“Not even Smelly? I mean, Kelly.” I wrinkle my nose because we both know I had it right the first time. A girl can only wear so much Jungle Gardenia before it becomes a public nuisance.
He gives a little laugh. “Not ever Smelly. I never did like her perfume.”
A grimace comes and goes on my face. “I feel bad that I said that. I make a lousy mean girl.”
“Yeah, but you make a great nice girl, and I really like that about you.”
“You like them nice, huh?” I wince. “I just realized that I might be nice, but I’m also panning out to be pretty naïve. I let you drag me so far away from humanity that if our talk doesn’t end well, I’m way too far to walk home. My leg has been pretty easygoing since I had the cast removed, but I’m in no mood to put some serious mileage on it.”
“Then we’ll have to keep it civil.” He pushes out that easy grin again, and my insides melt.
“Or you’ll have to give me your keys and you can walk home. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“I like the third option.”
“There is no third option.”
“The third option is, that no matter what, we stay friends.” His lips pull down in a hard frown as if the conversation just took a turn for the worse.
Friends. My heart rips in two all over again. I guess that’s my answer. He’s not that into me, never was. Joel Miller is, and always has been, way out of my league.
“I suppose that’s the best option—seeing that neither of us will have to walk home in the rain.” All of the playfulness in me, the flirt that’s been bubbling up since that moment I called out to him on the field has suddenly vacated the premises. “So tell me, friend, why did you think it was a good idea to play with my head?” A spear of anger cuts right through any happy-go-lucky thoughts I had just a few moments before—when I still thought a reconciliation was in the cards—when I still thought I had ended it with him over something that was truly a misunderstanding.
“I never played with your head, Mel.” His eyes steady over mine just as tense and strained as mine.
“Did your mother ask you to be extra nice to me in the event my parents decided to sue?”
He swallows hard. “Yes.” His eyes pierce into mine like laser beams, speaking a reality other than the bullshit that just streamed from his lips. My heart has already been cauterized with that truth, so I don’t flinch. “But only after I went to the hospital, after I decided on my own to help you out. I cared about you and your wellbeing the minute I saw you on the ground. If my mother never uttered those words, the outcome would have been the same—minus the fact Kelly pulled that shitty stunt and threw it in your face.”
“Are your parents still afraid I’m going to clean them out?” I feel sick to my stomach knowing that his parents will forever know me as the girl who Joel needs to be nice to. They’re mocking both my family and me, and they don’t even realize it.
“Maybe.” His eyes close a moment. “Knowing my mother, I’d venture to guess yes, but only because she’s terrified of losing everything she has. There was a policy in place to protect against this kind of a thing, and she forgot to pay it. There’s been an entire rash of set-up accidents on the Hill lately.” He shakes his head, pinching his eyes shut tight as if he can’t believe he’s having this conversation. “I don’t think for a minute you set this up. I hope you don’t think for a minute that anything I’ve ever done for you, with you”—his eyes plead with me a watery blue, deep end of the ocean, heavy with concern blue—“to you—was anything short of genuine.” His chin dips. His features harden just enough. “And when I said I loved you, I couldn’t have meant it more if I had written the words out with my own blood.”
“Then why are you settling for a friendship all of a sudden?” My rage bounces out of control like one of those annoying, tiny rubber balls Ben has lying all over the house. “How could you kiss me like that, and then cut what we had down to a friendship? I’m friends with Larry the Janitor, but I’m not going to let him suck on my boobs!”
A smile curves on his lips momentarily. “I’m not settling for friendship,” he shoots back. “I’m trying my best to navigate us back to where we were.” His chest bucks with a dry laugh. “And thank God you wouldn’t let Larry the Janitor suck on your boobs because then I’d have to kill him.”
“You’d kill for me?” My lips quiver, but I refuse to lose it. My insides burn for Joel ten times hotter than when we first arrived, and suddenly I’m glad we’re floating on the Pacific and not in his game room where the very real threat of his mother lives. Who knew homicide was such a potent aphrodisiac?
“Every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”
“You’d go to hell.” A tiny smile breaks free on my lips.
“I’d be canonized as a saint. Nobody should be sucking on your boobs but me.”
A laugh stifles in my chest, and I give a little shrug. “I like totally agree.”
That serious shadow crosses his face once again. “Will you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
He nods and pulls me in, and now his own lips are quivering. “I should have been honest with you from the beginning, Mel. I thought of telling you about my mom’s paranoia. I wanted us to laugh it off, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to ruin anything between us.”
“It wouldn’t have helped. My friends thought something was off anyway. You broke up with Kelly right after you ran me over. If you told me that stuff about your mom, it would have just planted a seed of doubt. As much as I want to believe the best, I seem to gravitate toward the worst.” I take in a forced breath. “When I was a kid, Kelly mercilessly bullied me on the bus each horrific day of fourth grade. I hated every day of that year. It was a living nightmare.” I bite down on my lip so hard I feel the bruise already blossoming through. “On my birthday, I was pretty convinced that it was Kelly who somehow talked you into pretending to want me—another one of her cruel jokes—her ridiculous bullying taken to a whole new level. Wouldn’t it be funny if Mouse-akowski thought the hottest boy in school fell in love with her?” My eyes burn with tears, but I let them pool, not even allowing myself to blink lest they fall. “That Kelly Masterson’s boyfriend would actually want me instead?”
