And It Was Good (Jessica Christ Book 2)

by H. Claire Taylor

  It was a mistake. Please leave. I’m not playing. If you love me, you will leave me alone to make out with Chris.

  FINE. HE LIKES HIS HEAD SCRATCHED, SO RUN YOUR FINGERS THROUGH HIS HAIR A LITTLE BIT.

  Uh.

  HIS MOM SCRATCHED HIS HEAD BEFORE BED EACH NIGHT, SO THAT’S WHY—

  No. Just no.

  Chris opened his mouth and began to speak. “Jess, I—”

  “Stop! Everyone just stop talking.”

  “Huh?”

  She raised up onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his, and he quickly took the lead, pulling her into his body and kissing her back passionately. The hand on her jaw moved around to the nape of her neck to brace her against the pressure of his lips. While the moves were similar to the ones he’d taught her in Coach Rex’s office, the similarities ended there. Whatever spark she’d felt before was nothing compared to what she felt now.

  Her whole body tingled, and once God remained quiet for long enough and she was convinced He wouldn’t interrupt again, Jessica relaxed against Chris’s body and began to truly enjoy herself.

  She felt a magnetic pull to him, and it just felt right. His arms held her close and she decided screw it and wove her fingers through his hair, scratching his head lightly as she did so. To her chagrin, God’s tip worked, and Chris moaned then grabbed her and picked her up, carried her around to the back of the truck, breaking the kiss just long enough to undo the tailgate and set her down in the bed.

  Did all boys like to make out in truck beds? It really wasn’t the most comfortable place …

  He climbed in after her and wasted no time guiding her down onto her back and positioning himself on his elbows above her. When she looked into his eyes again, he broke out in a goofy grin and laughed. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long, Jess.”

  His head blocked out the morning sun, which created a halo of light around him, Jess couldn’t hold back her own smile. “Me, too,” she lied, because she probably couldn’t say, “Cool. I used to have a crush on you, but then I got over it until about two days ago, when I realized you actually were the right one for me,” and still get to make out with him.

  He lowered his head and their lips clashed again. This was infinitely better than their kiss in Coach Rex’s room, which seemed ages ago now. It was also better than her kisses with Greg. Those felt weighty, but these, while intense, felt lighter.

  What didn’t feel light was the thing threatening to pop the buttons of Chris’s jeans as he pressed his body down against her.

  Oh dear God.

  YES?

  No! Figure of speech! Leave!

  So there was a reason Chris never let it all hang out in the locker room. Holy crap.

  Inevitably, he would want to do sex to her with that thing, too. Would that literally kill her? Did she even want to have sex with him? Making out was great, but sex was another beast entirely. Anxiety fizzed in her brain and suddenly making out wasn’t as fun anymore, which was fine, she supposed, because she could feel God’s airy presence appear full force inside her skull.

  YOUR MOTHER. YOU NEED TO GO CHECK ON HER.

  Now?

  ARE YOU QUESTIONING ME?

  No. Please, God, don’t make me—

  THOU SHALT GO CHECK ON YOUR MOTHER.

  Dammit! Damn you, God!

  STICKS AND STONES, JESS. STICKS AND STONES. NOW KNOCK IT OFF WITH LOVER BOY AND GO CHECK ON DESTINEE.

  She pulled back from Chris and pushed him gently away from her.

  His concerned look made her wish she could have ignored God’s commandment and kept with the kissing, but she knew God would make something terrible happen to force her hand if she didn’t listen. And, if she was totally honest, making out had ceased to be as fun once Chris’s alarmingly large crotch budge entered the picture. “My mom. I should go check on her. I don’t know if she’s seen the news and—”

  “Ah, right.” He rolled off her and sat up. “Sorry. I should have thought about that.”

  She sat up, too. “It’s okay. I didn’t think of it right away, either.”

  He gazed vaguely out at the pasture across the road from the truck, and she could almost see the doubt that was forming in his mind.

