people in my life before the bell rings on Monday. Ardy swings into step beside me as I’m walking through the front doors. He slings an arm around my shoulders and pulls me to the side, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I wanted to check in.” He looks down at me, his eyes sincere. “Are we good?”
“Yes.” I beam at him, trying to channel Hope’s exuberance into my smile. “Really good. But I have questions for you.”
“Questions?”
“Yes, all kinds of them.”
“What questions?”
“Things like What’s your favorite color? and Do you have any allergies?” I tell him.
“Gray and no,” Ardy says. “Also, you’re weird.”
“You’re weird,” I tell him. “Because gray isn’t even a color. It’s more of a shade. And anyway, those aren’t really the questions, but I’m going to come up with some. You should, too.”
“Getting-to-know-you questions?”
“You’re catching on. I want to know everything about you.”
“I like it,” Ardy says. “No secrets.”
Except one.
I rise to my tiptoes for a fast kiss. “See you at lunch.”
I leave him there and run to catch up with Cooper and Katie, who are walking past. “Look at you two hanging out together.” I smile at them. “It’s like you’re friends or something.”
But as we turn the corner, Cooper gives me a dirty look. “Yeah, and it’s like you’re consorting with the enemy.”
“Now Ardy’s the enemy? Seriously?”
“We don’t know,” Katie says. “He might be.”
“Whatever.” I train my eyes on Katie. “You’re mad because I wouldn’t go to your party with you.” I look at Cooper. “And you’re mad because I busted you in a love nest with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.”
“Ooh, let’s hear about that!” Katie exclaims.
“It wasn’t a love nest—it was yogurt,” Cooper says. “And we had a chaperone.”
“His sister? She’s five!”
“Six!”
“You went on a babysitting date?” Katie asks. “You’re actually the worst.”
“Who cares, she’s a kid,” I argue. “Why are you hanging out with Ian, anyway? As long as I’m with Ardy, you’re supposed to be keeping it casual.”
“She’s not wrong,” Katie says.
“Why do you care?” Cooper says to her. “Yogurt is the most casual of the afternoon treats. And Lark’s the one who shouldn’t be with Ardy. Not if he’s the degenerate that Ian says he is.”
“It’s already been established that Ian knows nothing.” If I were someone who needed to worry about blood pressure, this is right about the time I’d be pulling out a cuff to check it, because this conversation is achieving the double whammy of pissing me off and stressing me out. “I’ve talked to two out of three purportedly wronged ex-girlfriends, and everything’s turned out to be a bullshit rumor.”
“Rumors have to start somewhere,” Cooper says.
“Not bullshit ones,” I say in return. “Those start in Ian’s small, pathetic, boring little mind.” Katie looks surprised, and hurt flashes over Cooper’s face, but I ignore them, pulling out my phone. “Look, here’s Girl Three.” I find one of Trissa Jefferson’s social media pages, which, yes, I’ve looked at a time or two. “If it’ll get you off my ass, I will send her a message right damn now.” Cooper doesn’t say anything, so I start thumb-typing:
Hi. You don’t know me but I heard you used to date Ardy Tate.
I go with honesty.
We just got together and I’ve heard some things about him. Girl to girl, can you confirm or deny? I’d really appreciate it.
I hit Send and turn to them. “Happy?”
“No.” Cooper glares at me. “Not really.”
Katie and I watch him stomp off down the hall. “You could just let him be happy,” she says.
“You’re one to talk,” I say, before heading in the opposite direction.
What the hell?
* * *
It’s been a couple of weeks and I still haven’t heard from Trissa, not that I’ve spent any more time trying to track her down. I’m too busy holding hands with Ardy and kissing Ardy and floating on air around Ardy. At least that’s what I’m doing when I’m not hunched over my calculus textbook. That class is destroying my will to live. Today, however, it’s more interesting. We’re starting a chapter on fractals. If I’m understanding it correctly, a fractal—broken down to its most basic definition—is a geometric figure in which every part of it has the same characteristics as the whole. So the patterns of the tiniest part of it repeat themselves both inward and outward. In other words, as the figure increases in size, the pattern is ever expanding.
