The Carter Project ✓

twelve

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SEX SHOULDN'T COMPLICATE things. But of course it does.

It didn't seem to with Landon and I, everything seemed perfectly fine until it didn't. After the first time we made love to each other, we talked for hours, only to have radio silence fall between us for the next two days. He wouldn't answer my calls, would go offline whenever he saw I was online, and even skipped a debate meeting. It was awful, thinking that maybe I had ruined it for him, this grand moment he had been waiting his whole life for that was losing his virginity.

Of course, it was just as momentous of an occasion for me and I felt just fine after. Sure, the bar was lowered for my first and I wasn't as well-versed in adult movies as my other friends were. I had only seen sex simulated for me in PG-13 movies where two lumps under the covers would make the headboard slap against the wall until the couple finally came out from beneath the sheets with their underwear on. But I was glad that nothing of the sort had happened.

Despite how important and momentous it was for us, that definitely didn't make it glorious. In fact, it was on the third day that Landon had finally reared his head and worked up the nerves to talk to me. And he had felt completely embarrassed about the whole situation. He thought he finished too early (he did, but not too early), he thought he didn't make me feel good (he did, or at least I'm pretty sure he did), and he was scared to see me because he felt like he had ruined both of our first times (he did by going off the grid and making me feel like crap for two days when all of it was in his head).

But that's what Landon did, he was always disappearing or being "low key" until the smoke cleared and he had no choice but to come out of hiding. In fact, the day he broke up with me was right after he went a whole day without calling or texting me.

And history was a cruel mistress, because that's exactly what was happening again. For a week, Landon had been absent from school, as if in those moments when he would spin out of control, he only came back for me and this time, I was nowhere to be seen. Well, whose fault is that, buddy? Now he was back again, almost as if popping out of the woodwork once Mr. Ali exposed that Carter was sending me lewd text messages.

Because I had seen him in the hall and my heart stopped. Among all the people I never really seemed to notice, he really stood out being the one person I hoped I could go the rest of this year avoiding since Carter was out of the question at this point.

But luck wasn't on my side because I saw his eyes light up as they met mine across the space between us, almost like seeing me for the first time.

"Hey," he said at the top of his lungs so that I couldn't play it off like I didn't hear him call me. Then again, I still tried it, but even I knew there was no point.

"What do you want, Landon," I asked as we made our way towards the middle. "I have to get to class."

"Who said I wanted anything?" He tried to smile at me like he used to, with that crooked smile and the way his brows dipped in the middle of his face, but it didn't work like that anymore. It felt like now his smile was too crooked unlike the way it used to be and his eyebrows made him look more menacing than approachable. I just wanted to take a step back, and then as many other steps as it took for me to get out of the door and back in the comfort of my own home. "But of course, I do want to talk to you."

"Alright," I said without sparing a second between us. "Talk. What's on your mind?"

That stupid grin was wiped off his face, almost like he had no idea what to do with himself now that I wasn't the same girl around him. I had my guard up. He broke up with me, I had no idea what he wanted to talk to me about when nothing between us was how it had been before.