Butternut Summer (13 page)

We'll stop
, Daisy repeated to herself as Will ran his tongue along that neckline. Then, leaving one hand under her dress, where it was stroking the inside of her thighs with deliberate slowness, and maddening gentleness, he brought the other hand back to one of her breasts, cupped it through the dress, and, finding the nipple, took it between his fingers and caressed it again. If you could call it a caress, which she wasn't sure you could. There was a lot more hunger in his touch now, and a lot less gentleness, too, but the friction between his fingers and her nipple was delicious, and when he increased it, fractionally, she arched her back and moaned softly.

If someone comes we'll stop
, she reminded herself again, her hands running over his back. But stopping was easier said than done, wasn't it? Because how would she stop at this point?
Why
would she stop? Why would anyone stop doing anything that felt this good? And if what they were doing
now
felt this good, what would what they did later feel like?

As if in answer to this question, Will moved the hand that had been on one of her thighs up to her navel, up to the elastic waistband of her panties, and started skimming softly over the skin there.

Daisy felt herself tense again, just for a second, but it was enough, enough to kick-start that part of her brain that had been turned off for most of the night.
Are you really going to do this? Right here? Right now? In the backseat of a pickup truck? At a public beach?

Maybe
, her body answered, as the hand that had been on her breast left and came up under her sundress.
Maybe I will
, she thought, as both hands started to ease her panties down, gently. Slowly. Maybe she would just let this happen. And why not? She could do a lot worse than Will Hughes. For one thing, he obviously knew what he was doing. There wouldn't be any fumbling around, any wrestling with stuck zippers, or accidentally poking her in the eye with his elbow. No, he would make love to her properly, definitively. And afterward, there'd be no doubt in her mind, or her body, for that matter, that she'd been made love to.

On the practical side, too, he was a good choice. Because a guy like him would have protection. A guy like him, in fact, wouldn't even get out of bed in the morning without a condom tucked into his blue jean pocket. And afterward? Afterward, she'd never have to see him again, if she didn't want to. Though, she didn't know, honestly, if that was the case. She thought, in fact, that maybe she
did
want to see him again—very badly.

Maybe that was why, as his hands eased her panties off, she finally felt a belated little wave of panic.

“Will?” she said, pulling away from him a little. “Will, I don't know . . .”

“Don't know what?” he answered into her neck, kissing it again.

“Don't know if I want my first time,
our
first time”—she caught herself—“to be in the backseat of your pickup truck.”

Will kept kissing her neck for a moment longer, then stopped, and lay very still beside her. “What did you say?” he asked, and he took his hands, very slowly, out from under her dress.

“I said . . .” She stopped. She was suddenly almost painfully embarrassed. He was looking into her eyes now, their bodies still touching, his chest rising and falling rapidly against her own. It occurred to her, then, in that moment, that before she'd interrupted them, he'd been as aroused as she had been. “I said,” she started again, barely above a whisper, “that I don't want our first time to be in the backseat of your pickup truck.”

But he gave his head a tiny shake. “No. Before that. What did you say before that?”

Her heart sank. So he'd heard her. “I didn't say anything,” she lied. Already she missed what they'd been doing only moments before, missed the feel of his body against hers, missed the touch of his hands on her skin. She wondered if she could coax him back into a kiss now, but decided she couldn't. His expression, and his body, were alert, tense. Sex, it seemed, was suddenly the farthest thing from his mind.

“You said something else, Daisy. You said something about ‘my first time.'”

She blushed and looked away.

“Daisy, did you mean that?”

She lifted her shoulders noncommittally. But she didn't look back at him.

“You've never done this before?” he pressed. “With anyone? You're a . . .” He stopped. He couldn't even bring himself to say the word, she realized, with dismay.

“A virgin,” she supplied, trying to keep the dismay out of her own voice. Because right now, she couldn't believe it, either.

