Cherry (22 page)

Layla looked over at Zoe, who looked like she was
about to burst into tears, so Layla managed to put on an even braver and happier face, so much so that her cheeks started to hurt from smiling. “I promise we're good. We still had a fun Valentine's Day—and night. We went to the pier and watched the sunset and slept at Logan's uncle's beach house in the marina, which was pretty cool. We'd never actually, like,
slept
in the same bed before.”

“But he wasn't, like, mad?” Emma asked.

“Well. He wasn't
thrilled
. But I just . . . I don't know. I wasn't ready . . . He understood that.”

“And then you gave him the best head of his entire life?” Alex asked even though it was more of a statement than a question.

“Duh. Twice,” Layla admitted, which made her and Emma and Alex laugh.

  *  *  *  

ZOE
wanted to laugh along with the other girls, but she couldn't.

Instead, a tear dropped down her cheek.

“Oh, Zo, don't . . . It's okay. Logan and I are gonna be all right. I promise.”

Zoe nodded. She knew that they would. Or at least she believed Layla when she said it.

But that's not why her tears kept falling.

“What's wrong, Zo?” Emma asked.

“I, um . . . ,” Zoe started to say, but a few more tears fell down her face before she could push any more words out of her lips. “I don't even know why I'm crying. I mean,
I know
 . . . but . . .” The
girls waited lovingly as Zoe took a deep a breath and then finally explained herself.

“Austin and I had sex yesterday.”

“Whoa.”

“What?”

“Zoe . . .”

“Yep.” Zoe could feel even more tears bubbling up and then pouring down her cheeks. She hated that she was crying. “Sorry I'm such a girl . . .”

“Hey. No. Do
not
apologize for being a girl,” Alex said sternly. “Or for crying, either. You don't get any bonus points for pretending not to have emotions. Tears are so important. And totally underrated.” It wasn't the sort of thing Zoe would expect Alex to say. Most of the time Alex protected her thoughts and feelings, bottling them up inside, which made her words seem even more true and important.

“Why didn't you tell us when it happened?” Layla asked.

The simple answer was that Zoe hadn't wanted to step on Layla's big day. She and Logan had been planning to do it for so long . . . and it all just happened so fast with her and Austin. She figured she would text The Chat after Layla did, but then Layla never did.

“I'm sorry,” Zoe said again. “Not for crying,” she clari­fied, almost laughing a little through her tears. She still didn't know exactly what was making her cry. She wasn't sad, exactly, but it felt like she was having a lot of emotions all at once. All of the feels, apparently. And they were all
showing up in her eyes and then falling down her cheeks. She simply couldn't stop them.

“If you don't want to talk about it . . . ,” Layla said.

“No, I do,” Zoe replied. She could feel that
not
talking about it had actually been making her feel worse, as if having sex with Austin were some sort of secret, which it wasn't. Or as if she'd done something wrong, which she hadn't. Zoe told the story as completely as she could, giving Layla and the girls the “full mental picture.” She started from the beginning, explaining how she had been giving Austin head and how he'd mentioned wanting to have sex . . . and how she said she did too. And how, even though they hadn't talked about it before, they couldn't think of a reason not to do it right then and there, except that Austin wasn't sure whether or not he had a condom. Zoe said she didn't want to have sex if he didn't have one, so literally he ripped his entire room apart until he managed to find one tucked in the back of a drawer on his nightstand. Zoe went to the bathroom to freshen up, and when she came out Austin had cleaned up his room the best he could and lit a bunch of candles to try and set some sort of mood. It was afternoon, so it was still light outside and the candles weren't all that effective, but it was a nice, sort of romantic ­gesture—except that one of the candles smelled like a pumpkin spice latte, and Zoe had to blow it out because it just kept making her think of Thanksgiving dinner, which was a decidedly unsexy thought. After they figured out the candle situation, Austin turned on some music on his phone. It was a song Zoe had heard before but she couldn't quite remember the
name. It certainly wasn't a song that Zoe would've picked to listen to, especially not at a moment like this, but she'd been so particular about the pumpkin candle she decided to let it slide.

