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He smiles. “You have a game?”

“Yes, I have a game.” I move his hand from my face and use it to cover his eyes. I sit up on my knees and take a deep breath, before pulling my gaze from his face to… well, lower. He must have heard my nervous inhale because he’s trying not to laugh. “What? I’m getting the part that makes me most nervous over with. Aren’t you at least a little apprehensive about the fact that I’m seeing you naked?”

“I already told you my parts are in perfect working order. I have nothing to hide.”

Is he really that confident? Having nothing to hide is the part I’m most afraid of. And I wonder who will answer all these questions that have already started rolling into my brain since we stripped down minutes ago? Topics like puberty, boys, and sex are all subjects I’ve discussed in great detail with my mom on several occasions and it was never awkward or uncomfortable for either of us. But even if she were still here, I’m not sure I’d be able to ask her the things I want to know. Before, it was all hypothetical, all something I’d do or deal with in another lifetime. The second I started seeing myself experiencing everything with Jordan, it became a potential reality and it’s like if I open my mouth to ask a question it will become a personal inquisition rather than a hypothetical discussion. Even with Jordan, talking about this stuff was way easier when I couldn’t fathom the possibility of me and him ever being…
us
.

But I’m not completely naïve either. I’ve seen pictures, I’ve read books. I understand the basics of what things are supposed to look like and how they operate. I’ve even read scenarios where characters are going through the same relationship steps that I’m going through right now. I think about Kath and Michael in
Forever
. She got nervous about not knowing what to do, how to touch him, just like me. She compared his anatomy to descriptions from romance novels and found the reality to be much less intimidating. I’ve always wanted to have an experience similar to that because it felt okay to be bad at things. At first, anyway. Though I’m really hoping that if Jordan
has
named his penis, he doesn’t share that information with me.

“You haven’t fallen asleep, have you?” Jordan asks. “That would not be good for my ego.”

I laugh and rest a hand on his stomach so he knows I’m still awake. I want to slide my fingers further south—touch him there—but I don’t know if I can do that just for curiosity’s sake or if it has to be done with a specific purpose. My two years in middle school are pushing their way back to my frontal lobe and I’m suddenly recalling all the immature middle-schooler conversations and teasing about the size of male anatomy, but now I’m wondering how you really know if it’s big or small? How many do you have to see before making an accurate assessment and what does that say about the person making those claims?

And then there’s this whole other slew of conversations regarding “gross” girls who probably touched themselves all the time (I think, looking back, I sat with some horrible people during lunch and had absolutely nothing to contribute to their conversations). The logic is completely lacking. It’s wrong for girls to touch themselves and I guess guys are supposed to know exactly what to do because the girls obviously don’t since their hands have to stay far from that area? And how
do
guys know what to do with us? Do they all have plastic models of vaginas that come with a diagram and directions on what to do? It’s hardly fair to expect them to be good at this. At least gay guys, like Tony, know what they’re dealing with. They’ve been living with the same parts all their lives. I wonder if they compare sizes? I wonder if they bother learning about vaginas?

And assuming Jordan ends up exploring that region of my body, is it going to hurt? I can’t even use super tampons without feeling pain, so how much will it hurt to have fingers inside me? I glance at Jordan’s hand lying on the air mattress beside me, trying to guess whether the diameter of his finger is larger than a super tampon. If it does hurt, should I pretend it doesn’t so that he won’t feel bad? I mean, babies come out of there, right? It’s not like it will hurt forever. Eventually, I’ll adjust… I guess? Weird. It’s like conditioning.

A warm hand touches my hair, making me aware of the fact that Jordan’s eyes are now uncovered. How long has he been watching me stare at his supposedly functional parts? Or is it just one part? No, he’s the one that said
parts
. Plural.

“What are you thinking about?” Jordan asks, breaking the long silence between us and quieting all the thoughts flying through my head.

