Cherry (30 page)

“What's funny?”

“I feel like I've been with you all day because I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. And now that I'm
here, literally looking at you, I already miss you . . .” Joey laughed at himself. “So much for playing it cool, huh?”

“Cool is overrated,” Alex said with another smile.

“Thanks . . .” Joey laughed.

“You know what I mean,” Alex said. Besides, she felt the same way.

Alex and Joey spent the entire night kissing.

Basically
just
kissing.

There was some touching, too, but mostly they were just running from first base to second base and back again, in the most enjoyable circles. They'd stop every once in a while to laugh or hold each other or share a secret or tell a story, and then they'd inevitably start kissing again.

And again and
again
 . . .

And again and again it felt like things might escalate physically, and they
could've
, certainly, but Joey and Alex just didn't seem to be in that kind of a rush. For Alex, the girl who had been known to get bored with a boy before the end of their first make-out session, the girl who felt like she was always rushing, the girl who was always trying to move faster—
to literally break speed records—
this was an incredibly important moment of stillness. Of slowness. Of general
now
-ness. Most of the time Alex felt like she was being pushed and pulled and prodded to be something she wasn't . . . Right now with Joey, the only thing she had to be was herself.

ALEX
and Joey managed to kiss until the sun came up . . .

. . . but it still didn't feel like nearly enough time.

“I'm gonna miss you,” Joey whispered. He smiled with a little pink in his cheeks, as if he were surprised that the words had come out of his mouth.

“I'm gonna miss you, too,” she said, thinking it was strange, considering how little time they'd actually spent together, but knowing it wasn't strange at all considering all the feelings she was feeling through her whole body.

“I miss you already,” Joey said, laughing at his own corniness.

“Same,” Alex replied, all full of sincerity and a little bit of sadness.

She'd known Joey for about twelve years, ever since she and Zoe had been friends, and even though they'd formed their own friendship through the track team, they'd
never really spent any time alone together.

Until now.

And it felt like the most natural thing in the entire world.

Being together, with their lips and everything touching or their fingers and legs intertwined, felt right. But Joey had to leave. He had to sneak out of Alex's house and back into his before Zoe or his parents had a chance to notice he was gone.

So he kissed Alex good-bye one more time. Softly and slowly.

He said he'd text her as soon as he got back to his dorm room at Berkeley. And he did.

Hi
, he said simply.

Hi
, she texted back.

I miss you
, he added. And then, also:
Ugh.

Alex felt exactly the same way . . . all the way down to the
Ugh.

I miss you too
, she texted back.

She really did miss him. It was actually almost physically painful. Alex wasn't sure how to explain her feelings for Joey because they came on so fast and strong, but if she knew anything, anything at all, it was that they were the most real feelings she'd ever felt. For eighteen years, she'd had this space inside her, below her heart and above her stomach—maybe it was the place where the butterflies and the fireworks live—but it hadn't really registered before now. Like, if she'd walked through an X-ray machine, even just yesterday, there would've only been blank space inside her. But now . . .
ugh
, she thought, which was both the
best and worst feeling all at the same time . . .
now
Joey Reed—and his spiked hair and those teal glasses and that wink—were all sitting inside of her, filling a space that she didn't even know existed.

Now she didn't want to even consider feeling any other way.

ZOE
was starting to worry that something was seriously wrong with her.

She and Austin were still dating. And they were still sleeping together semiregularly. And it was mostly fun, and she liked it, but she still hadn't had an orgasm. “Maybe I'm, like, physically incapable of having one,” she'd proposed at froyo last week, but none of the other girls were willing to humor her.

It's totally gonna happen, they all assured her.

“Trust the process,” Emma had said, giggling.

Zoe did trust the process—sort of.

But she decided she also wanted some professional reassur­ance that everything was working down there the way it should, so she'd made an appointment with her gynecologist. Also, she figured it was probably a good move to go on the pill. She and Austin had been using condoms, but still.

Zoe stood by the oak tree next to the senior parking lot,
waiting for her mom to pick her up, when she saw Dylan heading toward her. Well, really he was heading toward the pool with a pack of water polo boys, but it was the closest they'd come to being in the same place at the same time in a long time.

She wasn't even expecting him to wave, let alone walk over and say hi, but he did. Zoe didn't realize how much she'd missed him until he was standing right there in front of her, but she didn't realize the words were just going to tumble out of her mouth . . .

“I've missed you, too,” he said before her cheeks even had time to redden.

“I got into Michigan,” Zoe blurted out, realizing she hadn't told him yet.

“Oh hell, yeah,” Dylan said. He'd already gotten early admission into Colorado. His older brother went there, and it was the only school he wanted to go to. And he got in. It was pretty undramatic as far as the college process went.

Zoe's college applications had been that way too. She wanted to go to a big school where people rooted for things and wore face paint and went to frat parties, but she also wanted a theater department. Zoe thought Michigan would be the perfect fit. Luckily, Michigan thought so too.

Then, Zoe's mom pulled up and waved. It was time to go. But before Zoe walked away, Dylan asked if she wanted to phonefall later that night.

Zoe had never said yes faster.

ALEX
and Joey had been texting constantly.

