One Drop of Golden Sun

Ch. 16 Guys' Brains and Sex

*Lokela

It wasn't possible that Ray was still a virgin. Lokela shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Wasn't she nearly twenty-one? She had to have had a hundred guys wanting to date her the last couple of years, surely she would have fallen for one of them before now.

"Right, so this isn't embarrassing at all. Let me say it clearer." Ray rotated on the wall until she was facing him. "I don't know any other guy I trust enough to ask. I would ask Doug, but he has no real experience with women, and I don't know the other guys at the house well enough for them to give me a straight answer. I know you don't mess around or play mind games. You have no skin in the game, and you know Zach pretty well, so here I am, admitting that I'm still a virgin at twenty. I can't just be with any guy who walks in off the street, so to speak, it has to be someone special if I've waited all this time."

"And you think he's special?" he asked, disbelieving his ears. "Why?"

"I think he truly cares about me, in a deeply moving, passionate way. God, I can't believe I'm saying this stuff. Look, he wrote me a letter. Look at it."

The ground seemed to open under Lokela's feet and the sickening feeling of falling sucked at his gut. But he stood rock steady as she handed him the folded piece of notebook paper with his own handwriting on it.

"You say Zach wrote this to you?" he asked, not bothering to read it.

"Yes. And it's beautiful. It's like the poem he wrote, but even more sincere. If a guy saves his best friend from getting hit with a car, winds up in the hospital with several broken bones and then his first thought is to write a love letter to the girl he likes, that has to say something about who he is. What sort of person he is on the inside, doesn't it?"

"And what does this have to do with you being a..." He couldn't say it.

"I think if anyone in the world would be worth sharing my first time with, it would be him," she said softly.

Lokela's stomach twisted. He was going to be sick. "Did he tell you he wrote this letter?"

"Yes, I already said that."

Lokela was going to kill that son-of-a—

No. Zach must have had a reason. Besides, it would be Lokela in that bed or worse if Zach hadn't pushed him out of the way. He had to stay calm. This could be explained and worked out without him going upstairs and beating the shit out of his best friend.

But that meant lying—again—to Ray.

Or not. Maybe he could buy time. Lokela's mind scrambled for a tactic, for something to say. "I think you should definitely wait a little longer."

That was a weak suggestion, but to the point.

"Well, I was thinking I would have to wait until he's discharged from the hospital," she said. "Until he can get up on his own, right?" She nudged him with her elbow. Was she making a joke of all this?

He shook his head, tamping down the rising panic. "No, I mean, you should really take your time. Make sure it's a real relationship. If he cares about you, he'll wait."

"But what if I don't want to wait? I've been waiting for a long time. In any case, what should I say? Should I tell him? Or just keep it for me? My experience or lack thereof doesn't really concern him, does it?"

Miller's car turned into the parking lot. Lokela had that sinking, falling feeling in his gut again. He had to say the right thing.

But all he could see was Zach's shit-eating grin when he said how much he'd like to get Ray in his bed. If he knew she was a virgin? He'd find a dark corner to drag her into the very next minute.