Arranged (10 page)

“I’ll see you around. Keep the change.”

When he’s gone, Kory pats me on the shoulder. “I had no idea you were such a heartbreaker, party girl.”

I watch Brendan’s back as he walks down the street. “Me neither.”

~~~

Kory and Jen are a tornado, and the mall’s Victoria’s Secret is Kansas. It never stood a chance. They decimate the sales racks, snapping up the best deals ahead of grabby ladies. They hand me delicate pairs of underwear with ribbons and lace. I feel so out of place, so awkward, but seeing Kory and Jen so excited about picking the right color for my skintone makes me realize how much they care, and I start to relax. They know more than I do about what looks sexy, and having them on my side makes me feel tons better. When we leave, me with two bags stuffed full of underwear and matching bras and accompanying lingerie (garterbelts!), I feel accomplished. We stop for chinese at the food court, Kory shoveling beef broccoli in his mouth and Jen picking at her kung pow chicken. I try, and fail, to eat chicken fried rice with chopsticks.

“So, Rose,” Jen purses her lips. “You and Lee are really serious?”

I almost choke on a pea. “N-No. I mean, yes? I mean, we’ve kissed a few times and the other week at the movie theater I realized –”

I stop. Kory and Jen are staring, waiting eagerly for me to finish the sentence. What did I realize? C’mon Rose, what
exactly
did you realize?

“That I like him. And I want to like him more.”

“And you want to have sex with him,” Kory says airily just as he stabs a beef strip. “Hot, crazy sex, preferably for days on end.”

I blush. “Kory!”

Jen taps my elbow with her chopstick. “Ah ah, no being shy. You can’t be shy, not with a guy like Lee.”

“Of course she can!” Kory looks offended. “A guy like that? Smooth and handsome? He’s probably had a dozen girls. And guys who have everything love when they meet someone who’s had nothing. Someone to teach.”

“Don’t listen to him. It’s all personal preference,” Jen insists. “Lee’s not the kind of guy to get weird about virginity. He’ll be understanding.”

“I don’t want him to be just understanding.” I frown into my soda. “I want to be
good
. He’s done it way more than me. The girls were probably better than I am. I just want it to be good.”

With every word my face gets redder. Kory and Jen muse over this, and Kory finally takes a sip of soda and clears his throat.

“Well, we could either hire you a gigolo for practice –”

“Not happening,” Jen says flatly.

“Or we could give you tips! Everything will happen naturally, I promise. Overthinking it would be the worst. We’ll just give you some outlines, and you keep them in mind and do what feels right.”

“Surprisingly sensible advice,” Jen agrees.

“And I’ll also be giving you my very favorite strawberry-flavored condoms.” Kory reaches into his bag and slides a box of them across the table to me. I blush and frantically shove them in my purse. Jen smacks his shoulder and he laughs.

“Thank you,” I murmur. “I was so nervous and I still am, but with you guys helping me I feel so much better. Like I can do anything - ”

“Like you can do Lee Montenegro, specifically.” Kory winks, and Jen rolls her eyes. He quickly gets a serious, if mischievous look on his face. “First, let’s talk about the dick, because boys are important and I know everything about them.”

~~~

By the end of Kory’s lecture I’m dizzy. And then Jen starts talking about vaginas and I’m downright overwhelmed. But I sort of know how vaginas work. I’ve explored down there enough to know it’s like a cat – pretty, warm, and can be touched the right way to make it purr. Like the true studious nerd I am, I took as many notes from Jen and Kory as possible, and I go over them in my dorm room by the light of a lamp at two in the morning. I
should
be studying for Basic Accounting, but for some reason I can’t get into the numbers. They’re almost…
boring
in comparison.

When did I start hating normal school work? I never used to think it was boring. I liked it, I was good at it, it was easy! But suddenly it’s become the hardest thing in the world to concentrate on and at the worst time – my scholarship is slipping away daily and my pride won’t let me just fall for the will’s money so easily. Sleeping with Lee is fine. Having a relationship (maybe? Could I even be in a relationship? A nice, healthy one? Or would I mess it up?) with Lee is fine. But
marrying
him? I’m barely turning twenty in four months for god’s sake – I’m not even legal to drink. And he’s
twenty-one
. We’re barely old enough to consider ourselves adults, let alone get freaking married. Sure, some people get engaged at our age but it’s a huge thing and they usually do it after being together for a while. Lee and I have only known each other for a few months.

