One Trip Around the Sun (16 page)

This morning, I feel confident and braver than I ever have. I’m wearing a black skirt that I bought when my mom took me shopping for school. I swore that I’d never wear it. I pair it with a sleeveless white crocheted shirt and a pair of black flats. I add diamond earrings and head downstairs.

My parents are sitting at the table across from each other. They seem fine—at least as fine as they are any other day.

“Good morning,” they say at the same time.

“Good morning.” I rummage through my bag that I dropped on the table when I got home last night. “Can you sign this, please?” I toss a permission slip on the table between them.

Dad looks at it and then at me. He opens his mouth to say something, but then he closes it when he notices what I’m wearing. He looks me over, and I wonder if he’s going to tell me that the skirt is too short.

“You look very nice. What’s the occasion?” he finally says.

“No occasion.”

Mom hands me the signed permission slip, and I shove it into my bag.

“Okay.” Dad appears anxious as if he has something more to say, so I wait. “Your mom and I are going out of town tonight to that B and B in Green Valley. You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah, I’m staying in tonight.” I don’t really know that for sure, but I say it, so they won’t worry about me. “Have fun, kids. I have to run.” I head out the back door, and I hope like hell that they do have fun and that whatever mess they had going on last night is over with.

“Stop pulling at it, Reese! You look hot!” Chelsea scolds me.

As soon as we get to school, I’m fidgeting with the skirt. “I’m gonna puke. I want to go home and change.”

“No, you don’t. Just walk beside me and stop with that nonsense.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ve got this.” I smooth out my clothes and take a deep breath.

First hour, I notice that Brady isn’t in his seat. The two girls that spend most of the class fighting for his attention are actually paying attention to the lesson. I sneak my hand down into my bag and check my phone. There’s a text from him.

Babe, woke up late. See you at lunch.

I smile and focus my attention back on the lesson.

I’m excited as I make my way to the lunchroom since it’s the first time I will see Brady today. As I’m waiting near the entrance, the two girls who sit near Brady in bio class approach me. Just as they reach me, Brady pops out from the senior hallway. I return his smile. Apparently, the girls think I’m smiling at them, and they look disgusted. Senior girls are such bitches. I roll my eyes at them and then focus on Brady.

They stop just long enough to insult me.

The one who sits right next to Brady is the first to speak, “Nice skirt.”

The one who sits next to her adds, “If you’re a nun.”

“Forgive me for liking my skirts longer than my vagina.”

They gasp and glare at me, and just as they are about to say something else, Brady swoops in and plants a kiss on my lips. He wraps his arms around me and grabs two handfuls of my ass.

“Do you know what I love today?”

“No, baby. What?” I lay my head on his chest, looking up at him.

“Your ass in this skirt,” he says to me, looking at the girls.

They huff off as we look at each other, laughing.

“And your mouth.” His fingers trace my lips.

“My mouth, huh?” I lift my chin, inviting him to kiss me.

“Yep. The more confident you get, the dirtier this little mouth gets.”

He kisses my mouth. “I love this mouth.”

Brady goes on ahead of me while I stand in the food line with Chelsea.

As we approach our table, Brady and Connor are having a heated debate about something. Brady’s gaze meets mine, and he stops talking mid-sentence. I sit next to him, and he never takes his eyes off of me.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he whispers before kissing my cheek.

I never imagined I could be so happy. Brady makes me forget all about the nonsense that came before him.

This is going to be
the
year for me.

I’m sitting downstairs, waiting for Reese to get out of the shower. She’s taking forever. I’m bored, so I decide to go up to her bedroom and snoop around. Maybe I can find something that I don’t already know about her.

Her room is a typical teenage girl’s bedroom. Pink shit is everywhere, and clothes and jewelry are hanging on every piece of furniture. There are a lot of pictures of her, mostly with Kyle or Chelsea, on her corkboard. The bashful girl in the pictures is the same one I met a few months ago. She’s smiling and even laughing in some, but her eyes look different. She’s changed so much.

