Beyond us (all of us #3) 18+

F O U R

C H L O E

When I was younger, Mom taught me the importance of boundaries. How they needed to be solid like a brick wall enforced with steel. A door dead-bolted and padlocked with only one key that I am the beholder of.

'No' was literally the first word to ever come out of my mouth. To this day Dad still laughs and tells everyone we meet about how I said no to everything the first three years of my life, all thanks to her.

The summer before freshman year of high school I had to sit at the end of my bed and watch Just say no videos like Mom was preparing me for war.

In a way she was.

She made high school out to be a four year battle zone of teenage boys equipped with alcohol, weed, and various drugs. I thought I'd be dodging their sexual advances and diseases like my life depended on it.

Mom really did try her best to make boys as unappealing as she could, but then I met Todd.

Then she met Todd.

Todd with his straight white smile, 4.0 GPA, and fancy university ambition had her in a chokehold and all the rules went straight out the window.

Every last one of them.

He had a squeaky clean image and from the outside looking in, anyone would think Todd was safe. A good guy. A good influence.

Todd was someone Mom wanted to rub off on me until my skin was red and raw because he's, in her words, exceptional at everything he does.

Football, baseball, track.

Even math.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't wonder if he was actually good at everything.

Like, sex? Could someone be good at something they've never done before?

I pinch the sheets beneath me. The satin fabric glides between my fingers, but it doesn't ease the sick feeling in my belly. My heart's pounding so violently in my throat, one cough could toss it out on the shag carpet like a hairball.

I count each second that passes, glancing at the fancy digital clock on the nightstand to try and try to talk myself down before Todd finally comes up.

It is too late to back out of this?

No, you're already here. Just do it.

Just get it over with.

It's literally no big deal.

I shut my eyes and let my head fall into my hands.

"It was so bad," Thea complained with a slight chuckle, slouching toward me on the locker room bench like she could still feel the pain of it. "I couldn't even sit down all the way for two days."

"Don't listen to her, Chlo'," Makenna told me, not turning away from her open locker. "She lost her virginity to a literal loser. Kinda your fault T."

Thea rolled her eyes then set them on me. "I'm just saying, that's how things went for me. Ninety-nine percent of guys don't know what they're doing, and the one percent of them that do are like satanic or possessed or something."

"She's being dramatic." Makenna chimed in, her hand on her hip. "Diesel's a little toxic, but that one percent is more than worth all the bullshit I have to put up with."

"A little toxic? Yeah, you're both just insane, Mak," Thea laughed, sideyeing her as she pulled on a clean white tank top.

I sat on the locker room bench, hunched over tying my shoestrings.