Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have) (6 page)

Why did he have to talk to her at all? Couldn’t they just ignore each other? It was so ridiculous. I tried to relax my shoulders so it looked like I wasn’t annoyed. “Hey, babe,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder. I wouldn’t let her get to me. He was my boyfriend. And I had my own house. Plus my own car. She was nothing. A fly on my arm. I shook her off and walked with Noah down the stairs. And smack into Hudson.

“Hey,” he said. “So do you want me to come over after school to jump-start your car?”

Noah looked from him to me. “What’s happening?”

I explained the car issue I’d had that morning. “Would you know how to start it?” I asked Noah.

“Um . . .” He blushed. “I have a Triple A membership.”

Hudson nodded. “I can do it. No problem.” He turned to me. “Want to meet me at my car after class?”

“I’ll take her home,” Noah said, putting his arm around me. “Meet us at the house.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

Hmm. Maybe we should fix Corinne and Hudson up and call it a day.

A HOP, SKIP, AND A JUMP

“There you go,” Hudson said as my car roared to life.

“Thank you! You’re the best!” I cheered.

Noah, who was standing beside me, flinched. Whoops. I took his hand.

Hudson started removing the cables. “Let it run for about thirty minutes to recharge the battery and then you should be good.”

“Thanks again,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Noah said.

“No problem at all.”

We all stood around for a second, and then Hudson said, “Okay, well, I’ll see you kids around,” then hopped in his car.

“Did he just call us ‘kids’?” Noah asked after he drove away.

“I do believe so.” I pulled Noah back toward the house. “Wanna go downstairs, kid?” I asked.

“I thought you were going grocery shopping.”

“Not till five,” I told him. “And I mean,
do you want to go downstairs
?” I leaned in and kissed him so he’d know what I meant. I wanted him to know that Hudson coming to my rescue with the jumper cables didn’t mean a thing.

He looked at his watch.

“Half an hour,” I said. “Plenty of time.” I gave him what I hoped was a sly, sexy grin.

“It’s just, I got stuff I gotta take care of before dinner,” he said.

What?

I was suggesting we both lose our virginity right that very minute on my brand-new futon in total privacy, and he was worried about stuff he had to take care of?

Was there something seriously wrong?

Was he upset about Hudson coming over?

“Just come down for fifteen minutes, then,” I told him, tracing my hand up his forearm. “I really missed you over break.”

“I gotta motor, April,” he said. “I already spent too long over here.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah.” He pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “So I’ll see you tomorrow, okay, cutie?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“Good.” He smiled at me. I loved those dimples.

I did my French homework alone until Vi finally showed a half an hour later. I bounded up the stairs and called, “Hi, honey, you’re home! Let’s go shopping! I’ll drive.”

“Wow, are you always this perky après school? Let’s move. And I can drive.”

FRANKLY, VI, I DON’T GIVE A . . . WAIT, WHAT?

The first ten minutes of grocery shopping were fun. Vi tossed various things in our cart while I watched in awe (French bread! Taco shells! Strawberry cream cheese!). The next ten minutes were less fun. (It was like a maze in there.) The ten minutes after that were painful.

“Grocery shopping is much more annoying than I thought it would be,” I said, while struggling to maneuver the cart around a sharp corner in the freezer department.

“You make it sound like you’ve never been grocery shopping before.”

“I haven’t. Well, not recently. Penny did all the shopping. And my mom hardly ever brought us along.”

Vi looked at me like I was from another planet. “I’ve done the shopping since I was about ten. But speaking of stuff you
haven’t done
 . . . why haven’t you and Noah had sex yet? Haven’t you been together for over two years? If you have to be in a relationship, you may as well be getting sex out of it.”

“We’re working on it,” I said. Any day now.

“It’s hardly work, darling,” Vi laughed. “It’s leisure.”

“We could never get any privacy when I lived at my dad’s. I didn’t want to do it in the back of a car.”

Vi nodded knowingly. “So now it’ll be any day, yeah?”

You’d think. Wouldn’t you? But now I wasn’t so sure.

“Are you on the pill?” Vi asked.

“No.”

“Do you want to be?”

“Maybe?” I said.

