He had me home by 1:59, and my father was waiting. Father had left most of the lights off, thankfully, so he didn’t seem to notice the brightness of my eyes, or the glow of my skin, or the mussed mess of my hair. Those are things I saw at least as I undressed for bed. I stared at myself in the mirror before I slipped a long T-shirt on over my naked body. I turned to one side, and then the other, posing, examining myself, trying to see what Jason saw.
I just saw me: five-foot-four, fluctuating between one hundred twenty pounds and one-twenty-five. Large br**sts with wide, dark arolae and thick, pink ni**les. Wide, curving hips and strong thighs, a flat midsection, dark, caramel-colored skin. Hair so black it was nearly blue, hanging past my shoulders in thick strands of coil-tight springs, impossible to manage. Eyes nearly the same color as my hair, a brown so dark they appeared black, my pupils all but indistinguishable from my irises. I had a bit of a sway to my back, making my ass look bigger than it really was.
Normally, when I looked at myself, I saw the sum of my flaws; now I saw myself a little differently. Now I saw my flaws as the sum of my beauty.
I slept deeply, and dreamed of Jason’s touch.
SEVEN: Falling Into Us
Jason
Two weeks later, the end of January
I was perched on the edge of the couch in Kyle’s basement, the wireless white Xbox controller slick in my grip from the last four hours of Madden, Halo 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops. The girls were out doing their weekly manicure-pedicure-shopping-milkshakes thing, leaving Kyle and me alone on a cold, snowy Saturday afternoon with nothing to do but play video games.
I was in the process of whooping Kyle’s ass in Madden, my Chargers crushing his Vikings 48-14, when he glanced at me with an odd look in his eye.
“So…you and Becca.”
I shot him a “yeah…and…?” look.
“What about us?” I asked.
“Have you guys, like, hooked up yet?” He didn’t look at me as he asked, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.
I cursed as he made a touchdown, bringing it to 48-21. “Have you and Nell?” I shot back.
“Asked you first, dickhead.”
I didn’t answer until after I’d chosen my play. “Depends on what you mean by ‘hook up.’”
He smirked at me. “All the way. Hook up, not mess around.”
“Then no.”
“But you’ve messed around with her?” He was inching forward on the couch, then shot to his feet as my quarterback threw an interception, resulting in another Vikings TD, bringing him to 28 points.
I wiped my palms on the knees of my jeans and glanced at him. “Yeah, we’ve messed around a bit.”
He paused the game, and I knew the conversation was about to get serious. “Will you?”
“Will I what?”
He punched my bicep hard enough to make it sting. “Hook up with her?”
I set the controller on the coffee table in front of me and leaned back to put my feet up, thinking about how to answer Kyle’s question. “I don’t know. Possibly?”
He just laughed. “C’mon, Jase. This is me you’re talking to. Don’t bullshit me. Are you gonna sleep with her or not?”
I frowned at him. “Dude, don’t be an ass**le. This is Becca, not some chick. If we do, I wouldn’t call it hooking up. That just sounds…I don’t know…cheap, I guess. Becca’s not cheap.”
He raised his hands in front of himself. “I wasn’t trying to say she was, man. I’m just curious, I guess.”
“What about you and Nell?”
It was his turn to shift on the couch, considering his answer. “We mess around, like, a lot. And at some point, I’m thinking we have to just make the decision to do it.”
“How do you feel about her?”
He snorted. “What, we’re gonna talk about our feelings now? Should we paint each other’s nails, too?”
I kicked his ankle. “Don’t be a dick. This isn’t the locker room, this is a private conversation. We’ve known each other almost as long as you’ve known Nell.”
He sighed. “I think I’m in love with her.” He pulled at a loose thread on a hole in the knees of his designer jeans. “If you laugh or make fun of me, I’ll kick your ass.” He glared at me in warning.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I was gonna give you shit about it, dude.” I dug my phone out of my hip pocket and checked for texts. “Have you told her how you feel?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Why is it I can say that shit to you, but if I think about saying it to her, I freeze?”
I laughed. “It’s scary, that’s for damn sure. Girls can get you all messed up. You know I’m gonna either understand or I’ll laugh at your sissy ass, in which case you’d try to kick my ass—”
“I wouldn’t have to try, I would,” he cut in.
“Yeah, whatever, pu**y. You’d be crying like a baby by the time I was done with you.” I kicked out with my heel, knocking his feet off the coffee table. “My point is, with Nell you can only hope you know she feels the same way. There’s just no telling how she’ll react. I think that’s what makes it harder to talk about with her than with me. My heart was beating so hard I was sure she could hear it when I told Becca I loved her.”
“You told her?”
I nodded, feeling stupidly smug about it. “Yeah, man. Right after Winter Formal.”
“Did she say it back?”
I grinned. “Yeah.”
I think he must have caught the hints in the way I grinned. “What were you two doing when you said it to her?”
“You know that spot, up on the hill beneath the big oak, where we go to plink cans with my .22?” He nodded. “We were up there after everybody left Ram’s Horn.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “And?”
“It’s real nice having a truck with a bench seat.” I knew I had a shit-eating grin on my face.
“Come on, man. Don’t hold out on me.”
“This stays between you and me, Kyle. I’m serious.”
“No shit.”
“Remember the dress she was wearing for Winter Formal?”
He grinned and nodded. “She looked hot.”
“Well, I discovered she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath it.” My mind brought up the mental image of Becca beneath me, and I resisted the urge to shift positions. “She was wearing underwear, though.”