After that, everything felt like it happened at the same time. Zoe and Austin were kissing and then they were naked and then Austin put on the condom. The good news was that Austin seemed to know what he was doing, or at least what he was
trying
to do. He'd had sex a few times before, but it took him a minute to line everything up just right. . . . Once Austin found the proper angle and body position and all that, he managed to successfully push inside of her, but it wasn't very graceful. Zoe decided it was probably whatever the exact
opposite
of graceful is . . . Clumsy? Ugly? Awkward? Probably all of the above combined.

“Yeah, it's definitively not pretty.” Emma laughed.

“Ohmigod, I can't even imagine what we actually must've
looked
like . . .”

“Whatever. The real question is did you like it?” Layla asked after a little bit more laughing.

Zoe had to think about that.

The truth was that it felt . . . well . . . it felt better once Austin found a rhythm.

After a little bit of time had passed, he had stopped to ask if she was okay. She was—and she said she was. And then he asked if it felt good. She knew he wanted her to tell him that it felt amazing or something all big and perfect like that, but that truth was that it actually kind of hurt. But she still told him it felt okay, which was more or less true—or
at least true enough—and so Austin kept going. And then, after a few more minutes—or maybe just one more minute, Zoe wasn't sure exactly—it really did start to feel more painful than pleasureful, and Zoe felt like maybe Austin's penis was just too big for her vagina, which, under normal circumstances, might've made her giggle, except that right then whatever was happening really did
actually
start to hurt—
a lot, way
more than it had even just a moment before.

Zoe was about to ask him to stop or at least take a break, but before she could, he said he was gonna cum—and he did.

He fireworked.

Zoe, unsurprisingly, didn't.

But she did feel a whole rush of emotions. Predominately she was proud that she had just made Austin do that. She was proud that she'd made him look like that and feel that way, all primal and euphoric . . . but then she had two more overwhelming thoughts at the very same time. One was that she didn't feel that same way he did (even though maybe she wanted to) and the other was that she hadn't
actually
done much of anything at all. Austin had done most of it. He was the one moving or thrusting or whatever it was exactly. Zoe had just been on her back, lying on the bed, trying to figure out whether or not it hurt . . .

Afterward they'd cleaned up and Zoe'd snapped a sexie that she never ended up sending.

And that was it.

And it was only then, as Zoe got to the end of the whole
story, that she realized she hadn't answered Layla's original question: Did she like it?

Honestly?

She still wasn't entirely sure.

“That's okay,” Emma reaffirmed. “It's a lot.”

Yeah. It
was
a lot. Zoe certainly didn't
regret
what had happened, but the reality of it was more than she had antici­pated.

“Do you want to do it again?” Layla asked rather carefully.

“Not today,” Zoe said with a little laugh. “But, yeah. I do.”

A few hours later Zoe found herself standing in front of her bathroom mirror. She was wrapped in a towel, freshly showered, staring at her reflection. She'd seen this same reflection a million times before, but tonight she wondered if she looked any different. Would anyone be able to tell that she wasn't a virgin anymore? Probably not, she thought. She looked the same to herself. Same pale. Same red. Same frizz and freckles and all that.

Then a new text message from Austin had just appeared on her phone:
Hi sexy

Zoe looked back at her reflection.

She didn't
feel
particularly sexy.

It was ironic, she thought, to feel like she knew
less
now than she did before she had sex, or maybe now she just understood that there was still so much more to know. And it made her think about “I Know Things Now,” the song from
Into the Woods
that had been echoing in her head. The
very last lyric of the song said that it was “nice to know a lot . . . and a little bit not.”

Now
that
is how Zoe felt: nice and also not.

Both, simultaneously.

Hi
, she texted back.

Thinking about you
, Austin responded quickly.

Aw, that's sweet
, she thought.