She opened the freezer door and checked out the various sorbets. “I’m going on it.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“So I can have sex and not get pregnant. Hello?”

“What did you use the last time you did it? With Frank?”

She picked lemon, dropped it in the cart, and then looked at me. Then back at the cart. Then back at me. “I never slept with Frank.”

“Oh,” I said, confused. “Then what was the guy’s name from your mom’s play?”

She pushed the cart down the aisle. “His
name
was Frank. I just never slept with him.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, catching up to her, even more confused. “Why did you tell me you did?”

“I told everyone I did. I felt like people expected me to have done it. Dean did it and Hudson did it and Joanna did it—this was before she realized she was gay—so I said I did it too.”

I wasn’t sure how to process this information. Vi had lied to everyone. Vi—strong, confident Vi—had felt the need to pretend to be something she wasn’t. Why did she care so much what other people thought? I guess if all her friends had done it, she hadn’t wanted to be the only one.

“So . . . that means . . . you’re a virgin?”

“You don’t have to announce it over the loudspeaker or anything. But yes. And it’s time to change that. So I’m going to have sex.” She moved us into the cheese section.

I smiled. “Who are you gonna have it with, though? Dean?”

“No way,” she said with a flick of her wrist.

“Why not? I’ve always wondered why you guys haven’t gotten together.”

“I am not interested in a boyfriend, thank you very much. And anyway, I know way too much about Dean’s sexual escapades. He’s constantly hitting on everyone. He hit on Doreen this morning for God’s sake.”

I laughed. “He wasn’t actually hitting on the school secretary!”

“You never know. In a different setting, if we hadn’t been there . . .”

“Ha ha,” I said. “Why are you so convinced that you don’t want a boyfriend?”

“I’m too busy as it is. And I don’t want anything keeping me trapped here. I am out of this place come graduation. Hells yeah!” Vi had applied to all the top undergraduate business and economics programs in the country. She was going to go to wherever gave her the best financial aid package. “I just want to have the experience. I want to know what it’s all about.”

“So who are you going to sleep with?”

“Liam Packinson.”

I scrunched my nose. “The redhead? Ew.”

“I love redheaded guys! They’re hot.”

“Redheads are evil.”

“Oh, get over it. You can’t blame Corinne for what Noah did.”

I pretended to be absorbed in the cheese section. “Do you like goat cheese?”

“No. Let’s get cheddar,” she said, grabbing two wedges and dumping them in the basket. “Nice way to change the subject.”

“Back to Liam. If you like him, why didn’t you invite him last night?”

“Because Jodi Dillon snatched him up on the first day of school in September. But I just heard this morning that they’re splitsville. And I’m up next. Operation Sleep with Liam begins tomorrow.” She patted down her hair and squared her shoulders.

“Sleep with Liam? Not date? Just sleep?”

“I told you, I’m not wasting time on a boyfriend. I have too many other things to do than be a
girlfriend
. But it’s time for me to have sex.”

“But why now?”

“First, because I cannot go to college a virgin. That would be pathetic.” She turned down the cereal aisle and tossed a box of Cheerios into our cart. “Second, it’s for research. For
The Issue
. I think it’s important that I actually do it before I write about it. So I’m going to Planned Parenthood to get the pill first.”

“Can’t you just use a condom?” That had been my plan.

“I’ll be using a condom plus the pill. Condoms can break and I am not going to be my mother.” She pursed her lips. “Accidents happen.”

“Fair enough,” I said as we turned into the cleaning supplies aisle. I wondered what it was like to know you were an accident. My parents had tried for two years before having me.

“If you want to start the pill too, I’ll get both of us appointments.”

“Maybe.” I rolled the thought around in my mind. Starting the pill sounded responsible. Sexy. Grown-up. “Yes. I would like to go on the pill.” One more thing to keep from my dad. Which reminded me . . . “Oh! Oh! Lucy lives on your street? With her parents?”

“It would be a crazy coincidence if she lived without parents on the same street as we live without parents, don’t you think?”

“You know what I mean! Why didn’t you mention that to me? Isn’t that dangerous?”

She shrugged. “She hasn’t set the block on fire yet.”

“Ha. Ha, ha, ha.”

“Don’t worry so much.”

