The ceiling in my room is dotted with tack from old posters. Heather lay over my arm with her head resting on my chest, and despite how warm her body was next to mine, my hand stopped receiving blood fifteen minutes ago. I chose to ignore it because she is small and achingly beautiful in my arms.
When you first have sex, it causes temporary idiot euphoria. Not only are you giddy, and your cheeks hurt because you've smiled too much, but you also start spouting stupid shit.
I'd blurted a confession to Heather before she'd left that we'd had magical sex, not to be confused with magic sex, which implied there were wands and warlocks and dodgy robes, but the kind that would alter you by morning. She'd smiled, of course, and told me she'd heard sex was magic to all boys. But, for the first time, I don't think she got what I was trying to say.
She'd asked again about the party and this time I couldn't refuse. I would put my reservations about Chuck behind me for one day because the light in her eyes when I nodded was priceless.
Later, I composed a text for Heather but deleted it. Chuck maintained you shouldn't text a girl after sex for at least seven days. Once, Heather had told me a boy from summer camp texted her all the time, and she caught 'The Ick.' I wasn't sure what 'Ick' was, but I hoped she'd popped a pill or whatever to get rid of it.
I dozed until it became a deep mid-afternoon snooze. It was the most rested I'd felt in months.
When I eventually awoke, it was past six in the evening. I went downstairs to the kitchen; Mom was doing that thing she did. That thing with the rag in the sink.
"Are you coming to the hospital?" she paused, soap suds masking her hands. "His surgery is scheduled in a couple of hours."
"I might see you later," I said noncommittally. "I have a date with Heather first." Although she'd never explicitly called it such, she hadn't not said it either.
"Oh," was all she said.
"At the party?" Chuck added from the breakfast bar.
My eyes narrowed. "Is there a problem?"
His mouth curled into a predatory smile, but I was the only one who noticed.
"Chuck, you're a dick." Unsurprisingly, he snorted a laugh, knowing I had nothing better to give.
Mom suppressed a sigh with her back to me at the sink. "Would it kill you to try harder to be friendly, Adrian?" She wiped her brow with the side of a wet hand.
She would never understand how much. "Probably," I said, wrinkling my nose, "so I won't chance it."
Chuck was an intimidating foot taller than me, having had a growth spurt over the summer, and fifty percent more stupid—which took effort. I put his dumb comments down to the number of blows he'd taken during football practice, but I believed nature was playing her part too.
Looking at him now, there was a plan brewing behind those big dumb brown eyes of his, and all I could do was wait for it to happen.
Heather arrived an hour after Chuck commandeered the truck, so we hiked two miles of flat desert highway. I was doing this for her, not me, and because we'd had sex, which I was immensely happy about. I was also determined not to be the guy who knocked back one Budweiser after another and spent the evening weeping in a corner over his dad before vomiting on somebody's dog.
But as I leaned with one thigh against the wall, white knuckles clutching the synthetic red cup, music thumping, it felt inevitable. The house was crammed with soon-to-be seniors and college freshmen on summer break.
"Glad you could force yourself to a party," Chuck said through a tight-lipped grin and a rougher-than-needed back slap.
"Fucking asshole," I muttered under my breath.
YOU ARE READING
Thorns
Ficção Adolescente[COMPLETED] Adrian's headed for a collision. He doesn't know when; he just knows that he is. With his father ill and his mother devout at his hospital bedside, Adrian is left navigating the world of grief, microwave meals, and first love alone. The...