Well, Lee insists it’s been longer than that, but I don’t remember. The only thing I know is I want to touch him, hold him, smooth his hair off his forehead and reach my hands into his jeans, over the tight expanse of his stomach, and –

My face burns and I shake my head so hard my headband flies off. Stop looking at notes about penises and vaginas and study accounting, Rose Jensen. Study like your life depends on it, because right now,
it kind of
freaking
does
. You can’t rely on someone else to help you. Not Mom. Not Dad. Not Lee. Not Grandpa’s money. You got this far, you got to UCLA on your own, you can get through this rough patch on your own, too. That dream, that little bakery, isn’t going to pop out of nowhere. You have to make it, brick by brick, and the first damn brick is this stupid Basic Accounting homework sheet.

Selena grunts and rolls over in her sleep. I shoot her a tired glare. I still haven’t forgiven her for her almost-night with Lee, but a tiny part of me whispers that she didn’t know I liked him. And she didn’t. So she isn’t really to blame. But for some reason the thought of her touching Lee,
any
of his old girls touching him, makes me incredibly growly and glarey, but I tamp it down as best I can. I don’t want to be
that
girl, jealous and creepy and weird.

That night, I can’t get Lee out of my head. My dream-self runs my fingers through his hair, and as he leans in to kiss me with his soft, broad lips. I tug a little at his scalp, pulling his head back and kissing him. When I let my hands drop he returns the favor, lacing his fingers in my hair and tugging, exposing my throat to the air. He licks a long, steady line up my tender flesh and kisses beneath my jaw just as he wraps his hand around my waist. His other hand drops from my hair and reaches down to part my naked thighs wider, and he laughs about something, low and in my ear, before he slides –

My phone’s morning alarm goes off. Selena groans, and I swear vibrantly and jam my hand on the button. When I take my underwear off to change them, they’re so damp I think I’ve peed them until I smell it – musky and wet and entirely Lee’s fault. I’m going to smack him. After I do him. Or maybe during.

Decisions, decisions.

Chapter Six

In Which Lee Montenegro Finally Says No To A Girl

The first time Grace texts, it confuses the hell out of me.

“What did you do to him.”

It’s not a question – no question mark. She obviously means Lee. I text her –
“What do you mean?”.
She doesn’t get back to me until the next morning.

“He’s done a complete 180 – he’s cleaned the whole apartment three times, he’s looking up bakeries in France, and he told his usual bootycall girls to piss off. What the hell did you do? It must’ve been
you.”

Something twists around in my heart. His bootycalls? He told them to leave. For me – because of me? Guys aren’t like that, at least playboy types like Lee aren’t. They want to get laid whenever they can – I’ve been in college long enough to learn that.

“I
just
told him I liked him,”
I text back. After hours of studying with no reply from her I realize she’s probably upset – me, her sort-of buddy, sort-of dating her brother without telling her. I’d be mad.

“I’m sorry.”
I text.
“I should’ve told you about this sooner.”

“No, it’s okay,”
She replies almost instantly.
“It’s your guys’ relationship, not mine. Besides, I always hoped it’d happen. He’s liked you forever, you know. In middle and high school he told me he’d have dreams of you sometimes. He’s a sappy dork like that.”

The twisting in my heart becomes a sweet pain, burning like candy acid.

“Why does he like me?”
I text back.
“I can’t remember anything about him. Was it something to do with us as kids?”

“Go to your Grandpa’s house. The creek in the back of the property might jog your memory.
Lee never told me what happened, but he talked about the creek a lot. Whatever happened might’ve been there.”

The creek. Riley and I and the other kids used to play in it when the summer got too hot to bear. Did something happen there? In my sunflower dreams, before they were taken over by the sex dreams, I remember hearing the rush of water. Something must’ve happened there. Something that made me lose my memory and convinced Lee he liked me. But what?

“I will. Thanks Grace.”

“No problem. Oh, and you might want to check page 167 of this month’s issue of Seventeen. <3”

She signs it with a heart, and that makes me dread it more. No. It can’t be –

“Selena!” I shake my roommate awake. “Selena, do you have this month’s issue of Seventeen?”