My face heats up, but it’s completely dark outside now and the only light in our tent is from the glow of one flashlight lying on its side. I don’t think he can even see my blushing. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“Trust me, I do.” His face is full of so many emotions—concern, fear, love—I can’t play it cool anymore. A few more tears leak from my eyes and Jordan sits up quickly, holding my face in his hands. “What’s wrong?”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “Nothing… Well, everything. But… I don’t know. I have way too many thoughts and questions and—”

“Shh,” he whispers, pulling me down next to him, my cheek resting over his heart. “You have questions… ?” he prompts.

I shake my head again. “I can’t ask you this stuff. It’s like the ultimate mood killer.”

“I seriously doubt that.” His hand makes circles over my back and then I feel the other hand rest right on my butt. My completely bare butt.

Maybe I should be touching his butt? Maybe I’m so bad at this, he’s going to think I must not love him? I know girls aren’t supposed to equate sex and not-sex with love and guys who do are assholes and only want one thing. But I’m starting to realize that it isn’t that simple. If you really love someone, then you trust them—enough to see you without your clothes on. Maybe you don’t want to have sex because of pregnancy and diseases or for religious or cultural reasons but regardless, emotional and physical love do overlap. I don’t care what we’re supposed to think, they do.

“Believe me,” Jordan says, “You can’t ruin the mood with questions.”

I think he’s wrong about that, but I decide on a compromise. I want to get this over with quickly. “I’ll ask and you have to answer in three words or less, okay?”

“Okay, sure.” He touches his lips to my hair and then tightens his arms around me. Wherever his fingers land, the skin heats up instantly. I’m already as turned on as I’ve ever been, but also more confused than ever.

“How do you know what you’re doing?” I guess I could’ve started by asking him if does actually know what he’s doing because really, how would I know?

“Trial and error,” he says right away.

“You told me before that touching in certain areas is done with a specific purpose, so does that mean if I want to touch you there, I’ll need to—”

He cuts me off by lifting my chin and looking me right in the eyes. “No,” he says firmly. “You don’t need to do anything. Nothing that you don’t want to do.”

I nod, my face flushing even more, and return to lying on his chest. He seemed so serious and intense about that question that I don’t point out the fact that he went over the three-word limit. “How do guys know what’s big and what’s small?”

“Ruler.”

I burst out laughing and lift my head again. “Seriously? You measure yourself?” He just shrugs, obviously not wanting to elaborate. “Do you think it’s going to hurt me?”

“You mean sex?”

He’s pretty good at the three-word limit.

“Not sex, the… other stuff.”

Jordan takes my face again and pulls me closer, kissing me long and slow. “It won’t hurt.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” He turns me over and this time I have to watch his eyes scan over my entire body. Then he’s working his mouth over all the skin on my neck, my shoulders, my chest. Heat trails from one spot to the other. Any chill from the cool night dissolves before I can even feel it. “What else?”

I think for a second, distracted by all the lips and kisses covering my body. “Is the diameter of your index finger equal to or great than the diameter of a super absorbency tampon?”

He rests his forehead against my stomach and his entire body shakes with laughter. When he lifts his head, he’s wearing that Jordan Bentley amused and devious smile that I know so well. I was introduced to that half-bad-boy look my first night at his house, when he told me he’d already cleared all the magazines out from under the bathroom sink.

God, that was humiliating.

“I don’t know,” Jordan says finally.

“But if you had to guess… ?”

“Equal or less.”

Hmm… okay then. “Are you sure I’m the best person for you to be fooling around with? Obviously I know how to kill the romance.”

He kisses the space between my boobs. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, but why me?” Why not Liberty or some other hotter, more experienced girl?

“I love you.”

Three words. Well done, Jordan
. “What’s your opinion regarding girls touching themselves?”

I feel his eyebrows lift but he keeps up the kissing. “Hot. Totally hot.”

I start to laugh and then stop abruptly. “I haven’t done that before,” I admit, hoping I wasn’t misleading. “Not yet anyway. But I will. I totally will, so you keep visualizing the hotness of all that or whatever, okay?”

