First There Was Forever (20 page)

N
ate lived on one of those hilly LA streets with no sidewalks, where you enter each house from the back.

Before we got out of the car, I turned to Nate.

“Wait,” I said.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“This is really random, but do you think Ryan is going to tell anyone that I came over here tonight?” I asked.

“Ryan is a steel trap,” Nate said. “He won’t say anything.”

“Okay,” I said. “Because, I haven’t told anyone anything yet. And it might be weird if it gets around or whatever.”

“I respect that,” Nate said. “That’s fine. I won’t. And Ryan never would.”

For a moment, it hurt to think about Nate and Ryan, to remember what it was like to have a real, true best friend. I was wrecking my most important friendship to be here with Nate right now and he wasn’t risking anything. I was hit by a fresh wave of guilt.

“Is something bothering you?” he asked, as if he could read my mind. He reached across the center console and touched my hair. I stayed still as he gently took a piece between his thumb and forefinger and ran his fingers slowly down to the tip.

“No,” I said, letting out a deep breath. “I’m good.”

“My parents are in their room,” Nate whispered when we had stepped into his front hallway.

Everything about Nate’s house seemed amazingly regular. There were pictures of the family on the walls, dog toys scattered on the floor, lamps and ornaments and flowers on the tables.

“Should we watch a movie? Or just go to my room and talk?” he asked.

I dropped my gaze, feeling gripped with an unexpected, crippling awkwardness. “Maybe just talk?”

His room was simple. A narrow bed with gray sheets. Two posters on his wall. One of a Brazilian soccer player and one of a band I hadn’t heard of. There were textbooks and pens scattered all over his desk.

He walked over to his bed and turned on his bedside lamp. It cast long yellow leaves of light around the room. He sat on the edge of the bed, and I sat beside him. I tucked my hands underneath my legs.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

I nodded, and then he leaned in and kissed me. It was a more innocent kiss than the ones that we had had before. Then he stopped, pulled off his shoes, and lay back on his bed silently, not touching me.

I watched all of his actions, unsure what to do next. In some ways, I just wanted to sit there and be invisible and watch Nate do everything he would do if he was alone. This was what I had been fantasizing about all year: to see the real Nate. To just know him.

“Lie down,” he said.

I untied my shoes and lay down next to him. He rolled onto his side so we were face-to-face. I wondered how often he had been in this position with other girls. Was this a regular thing for him? For me it was all so new it practically hurt.

“Are you really okay?” he said. “You seem quiet.”

My heart was pounding. Words got stuck in my throat.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, my voice sounding tiny. I could barely stand to look at him.

He nodded.

“Have you,” I started, “you know, have you, like, ever had sex?”

I couldn’t believe I’d said it. I squeezed my eyes shut out of shame. When I opened them, he was looking at me in this really inquisitive way.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”

My heart sank.

“But never, like, with someone like you,” he said.

It’s weird, but all of a sudden I felt like I was going to cry. I don’t know why. It’s like I was getting pummeled with a million emotions at once.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Like me?”

“Like, with a friend,” he said. “Someone I really like as a person.”

“I’m, like, a friend?” I asked.

He laughed. “Not like that.”

“I’ve never,” I started, “I’ve never done it.”

“I kind of figured.”

“Why?” I asked, feeling self-conscious. “How can you tell?”

“You just seem like someone who doesn’t do stuff just ’cause everyone else is doing it,” he said. “You’re different than that.”

I didn’t say anything, and then neither did he. We just looked at each other. Neither one of us squirmed or said something stupid or teasing or anything. We just really held each other’s gazes for longer than I’ve ever stared at another person.

“I think about you a lot, Lima,” he said. “A lot.”

“Have you thought about doing, about having it with me?” I asked.

He rolled onto his back so he wasn’t facing me and took a deep breath in and out.

“Yeah,” he said.

He had thought about it. His imagination would be so much more vivid than mine, because he had actually done it before. The thought made me scared and excited at the same time.

“I think about you, too,” I said.

He glanced down his nose at me.

“C’mere,” he said softly.

I climbed up onto his body. I liked lying on top of Nate, feeling every shape of his chest and hips underneath me. We started kissing and our mouths and bodies just started moving together. I thought I wouldn’t know what to do, but making out with Nate was easy. I didn’t have to plan my moves. I just did what felt right.

Nate rolled toward me and kind of gently pushed me onto my back. He lay on top of me, letting his weight press into me. He moved his hand slowly over my chest, slowly over my stomach, slowly over the bony part of my hip and then to my leg.

“Can I take off my jeans?” he asked. “They’re kind of bothering me.”

I nodded.

Nate stood up and unbuttoned his jeans, and I watched as he pushed them to the ground. And then once he had stepped out of his jeans, he took off his shirt, too.

“Sit up,” he said.

I sat up.

“Put your arms over your head,” he said.

I stuck my arms straight up like a little kid, and he pulled my T-shirt up over my head so I was just wearing a white cotton bra that I’d gotten with Mom at the Gap last summer.

Nate’s body wasn’t surprising, and I was relieved about that. His chest and stomach were smooth and hairless. If anything, the most foreign thing about his body was his legs. They were just such boy legs. All that hair, and the way they stayed so straight and bony all the way to the top. They were practically skinnier at the spot where they disappeared into his boxers than right above his knee.

