Fusion (Explosive #5) (8 page)

When he told the entire seventh-grade class that I had a crush on Mandy Simpson and she called me a troll she’d never touch, I didn’t care. It didn’t bother me. I wasn’t humiliated in the least bit. In fact, that crush was, well, crushed.
Thanks, Chris.
I later found out that I’d dodged a bullet with that one.

One time, I even got caught peeing off the side of the pier. Did I care? Nope.

But, when Sierra Sullivan barged into my room right in the middle of a hand job session, I was mortified. For the first time, I knew what embarrassment felt like. It was the worst feeling in the world, and I didn’t know to react. Clearly, Sierra didn’t know how to, either, because she froze, her eyes never leaving my dick.

And then I suddenly knew the meaning of spank bank material. Because Sierra standing in my room, her eyes wide as she watched me, was more of a turn-on than any
Baywatch
or
Buffy
episode ever could be. Dressed in cute, little gym shorts and a Navarre Raiders T-shirt, she was a vision of pure innocence and beauty, and she was precisely what I needed to finish what she’d walked in on. I couldn’t even help myself as my release spilled onto my stomach.

It wasn’t until she gasped in horror and ran from the room that I realized what I’d done. I was a mess—and not just literally. I debated not even going after her, but I couldn’t do that. I had to make sure she was okay. That we were okay.

Imagine my shock when she turned it into a joke. I was conflicted. Part of me was glad she was taking it all in stride. Another part had hoped she’d been at least a little affected by it. But I guess I was delusional, because apparently, it was no big deal to her.

That was killer on my confidence, by the way.

While lying there, watching
Dawson’s Creek
, I started relating to the show. Man, they’re right—whoever they are. Sex messes with you. Not only was I trying to picture Sierra naked, but I was having real, genuine feelings for her. The more I ran my fingers through her hair, the harder I became. Suddenly, cuddling on her bed didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. I needed some space, some distance, before my junk freaked her out for a second time that night. But, when I tried to shift away, she wrapped her arm around my waist and nestled in closer.

Shit.

I started going through the football playbook and picturing huge-ass linemen tackling my ass as I ran down the field. It was enough to soften me up.
Just
enough.

Until she shared her news and I started picturing her in a cute, little cheerleading outfit.

I thanked the freaking Lord as soon as the credits rolled, because I did the same thing. Twisting off the bed, I pressed my fists down and hovered over her, careful to keep my groin out of her line of sight. Her ocean-sky-blue eyes were sleepy, and I took it as my out. Leaning down, I gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“Night, Tod,” I whispered and turned to climb out the window. I was halfway through when she called to me.

“Hey, Copper?”

My head swiveled as I glanced back at her. I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue while I straddled the window sill. That was enough to deflate me just a little bit.

A mischievous smile played on her lips. “Who
were
you strokin’, too?” she asked. A giggle bubbled out, and I groaned, hanging my head in shame.

And then I had a thought.
Screw this. Jeremy Banks doesn’t do shame. Jeremy Banks has no shame. Jeremy Banks is shameless. Why is Jeremy Banks referring to himself in third person?

My eyes slowly rose and raked over her long, bare legs. By the time they reached her face, her laughter had stopped and she was watching me with expectant eyes.

I gave her a wink. “You were right when you chose the
fox
, Sierra.” I whispered the word
fox
using my best Jimi Hendrix impression.

Her brow wrinkled. I waited her out for a moment, and as soon as realization crossed her features, I slipped out the window and into the black night.

“Night, Tod! Have fun clickin’,” I called.
If strokin’ is my thing, then clickin’ is hers.
At least, that’s what I told myself, and I would keep doing so for the next…well…forever.

Even though I was answered with silence, I couldn’t help the smile that formed on my lips as I whistled my whole way home. All twenty feet of it. Just before I stepped onto my porch, I glanced back at her window. Her light had been shut off, but her silhouette watched me.

God, I wanted Sierra to watch me over…and over…and over again. What the hell was wrong with me?