After half an hour in the cleaning products aisle (apparently we needed garbage bags and recycling bags and laundry detergent and liquid dish soap that did not look like the dishwasher detergent and Swiffer refills and a Miele filter . . . and thank you, parents, for shielding me from all this as long as you did), we finally reached the cash register.

The Miele filter was sixty dollars.

“I don’t even know what a Miele is,” I said.

“An expensive vacuum cleaner. It was a gift from my grandma.”

“Where is your grandma these days?”

“A home. I visit her after school once a week.”

“You’re a very good granddaughter.” I had no grandparents left. Besides Penny’s parents. But I didn’t count them. Even if I did, I wouldn’t expect them to give me a vacuum cleaner as a present.

They did send me fifty dollars for the holidays, come to think of it. Um, come to think of it, I really needed to write them a thank-you note.

The bill came to three hundred and twenty-two dollars. Ouch. “I got it,” I said, handing over my debit card. “Consider it rent.”

THE FIRST TIME NOAH AND I ALMOST HAD SEX

It was four months earlier, the beginning of junior year. Noah’s parents were out of town, his sister was at a movie, and his brother was listening to music in his room. I’d told my parents I was at Marissa’s.

We had stuffed ourselves on Chinese food. Noah had over-ordered, as usual. He had big eyes. We would definitely have leftovers. We were in sweats watching a crazy sex scene from
Vampire Nights
in his basement. Noah was fidgeting. He always got antsy whenever he watched anything longer than a half hour.

Vampire Nights
was hot. “Maybe we should do it,” I said, not sure if I meant it or not.

And he said, “Now?”

And I blushed and said, “Yeah!”

“Okay!” he hollered, and jumped off the couch like it was a trampoline. “Do you have anything?” he’d asked.

I shook my head.

“Me neither. Let’s go to the store.” Before I could blink he already had an umbrella in hand, his shoes yanked on, and the garage door opened.

The idea of getting all dressed up and facing the rain made me reconsider. “Oh, never mind. It’s too wet out.”

“What? No!” His face deflated. “I’ll go by myself!” he continued, already out the door. “You don’t have to do anything!”

“Okay,” I’d said, sinking back into the couch.

I’m guessing the entire block heard the squeal of the tires.

We had been together for almost two years. We had decided to wait until at least junior year—having sex as a sophomore seemed too young to me, but junior year seemed acceptable. And now it was junior year. I knew he’d been waiting for me to bring it up. And I had been planning on bringing it up . . . as soon as I felt ready.

Maybe spontaneity was a mistake. First-time sex should be planned. Considered. You couldn’t just cannonball in, like it was a pool.

By the time Noah got back I had a nervous, pounding headache. Was I really ready? Or was it just
Vampire Nights
? The show also made me want to be a vampire, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea. Would everyone know? And did my breath smell like General Tso’s chicken?

“Don’t hate me,” I said.

He looked at me. Not in a mad way, but definitely disappointed. He dropped a Walgreens plastic bag on the wooden floor and kicked off his boots. “Hey, that’s okay. Whatever you want.”

“I don’t feel great.” The next thing I knew the room was spinning. I sat down on the carpet and bent my head into my knees. “I think I might pass out.”

He sat down beside me and put his arm under my neck. “Aw,” he’d murmured. “Is it the MSG? Maybe we should have ordered Bertucci’s instead.”

He ended up taking me home. As we left the basement, I glanced into the Walgreens bag and saw that he had bought five packs of condoms, all different types: lubricated, non-lubricated, non-latex, ribbed (for her pleasure), glow in the dark. Two per pack. Ten total.

“Big eyes,” I teased him.

He laughed. “I’m planning on using them all. Whenever you’re ready.”

FROM THE REAL SUZANNE TO THE FAKE JAKE

From: Suzanne Caldwell

Date: Tues, 13 Jan, 2 a.m.

To: Jake Berman

Subject: Settling In

Hi, Jake!

The girls are really enjoying themselves! I just called and they had a whole bunch of people over. I heard singing in the background and everything! I’m so glad they’re settling in well. Also, I met a man last night named Jake German! How funny is that! I asked him if he knew you, but he didn’t.
I hope things are going well in Cincinnati!