“See you tomorrow, Bailey,” Ace said. He pushed Charlotte in front of him as they rounded Sam’s truck to the passenger side and got in. I almost thought he was giving me time alone with Sam on purpose—or giving Sam time alone with me.
Sam squared himself in front of me. Looked down at me. Licked his lips. Turned to look over his shoulder at the cab of his truck, presumably to see whether Charlotte was watching us through the back window. I couldn’t tell with the streetlights reflecting on the glass, and honestly I wasn’t interested. Sam wasn’t going to try anything while Charlotte was anywhere around.
The interesting thing was watching him struggle through it. The diffused lights from overhead softened his features and darkened the stubble on his face, but I clearly saw two embarrassed points of red flush his cheeks as he blinked slowly at me and thought about last night.
“We usually meet at Ace’s dad’s car lot and all drive together when we have a field trip out of town,” he told me. “I could pick you up and take you there tomorrow afternoon.”
“Sounds good,” I said brightly, as if a gig was all I expected from him.
He lowered his brows at me and hesitated, unsure whether I was toying with him. I wasn’t going to clarify. After feeling like I was stumbling around under his thumb all afternoon, I enjoyed finally taking the lead in this dance. My only response was to raise my eyebrows like I wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, though electricity raced just underneath my skin because he was standing a few inches away.
“See you then,” he said suddenly. Walking to his truck, he looked up at the sky, searching for strength. With his hand on the driver’s door, he turned back to me. “You leave first, so I know you’re safe, considering your death wish and all.”
“Ha.” I got into my car obediently, though, and drove off. Stopping at the intersection, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that both Charlotte and Ace turned toward Sam, probably ribbing him about me, Girlfriend Twenty-seven. Sam stared straight ahead, watching my taillights until I turned the corner.
10
I climbed the steps of my parents’ house, toward my room, but Sam stopped me with an arm encircling my waist. “Bailey,” he breathed, gently flattening me against the wall. Above us, a framed photo of Julie and me in our bluegrass festival outfits creaked on its nail.
In reality, I was descending the steps inside my granddad’s house. After a long morning of sanding guitars and sweeping the floor, my repeated fantasies about what Sam didn’t do to me in my parents’ house the previous night had become a lot more interesting than my real life. I wondered whether the bride from our gig was doing something similar, fantasizing about Sam while she made love to her David or wandered around her house or drove through her lunchtime commute, titillated in her compact car.
“I can’t,” I whispered, bracing one hand against Sam’s chest to back him away. The hard pressure of his hands on my upper arms and his groin against mine never changed. He said in my ear, “I know you’re holding back, Bailey. There’s something you don’t want me to know. Whatever it is, I promise it won’t matter. I want you, and I know you want me, too. Let go and feel, just this once.”
I let out a sigh agonized enough that my granddad heard me in the kitchen and asked me what was wrong as I crossed the showroom to the front door. “Nothing,” I called back. “See you later.”
“Here?” I asked, blocking Sam’s hand with mine just before he unbuttoned my shorts.
Sam glanced down the carpeted stairs, then up. “You don’t like risk?” he asked coyly.
“I—”
“That’s okay. I want you to feel comfortable. Come on.” He took my hand and led me up the stairs, away from the last portrait of Julie and me together at a festival. He put his hand on my bedroom doorknob and turned it. And in real life, I pulled open the front door—
—and jumped ten feet in the air, registering only a split second later what had startled me so badly. Sam was standing there with his eyes wide and his hands out to save me.
“Holy f**k!” I yelled at him.
He put his fists on his hips and eyed me skeptically. “Yeah, I get that a lot from the ladies.”
“What’s the matter?” my granddad hollered, concerned, but not concerned enough to turn off the polisher.
“It’s just Sam,” I yelled back.
“In my day, the young people didn’t greet each other that way,” my granddad called. Sam had a mysterious effect on him. He’d never attempted even this lame humor before.
“Bye,” I yelled. Stepping out onto the front porch and pulling the door closed behind me, I explained to Sam, “You startled me. I was thinking about you.”
He grinned. “I was thinking about you, too. I thought we could hang out before we need to leave for the gig.”
“I can’t,” I told him, hoping he heard the sincere regret in my voice. “I was just leaving for a doctor’s appointment.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“No, thanks.”
“Why not?” His eyes were suddenly two dark points, his mouth drawn into a small, worried circle. “What’s wrong?”
Surprised by his reaction, I put my hand over his heart to reassure him. It raced under my fingertips. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, self-consciously removing my hand again.
“Then why are you going?” he demanded.
“It’s my annual exam.”
“Then why can’t I go?”
I’d just had a similar mortifying conversation with my granddad at breakfast. He hadn’t wanted to go, but he’d demanded to know exactly where I was going and why. Exasperated, I enunciated every syllable so Sam would be embarrassed into backing off. “It’s with the gy-ne-col-o-gist.”
His face didn’t change. He asked suspiciously, “If it’s your annual exam, what happened a year ago that made you go in the first place? Wasn’t that right when you got mad at your parents and went wild?”
I folded my arms. “Yeah, but not like you’re implying. You’re starting to sound like Elvis at the mall.”
I’d intended that comment to shake Sam out of this strange worry and into anger. Anything was better than this intense stare he was giving me, like he knew something terrible had happened and I was keeping it from him.
“I’m a virgin,” I blurted.