Hormones,
was what I told myself.
Hormones and fucking Mandy Simpson
. After my little party disaster with her, I hadn’t touched a girl. Hell, I was lucky Mandy seemed to have forgotten all about the night she’d walked up to me at a beach party, shoved her hand in my pants, and stroked my dick for a solid fifteen seconds before she said I was taking too long and she moved on.

Uhh, sorry, Mandy. In my defense, you did catch me a bit unprepared.

1.) No girl had ever touched my penis before that night. Hell, the only thing that’d ever touched it was me, and my hands are like my feet and my dick. Big. So her soft, little, drunk hands were…foreign to me. It caught me off guard. That’s all.

2.) If I hadn’t had six beers and hadn’t been suffering from immense shock, I probably would’ve nutted in about five seconds. Don’t judge. I was newly introduced to alcohol. Six beers was a lot at the time.

3.) Did she
not
see my best friend, Sierra, sitting five feet away from me, chatting with Chris and some other guys from the football team? I couldn’t get off in front of her if I’d tried.

Okay, so maybe that last part was a lie. We’d found that out tonight. But I hadn’t been able to do it with another girl with Sierra sitting right there. So Mandy had walked away, leaving me in a hard situation. I’d spent the next two hours with an ache in my balls that the Internet later told me was blue balls.

Blue Ball Mandy Simpson, I will never forgive you for those two hours of pure agony.

The worst part? I hadn’t even gotten a kiss for it. No making out or anything. Just a drunk chick sticking her hand in my pants for the first time ever. Couldn’t I at least have gotten some tongue action? Or, well, any action? Though, from what the guys said in the locker room, I wasn’t missing much. Blue Ball Mandy Simpson was also apparently Slobbery Mandy Simpson. I’d avoided a nightmare there, and in the weeks after, I’d had no desire for Mandy or any other girl to finish what she’d started.

So why was I now picturing Sierra’s pretty, pink lips and imagining running my tongue over them, begging for entrance so it could tangle with her own? Why did I want to press my lips to hers to see how they tasted? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about my hands roaming over her skin as we became more than friends? Just like I’d been doing since the first day of school when I’d temporarily lost my mind and almost kissed her before we were so rudely interrupted by Chris.

Yep. My problem was most definitely hormones. I needed to get a grip.

Wait. Wasn’t that what had gotten me into this mess in the first place?

“
Dawson’s Creek
over?” Dad asked as I walked in the front door.

I nodded and tried to move past him, but he followed me to my room. When he shut the door behind him and took a seat at my desk, I frowned. Something was off, and a sudden bead of sweat broke out on my brow as worry set in.

The corners of his mouth curled down while his round, bulging eyes darted around, looking anywhere but at me. His brows were knit together so tightly, I could practically see the tension it was creating. I had no idea what to expect when he cleared his through. “Okay, son. So…uh. I saw Sierra fly out of here earlier and then you going right after her. Apparently, in your haste…you uh…” His face reddened, and I held my breath, hoping like hell he hadn’t overheard what had happened.

“It’s no big deal, Dad. We’re fine,” I reassured him, wanting to get this over with and get him out of here. “She, um, she just caught me at a bad time.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie. In fact, it was pretty much the truth.

He nodded. “Right. Well, uh, the thing is… When you ran after her, you dropped your…um…towel in the hall and apparently didn’t notice it.”

My whole life, I’d never experienced humiliation, and that night, I was getting it in spades. God, could it get any worse? I hung my head and let out a groan before peeking back up at him. Fortunately, this was as embarrassing for him as it was for me.

“Like I said, she caught me at a bad time… If you get my drift.”

He nodded again, looking like one of those bobble heads that you get at a baseball game. He cleared his throat again and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before looking back at me. “Well, son. It made me realize we’ve never had
the
talk. I guess I was letting the school do it for me, but now that you’re experimenting and stuff, I figured we should have a talk. Man to man. You know. The birds and the bees stuff, even though I have no idea why it’s called that. Maybe because bees pollenate? But that makes no sense for the birds because they lay eggs. I mean, I guess, technically, a woman has eggs, but it’s a completely different type of reproductive system and process…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Where the hell does that damned saying come from?”