But
then
she thought about what exactly he might be thinking about . . . and laughed as she realized that, yes, Austin really was a sweet guy, and yes, she was sure his intentions were good, but mostly,
yes
, she was sure his thoughts were most likely dirty, too.

And she liked that.

But, then again, she also did not.

ALEX
was running out of time.

Literally.

Lately she'd been spending as much time as she could on the track, but it still felt like there would never be enough runway to run as fast as she needed to run in order to break the record.

“You gotta believe!” Coach K said, or almost
scolded
, as Alex pulled off her track shoes after practice on Tuesday.

“I do believe . . . ,” Alex grumbled.

“Then why don't I believe
you
?”

“I don't know!” Alex said.

At least that sounded like an honest answer.

More than anything, Alex wanted to clear her mind and just focus on her feet, but it didn't work like that. She had a whole body of parts in between that needed attention. And she still had to show up at school every day. And Oliver was still her car pool driver, and they were still riding to
school together, even though they hadn't actually
spoken
since Valentine's Day. And it was fine, really. But then again it also really wasn't. And they were just both so stubborn, Alex was starting to think they might never speak to each other ever again.

But. As was the case with so many of her thoughts and plans, Alex was mistaken.

“Hi,” Oliver said far too casually as she approached the parking lot. He was sitting on the hood of his car, his hair still wet from a recent shower.

“Hello,” Alex replied with enough emphasis to let him know she was surprised to be
hearing
from him let alone seeing him here and apparently waiting for her.

“You need a ride?”

“I'm okay,” Alex said, trying to give him a nice but firm brush-off.

“Are you though? Really?” Oliver pressed. “Are
we
?”

“We?”

“Obviously you're mad at me—”

“Why would I be mad at you? It's not like you said you wanted to hang out on Valentine's Day and then spent the whole night before making out with some other girl—”

“It was mostly
adrenaline
.”

“That's a lame excuse.”

“I wished it was you the whole time,” Oliver insisted, sounding even lamer. Alex rolled her eyes. “I don't care if you think that sounds like a line. It's the truth.”

“Yeah, well, the problem with you is that it's too hard to tell the difference.”

Oliver nodded, absorbing that. It didn't seem like he was going to try to argue. “You sure you don't need a ride home?” he asked finally.

“I'm sure,” Alex said as convincingly as she possibly could.

The good news was that her words and her feelings were actually one and the same. She didn't need a ride home—and she honestly didn't need Oliver, either. Right now she didn't
need
much of anything, and that was a phenomenal feeling. As she watched him drive away, she couldn't help but think that maybe this would be the first day of the rest of the year. Maybe now she was ready to wholeheartedly believe in herself and get over her fears and have enough faith and finally break the track record and all of that.

Or maybe not.

Maybe Alex should just get used to feeling more wrong than right.

Her phone buzzed. Oliver had sent her a new text message.

Two
text messages, actually.

The first said:
it is bigger, I swear

The second was a picture of his penis.

Alex understood dick pics even less than she understood hickeys. She didn't see the point. It seemed to turn boys on way more to send them than it did for her—or any girls she knew—to actually get them . . .
Ugh
. Now Alex couldn't help but wonder how many other girls had already gotten this very same picture from Oliver.

She deleted it without even really looking at it.

Well.

No.

That was a lie.

She looked at it for about ten seconds first.

Maybe twenty.

But the whole time she was looking, a jumble of thoughts raced through her head. She wondered why he had sent it to her exactly and what he was thinking about when he took it and what he thought
she
would be thinking about when she saw it . . . and then also what she was
actually
thinking, which was a two part answer mixed together as one: the first part was that his penis was larger than she had expected—not that she was expecting it in the first place, but still, it was—and the second was that she didn't think penises were particularly sexy looking. At least not in pictures. As far as pictures were concerned, she was far more impressed by abs or lips or maybe even just a piercing set of eyes. Alex could imagine that some other girls might
like
getting this kind of picture. Maybe some other girls would even be turned on by it, and that was all fine or good or whatever, but Alex knew she wasn't one of those girls.