Ever since they'd spent the whole night kissing, they'd been continuously texting about anything and everything. Embarrassing stories. Childhood memories. Stupid jokes. They'd text back and forth about their hopes and dreams. About all their thoughts on God. About drugs and alcohol and rainbow sprinkles. About Alex's running shoes and how they occasionally didn't match. They texted about their daydreams and nightmares . . . Alex admitted that lately
he'd
been keeping her up at night, mostly just in the best possible way. She even texted him in the middle of the day just to say that she couldn't stop thinking about him, which wasn't the kind of thing she normally wanted to admit to a boy, or anyone really, but it felt like Joey already knew. He texted her back and said he felt exactly the same way. She already knew that too.

Alex couldn't imagine having all of these text message
conversations with anyone else. She'd never really cared what
any
boy thought about these topics, let alone what one particular boy thought about
all
of them. But with Joey, she wanted to know everything.

The only strange thing about all of their texting was that it accounted for a hundred percent of their communication. Alex liked texting much better than talking on the phone. She appreciated having the time and space to respond in exactly the right way.

But
.

Considering the fact that none of these words
had
actually come out of her mouth and that she hadn't actually heard any of them come of Joey's mouth either, the whole thing was starting to seem like a strange dream. And to make matters worse, she still hadn't told the rest of The Crew about Joey. She certainly didn't want to lie to Zoe, not after all the Cameron stuff, but she knew how weird Zoe could get about things, especially things that involved her brother. She didn't want to get all into it with her if things with Joey weren't going to last anyway. Maybe that was lying by omission, but Alex wanted to figure out what was actually going on between them before she opened it up to The Crew.

Alex climbed into bed for the night and grabbed her phone.

Can I ask you a question?
she texted Joey, innocently enough.

If it's “what am I wearing?” it's gonna be awkward
, he texted back.

Alex smirked. That
wasn't
what she was going to ask, but now she wanted to know.

(The answer is nothing),
he added almost immediately.

She and Joey had texted for an incredibly long time without crossing into any sort of sext message territory, and Alex had recently started to wonder if Joey was ever going to make that sort of a move.

What about you?
he texted after a moment had gone by.

The truth?

Alex was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and an oversized track T-shirt, but she was pretty sure that wasn't the kind of answer Joey was hoping for. She lied, well, fibbed, and texted that she was wearing
black panties
. She hated the word “panties,” but “underwear” just didn't sound sexy enough.

UGH
, he responded in all capital letters.
I want to take them off.

Yes, please
, she texted back quickly.

And then, just like that, it was on . . .

. . . and they began turning
each other
on as a flurry of sext messages replaced their usual text message conversation. Joey told her where he wanted to touch her—
her thighs
,
her neck
,
her breasts
—and how he wanted to touch her—
mostly with his tongue
—and before Alex knew it, she really was touching herself and texting Joey about it. And Joey was touching himself, too, and texting her back . . . and pretty soon there were fireworks on both ends of the phone.

Or so Alex had to assume.

It was still hard to know what was actually happening.

She liked texting Joey, and she liked sexting him too, but all of that was only taking place on the glow of her phone screen.

Alex was starting to worry that it wasn't real.

Part of the problem was that it simply felt too good to be true.

LAYLA
was still spending far too much time thinking about Logan.

It wasn't that she was still mad at him anymore or hurt by him or anything like that, but she simply couldn't get him out of her head for any extended period of time, and it was driving her crazy.

And now.

Logan and Vanessa were
officially
a couple, and they were almost always making out all over campus. And Layla was pretending not to notice or care, both of which were horrible lies. She was focusing on schoolwork mostly, still trying to get her grade up to an A in AP Lit, doing some extra credit assignments. She was also trying as hard as she could not to focus on the calendar or her to-do list and its due date. And so, for the first time all year, Layla had actually succeeded in losing track of time, which was very un-Layla-like.

But then.

Last night, as she was lying in bed, searching for new quotes online and feeling uninspired, she suddenly felt compelled to count the days on the calendar. And so she did. She counted down, all the way down from today, Monday, April 13, to graduation day on June 22 . . . and she just simply had to laugh. She certainly believed that the universe had a mind of its own, but she didn't think it was
perverted
. But maybe it was. She counted the days on the calendar again, a second time, and then, just to be safe, a
third
time too, and realized that as of tomorrow, Tuesday, there would be exactly sixty-nine days until graduation.

Sixty-nine.

Of course
she would reignite her interest in the calendar and the counting and all of that right before the most overtly sexual day of the whole countdown.

If Layla had ever gotten a sign from the universe, this might be it.

She texted Wyatt right away and made a plan to see him after school. They'd hooked up a couple times since that first make-out session at the skate park before spring break. He was still fun and still uncomplicated—but Layla still knew that she didn't want to sleep with him. Even so, she decided she'd still like to make some sex pact related progress with him.

“You're gonna sixty-nine him?” Alex asked as she unwrapped a protein bar.

“I think we have to say that I'm gonna sixty-nine
with
him,”
Layla said so seriously that it caused everyone else to laugh.

“Okay, grammar police . . .”

“No, it's just . . . it's not something I can just do to him. He has to do it to me, too, which is kind of the whole point . . . ,” Layla said, trailing off.

LAYLA
drove over to Wyatt's house right after school.

They quickly found themselves alone in his room.

On his bed.

With the door closed.

Wyatt's parents weren't home from work yet, but Layla got the vibe that they wouldn't care about an open door policy even if they were. Wyatt was pointing out all the constellations on his ceiling: the Big Dipper, Orion's belt, and all the rest. He'd painted them with glow-in-the-dark paint. He was very proud.