I walk over to her nightstand and sit on the edge of her bed. I pick up an almost empty bottle of lotion and pop the cap to smell it.

Oh, yeah. That’s her smell.

The smell alone could make me hard without her even touching me. I make a mental note of the brand and the scent. She’ll be getting a gift very soon just to let her know how much I love the way she smells.

A set of dog tags that have Kyle’s name on them lay beside a frame that says
Best Friends
on it. There’s a photo of her and Chelsea in the frame. Nothing of mine is here. I want something of mine in her room.

All last week in metals class I worked on a charm for Reese. It’s a heart with the word love spelled out on it. I put everything I had into it, and it’s the only thing I’ve made in class that’s worth a shit. As a matter a fact, I’m impressed with myself. I don’t want her to take it too serious though so I wasn’t going to give it to her anytime soon. I’ve been carrying it around in my wallet and figured when the time was right I would give it to her. I guess now is as good a time as any. I pull it out my wallet, and I walk over to her desk. I grab a Post-it note, and I jot down a message to her, just to make sure she doesn’t read more into it than I mean.

I LOVE SPENDING TIME WITH YOU, REESE.

I put it on the nightstand and then drop the charm on top of it. I hope it earns a place next to all these things that mean so much to her.

I see her schoolbooks lying on the floor, so I decide to sit down and do her homework for her. She hates math, so I start with that. I’ve done a few of the harder problems, and then I’m bored again.

How long does it take to wash your body?

I contemplate going into the bathroom to see if she needs help, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t do anything to make her have to say no to me. She calls the shots, and she hasn’t called that one.

I look at the other papers lying around, and the title on one of them catches my eye. I pick it up and I’m shocked at what I’m reading.

AM I A VIRGIN?

CHECKLIST

1. FIND A GUY.
MATT.

2. FLIRT.

3. MAKE OUT.

4. PURCHASE CONDOMS AND SPERMICIDE.

5. HOTEL ROOM.

6. ???

Okay, this is surely some kind of fucking joke.

Am I a virgin?
Well, you are or you aren’t, and she already told me that she was.

Find a guy?
Why the fuck does it say Matt? Who the fuck is that?

Condoms and spermicide?
I saw those in her purse the night that she had the panic attack.

What the fuck?

Checkmarks are by numbers one through five.

Was this a plan to lose her virginity, and she stopped before she went through with it?

Yeah, that’s obviously what this is. It makes sense. Chelsea said that Reese was about to do something stupid, but she wouldn’t say what. No, if this was a plan to lose it, then why is it labeled,
Am I a virgin?

I’m sitting on the floor, leaning against her bed, when she finally walks in.

She looks at me, smiling, her hair wet and sexy. I can’t let that distract me though.

I hold up the paper. “You wanna explain this?”

She presses her eyes closed for a moment. Then, she opens them and walks over before taking the paper from me. She quickly becomes pale as a ghost, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t worried about her. But I’m pissed, too.

“Brady…” She drops her hands to her sides, letting the paper drop to the floor. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“It looks like a plan to lose your virginity—except, according to this, you don’t even seem to know if you are a virgin. How is that even possible? It also looks like that I wasn’t even your first choice.” I stand and try to get around her. “I would never in a million years have pegged you for this bullshit, Reese.”

She holds her hands to my chest, not letting me get past her. “You have it all wrong. That’s not it at all. I mean, it’s complicated.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed you say that a lot. My name isn’t on that paper, Reese. Who’s Matt? And why is he crossed out?” I point to the paper on the ground.

“Don’t leave, Brady.” She sucks in a deep breath, and her expression is one I know too well.

“So, you fuck me over, and you’re the one having the panic attack.”

I stomp out of her bedroom and slam her door. I run down the stairs, but when I make it to the bottom, I come to my senses. I run back up the stairs to her bedroom and press my ear to the door, listening to see if she is really having a panic attack. I don’t hear anything at first, and then I hear a gasp.

Thank you! This was a team effort, and so many people played a part. Thank you!