Nate sat down next to me, and we started kissing again. There was a new carefulness now that we were only partly clothed. The sensation of his hands on my skin took getting used to. It was like getting into a too cold pool: You know you’ll adjust, but at first it just feels like tugging.

Nate’s hands moved all over my body. He was slow and careful. When his hand slid under my bra, I felt him tense up, and he almost made a sound. But he didn’t, and I was glad. I was sort of scared of all that heavy breathing and groaning you hear in the movies.

I let my hand move down to his boxers. Hailey always said penises were really scary, really gross and rubbery and weird. Through the fabric of his shorts, I couldn’t tell what I was touching. It was a mystery—parts were super soft and other parts were hard as bone.

He took my right hand in his left hand and brought it inside his shorts. When I felt the strange soft skin of his penis, I made a gasping sound. It did feel weird. Nate’s hand stayed on the back of my hand and he guided me. I tried to relax and breathe and even enjoy it, but it just felt overwhelmingly foreign. Even scientific. I felt myself clamming up, as if I was disappearing inside of myself.

“Wait,” he said. He took my hand and brought it out of his shorts. He squeezed my hand really tight, and then he put it on his chest.

I was too ashamed to look at him. The shame of knowing I had failed was coupled by the bigger, darker shame of our bodies all together.

“Hey,” he said.

I let myself look at him, in his face, and I felt immediately better. He looked really content, really mild. His cheeks were glowing pink. A lock of his hair had fallen across his forehead in this adorable way that made him look like a little boy.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He smiled. “Are you kidding? That was so nice.”

“No,” I said, biting my lip and turning red.

“Lima,” he said, “you are so hot. You drive me crazy. You have no idea.”

I let out a little sigh of relief and let my head collapse onto his chest. He stroked my hair and ran his fingers along the edge of my ear.

I
woke up when the light started creeping into Nate’s bedroom. Everything in his room looked slightly dingier in the daylight. The light revealed the few cracks in the paint and the sort of cheap plastic of his swivel chair.

I was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how dirty I was, having not brushed my teeth or washed my face, and struck by a fear that Nate’s mom would wake up at any moment.

I peeled my cheek off Nate’s chest and crawled over him, reaching over the side of the bed to find my cell phone in the pocket of my jeans.

“What’s up?” Nate grumbled softly.

“I should go before your parents get up. And I need to be back to the twins’ house before my mom comes for me,” I whispered. “I’m gonna call a taxi.”

“No,” he mumbled, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’ll take you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You really don’t have to.”

He nodded groggily. “Yeah, yeah, no problem.”

I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and watched him as he did the same. I had the same feeling I’d had the night before: that I could just observe him doing regular things forever and not get bored.

He was barely looking at me. I got a wave of fear that I had screwed something up.

It’s almost as if he read my mind, because he looked up at me before he tied his shoes. I was standing awkwardly, two feet away from the bed.

“What are you doing all the way over there?” he asked.

I sat at the edge of the bed next to him. He wrapped his arm tightly around my shoulders and pulled me toward him in a kind of headlock, and I knew everything was still okay.

• • •

It was really different to be alone in the car with Nate in broad daylight. It was the first time I felt like we were boyfriend-girlfriend.

“My mom hates McDonald’s,” I said as we drove past one. “She’s all into, like, natural food and stuff.”

“That rules,” Nate said. “McDonald’s is, like, the most fucked-up corporation in the world.”

I wondered for a second if Mom and Nate would get along, and I felt a pang of longing to have everything be out in the open. She would like him if she met him. I just knew it.

Being around Nate, I felt that I was exactly where I needed to be. It didn’t matter if we were talking or not talking, if I had or hadn’t brushed my teeth. Right here, in this beat-up old Honda, at the corner of La Cienega and Wilshire, was the center of the universe because Nate was there.

• • •

The front door was unlocked and I let myself into the twins’ house. I walked into the living room and froze in the entrance. Meredith and Henry were making out on the couch. They were clothed, but their bodies were intricately locked together, churning rhythmically like gears in a machine.

Meredith paused when she heard me come in, and she looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her. She pushed Henry off of her.

“Sorry, so sorry,” I stammered, backing out of the room.

“Wait,” Meredith said, stumbling off the couch.

I turned away.

“Lima,” she said gently. “Hey, wait.”

I stopped and faced her. “I didn’t see anything.”

She laughed. “That’s not true. I know you saw us.”

“Did Henry and Lily break up or something?” I asked.

“No,” she said. And then she sighed exasperatedly. “It’s complicated.”

I didn’t say anything.

Something hardened in her expression and she said, “Where are you coming from? What happened to you last night, anyway?”

“Oh,” I said, “I just, like, went back to Nate’s house ’cause you guys were all sleeping.”

“Mmm,” Meredith said, and I could see her piecing together my story. Whatever moral leverage I had a moment ago was gone now.

“I guess we all have our secrets,” Meredith said, and this time, I genuinely couldn’t read her tone.

“I’m really tired,” I said. “I’m gonna go lie down.”

Meredith didn’t object, but I felt her eyes on my back as I walked away.

I curled up on a couch in her sunroom, hoping to sleep for a little before Mom came. I peeled off my sweatshirt and draped it over my eyes, creating a makeshift darkness. I was tired and wired at the same time. My mind was reeling, running through all the things that had happened during the last twelve hours. For the next two hours until Mom picked me up, I drifted in and out of brief, restless patches of sleep.