by K L Wood
3. The only person who’s ever come close to seeing me for who I really am? Tabitha, my frigging little sister’s best friend. I was eighteen, and she was fifteen. Completely off-limits. Jailbait. Not to mention I’d known the kid since she was seven. I knew she had a little crush by the way she used to stare at me. I figured it was some pubescent stage when your hormones are completely out of whack, and I just happened to be the guy she saw the most. But what she wrote in her diary…it floored me. What fifteen-year-old thinks like that? And how did she see all that when my own girlfriend at the time didn’t have a clue? I wanted to ask her that day. I wanted to know what else she saw, but I avoided her like the plague. The age difference. The fact that I call her parents “aunt and uncle”—our parents aren’t actually related, but still, the whole thing had “creepy” written all over it. I had to be the adult and draw the line, so I did.
After today, she’ll officially become an adult. Eighteen. A senior in high school, and from what I hear, she’s already preparing for college. If we still talked, I’d tell her to stay away from frat parties and crack a book instead. To do all that corny RA stuff they have planned, like dorm movie nights and ice cream socials. And, if she drinks, to make sure she trusts the people she’s with and to have each other’s backs. Don’t do shots or skip classes. To read for pleasure, not just for school. And if she dates, to find herself a guy who knows what the hell he wants out of life and hasn’t changed his major three times, like me.
3
Officially an Adult
One Month Later
Tabitha
I pressed my lips tighter together, but Derek’s tongue poked inside my mouth, tasting like a mix of peppermint and the roast beef sandwich he had for lunch. I counted the seconds as my tongue swirled around his.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four…
On seven, we finally pulled apart, and I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. His lips shined from my gloss. I’d hoped my new choice in lipstick would deter him, but no go.
“Text me later, babe.” Derek side-smiled and grabbed my ass before whipping his head toward Paige and her boyfriend, Bryant. “Hey, you guys about done? We have practice.”
Bryant and Paige were in another dimension as far as relationships went. Their kisses weren’t messy or awkward. They looked exactly like a kissing couple should—endlessly connected and shielded from the rest of the world, completely and utterly in love. I wanted to experience a kiss like that so badly.
Paige thought about trying to get me to hook up with his twin brother, Luke, but he and Bryant were complete opposites and barely acted like brothers, let alone friends.
Plus the fact that they were identical would’ve been weird.
Derek let out an exaggerated sigh before Bryant and Paige finally broke apart.
Bryant cupped her cheek and smiled as he looked deep into her eyes. “Love you, baby.”
Paige smiled, not taking her eyes from his. “I love you, too.” She smacked his ass. “Get a touchdown pass for me.”
“For you, I’ll get three.”
She giggled, and Derek rolled his eyes as he tugged on Bryant’s jersey from behind. “Come on, Romeo, before Coach has a conniption. I’m not running extra drills for being late on account of your ass.”
I shoved icy mint gum into my mouth to get rid of Derek’s aftertaste, secretly wishing Bryant would teach his best friend how to kiss. I could break up with Derek, but I really did like him…kind of. Well, I didn’t not like him.
It made sense that we’d end up together. We were the third and fourth wheel when we went out with Paige and Bryant, so naturally, we had to keep each other entertained when the class couple got caught up and forgot we were there. Derek and I both liked movies and music—not the same kinds, but it was a start. He didn’t like reading, and I didn’t like video games, but it was okay since I read while he played. It worked. We worked.
“Ready to pick up our dresses?” Paige asked.
The blood drained from my face. Prom. The flyers and banners in our hallways served as a constant reminder, but somehow, the dresses made prom night even more real. The other thing that had me biting my nails more than usual was the promise I’d made to Derek.
In less than one week, I would be a virgin no longer.
He wanted to do it earlier, but I told him it was my dream to lose my virginity on my prom night, complete with rose petals spread over the bed. The part I left out? That I wanted Reed to be my first. That obviously wasn’t going to happen. Reed had barely looked my way once while home for semester breaks. In his eyes, I barely existed at all.
Paige stood in front of the mirror in a gold chiffon maxi dress. She twisted up her long, caramel-colored hair with one hand to show what it would look like done up. “What do you think?”
With her tanned skin and dark blue eyes—just like Reed’s—she was breathtaking. People always mistook her for a college girl. She had the air of a woman about her, while I still looked like a high school girl. I had curves, and my boobs had grown in, but my big brown eyes had innocent written all over them. Or maybe it was the fact that I was innocent and inexperienced, at least sexually. Well, maybe innocent was the wrong word. I had given a hand job once, but I had no idea what the hell I was doing, so Derek guided me with his own hand. I felt like I was sitting shotgun, and he had no intention of letting me take over the wheel. It was weird, to say the least, but I did learn something surprising: guys had hair down there, and a lot of it. In the few porn videos I’d seen before, guys had no hair at all around their manly parts.
“You look beautiful. That’s the perfect dress for you,” I said.
