Night Owls (25 page)

Crap. “I don’t blame you.”

He absently scratched the side of his neck. “To be honest, I don’t like being down here on this floor, either.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say. But he didn’t linger on the memory. He just smiled softly and hooked his pinky around mine. “Let’s go upstairs. There’s something I
want to show you.”

Backtracking up the big staircase, we headed to the top floor, music following us all the way up. Four bedrooms were clustered around his father’s office, which was one of those messy-neat
rooms, with small stacks of paper and file folders everywhere. “It looks like someone cleans around the piles,” I said, smiling at the vacuum-cleaner ruts still visible in the rug.

“Mrs. Weiser, every other morning on weekdays. She’s our maid. She doesn’t come when my parents are out of town.”

Ooh-la-la
, a maid. Must be nice. It took me several seconds to realize he was assuring me we were alone, and that made my stomach do a few cartwheels.

He led me up a tiny spiral staircase in the corner of the office. We emerged into a renovated attic space. White walls covered the underside of a pitched roof, making an upside-down V. Short
bookshelves lined the sides. The only pieces of furniture were a small stuffed chair and a reading lamp. A light blue rug covered most of the wood floor.

The back of the room contained a porthole window that overlooked the decks, but it was the front wall that drew all my attention. It was made of glass, and two doors in the middle pushed out and
folded back on themselves to open up the room onto a small balcony, where a waist-high wall of glass separated us from a stunning view of the city.

Cool night air rushed through the open doorway as we stepped out onto the balcony. The tree-lined hill of Parnassus sloped to the left (and beyond that, my neighborhood). Buena Vista Park sat to
our right, and the heart of San Francisco lay before us. Darkening streets slanted toward a pink sunset. We weren’t high enough to see the Bay in the distance, but it was a million-dollar
view nonetheless.

We sat down side by side on the edge of the rug, legs stretching onto the balcony, and looked through the glass wall.

“Cool, right?” Jack asked. “It’s the best part of the house. Jillian and I used to come out here and sail paper airplanes over the rooftops.”

Minutes passed while we listened to music and watched streetlights twinkle to life under the rolling fog. I must’ve gotten a little too relaxed, because when he finally spoke, it startled
me. “I want to know why it was so bad for you when you and that Howard Hooper guy dated.”

“I told you. He was a jerk.”

“No, I mean the sex,” he clarified. “I need to know what he did wrong so I don’t make the same mistake.”

MY CHEEKS CAUGHT FIRE, SO I DIDN’T LOOK AT HIM.
I just said, “Oh.”

“What if it’s bad between us, too? You might end up hating me.”

“That’s not going to happen. But if you’re worried,” I said carefully, “we don’t have to . . . I mean, I’m not expecting anything from you.”

He looked alarmed. “You don’t expect anything from me, as in you expect it to be the same?”

“No! I meant . . . ugh.” I drew my knees to my chest and hugged them. “I meant, if you’re not ready, it’s fine.”

“Oh, I’m ready,” he said so confidently, it made my chest feel warm. “I just want to know what went wrong. Like, specifically.”

“Specifically?”

“If we can’t talk about it, how can we do it?” He had a point. “Why was it bad?”

I sighed. “For starters, it was always in the car.”

“Which was cramped?” he guessed.

Fine. He really wanted to know? I’d tell him everything. “It felt cheap. Like he couldn’t be bothered to try harder. And either there was a seat belt buckle poking my rib or my
head was bumping against the roof of the car—which, after I broke up with him, he apparently told some of his friends in English class about. Because a couple of them started making jokes to
me, like ‘Your head bruised up today, Morticia?’ Or they’d pound on their desks and say ‘What’s that sound? It’s Morticia’s head hitting the roof of the
car.’ ”

“Jesus and freaking Mary,” Jack mumbled. “Are you serious?”

“That’s why I hate being on top, by the way. What else? Let’s see. Howard was always in a hurry, so even though he wanted to see me naked, he refused to do anything more than
push his jeans down a few inches, ‘just in case’ we got caught and he had to make a quick getaway.”