“Jesus, Daisy,” he said, sitting up and looking down at her, suddenly wary. He looked at her as if she were a danger to him, a poisonous snake that could strike at any moment.

“Will, it's okay. It's not contagious,” she said, sitting up. “I said I was a virgin. Not a leper.”

He ignored her remark. Instead he continued to watch her, running his fingers through hair that was too short to run his fingers through and looking for all the world like a man trying to solve an unsolvable problem—in this case, her virginity.

“Daisy,” he said finally, giving up on the problem, “why don't you get in the front seat. I'll take you home.”

“Now?”

He nodded, reached for his T-shirt, and pulled it back on.

“So that's it. Our date is over?”

“Yes, it's over.”

She felt dismay giving way to anger. “Why, Will? Because I've never had sex with anyone? Or because I won't have it with you?”

“Neither,” he said, shaking his head.

“Then why?” she asked, and she was horrified to feel tears burning in her eyes.
Don't cry
, she pleaded with herself.

“Because Jason was right about you.”

“Jason from the garage? What did he say about me?”

“He said you were different. He said you didn't just, you know . . . sleep around.”

“And that's a bad thing?”

“No, it's not. It's just . . . it's just that we want different things, I guess.”

“Will, you barely know me. How could you possibly know what I want?”

“I
don't
know what you want, Daisy,” he said quietly. “But I'm willing to guess it's more than
this
.” He made a gesture with his hand that included the two of them and the backseat of the truck. Then he reached over and, very carefully, without touching her skin, tugged first one strap up on her sundress, and then the other. When they were both back in place, he said quietly, but firmly, “Come on. Let's go.”

Daisy knew it was useless to argue. So she slid out of the backseat, awkwardly pulling up her panties as she did so, got into the front seat, and fastened her seat belt. She was careful not to look at Will, careful to look out the window as he started up the truck and headed back to town. The tears that had threatened to come had arrived now, running silently down her cheeks, and she was convinced that if he saw them, it would put the final seal on her humiliation. She could almost hear him telling Jason.
First, I found out she was a virgin. Then she cried the whole way home. It was a nightmare
.

By the time Will turned his truck onto Main Street, though, her tears had stopped and her embarrassment had turned to anger.

“You can let me out here,” she said stiffly when they were a block from her building. “I'll walk the rest of the way.”

He slowed down but didn't stop. “Can I take you to your front door?”

“No, Will, you can't,” she snapped. “And don't worry about being rude, okay? Because you couldn't set that bar any lower than you already have tonight.”

He stopped the truck, and she got out and slammed the door behind her. She knew he was waiting there, though, in the idling pickup, while she walked up the block and let herself into the building's side door. But if that was his last-ditch effort to be polite, she thought, starting up the stairs to the apartment, it was too little, too late. Hopefully, after tonight, she'd never have to see him again.

But she did have to see her mother again. She was on the phone in the kitchen when Daisy let herself into the apartment, but she poked her head out as Daisy walked by; instantly, Caroline's face registered her concern.

“Allie, hold on a second,” Caoline said, putting the phone aside. “Daisy, what's wrong. What happened on your date?”

“Nothing happened,” Daisy said, knowing that her red eyes and blotchy skin had given her away. “It's just that, Will and I . . .” She shrugged. “We just didn't have that much in common. But that's
not
why I'm crying, Mom. I'm tired and, and it's been a crazy week.”

“It
has
been a crazy week,” her mother agreed. “Do you want to talk about it? I can call Allie back.”

“No, thanks,” Daisy said, already heading into her bedroom. “I'll see you in the morning, okay?”

She closed the door behind her, crossed to her bed, and swiped impatiently at the textbooks scattered across it. They were for a senior seminar she'd be taking in the fall, and she'd meant to get started on them early, but now she pushed them off the bed, listening with satisfaction as they thudded onto the floor.

