Prove It

Chapter 23

~~~~~~~~~Sierra~~~~~~~~~

“You look different,” Tia said as soon as Sierra sat down at the cafeteria table with her.

Sierra was already regretting her decision to eat with Tia. Tristan tried to convince her to stay with him but she refused for two reasons. Reason number one: she was going to blurt out how much she loved him at any moment. The words bubbled up every time she looked at him and they stayed on the tip of her tongue, ready to slip out every time she opened her mouth. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to know; she felt that the timing was wrong. If she said it now, he’d probably think she was being emotional because they had sex but it was the other way around. She didn’t love him because of the sex, she had sex with him because she loved him.

There were moments when it still didn’t feel real that they had sex. And that led to reason number two. What did all of this mean? She was still unsure of what their actions last night meant in the big picture. They still had the future to consider. Tristan was going to Stanford. She wasn’t. It was impossible to take last night back and what if it was a mistake? It didn’t feel like a mistake, but was it too soon to tell?

Sierra didn’t have anything to compare sex with Tristan to but she could easily see why sex was such a big deal. She’d never experienced anything so intimate before in her life. It was surreal. She felt like her body didn’t belong to her. For a few precious moments she physically belonged to him and he belonged to her. She was forever changed. Once you gave yourself to someone that way, did you ever get all of yourself back or did a small part of you belong to that person forever? Sierra had so many questions and no clear answers. She couldn’t ask Tristan without getting his biased responses. He tended to cloud her judgment and that was the last thing she wanted.

But now that she was sitting with Tia, missing her boyfriend and feeling guilty for having a secret, Sierra wished she’d ignored her crazy idea to spend time apart from Tristan.

Tia had been stealing not-so-subtle peeks at Sierra all morning. She was giving her one of those long meaningful looks right now. Sierra squirmed in her seat. Then, she took a moment and brushed off her nervous feeling. There was no way Tia knew. No way.

“Do I really look different?” she answered, finally. “I think I look the same way I did when I was seventeen.” Her voice was nowhere near as steady as she tried to make it.

“No, you don’t look older,” Tia said. “You just look … different. Like you had a really good birthday.”

There was nothing suspicious about that, right? She did have a really good birthday. Who was she kidding? She had the best birthday. Not that eighteen is a lot of birthdays, but this one was definitely a memorable one. She wasn’t ready to tell Tia exactly how memorable it was. Not yet. Sierra was still dealing with not being a virgin anymore, she wanted some more time to process. She didn’t want Tia’s opinion to influence her before she really knew how she felt about it.

Tia gave her another long glance.

“Did Tristan give that to you?” she asked. Tia pointed to the necklace Sierra had been unconsciously fidgeting with. Sierra dropped her hand.

“Yes,” she answered, practically beaming.

“It’s pretty.”

It was more than pretty; it had significance, and that made all the difference. She tried to stop fidgeting with it, but she couldn’t keep her hands off of it. Touching it made her feel close to Tristan.

Tia noted Sierra’s glazed expression. “Why do I get the feeling Tristan gave you a lot more than a necklace for your birthday?”

“Hmmm,” Sierra answered carefully.