Junia Baker's Journal

Chapter Fourteen

I sit with Bhodi during our free period, like we always do, though something about today is different. Today, I'm finding it extremely hard to keep this secret from her. I know if I tell her, I'll probably impress her, which is something I've never been able to do when it comes to sex or guys.

She's my only friend, she's the only girl I stayed friends with leaving high school and entering our first year of university. I've never clicked with someone as fast as I clicked with her. She likes boys just as much as I did, and she loved having sex. She's kind of a slut, to put it bluntly.

I think her body count is at eighteen now, but I've lost track. She always tells me about all the guys she sleeps with and usually I never have any juicy stories to tell her back, but now I do.

Benji and I have had sex every day this week, since the first time we did it last Sunday. On Monday, we did it in the kitchen. I was bent over the table, his hand on my head, pushing my cheek into the wood. On Tuesday, he booked a three star hotel and we spent most of the day there, as I ditched my last couple classes. He laid roses from the door to the bed, then from the bed to the bathtub. We had sex on the bed the second I got there, before he brought me to the bathtub and drew me a hot bubble bath. He helped me in, then squeezed in behind me and rubbed my skin, telling me how special I was. We then had sex in the bath, then a couple hours later we did it standing up by the dresser back in the bedroom. I couldn't believe he was able to do it that many times in one day.

On Wednesday, we had sex in his car again, but this time in the backseat. It was quick and late at night, in a laneway after we picked me up from Bhodi's. I think we both like the thrill.

Thursday was a little different.

He invited me over to his apartment. I took the bus there and told my mom I was sleeping over at Bhodi's. She paid no mind to it, of course.

There were candles everywhere, some lit, some seemingly accidentally blown out. The blinds on the two windows he had were closed. It was a secret that I was there, no one could know. I don't think people would bother to look through his window, but he seemed a little paranoid either way. He always seems paranoid whenever we're together, ever since we started sleeping together, which I understand, but I also wish he'd loosen up a little bit and stop worrying so much.

He gave me a beer, a Pabst Blue Ribbon. It tasted cheap, not like the beers my dad used to keep in the fridge when he was alive. I would always sneak the beers that he had fully stocked, all of them always looking different but the labels always saying CRAFT beer. When he died, after the cancer finally killed him, my mother never continued keeping them stocked, which I never blamed her for, although I did miss the easy access to beer. Eventually once she started drinking, that easy access came back.

Benji also drank a beer, but it seemed more like he was already on his fifth or sixth, which is why he didn't come and pick me up like he always does.

I spotted four empty cans on the counter near the kitchen sink, one toppled over laying on its side, a little pool of beer forming below the mouth opening.

I wonder what made it different this time, what made him drink so much. Maybe because this time, I was going there. Not even my mother went to his apartment. She claims it's too small and claustrophobic.

I think she's spent the night a total of three times since they started dating and she never had much to say when she would come home the next day. She always said they just stayed in, ordered pizza and watched a movie. It seems like that's all they ever did together.

He made us dinner, but the closer I looked at it, the more I think he bought one of those remade dinners where you just stick it in the oven for fourty-five minutes, but I still thought it was sweet of him that he tried.