As Ms. Perkins explains this, my gaze jerks down to where my left thumb and finger are gently tapping on the edge of my desk. I know everyone else is zoned out, but I sit up straighter, paying attention as Ms. Perkins elaborates: wherever a fractal starts, it always multiplies out in versions of itself. No matter where it goes, it always started in one place.
My heart speeds up, like it understands a second before my brain registers what I’m hearing, because now Ms. Perkins is talking about the history of fractals: when they were first discovered and what mathematicians learned about them. She says that not only the cells in our bodies but also the stars in the universe are based on fractal patterns. That all of life as we know it is one giant expanding pattern.
The rhythm of my heart increases to a roar, surging up my chest, through my throat, and into my ears, blocking out all other sound. Is my ever-expanding, ever-the-same pattern the key to the patterns of life? It’s like it’s all connected: the way I do the same things over and over with boys. How I make the same moves, the same mistakes. The way my fingers twitch over and over against my desk. I’m overcome by the terror of it, the responsibility….
And then Ms. Perkins’s voice breaks through my whirling thoughts. “That would be cool, right?” She shakes her head. “Except then we learned that, no, cells and the universe are not set up in fractals. It’s not as simple as finding that one system that unlocks everything we know.”
I slump back in my chair, relieved…and also mortified that—though I’m the only one who knows it—for one crazy, brain-whirling second, I kinda thought that maybe I was the keeper of the universe.
Who needs drugs when you have my brain?
* * *
By now Ardy knows how to find me after school. He’s waiting at the flagpoles when I walk out. Leo is also there, and he does not enjoy the kiss I give Ardy when I arrive. “Dude,” Leo says, pained, then holds out a hand for my car keys. I give them to him, and he trudges off.
Ardy sets his back against the REACH flagpole, pulling me in and moving his legs apart so I can stand between them. “Did you do fractals today?” he asks.
“It’s hot when you talk math.” I give him a kiss that’s even better than the one I gave in front of Leo.
“Good to know. I’ll work on upping my conversational calculus game.”
We kiss for a moment, and then I tilt my head back and look at him. “What about fractal
s?”
“All that stuff about expanding patterns. For a minute, I was like Oh shit, my girlfriend is the queen of the universe!” He smiles down at me, and my heart contracts. “And then I pretty much immediately realized that I was a huge weirdo for thinking it, which now behooves me to ask…did that happen to cross your mind at all?” He watches me, waiting. “What?”
Because I’m grinning a huge, ridiculous, could-not-be-stopped-even-if-I-tried grin. “It might have,” I tell him. “Which makes me a huge weirdo, too.”
It also makes me someone who has—against all odds—let a boy in. Let him get to know me. To understand me. To see some of my misfit pieces that might not be considered beautiful and appealing by all.
It makes me feel human.
It makes me feel warm.
It makes me terrified that I’m getting in way deeper than I ever dreamed I would have.
But in this immediate moment, outside the school, by the flagpoles, all it does is make me put my hands on Ardy’s shoulders and move in for another kiss.
The first text I get is from Leo:
OMG WOULD YOU COME ON.
I ignore it so I can spend a few more minutes with my fingers entangled in Ardy’s thick, dark hair.
The second text is also from Leo:
Imma call Mom to come get me.
That’s the one that finally convinces me to leave Ardy and head toward my car.
But the third text is the one that stops me in my tracks, that turns everything upside down. It’s from Trissa Jefferson, and it’s only seven words long:
I need to tell you about Ardy.
Trissa meets me on one of the concrete benches outside Providence St. Joseph’s front entrance. She’s carrying a giant gold-painted dreidel. “I only have a few minutes,” she says. “Everyone had a baby today. There are six balloon bouquets waiting in the lobby.” She gestures to the dreidel. “Plus, the Hanukkah gifts are starting to arrive.”