Her smile broadened as she checked out the back of her dress in the mirror. “Aren’t you gonna try on yours to make sure it fits?”
I didn’t bother to look at my dress hanging on her closet door. “Maybe later.”
She scrunched her nose. “You don’t seem all that excited about prom.”
“I’m more nervous than excited.”
“You don’t have to have sex with Derek, you know. It’s not, like, a rule or something.”
I thumbed through Instagram. “Derek and I have been dating for three months. There’s a rule, unspoken, but it still exists. Plus, I already told him I would.”
She unzipped the low-cut back. “Do you want to have sex with Derek?”
I chewed my bottom lip, trying to forget the feeling of his tongue jabbing into my mouth. “I do want to have sex, yes.” I left out the “with Derek” part. Statistics had shown that girls rarely ended up with the guy they lost their virginity to. Derek was there and available. It made sense for it to be him.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to have sex. I asked if you wanted to have sex with Derek.”
Totally ignoring her question, I tossed my phone across the bed and hopped up. “I’m gonna grab a ginger ale. You want anything?”
She chuckled, shaking her head. “I’m good.”
I headed down the hallway and slowed as I approached Reed’s old bedroom door. He still came back here for summer and holiday vacations, but he usually went away for spring break, which was this week. In five months, he would be a senior at Bentley University, and I would be off to UMass Dartmouth.
Tracing my fingers over the door handle, I pictured his tattered poster of The Killers’ Hot Fuss album hanging on the wall by his desk. Reed’s taste in music was generally more obscure, but The Killers were one of the few bands he loved that made it mainstream. They’d been his first concert when he was sixteen. I was thirteen and jealous I couldn’t go, too. Not that he’d have wanted me tagging along, but I did beg my parents to take me. Instead, I’d stayed in my room and downloaded any live songs by The Killers I could find onto a playlist I titled “My Imaginary First Concert.” I’d lain down on my bed and dreamed I was there with him. My stomach still fluttered at the fantasy of him lifting me onto his shoulders so I could see better, my fingers gripping his black hair.
It had been a while since I’d been in his room, and the urge to go in there overwhelmed me. I missed him. I missed hearing his music blaring through the door as if earbuds were never invented. I missed his smell, like sweat and grass and something spicier and a little sweet. I turned the handle and let the door fall open. His room was messy but neat at the same time. Reed was never the type to leave clothes on the floor or dirty dishes in the sink or take-out containers lying around. His kind of mess involved paperbacks and notebooks. He used to go to thrift stores to pick up old books. He had some on his Kindle and iPad, but he said there’s nothing like being physically present to search for a new book, holding it in your hand, reading the back covers.
I had a little collection of my own, too.
Reed’s closet door was decorated with odd trinkets and stuff I imagined meant something to him. Patches, concert tickets, movie tickets, pins. There was even a blue paperclip, but I had no idea what it meant or why it was important. He would never tell me.
But my absolute favorite thing was his infamous “Wall of Quotes.” Reed had some posters up like most kids, but he had a whole wall dedicated to book quotes. Whenever he came across a good line in a novel he loved, he used to write it down on a sticky note and tape it to the wall. I noticed a few that had fallen to the floor, so I picked them up. He never wrote the full book title, just its initials. I grabbed tape from his squeaky desk drawer and stuck the first sticky back on the wall while reading it aloud:
“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.” - HPOP
I smiled, knowing exactly what the initials stood for: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The next one I knew right away. It was from Anna Karenina and was one of my own favorite literary quotes:
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” - AK
The last one I had trouble with. I had no idea what book title the D stood for. This quote should have seemed romantic, but somehow, it made me feel a little sad, as if Reed felt that he was the darkness and someone else was a light.
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” - D
“Is there a reason you’re in my room?”
The voice was familiar but even deeper than I remembered, and I spun around to find Reed standing in the doorway, a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. The sleeves of his black T-shirt clung to his biceps as he hoisted the bag onto his bed. His thick black eyebrows rose above those cool blue eyes, awaiting my answer.
My first thought was about how glad I was that he didn’t tan like Paige. I loved his pale color against his black hair. It made him look like a vampire, cold to the touch. My second thought was about how to deal with the humiliation of getting caught…although it wasn’t the first time.
My cheeks flushed with heat. “Sorry. Some of your quotes fell, and I rehung them.”
He crossed his arms against that beautiful chest of his. “What? You had a premonition that they fell off the wall?”
His mouth was perfect. Full, kissable lips. I imagined he didn’t taste like roast beef sandwiches or strangled a girl’s tongue with his own.
“Something like that,” I finally choked out. “What are you doing back, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be getting boozed up with frat guys while girls do their walk of shame in the morning?”
“Not my scene.” Reed’s eyes traced over me, and he frowned before turning away and unzipped his bag. “You can go now.”
A frown and a get-out-of-my-room welcome. Nothing had changed. He still saw me as a little high school girl—or, worse, an annoying, fake little sister he’d like to get rid of.
