“Nudity,” I tell her, “looks awesome on you.”
She’s not bashful about where she puts her hands, so neither am I. We’re chugging full speed ahead when all of a sudden, she sits up and says, “Wait right here. I’ll be back in a second.”
I’m like, Crap! Did she freak out after getting me to the point of no return? But then she skips back into the room and hops into bed with a condom from her mother’s nightstand.
“Just to be on the safe side,” she says. The girl’s thought of everything.
Cassidy always liked to be on top, and it’s splendid that way, but with Aimee, I figure the old-fashioned method will be best. We can get fancy some other time. Right now, I just need to help her through. I figure it’s probably even for the best that we’re doing it. She can get some experience with a guy that only really has her best interests at heart. No worries. All positives.
In the middle of it, I look down at her face. Her expression is sublime, her eyes closed and her lips moving slightly with the little peeps that squeeze out of her. She looks like a saint at prayer. Suddenly, I feel all the layers that have grown over my own purity stripping away. The faster we go, the more layers burn away, until magic time hits, and there’s nothing left but the original me, as pristine as her body, shining and glorious.
Chapter 46
We lie there silently for a long time, and I stroke her hair until finally she’s like, “You’re incredible. It was like we were just one soul joined together.”
I kiss her forehead and go, “Thanks. I guess it’s pretty easy to seem incredible to someone on their first time.”
She doesn’t say anything back to that, and I’m like, “This was your first time, right?”
No answer.
“Aimee?”
Finally, she’s like, “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean? I thought you told me you never had a boyfriend.”
Again, she hesitates, her eyes closed, her chin tucked down. It’s bizarre—this weird, negative electricity buzzes through my stomach as I wait for her answer. It’s like I’m actually afraid of what she’s getting ready to say.
“I don’t want you to hate me.”
I kiss her forehead. “That’s never going to happen. You’re unhatable.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart and swear on a stack of Supreme Beings.”
“Be serious.”
“I am. I promise I won’t hate you.”
She lets out a hard sigh. “It’s just something that happened,” she says. “I mean, I didn’t plan it.”
“Hey, I understand. I hardly plan anything.”
“The thing is, I was fourteen, and you know, I didn’t know anything about being with boys, and Randy’s son was over spending the night.”
“Jesus, Randy-the-Walrus’s son?”
“Yeah,” she says in a small apologetic voice. “Mom made up the couch for him to sleep on, but sometime after everyone else was in bed, he came back to my room and asked if he could sleep with me. He said the couch was too small and it was hurting his back.”
“God, what a line of bullshit.”
“And I thought it would be okay. I mean, we were practically related in a way. So he gets in under the covers and slides right up against me. And he’s like telling me how comfortable my bed is and how warm my body is, and then he starts telling me how he was watching me all through dinner and liked the way I ate.”
“He said he liked the way you ate?”
“Yeah. And I was just lying there flat on my back and he put his hand on my stomach and started kind of nuzzling his nose against my hair and telling me how pretty I was. I just shut my eyes and tried to slow down my heart from beating so fast, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t really had anyone be interested in me before, and he seemed like he really was.”
“I’m sure he was.”
Her face squinches up. “No, he wasn’t. Maybe just for that one thing, but not for me. I should’ve known better. I mean, what twenty-year-old guy’s really going to be interested in a fourteen-year-old?”
“Damn! Are you kidding me? He was twenty? What a perv.”
“Well, but the thing was, I felt like here’s this older guy and he sees something in me none of the guys at school see. That nobody anywhere sees. He’s, like, even telling me he loves me, and I hadn’t heard that since my dad, and so I just felt so special. It was like I was Sleeping Beauty waking up from his kisses. But I didn’t really know what to do, so I just lay there and let him do it, and I started crying and he put his hand over my mouth. And then, when it was over, he went back to the couch, and later at breakfast, he wouldn’t look at me. He’s never come back since. I think he lives in Colorado now.”
“That dude is the king of the creeps. I can’t believe your mother stayed with Randy after that crap.”
“I never told her about it.”
“What? You should have. That’s statutory rape.”
“I never told anyone. Till now.”
“Not even Krystal Krittenbrink?”
“Just you.”
We both lie there quietly. It’s hard to think of something to say after that. After a while, I feel her tears on my shoulder.
“Don’t cry,” I tell her.
“You must think I’m terrible,” she says.
“I don’t think you’re terrible. Why would you say that?”
“You can’t even talk to me now.”