“Blurghf – what?” Selena sits up and rubs her eyes. “Where’s the fire?”

“Seventeen. This month’s. Do you have it?”

“Duh,” She waves her hand at a pile of magazines. I flip to page 167 and nearly drop it.

There, in the beautiful blue silk shirt they gave me and staring out from the page with smoky, sultry eyes, is a girl who looks like me. But she can’t be me – her body is too airbrushed, there’s no scars or pimples or birthmarks, but her hair is the same blonde dishwater shade as mine. Somehow they made the color look beautiful, the same color as the sand I’m lying on. Grace’s arms are around my neck and her face is in my shoulder, her fierce dark looks piercing through me when I stare at her for too long. She is perfection and I’m extremely well photoshopped perfection. Nobody’s going to recognize me from this ad – not when my hair’s in a greasy braid and I’ve worn the same American Eagle sweatshirt for three days. Selena sits up and looks at the page and whistles.

“Wow, they’re really pretty. That blonde one has gorgeous bone structure. I guess that’s why they’re models and not us, huh?”

“You’re really pretty, though,” I insist. Selena laughs and runs her fingers through her hair.

“Not as hot as them.”

For once, I’m like Selena. In that page, I’m just as pretty, if not prettier than her. She said it herself. I’m not the boring girl who studies too much and never goes to parties in that page – I’m someone new, someone beautiful and interesting. The kind of girl Lee would like. I look like a glamorous girl he’d sleep with. I ask Selena if I can tear out the page and she says yes. I fold it and put it in my wallet under my driver’s license.

That weekend, Mom asks me to come up and help clear out Grandpa’s house. And I agree.

It’s time to visit the creek.

~~~

Grandpa’s farmhouse is the same as ever – the whitewash peeling and the veranda crammed with dilapidated chairs and tables. The grass is tall and yellow, the garden shriveled. Grandpa would be disgusted by the way it looks. To him, the garden was like a third grandchild. The sunflower field is dead and cold, the stalks brown and broken, but the outline of the rows can be seen as they spread all the way to the gulch, where the creek is.

Mom and Dad’s van is parked crooked. I park and get out – following the telltale sounds of boxes being dropped and Riley’s high-pitched voice whining to the garage. It’s open, junk spilling out; an old kayak, a tablesaw, boxes of tools and books and old clothes, a molding dollhouse, and hundreds of musty-smelling Christmas decorations. And that’s just a fraction of what’s in the basement. Riley moans about a pulled muscle as he hefts a box onto a pyramid of them and mouths at me; ‘
run while you can
’. I wave hi to Mom sorting through the clothes. Dad inches a coatrack out of the garage and into the dumpster they’ve rented, dusts his hands off, and smiles at me.

“Hey, kid. How was traffic?”

“Not bad.” I zip my jacket up against the cold. “Can I help?”

“Sure. I was just about to go up and make us some cocoa – nothing fancy, just the instant kind. Could you do that?”

“But I want to lift with the boys!” I tease.

“Oh, you’ll lift whether you like it or not.” He chuckles, and wipes dust off his forehead. “But if Riley doesn’t get a pick-me-up of sugar in the next five minutes, I think he might start screaming.”

I salute and run up to the porch. The house is quiet, the dark hardwood floors and colorful throw rugs seem dull and faded in comparison to when I was a kid. The same dog-pee smelling couch sits in front of the widescreen TV, and the cracked oak dining table is piled high with candles, paper plates, photo albums, and other odds and ends. I slip into the kitchen and am greeted by a familiar face, salt-and-pepper hair shining slickly in the light.

“Farlon?”

Farlon turns, eyes narrowing and a smile forcing its way onto his face. He’s leafing through a photo album with a tanned hand.

“Ah, Rose. I presume you’re here to help your family with the garage?”

“Yeah. And you?” I try to sound polite.

“Brett insisted I come here and claim some of the things James left for my father should he have died first. He didn’t, but the objects are willed to our family all the same.” Farlon’s smile grows. “Lee is not coming, if that was a concern of yours.”

“No, it’s not.” I shake my head and pull out mugs, filling them with milk and piling them in the microwave. I watch Farlon out of the corner of my eye.