My face blanched. Birds and bees? What the hell? “I’m not experimenting, Dad. I swear it. I was just jacking off!” I protested.

The corner of his mouth twitched, curving into a half-smile as his eyes relaxed. “You’re not? I just… Well, I was hoping you were…” His crooked smile was quickly replaced a tight frown. “So you and Sierra aren’t…you know?” He started making hand gestures even I couldn’t interpret.

It was getting worse by the second.

I jumped off the bed and shook my head profusely. “No! Absolutely not. We’re just friends, Dad.
Just
friends,” I insisted.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.

Holy shit. Where did that thought come from?

“And you haven’t…?” He raised an eyebrow as well as his hands.

Imagine a circle and a lone finger and an old man miming what apparently is a sex act. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. For the second time, I was officially mortified. If I had to choose between that conversation and Sierra watching me come, I’d happily choose Sierra every freaking time.

“No! I’ve never even see a real, live boob before,” I admitted.

Almost instantly he exhaled a relieved sigh.

That was all I gave him. He didn’t need to know about Mandy. In fact, no one
ever
needed to know about her. I’d never even kissed a girl, let alone had a sexual experience outside of that, and I was more than happy to play the perfect innocent role. I mean, it was pretty much true.

That probably was weird for guys my age. In the locker room, I heard lots of talk of who had made out with whom, who’d given whom a blowjob, and there’d even been sex talk already. Crazy, I thought. Who the hell has sex at fourteen?

A lot of people, apparently.

I just wasn’t one of them. I guess I was what you could call a late bloomer, but it was more than that. Ever since the second grade, Sierra and I’d been inseparable. Where she went, I was right beside her. No girl had ever interested me enough to stray from her side. And, until just a few weeks ago, I’d never even considered kissing her. I was starting to realize, however, that I needed to do something. I needed to kiss someone, but there wasn’t a single girl I wanted to except for the one I couldn’t have.

Dad cleared his throat again, and I looked up to see him nodding happily. “Good. Good. You know, there’s plenty of time for all that. Boobs and sex, I mean. Both are great, beautiful things when you’re with someone you love. That’s the key to good sex, you know. You should wait until you love your partner enough to accept the responsibilities that can come along with sex.”

“Umm, yeah, Dad. I get what you’re saying.”

I was hoping that would get him to stop, but nope. He kept right on going.

“You see, son, what a lot of kids don’t realize is just how serious sex is. Boys your age think they’re invincible. But the truth is, you’re not, and even if you use a condom and birth control, there’s no guarantee to prevent pregnancy. Your sperm, you know, it can be potent.” He tapped his index finger on his chin as if pondering how he should continue this conversation.

The urge to groan was strong, and for once, I was wishing Jenna would break curfew and get in trouble. Awful, I know, but anything to get my dad out of my room. No such luck, however. His eyes lit up as if the lightbulb in his brain had just clicked on.

“Sperm. Think of it like a rich fertilizer. Fertilizer that doesn’t always have a success rate. This kind of fertilizer is special. It has to hit the egg just right to make a baby, but even still, you have to be careful. It’s like the lottery. The more you play, the more likely you can win, and you’ll never know when you’re going to hit the jackpot. But if you don’t play, you have no chances of winning.”

“So, to be winning, you have to have sex?” I joked, making him look even more uncomfortable. Probably not a good idea when I wanted this topic of conversation to be over, but it just came out without a second thought.

“No!” he protested as all the color drained from his face. He pulled on his collar as if that’d help him breathe better. “That is
not
what I meant.”

“I’m just kidding, Dad. I know all about sex and reproduction and where babies come from. You can spare me The Talk. The last thing I plan on being is a teen dad. Trust me. I’m not having sex, and I don’t plan on it any time soon, okay?”

The color started to return to his face. Thank goodness. It was time to end our conversation.

As I started to walk out of my room in hopes of him following, my dad called my name. I glanced back to see him eyeing me contemplatively.

“You know, Jeremy. Sometimes best friends make the best lovers.”

I nearly choked but kept my composure and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, Dad? Lovers?”