Cherry (2 page)

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It makes it harder to find good pizza.”

“Zoe, it's a metaphor.”

“I know . . .” Zoe stuck some more vanilla froyo in her mouth.

“I'm thinking Logan and I will do it for the first time on Valentine's Day,” Layla said proudly, as if she were the first person in the history of premeditated sex dates to select the national holiday of flowers and candy and Hallmark cards. “It's gonna be perfect.”

“Were you always this corny?” Alex laughed.

“I am not corny—”

“I bet you want rose petals and candles too.”

“Who
doesn't
want rose petals and candles?”

“Me, for starters,” Emma said.

“Me, for seconds,” Alex agreed.

“Okay, okay,”
Layla said, turning toward Alex, “We can't all be lucky enough to lose it on make-out rock behind the boathouse at Camp Waziyatah.”

“It was make-out
ledge
, thankyouverymuch.”

The girls knew that Alex's camp boy was named Cameron, and that he was “tall” and “hot” and “lived in Massachusetts,” but that was pretty much it. Alex wasn't really a big talker no matter what the subject was, but she definitely didn't like to kiss and tell. Probably because then she'd have to be talking all the time. More often than not, she was tired of her boy-of-the-moment before the end of their first make-out session.

“Okay, fine. Make-out
ledge
,” Layla corrected. “I'm sure it was magical.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Alex paused, searching for the right words to explain what had happened. She knew “magical” certainly wasn't going to be one of them. “I think the first time's gonna be awkward no matter what you do.”

“So you're saying I should
plan
for awkward,” Layla said, translating Alex's advice into a language she could understand.

“If you must . . .” Alex grinned, knowing full well that Layla
obviously
must. “All I'm trying to say is that it's probably smart not to expect . . .”

“An orgasm?” Layla offered.

“Ohmigod,” Zoe said, squirming in her chair.

“Oh my God,
yes
, Zoe, we're talking about
orgasms
,” Alex teased.

“I realize that, but . . .” Zoe's face turned red, and she couldn't
finish the rest of her thought. She was still wrapping her head around Layla's sex date, and the thought of Alex's orgasms, or
anyone's
orgasms, or really just the entire
concept
of an orgasm was a lot right now.

“Just think of them like . . .
fireworks
,” Layla said.

“Fireworks . . . ,” Alex repeated, trying the word on for size.

“I actually love fireworks.” Emma laughed.

“Okay,
okay
. Thank you, but now I hear you all saying ‘fireworks,' and it just sounds like ‘orgasm' anyway, so . . .”

“Zoe, if it
really
sounded like an orgasm—”

“Ohmigod, Alex, I swear, if you start moaning right now . . .”

Alex, Layla, and Emma exploded into another fit of ­giggles, as Zoe shook her head and heaped another spoonful of rainbow sprinkles onto her vanilla frozen yogurt.

“I like that we're talking about this,” Layla said once all the laughter had quieted down again.

“Me too,” Emma agreed.

“Me three,” Alex piled on.

Layla, Emma, and Alex all turned toward Zoe.

She shook her head.

“Is that a no?” Layla asked.

“We've already established that I'm bright red, and I'm pretty positive I have massive pit stains and a rash on my chest . . .”

“
That's
your answer?”

“I don't know . . .”

“Oh, c'mon, Zoe,” Layla pushed. “We're having a
bonding moment like we've never had before, and all you're gonna give us is an ‘I don't know'?”

“I love-hate this conversation. Is that a possible correct answer?”

“Zo, it's not a test,” Emma said through a fresh wave of giggles.

“Okay, well, whatever it is, I'm one hundred percent having a love-hate relationship with it,” Zoe managed to say before getting swept up into Emma's laughter. Alex and Layla were already there too, laughing so hard they couldn't breathe, and it was simply impossible to tell whose laughter was whose because it all just mixed together so perfectly.

That's how it worked.