  “Hey,” she said, placing her hand on his check and slowly turned his head toward her. “I’m not just making an excuse to end this. I—I wanted this to happen, just maybe without it having to take racists calling me the Antichrist, threatening to picket our games and the entire region thinking my mom is a raging slut.”

  “She never should’ve approached Eugene after the game.”

  Jess nodded. “I agree.” And then she leaned forward and kissed him again. “She doesn’t go into work until after lunch today, so we can probably catch her and warn her if we leave soon.”

  “Okay.” His energy seemed to return to him now that he had a clear mission. “Let’s get going.”

  As they pulled out onto the farm to market road, he chuckled. “You know, what kills me is how Eugene was able to get one five-second shot of your mom talking to Coach Rex and spin it into a scandal … that people actually believed.”

  “People will believe whatever suits them, clearly. But my mom hasn’t even gone on a date since she had me. At least not that I know of. And I think I would know, because she doesn’t exactly hold back about that sort of thing.” Her mind involuntarily conjured an image of Destinee and God in the backseat of a car, making a miracle happen.

  A shiver ran through her body. “Ulck.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  As they pulled onto Jess’s street, she saw a black Dodge Ram parked on the curb outside her house. She recognized it, but couldn’t pinpoint whose it was.

  “Shit,” said Chris, slowing his truck to a crawl.

  “What? Whose is that?”

  “He must’ve heard we skipped school.”

  “Who must have?”

  “Coach Rex. Fuck! We’re in deep shit. Like, for real. He doesn’t tolerate skipping school.”

  “Then why did you pull me out!? Oh crap. He’s going to think we were—”

  “Making out?” Chris looked at her and grinned morosely.

  “I was going to say having sex, but sure.”

  “Should I keep driving?”

  Jess was tempted to say yes, but she remembered that God had commanded she check on her mom. Did driving by the house count? Probably not. She needed to give Destinee a heads up. “No. Maybe Coach is just waiting for us to show up to make sure we’re okay. Surely this is a special situation, right? He should understand why we skipped.”

  “Maybe,” Chris said uncertainly as he pulled into the driveway behind Destinee’s Nissan and put the F350 into park. “You want me to come inside with you?”

  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Please? Less chance he would suspend both the kicker and the starting quarterback.”

  Jess unlocked the front door and peeked her head inside, expecting to see Coach Rex and Destinee sitting on the couch, hands folded in their laps, waiting patiently with stern faces for Jess to show up. She wasn’t sure why she expected this, especially from her mother, but she did.

  But no one was on the couch. So she stepped inside and Chris followed, shutting the door behind him. Probably Destinee had made Coach some coffee while they waited for Jessica to show up, meaning they were in the kitchen. Jess walked around the corner and into the kitchen, but no Rex and Destinee.

  Then it occurred to her what must have happened. She turned to Chris to run the idea by him. “Do you think they went looking for us?”

  It only took a moment for him to think it over and dispel that idea. “Both their cars are out front, though.”

  “Maybe your mom came by and picked them—” She fell silent when she heard a knocking sound. Except it continued in a steady rhythm. “Do you hear that?”

  Chris had frozen in place, too, his eyes darting around. “Yeah, what is that?” he whispered.

&nb
sp; Guided by her curiosity, Jess followed the sound of the noise out of the kitchen and down the hall. She passed the bathroom and her room, eventually arriving at her mom’s bedroom. The knocking was definitely coming from in there. It sounded like someone hitting the wall with a wooden bat. Or hammering a nail into a stud. Her mind couldn’t make sense of it.

  And now that they were closer, there were new sounds. The delay between when her brain registered that those sounds were voices and when it processed what those voices actually indicated was a longer delay than the time between when Jess pushed open the door and her eyes fell upon the source of the knocking: Destinee’s bedpost hitting the wall over and over again. But that wasn’t the image that would sear its way into Jess’s brain for the rest of her life.

  Chris was the first to react. “Oh dear holy Jesus!”

  His shout caused a chain reaction that included Destinee screaming for them to get lost and Coach Rex jumping up off the bed, buck naked, trying to cover his sensitive bits with the embroidered pillow from Jess’s grandmother that read, As for me and my house, we will serve the lord. -Joshua 24:15.

