Cherry (6 page)

“I made sure to put a couple links about it in the Sex Doc.”

“
The Sex Doc?
Is that what we're calling that
textbook
you sent us?” Alex grinned.

“You're welcome.” Layla smiled. “Did you read it?”

  *  *  *  

ZOE
shook her head.

“There's, like, a thousand articles . . . ,” Zoe said as if that were the only reason she hadn't read Layla's extensive Google Document of sexcentric information yet. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing made Zoe nervous. From what she'd skimmed last night, the doc was basically a data dump of everything and anything anyone could possible want to know about sex alphabetized and color-coded by
subject matter: what to do, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, how to be safe about it. There was a whole section on birth control and condoms and morning-after pills. There were links to first person articles about losing your virginity and an extensive collection of YouTube videos. It was basically the most Layla thing ever, Zoe thought as she unzipped her hoodie. She wasn't sure what the most “her” thing ever would be, but it definitely wouldn't be something like that . . .

“Whoa,” Emma said, her eyes on Zoe.

“Whoa, what?” Zoe looked down at her tank top. “Did I spill something?”

“It's . . .
your boobs
.”

“Ohmigod, stop.”

“They're hot, Zo,” Alex added. “Just use them wisely . . .”

“Ha. Right.” Zoe blushed. “I don't know the first
thing
about using them.”

“I'm sure you'll figure it out pretty quick.”

Zoe was still getting used to having them attached to her body let alone trying to figure out what to actually do with them. Zoe turned to Alex, hoping to change the subject. “Speaking of figuring it out, I have an important question for the sexpert.”

  *  *  *  

ALEX
was definitely
not
a sexpert.

“Okay, but in comparison to the rest of the table you are,” Zoe insisted.

“Maybe your answer is somewhere in the Sex Doc,”
Alex said, but Zoe was already forging ahead with her question.

“So, last night, when I was talking to Dylan—”

“Wait, you two are
still
doing that?” Layla asked.

“Oh. Yeah. We fall asleep on the phone almost every night.”

“Forget the sleeping part,” Alex said. “Who
talks
on the phone?”

“Me! My fingers are too fat for texting.”

“Zoe.”

“What? They are. And autocorrect hates me. I'm completely unkeyboardinated and can't type without making every mistake possible. I also never know what to type in the first place.”

“But you somehow know what to say for hours every single night?”

“Yeah. It's really so much better. You should try it sometime.”

“I can't imagine having that much to say to the same person, even Logan,” Layla said.

“Yeah, I don't know.” Zoe smiled. “It's really just the easiest . . .” Then she ran her fingers through her hair again and launched back into her question for Alex,
the sexpert
, which basically boiled down to: Does the G-spot actually exist?

The truth was, Alex had absolutely no clue what a G-spot was, let alone whether it existed.

What she
did
know was that there was only so much longer she could go without setting the record straight
about what actually happened with Cameron at sleepaway camp.

Or, more accurately, what
didn't
happen.

There was a good reason why Alex's sex dreams always ended in exactly the same place, right before the actual sex part . . .

It was because she never really made it to the actual sex part.

ALEX
never meant to lie about it.

Technically, she didn't
actually
lie about what had happened, but she also definitely didn't have sex with Cameron that night at camp.

It was an honest misunderstanding, she thought as she laced up her shoes in the locker room before track practice. Surely the girls would get that too, at least once she had a chance to really explain it to them. Still, the thought wasn't doing much to quell the growing pit in Alex's ­stomach. Now that the sex pact was in play, she knew she would have to set things straight with The Crew as soon as pos­sible . . . but getting up the nerve to do it was the hard part.

As Alex walked out of the locker room, she heard a ­chorus of laughter coming from Coach Kolbert's office at the end of the hallway. Coach K, as everybody called him, had been coaching track for almost twenty years, longer than all kids on the team had even been alive. They teased
him about being an old man, and he had no problem teasing the “young kids” right back. He was wise, but also playful, which was why everybody loved him so much. Alex watched him for a moment through his office window as he laughed with a few older boys she recognized as former members of the track team. They were all recent graduates. Alex figured they must've still been home from college for winter break.

One of the boys in particular caught her eye.

It was Joey Reed.

Alex always found it rather funny that his name rhymed with Zoe's, but apparently that was a total accident. Mr. and Mrs. Reed were formal people and only called him by his full name, Joseph, for the first six years of his life. It wasn't until he got to elementary school that people started calling him Joey. By that point Zoe was already four years old, and they certainly weren't going to change
her
name, so there was nothing anyone could do to stop the rhyming: Joey and Zoe forever.

Alex had known Joey ever since she and Zoe met back in first grade, but they become friends in their own right more recently through their time on the track team. Joey hung out with the kind of stupid boys who liked to play pranks or make lame jokes, but he wasn't like that. Joey was a sweetheart, and he'd go out of his way to apologize for his friends. Alex watched Joey and the other boys closely for another minute as they kept talking to Coach K. College life seemed to be agreeing with all of them. They were only a year or two older than she was,
but they looked so much more mature and comfortable in their own skin. And their bodies, too. Especially Joey. Especially
his
body. Alex didn't want to walk over and interrupt the reunion, but she hoped he would look out in her direction so she could wave hello.

He didn't.

Things didn't always work out the way she wanted them to.

Oh, well.