Layla, Zoe, Alex, and Emma had been an inseparable foursome ever since the fateful day they were all randomly assigned to the same desk cluster in Miss Morgan's first-grade class. All these years later they were still just as close as ever.

“Most people aren't this lucky,” Layla said, as always.

“Not even close,” Alex, Emma, and Zoe answered.

Then Layla swirled another spoonful of Sno-Caps into her frozen yogurt—and a brand-new thought bubbled up into her brain . . .

Zoe was the first to see Layla's face light up. “Oh no,” she said knowingly.

“‘Oh no' what?” Layla laughed.

“I see you, Layla. I see all the gears in your pretty ­little head spinning like crazy. Like that time you decided we should toilet paper Xander Murphy's house. Or the
night you made us go skinny-dipping at Zuma—”

“Hey, I did not
make
you do anything—”

“Layla,” Zoe said, wiping her clammy hands onto her jeans, “I know what this face means . . .”

“That I often have good ideas?” Layla asked, loving everything about this moment.

“Wait,
what
is a good idea?” Emma asked.

“Yeah, what are you talking about?” Alex asked. “Unlike Zoe, I don't have psychic powers.”

“Layla thinks we
all
should have sex,” Zoe blurted.

“Together?” Alex laughed.

“Ohmigod, no,” Zoe squeaked, too nervous and awkward and rashy to even entertain that kind of joke.

“Wait. But what if we really did?” Layla asked, getting all sorts of excited. “I swear I wasn't thinking that when we first sat down this afternoon, but now that I hear Zoe say it out loud—”

“Please don't blame me—”

“Zoe. There's no
blame
. This is brilliant.”

“Wait. You're serious?” Emma asked.

“Yes. We should all have sex. Before graduation.”

Emma shook her head at Layla's use of the G-word.

“I think we're forgetting that Alex has already
had
sex,” Zoe said, as if that somehow made it impossible or unnecessary for the other girls to do it too.

“Yeah, but she still hasn't had
good
sex, no offense—”

“Okay, but
no
,” Zoe said, still fighting the idea. “You have a boyfriend. Alex always has a million options. Emma's
adorable. And then there's me over here with my frizzy hair and freckles and permanently red cheeks. I just got my braces off two weeks ago!”

“Luckily, ‘braces off' exponentially increases your sex appeal,” Alex teased.

“No. No one looks at me and thinks about wanting to have sex.”

“That's not true,” Alex pushed back. “I could be thinking about it right now . . .”

“Yeah, yeah . . . ,” Zoe said, shaking her head again.

“Zoe,” Layla insisted, “you could totally have sex if you want to.”

“I do want to!”

It took Zoe a moment to realize that those four ­little words had actually come out of her mouth and into the sugarcoated air of The Bigg Chill. Now the words were echoing off the froyo machines and the wall of glass windows and all the tables and toppings and people in between. “Ohmigod . . .”

“Ohhhh my God
yes
,” Layla replied, all singsongy.

“No. Stop. No more smiling . . . ,” Zoe said. “My point is that—”

“Your
point
is that you want to have sex,” Alex piled on.

“No—”

“Don't you mean
yes
?” Emma joined in. “I'm positive I already heard you say yes.”

“No, still
no
. My point is that I don't exactly have a lot of options.”

“That is false,” Emma said.

“If you want to have sex, you can find a way to have sex,” Layla insisted.

“The last thing I wanna do is just ‘find a way.' I'm not gonna sleep with a random or lower my standards because Layla had a stupid idea—”

“It's
not
a stupid idea. In fact, I think the sex pact might be the single greatest idea I've ever had.”

“
Sex pact?
Since when is there a sex pact?” Zoe was now officially freaking out.

“Well, now that we've established we all
want
to have sex—”

“
Good
sex,” Alex interjected.

“Duh, yes. Now that we've established we all want to have good sex, I think we all should.”

“I'm down.” Emma laughed.

“Totally,” Alex agreed.

“Ohmigod . . .” Zoe blushed.