  WOO! LOOK AT HIM JUMP!

  This is why you sent me here?!

  SOMEONE HAD TO STOP THIS.

  You’re God! Why couldn’t it be you?

  “Shit. Oh shit …” Chris groaned, his face scrunching up like he’d just tasted something bitter. He backed away with his hands up, trying to shield his eyes from the horror that Jess couldn’t look away from.

  “Come on now, Jess! Give us a second,” Destinee hollered, sitting up shamelessly, her breasts on full display.

  “Uck … uck!” Jess finally ripped her eyes away from the grotesque scene and turned to follow Chris, who was stumbling out of the McCloud home as quickly as he could, whimpering and gagging the whole way.

  “Don’t leave me!” she hollered after him. “Don’t you dare leave me!”

  The F-350 was already humming loudly when Jess leaped into the passenger’s seat and Chris quickly backed out of the driveway and hauled ass down the street and away from the horror. Neither spoke another word until they were safely parked at the Sonic a mile away, each with a Slush in hand, and even then the only thing that could be said was what spilled from Chris, full of trauma and remorse.

  “I can never unsee that.”

  With the state championship only hours away, Jess knew that she should save her energy for the game. More importantly, Chris should save his.

  But who was she to tell him how to live his life?

  They’d been out of class, enjoying the small indulgence of a hardcore makeout sesh long enough for her back to have warmed up the cold metal of the lockers that she leaned against. How much longer could they risk before teachers would become suspicious about their frequent bathroom breaks?

  What had started as a sweet, secret romance had, over the course of a month, blossomed into a hungry, secret romance. But whether because Chris was afraid to ask the daughter of God to have sex with him or for some other unfathomable reason, they hadn’t yet moved past simply making out. Jess knew better than to expect that to last long, though. It was unfortunate, because making out with Chris still left her just as tingly and lightheaded as it had the first dozen or so times they’d snuck off during class to get at it.

  “Someone’s going to wonder where we are if we don’t go soon,” she said, searching the hallway for signs of any movement that might indicate peeping eyes. Their new relationship was a story worthy of Eugene Thornton, had he not already broke it long before it actually existed. Jess tried not to think about that, though. It almost gave that stupid reporter more credit than he deserved. His had just been a lucky guess, anyway.

  “Let them wonder,” he countered as he continued pinning her against the end of the lockers so that she could feel his huge man bulge pressing against her hip. While she understood that she should probably feel grateful for the size of Chris’s asset, it instead still left her anxious and at times terrified when it burst forth from the recesses of her subconscious. So it was like everything else in her life.

  She pushed him away, and it didn’t take much effort. She suspected that Chris harbored a certain level of trepidation every time he made out with her, fearing that she might accidentally smite him, so that whenever she gave him the slightest physical indication that it was time to stop, he jumped off in a hurry.

  “You don’t mean that,” she said. “You know it would become a ‘thing’ if people found out about us. I don’t know how, but it would. And it wouldn’t be great for the team.”

  “But you’re still fake dating Quentin, and nobody on the team cares.”

  Jessica pursed her lips. “Uh, really? You’re serious? Nobody cares because everyone knows it’s fake.”

  “Then why don’t you just break up with him already?”

  “Because”—she nodded, hoping that the meaningful look said it all so she didn’t have to. But he stared at her confrontationally, challenging her to go on. She sighed. “I need people to know God doesn’t disapprove.”

  “So what,” Chris said impatiently, “are you going to fake marry him to make a point?”

  “Come on. Of course not. I’ll have to real marry him.”

  Chris’s jaw dropped open before he realized she wasn’t serious and snapped it shut. “I’m just saying.”

  “I’m just saying we need to get back to class. Coach isn’t going to be happy if he finds out we were skipping class when we’re already getting out of school early for the game.”

  He whimpered as masculinely as was possible and took a resigned step back from her. “Not like Coach Rex can really call us out after … well, you know.”

