Jason—the considerate guy—has a six-pack in the back of his golf cart.
We celebrate our win by splitting a beer between us. We sneak into the TV room, which is…exactly as a it sounds. A room with a TV and a couch. It’s attached to the dock master’s office, and it comes in handy for the boat-owners who don’t have cable.
I give Kenzi the remote and she settles on VH1. The music videos provide good background noise as I make her unfold her prank in full detail.
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” I tell her, “you’ve got a devious streak.”
She cackles and takes a swig from the bottle. “That’s me. Miss Horrible.”
I shake my head. “I can’t believe he bought it.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s accustomed to women throwing themselves at his feet.”
I screw the corner of my mouth. “You’ve got that right. He thinks he’s going to have sex with you.”
She blinks at me. “What?”
“He said…” and I clear my throat now for a dramatic retelling, and point ahead, my voice a growl: “That girl there. I’m going to fuck her this summer.”
Kenzi screws up her nose. “Gross. Like he’s going to throw me over his shoulder, caveman style, and take me to his cave?”
“He probably has a shag-cave. Where susceptible women get the all-encompassing honor to getting railed by Jason King.”
Kenzi chuckles and puts her bottle to her lips, but her eyes stare into the far-off.
I call her out: “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
“I’m…not!” she huffs, but she pulls a bit of hair behind her ear when she says it. She does add, “I guess there are worse ways to lose my virginity.”
“No. There aren’t. That’s the absolute worst way. You don’t want to be a notch on someone’s flip-flops.”
She shrugs. “Honestly, I’d rather be a notch. I can’t think of anything worse than a rose-petal bed.”
“Chilled champagne.”
“Chocolate-covered strawberries on the pillow.”
“Your lover playing an acoustic guitar softly from the bathtub.”
We both look at each other and cackle.
“You’re right. That does sound terrible.”
Kenzi drops hear head against the couch. Her raven hair drips over the back like a waterfall. “What was your first time like?”
“What, you mean besides the rose petals?”
She sticks out her tongue.
I steal the beer, take a swig, and then set it in my lap, loosely cradling the neck between both hands. “Miles Kronfeld,” I tell her. “Seventh grade. His parents made him keep the bedroom door open at all times—boys or girls, didn’t matter—which, in retrospect, was pretty forward of them, I guess. We’d have sleepovers and one night he climbed into my bunk. We touched each other and I’d just…watch the changes in his face. Listen to the hitch of his breath.”
“So it was like…only handjobs? You two never…?” Kenzi extends her two pointer fingers and taps the tips together.
I frown. “What…because it wasn’t penetrative, it doesn’t count? It was intimate. Probably more intimate than most of the penetrative sex I’ve had. So, yeah. I count it.”
“That’s fair,” Kenzi agrees. Her eyes drift to VH1, but I can tell she’s not really watching. “Why does sex have to be so complicated?”
I shrug. “It doesn’t.”
“It’s my body,” Kenzi protests.
“It is.”
“And I can do whatever I want with it.”
I look her straight in those emerald eyes. “So what do you want to do with it?”
I’m not immune to the shift in the air between us. For a minute, it hangs. It’s the feeling of putting on clothes straight out of the dryer—static electricity that makes your hair stand on end.
And then Kenzi leans in, and I lean in. We crash somewhere in the middle, mouth finding mouth, hands groping, feeling for…something. Like finding each other in the dark. We are sloppy. We are rushed. She tastes like cheap beer and fruity lip balm. I want to suck it off her lips.
The beer spills. No one cares. Our teeth click in our haste and we chuckle about it, her warm breath a puff on my cheek. My lips find her neck. That sensitive spot underneath her ear. She moans and the sound plucks a cord inside of me that sends me trembling.
My mouth fingers hers again, and this time, we taste each other. She licks the inside of my mouth, kitten-like. When we break apart, she sucks my bottom lip in her mouth and nibbles the steel of my lip ring.
There is something simultaneously so eager to please and so innocent about her and it goes straight to my groin. I could cut through diamonds right now.
I fall in top of her, pinning her to the couch. She grips my hair. The back of my chest. She tugs at my shirt and her legs wrap tightly around my waist, boa-constrictor style. Our hips wedge together and we roll around, soaking in each other’s heat. She lifts her arms and I acquiesce and push her shirt and her bikini top over her head—they’re both still damp and they roll up together in a tangled mess before hitting the floor.
Her breasts spill out—beautiful, soft, and full—and she pulls my shirt off and our skin feels so hot together, so good pressed together. I feel every brush of her fingertips. The warmth of every soft sigh. The movement of her body, undulating and jerking restlessly and wantingly underneath me.
It’s almost too much. “Slow down,” I try to coax her.
But she’s animal-frantic, grabbing at me. “I want you inside of me,” she pleads, her voice this low, heated thing.
“Yeah…” Mine, a gravelly growl that I barely recognize.
Her lips crush against mine and I trip and fall into her kiss. There is a whole summer’s worth of pent up energy in me, and it zeros around every swipe of her tongue. The dark heat of her mouth. The way she tastes me, so curiously, so hungrily, as though she wants to trace every strand of my DNA with the tip of her tongue.
I am a line on a ship, wrapped around a winch, pulling tighter and tighter and tauter and tauter, until it trembles with the pressure, one more twist all it needs to make the whole thing snap apart—
“Fuck!” This is not a toe-curling moan of pleasure. This is the humiliated groan of a boy wound so tight, he comes apart.
In his pants. In his fucking pants.
I freeze on top of her.
Kenzi’s breath patters against my lips, her silence unsure. Still clinging to me. Then, timidly, she asks, “Did you just…uh…?”
“Yeah…ugh.” I climb off of her and sit up, retreating to my side of the couch. There’s a decorative throw pillow in the opposite chair and I snatch it up, hugging it in my lap. Hiding the shame stain.
“I swear, this has never happened to me before,” I mutter into the seam of the pillow. “Is this like a…straight person thing? Because it sucks.”
Kenzi sits up and runs her nails over the back of my neck. “Firsts for both of us, then.”
“This was not your first time,” I protest.
“You said it yourself—your first time doesn’t have to be penetrative to count.”
“Oh my God…do not. Do not repeat my idiot words back to me.” I bury my face in the pillow. I feel sticky and sullied and ridiculous. “I wish I was Pinocchio.”
“Because he’s…made of wood?”
“No. Because he got swallowed up in the belly of a whale.”
A light chuckle escapes Kenzi. “C’mon. It’s not that bad. It’s kind of flattering, actually.”
“Great,” I groan. “I’m going to go lie underneath a car now.”
“Stop. You’re so dramatic.” She rests her chin on my shoulder. Her breath tickles my neck lightly and, eventually, it draws me out of my turtle shell. I roll out of my hunch and lift my head.
“Can we just…go back to being friends and pretend this part of the night never happened?”
She blinks at me, those green doe eyes all innocent. “Pretend what never happened?”
The silence between us is like steel wool against the skin. I want to say something, but all my words have jumped down my throat and refuse to resurface.
“I like this song,” Kenzi says after a moment. “Turn it up?”
I do. We both stare at the video without really watching it. Halfway through, she gets close, and rests her head on my shoulder.
“You’re my best friend,” she says after a minute, “You know that, right?”
“You’re mine.”
We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.
We stay up late, watching videos, just existing in each other’s shared space.