He slides up higher and wraps his arms around me so tightly that I can feel him against my leg, feel all of me touching all of him. He buries his face in my hair, mumbling, “I love you so much. You’re awesome and adorable and sexy and bold and brave and… Please don’t stop being like this, okay? Promise?”

I’m warm all over—inside and out. I wait for Jordan to lift his head and I kiss him hard, forcing him onto his back. My fingers slide down his stomach and keep sliding until I’m touching him. His breath catches and then he deepens the kiss, one hand reaching for my face.

“You don’t have to—” he starts to say, whispering the words against my lips. But he stops and sucks in a breath when my touch becomes more firm. “You can… you know… quit whenever…”

I pull back a little and watch his expression carefully. Maybe I am brave?

There’s a whole new kind of tension wrinkling his forehead and I know right then that I’m, at the very least, not terrible at this.

I duck my head and kiss his neck so he can’t see me smiling.

My feet are freezing. And my ass.

I peel my eyes open and see that there’s now at least a foot between me and Karen. I rustle around inside the tent, feeling my way through the dark until my hands locate my bag. I pull out a pair of boxers and slide them on along with my liner socks. Karen’s curled up in a ball, the outline of panties showing through the dark and a tank top, too, I think. She must have woken up cold before I did.

I unzip the extra sleeping bag and lie down behind her, tossing it over both of us. During the long hike yesterday, I wasn’t sure how awkward this would be for her—staying alone in a tent together all night—but the second my arm drapes around her waist, my chest pressing against her back, she relaxes into me like even in her sleep she expects me here. Close. I tangle our legs together, hoping we’ll both get warmer from body heat.

The haze of last night is finally clearing, my brain catching up with my emotions. How the hell did all that happen? How did we go from having fun hiking to fighting to me agreeing to have surgery to getting naked… then the crying and the deep discussion of measuring male anatomy and questioning the diameter of my index finger? And then the part where Karen became an accomplished hand-job giver.

I think I’m ready to do it all over again.

Minus the fighting.

“Are you as cold as I am?” Karen mumbles. “Or are you lying awake regretting agreeing to go back to the doctor?”

I tighten my arms around her and rest my mouth against her neck. “Yes, then no.” I can’t help it, the three-word challenge is too much fun to end yet.

And yes, I’m still scared shitless. I feel like puking just thinking about surgery, but I don’t regret agreeing to it. Not after hearing her say,
I need you to be okay. I need you
.

I’d been too busy thinking about my own fears, I hadn’t realized what it was doing to Karen. She’s been through so much. I can’t make her worry more than she needs to.

“I’m okay,” I whisper. “Just cold.”

There’re goose bumps spreading over her skin in each place I kiss and after a few more seconds, she sighs and adjusts her head to expose more skin. I’m completely unsure how far to take this. On one hand, I want to make her feel like she made me feel. And on the other, it seems a bit backward for me to attempt this if she hasn’t even tried by herself. It would be weird, right? Maybe she has done it but didn’t want to admit it? No, I don’t think she was lying. She almost seemed disappointed that she couldn’t admit to it.

I slip my fingers under her tank top. She jumps, probably from the coldness, and then holds my hand against her chest, warming it. I take that as a good sign and continue exploring with my fingers until I make my way back to her waist.

All this thinking about touching her is forcing me to pull my hips away from her back. I hesitate, like a fifteen-year-old about to make contact with his first pair of panties and afraid he might get slapped. But then Karen slides her right leg ever so slightly away from her left and my heart races. Is that a hint? Did she do that on purpose? Is she making room for my hand to fit between her legs? It’s funny how I can think about so many different concerns and outcomes now, but when the roles were reversed, when Karen had her hands on me, all I could think about was me. So yeah, apparently I’m a selfish bastard.

And Karen hadn’t seemed weirded out while touching me hours ago. In fact, she seemed very aware and even expectant of both the process and the outcome. Or I could have been too focused on myself to notice any discomfort on her part.

What the hell? I’m not some new adolescent who can’t unfasten a bra. I know how to pay attention. I know Karen and I know when she’s uncomfortable.