“That’s hot.”

Once I got going with the confessing, I couldn’t stop. “So of course it always lasted like three minutes. He’d just pick me up and park somewhere, and then he’d drive me
straight home afterward so he could rush back to his own house to play video games with his jerkwad friends.”

“Remind me why you were with this asshole again.”

“He also said he couldn’t afford to take me to the movies anymore because he’d quit his after-school job, but the next Monday morning I overheard him bragging about some keg
party the swim team threw, and he’d pitched in thirty dollars to help buy beer. Oh, and he never wanted to hang out with me at home because he claimed he ‘didn’t do the parent
thing.’ ”

“What did Katherine the Great think about that?”

“I never told her about him.”

“I see.”

I hugged my knees closer. “If you want to know the truth, I probably should’ve known better. I ignored a lot of things I didn’t like about him right from the start because . .
. well, because I was lonely and just wanted to do something that made me feel like I was in control of my life.”

“He was your golden apple.”

I thought about that for a moment. “No, because I wasn’t helping anyone in the process. I wasn’t doing anything poetic or beautiful, and I didn’t have good intentions. I
was only doing it to make myself feel better.”

“Mmm.” Jack balanced a forearm against his bent knee. “Well, apart from the pitfalls of extreme douchebaggery, which I’m not even going to address, because clearly this
guy is a total loser and didn’t deserve you—”

“That’s the truth,” I mumbled.

“But what you’re telling me is that you don’t like to be rushed”—he began ticking off a list on his fingers—“or being on top. You
do
like
making out and equal-opportunity nakedness, and you’d prefer it not to happen in a car.”

“Well, what you and I did in the car was sort of nice,” I admitted, glancing at him. “Really nice.”

“Oh, good,” he said with a soft smile. “I thought so, too.”

“But a bed would be nicer. Or anywhere nonpublic.”

“What about on top of some trash cans in a dark alley?” he teased.

“Gross.”

“Under the bleachers, next to the empty nacho trays and cigarette butts?”

I shoved him, and we both laughed. Then I chewed on the inside of my mouth and finally said, “We always used condoms, just so you know. I might’ve been stupid, but I wasn’t
irresponsible.”

“I bought some new ones,” he said. “I felt weird about freeloading off your mom, no offense.”

Oh, wow. That made my pulse quicken. “I brought a couple of them with me, just in case.”

“You did?”

“Not that I was making assumptions.”

“Make all the assumptions you want,” he said playfully, his mouth quirking up. A few moments passed. “By the way, I read an entire book about the female orgasm last
night.”

I nearly choked.

“And I’ve watched a lot of porn—”

“Oh, God,” I said, covering my face with my hands.

“—so it’s not like I’m totally in the dark.”

Some weird, twisted noise came out of my mouth. I did my best to form it into a rough “all right.”

“Just promise me one thing,” he continued. “If it’s not good, tell me. Don’t just get angry and resent me. I’d rather us not do anything and keep what we have
now than screw things up between us. Okay?”

I nodded.

He nodded.

Awkward silence hung between us until he finally said, “So, how about dinner?”

Oh. I hoped I didn’t look as disappointed—or simultaneously relieved—as I felt. I reminded myself that he was just doing what I told him I wanted: nothing rushed. We were just
hanging out. Besides, Mom’s shift didn’t end until seven in the morning, which was almost ten hours away.

He stood and offered a hand to help me up. When I got on my feet, he was closer than I realized, and I bumped into him. I apologized and tried to step back, but he stopped me with an arm around
my waist. “You’re not freaked out, are you?”

I wanted to say “of course not,” but it came out as “You haven’t even kissed me today.”

“You haven’t kissed me, either.”

I smiled, feeling sheepish. “Oh.”

He traced one of my milkmaid braids and combed through the loose wisps around my temples. My gaze tracked his movements before lifting to his face. His fingers stilled. We stared at each other
for a few heartbeats and then met in the middle.