I held my head up high, refusing to let him make me feel small. “‘A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.’” I brushed past him and looked his way over my shoulder. “That’s Oscar Wilde, by the way. You should hang it up on your Wall of Quotes.”
He smirked. “‘True friends stab you in the front.’” His eyes cut through my own. “Another one by your man, Mr. Wilde.”
“Then I guess that makes us besties,” I added with a touch of venom and slammed the door behind me.
Reed
Dinner was unbearable with Tabitha there. All that talk about prom and hotel rooms. My jaw clenched so tight, I was surprised I could open it far enough to get a few bites in. All I could think about was what she wrote over three years ago, how she wanted me to be her first on prom night. Complete with stupid rose petals. She really did read too many romance books.
I knew I shouldn’t have read her diary, but after that entry that I teased her with, after I realized it was about me, I couldn’t help but want to know more about her and how her mind worked. It’s not like she didn’t sneak into my room to steal glimpses of new quotes I taped on my wall or to peek into my notebooks. My room was my private space, and she entered it freely, as if she belonged there. I pretended like I minded, but the truth was I liked it. I liked that she was into a part of me that my friends—and girlfriends—never cared to know or ask me about.
Today was no exception. I loved seeing her in my room, taping fallen quotes back onto the wall. It warmed me. When I saw which ones they were, it was even more perfect. She really was the sun I couldn’t look at but wanted to.
And for fuck’s sake, she had grown, which made it worse. It was easier when she was younger—awkward and festering with hormones. I could shut the door. Tell her to leave. Even roll my eyes. But now, Tabitha was a young woman, getting more and more comfortable in her own skin. I’d heard she had a boyfriend, and I already hated him. I knew she hadn’t had sex with him yet, and somehow that relieved me. It wasn’t those big brown eyes that could get away with frigging murder. It’s that look girls got after they made love. Like they’d crossed some rite of passage and could now truly become a woman. It’s all bullshit and in the mind, but it’s a look and aura I noticed, and I was never wrong.
Tabitha was still a virgin. A part of me wanted her to stay that way.
“Tomorrow, we’re going over to Uncle Derek’s and Auntie Sam’s house for dinner,” my mom said in my direction. “They’d love for you to be there.”
Derek. Wasn’t that the name of Tabitha’s boyfriend? A little warped, if you asked me.
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” Tabitha picked up her glass of ginger ale daintily, like it was wine. “We wouldn’t want to interrupt one of your back-home booty calls.”
My sister snorted out a laugh, and my mom only glared at her while hiding her own smirk. Jesus, they were terrible parents. No, they were great parents, just bad at discipline. I could brush it off by saying that they couldn’t control Tabitha since she wasn’t their daughter, but there’s no way Tabitha would talk like that in front of them if it was frowned upon. Both our sets of parents were more on the unconventional side, having always treated us more like adults than kids. Even to the point of letting us decide our own punishments, which should be every kid’s wet dream. But it wasn’t when you had an actual damn conscience.
I’d punished myself far worse than my parents would have done in the past, which worried them for a time. What they didn’t know was that whenever I’d grounded myself, it was really just an excuse to leave my so-called friends for a time to read and be me.
“If any last-minute plans come up, I’ll cancel,” I said before downing half my wine. Something Tabitha wasn’t served at the table. Our parents may have been open-minded, but teenage drinking was a big fat no in our houses. Since I was five months away from twenty-one, they let the wine slide.
Tabitha ripped into her steak like she was cutting through my flesh. “You should save my mother the trouble of cooking extra if you think you’ll have better plans.”
“I’ll be there,”
I finally said.
She responded by chewing her meat and giving a slight shrug. She didn’t believe me. I wasn’t sure why. I’d never lied to her before.
“Will your boyfriend be there?” I asked.
Her eyes lit up, and I realized I’d just planted the damn idea in her brain.
“Oh, you want to meet him?” She gave a mischievous grin. “I’m sure I can arrange that.”
My mother shook her head and changed the subject. “So, how are your classes coming along?”
Internally, I shuddered. “I like my writing class. The professor’s good.” As for the rest, it could go fuck itself.
“What’s your plan?” my dad asked. “Graduation is next year.”
This was where I felt envious of my little sister and Tabitha. The questions they got were about which school or what major instead of real-life questions like what they were going to do with their lives. The truth was I had some semblance of a clue. I just didn’t know how to package it with a pretty bow. What I really wanted wasn’t feasible, like being a banker or a lawyer. There was a straight and narrow path to those careers. Mine entailed maybes and what-ifs.
“I want to be a travel writer.” I took a bite of my steak, waiting for the objections to roll in.
“A what?” My dad squinted his eyes in confusion, as if he’d never heard of the title.
“Travel the world,” I said with a touch of sarcasm. “And write about it.”
I looked around the table, and the only one smiling was Tabitha. “That’s incredible, Reed.” And she meant it. “If you do it, promise me you’ll see the moonbow.”
