That’s the boy I remember. When did he turn into this other boy, one who apologized, who looked at me the same way he looked at the things he cared about?
He’s looking at me that way now. His eyes are deep and dark in the low lamplight. I think he’s about to say something. But then he walks out the bedroom door without another word.
Once he’s gone, I sigh, then pick up the comforter and pillow and put them back on the bed.
15
I climb into the right side of the bed. The ceiling slopes down to the headboard, so when I sit up straight, it’s not very high above my head. Seth will have to be careful. The sheets are white, and cool from the air conditioner, and I shiver a little as I slip between them. I lie on my side, facing away from where he’ll be.
I spent the past year trying not to think about that night with Seth, trying not to think about Seth at all. I didn’t let myself feel anything other than guilt over what I’d done. Didn’t let myself think about how, if it weren’t for everything, I might look back on that night—the rock pressing against my back, the Milky Way glittering overhead, the look in Seth’s eyes like I was the only thing he could see—as something good that happened to me. Not something bad I’d done.
There are footsteps, then the door creaking open. Footsteps stopping.
“I’m okay sleeping next to you,” I say without looking at him. “If you are.”
A long silence. Then another footstep, then the bed depressing as he sits. “I’m not gonna argue with you.”
I listen to him crawl into bed, feel the covers pull, the mattress bounce. I keep my eyes on the air conditioner.
“Lights out?” he asks.
I nod.
He switches off the lamp, and then it’s dark in the room except for a little street light coming in through the blinds. Seth shifts in bed, and so do I.
Maybe it’s the darkness that makes me bold, but I say, “That night was my first time.”
I feel him grow still behind me. “What?”
“That night. With you. It was my first time.”
A long silence. “You and Reagan never—”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Why not? It’s something even I have never fully understood. Jeremy wanted to, obviously. He brought it up a month after we started going out. He’d never had a serious girlfriend, despite all the attention he got, and he’d never done it, either. I told him I wasn’t ready. And he never pushed me. Last summer, before everything went so wrong, there was one night when we came close. But I stopped it, saying I wasn’t ready yet. And again, he didn’t push. He’d waited for me. And I never said yes.
“I just…didn’t think I was ready.”
The bed frame creaks as Seth shifts again. “Were you…I didn’t mean to, like, pressure you, or—”
I shake my head. “You didn’t.” With Seth, there wasn’t even much of a conversation. We were kissing, and then his hands were in places only Jeremy’s had been, and then I was pulling his shirt off, and he was tugging at mine. His voice in my ear: Do you want to…Me nodding, pushing all my doubts to one side, Seth’s hand fumbling in the pocket of his backpack, our breaths hitched in the air, every nerve of my body thrumming—
I squeeze my eyes shut, even though it’s dark, even though he can’t see my face. “You didn’t,” I say again. “I wanted to.”
After a long while, he says, “It was my first time, too.”
I freeze. “What?”
I turn in bed to face him. I can see the outline of his features in the dim light. His eyes are wide open, and he’s looking at me, his mouth quirked up on one side. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’re…” I gesture toward him.
“I’m what?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just figured you always had some Manhattan prep school girl back home or something.”
He shifts, props his head up on one elbow. “And what gave you that impression?”
“You know.”
“I don’t. Tell me.”
“I mean, you’re…not bad to look at. You sometimes have interesting things to say.”
An exhale that might be a laugh. “Don’t flatter me, Addie.”
“And…I don’t know. All those times we made out before, and then we’d never talk about it…It felt like you were ashamed of me.”
He snorts. “I thought you were ashamed of me. That’s why I never talked about it.”
Oh. That never even occurred to me.