His lips were warm on mine. His arms pulled me closer, and we pressed against each other, shoulders to hips. Maybe it was all that candid sex talk, but I was both extremely turned on and
deliriously edgy at the same time. My hands found their way under the back hem of his soft T-shirt. He felt warm and solid and muscular, and I traced the bumps in his spine with the tips of my
fingers while he trailed wet kisses against my neck. It all felt so good. Too good. My knees went weak, and I staggered against him before quickly righting myself.

“Maybe we should skip dinner,” he said in a gravel-rough voice.

“Maybe we should skip the bed thing, too,” I said, half kidding to cover my embarrassment over the wobbly knees.

“Okay,” he said. “Here?”

Wait, here? Now? I’d only been joking. Jack, however, was not. My nerves went all jangly. “You think anyone can see us?” I asked.

“Not unless they have binoculars with night vision.”

Right. Okay. “Did you bring—”

“In my pocket.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

I could feel my pulse
whoosh
ing through my temples.

“Yeah,” I finally said.

We began pulling each other’s clothes off, piece by piece: jacket, shoes, socks, shirts. I nearly passed out from the thrill of seeing his bare chest bookended by those half-sleeve tattoos
with their intensely saturated colors, even in the blue moonlight. And below his chest, the dark trail of hair leading to . . .

“Why do you have a 4-H belt buckle?” I whispered.

“It was my grand father’s. He loved cows.”

I was loving cows right then, too. My fingers trembled as I finally,
finally
—WAS I ACTUALLY DOING THIS?—got my hands on that buckle. I was so consumed with the unbuckling
that I didn’t notice him struggling to unhook my bra until he growled. I laughed nervously, and he pulled me closer so he could see what he was doing over my shoulder, scolding me in a
teasing voice, “You think it’s funny, huh? I’m going to rip it off of you in a second if it won’t—there.”

Cool air rushed over my skin. For a panicked moment, I wanted to cover myself. But my shyness melted away when he touched me, softly at first, then with more confidence. And by the time we got
the rest of our clothes off, he was more than confident. He was outright presumptuous.

“I can’t stand up while you do that,” I said, practically panting.

“So bossy,” he teased. We dropped to the floor, and he kissed me in some new and wonderful places before he started touching me again. But it was—“Ow.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled. “What? Is this better?”

“Um . . . I think?” This was more awkward than I’d expected. Doubt crept into my thoughts. Not about Jack but about myself. What if Howard Hooper wasn’t the problem? What
if it was me? Maybe I was terrible at sex. Like, woefully bad. What if Jack’s worries about it changing our relationship weren’t wrong? What if—

“What about this?” he murmured.

I couldn’t answer. Not for a while. But when I realized I could touch him, too—actually touch him! Anywhere!—I reciprocated his bold moves and marveled as he shuddered beneath
my fingers.

Everything was different with Jack. More intense. Emotional. Stronger. Better . . . Him. Us. All of it. And one by one, my doubts shrank until they were more or less gone.

“Now, Jack, please.”

“You sure?”

“
Yes.
”

“Are you close?”

“Maybe. Are you laughing at
me
now?”

He grinned at me with heavy-lidded eyes as he fished inside the pocket of his discarded jeans. “Only because I’m happy.”

I laughed a little, too, breathless, and then groaned. “Please hurry. Do you know how to put it on?”

“If I lie and say no, will you help me?”

“You’re awfully cheeky for a virgin.”

“I told you, Bex. You bring out the best in me. Oh, don’t do that. It’s too good. Move here. . . . Jesus, you’re beautiful.”

“Jack . . .”

“I . . .”

“Oh . . .”

“My God.
Am I hurting you?”

I pushed back in answer.

“You feel so good,” he whispered.

“Please don’t stop.”

“You either.”

Near the end, I turned my cheek to the rug because I was overwhelmed and afraid to let him see me lose control. He bent his head to my neck and whispered breathy encouragements until neither one
of us could say another word.