Then she lay down on the bed and buried her face in its pillows. She considered crying again, but she didn't. The situation was just too ludicrous, even to her. So instead, she pictured the expression of almost abject horror on Will's face when he'd found out she was a virgin, and she almost,
almost
laughed. But she couldn't do that, either. She was too hurt, too disappointed.

She'd thought when she and Will talked at the garage and then again at the beach that there'd been something between them. An attraction, yes, but something else, too.
A connection
, she decided, though she knew that word belonged to the province of cheesy reality dating shows. Still, she'd felt it. And she'd thought he'd felt it, too. And now? Now she knew it hadn't been there. Or, if it had been, it had been completely one-sided, on
her
side.

Will hadn't taken her out to the beach because he wanted to talk to her or get to know her better. No, he'd taken her there for one reason and one reason only. And was that
so
surprising? Like most people their age, he lived in a world of casual hookups, and sexting, and friends with benefits. It was
Daisy
who was the anomaly, Daisy who was the throwback to another time. Because, like it or not, she was still burdened with the almost arcane idea that
sex should mean something, be the product of something
. Maybe not the product of true passion—because she'd always suspected this was an overrated commodity, anyway—but the product of something deeper, and more meaningful than two people killing a couple of hours together on a Saturday night.

But her mind had caught on that word, and it went back to it now. Passion. She'd never felt anything close to it before, had she? No, she hadn't. Except for . . . well, except for tonight, she realized with surprise. Tonight, in the backseat of Will's pickup, she'd gotten a little preview of what it might be like. The way he'd kissed her and touched her had made her feel like . . . like she was standing on the edge of something, something incredibly pleasurable but also, at the same time, incredibly scary.

She thought about that for a while, picking at a loose thread on one of her pillowcases. Was it fear, she wondered, that had held her back, fear that had kept her clinging stubbornly to her virginity? She remembered what Will had said tonight about how people could learn to like the feeling of being out of control. Maybe she was afraid of that feeling, afraid of letting go, afraid of sliding, sweetly but dangerously, off the edge of everything she knew and understood.

But she pushed that thought away. It was dumb. Her biggest fear in life wasn't losing control; it was getting into a good graduate program in psychology after she finished college. Besides, what was wrong with a little self-control, anyway? She would never have gotten as far as she'd gotten if she hadn't exercised self-control. The academic awards, the volleyball championships, the scholarship—those had all required self-discipline. And she was going to need a lot more of it to get her through these next few years. She'd be the first person in her family to graduate from college, the first person, too, to go on and earn an advanced degree.

She stopped picking at the thread now and pressed her too-warm cheek against the cool cotton of the pillowcase. Her virginity wasn't her problem, she decided; her naïveté was. No more trips out to the beach with guys like Will, she vowed, unless, of course, she wanted a casual hookup, too. And no more thinking that the way Will had kissed her tonight—however amazing it might have been—was any different from the way he'd already kissed a hundred girls before her.

A
lmost three weeks after Caroline's meeting with Jack at Pearl's, she brought a lunch order over to a customer. It wasn't just any customer, though. It was quite possibly the most important customer she would ever have—and certainly the most important customer Pearl's would ever have.

“Here you go,” she said, sliding the order on the table. “One freshly squeezed orange juice, and one tall stack of blueberry pancakes with a side of extra-crispy bacon. Did I get that right?”

“Have you ever gotten it wrong?” John Quarterman asked, with amusement.

“Probably not,” she said. “But then again, it is what you order for lunch every time you come in here. More coffee?”

“No, thanks. Not yet,” he said. He'd already taken his suit jacket off and draped it over the back of his chair, and now, as he loosened his tie, he stared longingly at the pancakes.

This order of them was especially good, too, Caroline thought with satisfaction. They were fluffy, and golden brown, and studded all the way through with perfectly ripe local blueberries. Caroline had made these pancakes herself. Not that Frankie wasn't a wonder at the grill. He was. But she wasn't leaving anything to chance today.