“Is that a yes?” Layla asked.

Zoe couldn't quite believe it, but the truth was “yes” it was.

“It's
hap-pen-ing
,” Layla declared triumphantly. “I think step one is to put the positive intention out into the universe.” Layla loved step-by-step instructions almost as much as she loved her lists and due dates. “Before high school ends, we are going to do this together.”

“But not
together
together,” Alex teased.

“Right. We'll do it . . .
concurrently
. With the right person in the right place at the right time . . .” Alex and Emma
nodded firmly in agreement. Zoe managed to tip her head forward slightly, which was more than good enough for Layla. “We're having
sex
!” she exclaimed.

And that was it.

One serving of frozen yogurt later, sex was no longer simply a daydream or a wet dream or a piece of juicy gossip that happened to somebody else.

All of a sudden, it was something the girls actually did, something they all wanted to do—and were going to do,
together
—before high school graduation.

LAYLA
almost couldn't believe it.

The Crew had a sex pact.

And the sex pact had a due date.

And the whole thing was happening
.

In Layla's head, plans and dreams were basically the same thing, but suddenly this one felt like it was actually gonna come true. Obviously, there were still variables to consider and the need for contingencies and everything, but Layla loved that sort of thing: the planning and the overplanning. She realized it might even be thematically appropriate to say she got off on it, which made her grin, equally embarrassed and excited.

ALL THE FEELS
, Layla texted Alex, Emma, and Zoe in The Chat, which is what The Crew called their ongoing text message conversation.
I am having all of the feelings at the very same time.

RELAX
, Alex texted back. “Relax” was a pretty
standard Alex response, but Layla could not simply relax. She tried not to get too far ahead of herself, she really, truly did, but her mind was always racing away from her. Like even right now it was racing into the future—past the pact and the due date—all the way into the next year and then into the next decade, until all of a sudden all she could think about was the fire pit where The Crew would spend all of their future nights together. Of course this fire pit would be located in the backyard of the property that the girls would communally purchase, where they would build four separate, but architecturally cohesive, houses, one for each girl, and they'd all live happily ever after with their husbands and their children—and each other, obviously. The compound, as Layla called it in her dreams slash plans, would materialize sometime shortly after the girls wore the same blush-colored bridesmaid dresses to each other's weddings, but not before they all took a coordinated sabbatical from their successful and well established careers to travel through Europe.

Layla took a deep breath and managed to reel her thoughts of the future back into the present where she was lying on her bed, holding her cell phone up in the air, and watching a string of texts pour into The Chat from her best friends, who—thankfully—seemed to be full of just as many feelings as she was. Layla already knew that she was ready to have sex with Logan, but the fact that her best friends had just piled onto the plan with her was the icing on the cake.

Or no, not the icing . . . it was the cherry on top.

IT'S
ALL HAPPENING and I couldn't be happier,
she texted.

It was Sunday, January 4. High school graduation was Monday, June 22. Therefore, according to Layla's precise calculations, there were exactly 169 days until graduation and the official “doing it” due date. How thematically appropriate, Layla thought. The “sixty-nine” of it all felt like a giant wink from the universe, like a sexy, numerologi­cal “all systems go!”

As Layla double-checked her math, recounting the days from January to June, she could feel that same splendid smile, the one Zoe had caught on to at the yogurt place, creeping back across her face. She realized the smile had most likely been stuck there ever since she got home from froyo. It had probably been there all the way through dinner, too. Thankfully, no one else in the Baxter family seemed to notice. Layla's younger sister, Maxine, had spent the whole meal lobbying their mom for permission to go on the upcoming middle school ski trip, while her dad and little brother, Avery, were engaged in a heated discussion about their fantasy basketball league. Luckily, all of this mundane commotion let Layla off the hook. She didn't have to explain why she was unusually quiet. Or why her toe wouldn't stop tapping under the table. Or account for the fact that she had somehow eaten all the lima beans off her plate even though she absolutely
hated
lima beans.