When I closed my eyes, I saw the two of them, together, kissing in a hot tub. On the beach. In some club. Lacie Barone probably knew tricks and moves I’d never even heard of. But of course she did.
I was still a virgin.
I’d never had sex before, not with Jeremiah, not with anybody. When I was younger, I used to picture my first time with Conrad. It wasn’t that I was still waiting for him. It wasn’t that at all. I was just waiting for the perfect moment. I wanted it to feel special, to feel exactly right.
I’d pictured us finally doing it at the beach house, with the lights off and candles everywhere so I wouldn’t feel shy. I’d pictured how gentle Jeremiah would be, how sweet. Lately I had been feeling more and more ready. I had thought this summer, the two of us back at Cousins—I thought that would be it.
It was humiliating thinking about it now, how naive I’d been. I’d thought he would wait as long as it took for me to be ready. I really believed that.
But how could we be together now? When I thought of him with her, Lacie, who was older and sexier and more worldly than I’d ever be, at least in my mind—it hurt so bad it was hard to breathe. The fact that she knew him in a way I didn’t yet, had experienced something with him that I hadn’t, that felt like the biggest betrayal of all.
A month ago, around the anniversary of his mom’s death, we were lying in Jeremiah’s twin bed. He rolled over and looked at me, and his eyes were so like Susannah’s, I reached out my hand and covered them.
“Sometimes it hurts to look at you,” I said. I loved that I could say that and he knew exactly what I meant.
“Close your eyes,” he told me.
I did, and he came up close so we were face-to-face and I could feel his Crest breath warm on my cheek. We wrapped our legs around each other. I was overcome with this sudden need to keep him close to me always. “Do you think it will always be like this?” I asked him.
“How else would it be?” he asked.
We fell asleep that way. Like kids. Totally innocent.
We could never go back to that. How could we? It was all tainted now. Everything from March to now, it was tainted.