  “Stop. I can almost shut my eyes at night without seeing that projected onto my eyelids. I don’t need to be reminded.”

  She walked past him and turned back over her shoulder to add, “You need to get your head in the game, anyway. Hillcrest isn’t going to beat itself tonight.”

  As she walked back to class, she could feel Chris’s eyes on her, so she swayed her hips just a little more than usual before she turned the corner and walked back down to AP Biology.

  Pausing just outside the door, she ran her fingers through her hair to straighten it and adjusted her shirt, which Chris had clumsily disheveled in his hurry to get his hand up it. Then she opened the door. The first face she saw was Greg’s, but he quickly looked away once he’d processed who’d come in, leaving Jess with a residual pang in her stomach that she would never admit aloud, not even to Miranda.

  She sat at a table with Sarah, a quiet artist type who’d become Jess’s new permanent lab partner since Gary and his busty cat ladies had become too creepy to stomach immediately after lunch. Not only was Sarah a huge step up from Gary, but she could commiserate easily with Jess, since Greg had ditched Sandra and taken up with Sarah’s ex-girlfriend, Jane. At least Jane wasn’t Sandra, but the fact that Jess had never seen Jane not high meant that she and Greg might actually be a good match for each other, and that was somehow worse. Seeing him with Sandra had felt like a knife to the sternum, but seeing him with Jane, who he must genuinely like, left her with a dull ache that filled her entire ribcage each time something Jane said or did made him smile.

  Once Jess found her seat, she nodded at Sarah, who pointed to where they were in the textbook. Her eyes followed along, but her mind was a jumble. The precise reason wasn’t clear, though; it could have been one or all of the confusing situations in her life that left her unable to focus on mitochondria—Chris, the championship, Greg, Quentin or the pathetic state of race relations in general.

  When Ms. Kensington gave them time to work with their partner on a short answer, Sarah slid her phone over toward Jess underneath the table. A group chat was live on the screen, and responses started popping up one after another.

  Jess looked up at Sarah, and the girl frowned sympathetically before pushing the phone at Jess more adamantly. “You have a right to know, I think. I’d want to.”
/>
  A knot formed in Jess’s stomach. This couldn’t be good.

  She took the phone from Sarah, keeping it under the table and away from view, and scrolled up to read the messages from before. Greg, Jane, Emma, Drew, and Sarah were all in it. She stopped when she saw a large chunk of text from Greg.

  Greg says: Such an attention whore. It’s so obvious she’s just with Quentin to prove a point. She’s wanted to bone Chris for months and he can have her pious ass for all I care.

  Emma says: No way. She’s w/quentin 4 that big black D. Prudes r always the real sluts

  Jane says: Lol

  Greg says: You have no idea. All she ever wanted to do was blow me. We hardly ever got to fuck because she was too busy trying to suck me off.

  Drew says: pls ur so full of shit greg

  Sarah says: How come she’s a slut but u aren’t? U were both doing it

  Drew says: Dudes can’t be sluts they just dudes girls job 2 say no

  Greg says: Jess is failing big time at her job. She’s probably taking it from Quentin AND Chris.

  Emma says: I heard Chris has a huge D

  A loud crinkle and pop followed by, “Shit!” pulled her attention away from the phone. She looked toward the source of the noise and saw Greg sitting frozen in shock, water soaking the front of both him and Jane from head to toe. In one hand was his phone, which he’d raised into the air to save it from certain wet death, and still clutched in his other fist was what small shred of a plastic water bottle remained after the rest had exploded.

  As he slowly became unfrozen, his head turned and his eyes found Jessica. She smiled and nodded slowly. Once the chaos passed and he had more time to think about it, there would be no way he’d believe Jess had been the reason why the water bottle popped. But for the moment, in his shocked mental state, he did seem frightened.

  Good. That’s what he deserved, even if the smiting was entirely unintentional.

  She handed the phone back to Sarah, who mouthed “Sorry,” and Jess could tell she meant it. Jess was sorry, too. Her stomach roiled and she wondered if she would throw up.