An hour later, in the midst of track practice, Alex still hadn't been able to stop thinking about Joey. She should've just gotten over herself and said hello. It was stupid she hadn't, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Especially right now, at this moment, as she sprinted around the track, pushing herself as hard as she could. She could feel the blood pulsing from the ends of her fingertips all the way down to the tips of her toes. She could feel her knees buckling beneath her. But mostly she could feel every single second of time as it slid away from her.

She knew too much time had slipped off the clock even before she crossed the finish line.

“Almost,” Coach K said, looking at his stopwatch.

Alex let out an exasperated
groan
. She had been stuck at “almost” for months now—and she hated it. “Almost” doing something just meant that you almost
didn't
do it as much as you almost did. “Almost” certainly wasn't going to help her break the state record.

“You're so close,” Coach K said, trying to find the bright side.

But Alex didn't want “close” and she didn't want “almost,” either.

She wanted
actually
.

It didn't matter that she was
close
to breaking the record, just like it didn't matter that she was
close
to having sex with Cameron. She still wasn't the record holder, and she was still technically a virgin. At this moment, Alex wasn't sure which “still” was worse.

“You're just getting in your own way,” Coach K said, sensing Alex needed more of a pep talk. He was talking about breaking the state record, but he might as well have been talking about everything else in her life too. “I can see you're all up in your head right now, overthinking yourself, second-guessing every choice you've ever made, revisiting all your old mistakes . . .” Alex nodded, mildly worried that he might be reading her mind. “But you know as well as I do that's not going to get you where you want to go. That's only going to send you backward. And you don't need to go back. You've already been there, right?” Alex nodded again, but more subtly this time. “Yeah?” Coach K asked, pushing for an actual response.

“Yeah,” she grunted back, frustrated.

“Good. Get angry,” he pushed, “because as far as I'm concerned, this record is already yours. But just because we think something doesn't mean it's just going to happen,” Coach K said, choosing his words in such a way as to make Alex even more certain that he could read her mind. “Victories have to be achieved, but I know—
I believe
—that you can do this. You will do this. But I need
your faith to be bigger than your fear, Ms. Campbell.”

Alex needed that too.

“Let's do one last lap and then call it a day,” he said.

She walked back to the starting line with her hands clasped on top of her ponytail, trying to empty her lungs and her thoughts at the same time. She did her best to push unhelpful words like “failure” and “Cameron” and “lie” and “virgin” to the edge of her mind, but as she worked to clear space in her head, she couldn't help but think about how hard she had to try to do so, which made her think about her twin brother, Max, and about how hard he had to work to do just about anything. Even though she was never entirely sure what was going on inside his head, she always felt like she understood him. She and Max had a special twin bond. They connected over their shared love of
Star Wars
. Really, Max was the one who loved
Star Wars
, but Alex loved how much he loved it, and then that just made her actually love it too. Max could quote every word any character said in any of the movies, but he always liked Yoda's words best—never quite in the right order, but somehow always making sense anyway.

One of Max's favorite Yoda sayings was “Do or do not. There is no try.” Alex liked that too, because it didn't pretend that “almost” was acceptable. You either succeeded or you failed—there was no in between. There was no “close.” There was no “almost.” There were no points for trying or planning or expecting.

Max was only two minutes and thirty-five seconds
younger than Alex, but that time—that “only”—was everything.

Alex, always the fast one, came out first, while Max got stuck backward or upside down or something. The doctors went in and grabbed him, but those first two minutes and thirty-five seconds had already changed everything. Immediately, expectations were recalibrated. Bars were lowered. Dreams were reimagined. Alex knew her parents loved her and Max equally, but they all knew that she was capable of so much more than he was, so they expected more from her too.

To put it simply, Alex had to be both the good daughter
and
the good son. Maybe that's why she was such a tomboy. Maybe that's why she liked to play sports. Maybe that's why she approached making out with more of a “boy mentality”—or whatever that meant. The irony was that if she actually
was
a son, no one would've ever written “slut” on her locker. She probably would've been called a stud or a pimp, like Oliver. He hooked up with everyone all the time, and he was “the man.” She made out with guys semifrequently, admittedly more often than most girls but not
all
the time, and she was called a ho. And, ironically, everyone thought she was even
more
of a slut because she'd had sex before, which she actually
hadn't
, so it was all just a jumbled mess. And all of it was still swirling around in Alex's head even as Coach K blew the whistle to start the last lap of the day.

Alex sprinted hard off the starting line, running as fast as she could, but it wasn't enough.

This time was even less “almost” than the lap before.

“It's okay. We'll
pick it up again tomorrow,” Coach K said.

It actually
wasn't
okay, but arguing just felt like another lost cause.

A few minutes later Alex walked toward the parking lot, carrying her backpack and gym bag and all of her thoughts and fears and expectations. It was more than she knew what to do with. She was sweaty and frustrated and tired, and annoyed that her mom wouldn't be able to pick her up for at least another hour . . . and that's when she saw Oliver, sitting on the front hood of his car, texting. His hair was still wet from a recent shower. “Hey, you,” he called as she approached.

“Hey,
me
?”

“Yes, you. Who else would I be waiting for?” Alex smiled. “Maybe don't answer that . . .” Oliver smiled back. “Do you want me to give you a ride?” he asked, his innocent tone not exactly matching the gleam in his eyes.

Alex raised her eyebrows, a new, bold smirk stretching across her face as she considering the wording of Oliver's question.

“A ride in my
car
,” he clarified. Alex added Oliver to the list of people she suspected might be able to read her thoughts. “You coming?” he asked one more time. “I'm not gonna beg.”

Oliver didn't have to beg. Alex was in. Literally. Figuratively.
Actually
.