“He does, and she never orchestrated this.” He says it so fast my heart thumps as if begging to believe him. “Kelly was, and is a nightmare of a person. I feel terrible that she ever brought you an ounce of pain when you were a kid. I don’t want anything to do with her anymore.” He rubs his thumb over my cheek. “I want everything to do with you. I don’t want to just be friends, Mel.” His Adam’s apple rises and falls. “I want everything with you. I want to be who we were and so much more. Every time you look at me, I melt inside. You’re my girl. The only one I ever want to be with.”
I sniff back tears. “You melt me, too.” My body leans hard over his as Joel gently digs his fingers through my hair. He pulls me in until his lips are touching down over mine, and it feels like ecstasy. It feels like my birthday—not particularly the last one—and Christmas—and every good thing I’ve ever experienced rolled into one magical moment.
His tongue slips over mine, and all of my synapses fire off at once in an explosion of rapture. Joel pulls, pushes, teases me with his slow, laboriously achingly slow, hot as fire kisses.
A hard moan rips through my throat and straight into his mouth. I glide my hands underneath his shirt until they’re pressed against his heated skin.
Joel pulls my sweater right off. He removes my bra with a single maneuver that sends it flying across the room like a slingshot.
He looks at me with those drugged heavy eyes as his hands slide over my boobs. “Larry the Janitor can go fuck himself.” His dimples go off, and a shockwave of pleasure pulsates through me at the sound of his words, at the feel of his hands.
“I don’t want to talk about Larry the Janitor.” My lips pull hard over his. “I just want you inside me.”
His eyes widen and notch as he pulls me in with a renewed vigor. Joel and I embark on a new journey, a new level of who we thought we were, of who we want to be, and that’s together. I want this with him. A very real part of me has been aching for it from the beginning.
Joel takes off his clothes between his excruciatingly slow kisses. He helps peel off my boots, my jeans, and slips his mouth to my left leg, kissing it up and down as if he were playing an instrument—offering up an apology with his lips, and he is.
“That tickles.”
“Get used to it.” His kisses track all the way to my mouth. He pulls back and plucks something from his jeans. It takes a second for me to register that it’s a rubber. He opens the tiny disc, and I dot the tip of my finger over the center. It feels like jelly, like a sticky film that I can’t believe I’m going to let anywhere near my body. He sits back, and for the first time I see him—all of him. There he is, long and hard, and a lump the size of an apple settles in my throat.
Joel gives a sad smile as if he were almost sorry for me as he takes my hand and gently rides it up and down the length of him. He rolls on the condom before landing his mouth back over mine. My legs pull up along either side of his body, and I feel vulnerable, so very exposed. I’ve never been prudish about being naked in front of anybody—not that I’ve been naked in front of anyone, with the exception of Jen, and that was just once when I was trying on a swimsuit at Foxmoor, and then that was just my boobs with my elbows mostly covering them. But holy crap—having my thighs split open like this, feeling the air lick me down there like some foreign tongue has me quivering, excited in ways I never expected.
Joel pushes into me gently as I hold my breath and feel the pressure, feel the burn as my body slowly gives way to him.
Joel rides over me with a steady rhythm, his body landing so deep inside of me it pinches. This moment feels otherworldly, like some bodily experience that has never been done before by any mere human. This feels special beyond measure. It feels like the only thing Joel and I should ever be doing.
All of time stands still as Joel dives into my body, his sleepy eyes staying locked on mine. Our fingers interlace, our hands squeeze tight just soaking in the moment—this moment right here where Joel and Melissa are officially one.
“Shit. I’m coming,” he whispers into my ear as he shudders over me, and my body clenches tight around him with my own arousal at its peak.
“I love you,” he whispers.
I burrow a kiss into his neck. “I love you, too, Joel Miller.”
* * *
Joel and I spend hours locked in one another’s arms with his mouth over mine, over my body, in places that make the good girl in me blush hotter than a bonfire. But the outrageous level of affection, of safety and solitude has propelled me—us to that next level I was hoping we would get to one day.
We leave the boat, vowing to come back soon, and Joel drives me to my house through the damp streets of San Ramos. The streetlamps bounce off the slick roads, lining our impoverished town in silver. San Ramos gets to be royalty if just for one night, and with Joel by my side, so do I.
“One day is today,” I whisper as he holds me just outside my front yard.
“Every day is today.”
I swat him. “No, smartass. The one day I was really hoping for, dreaming of is today.” I meet his eyes with hesitancy. Joel has a way of reeling me into his soul with just one look. “I feel like we’re finally together.”
“We are. It’s the way it should be.” He lands a molten kiss to my lips. “Did you open your birthday gift?”
My mouth falls open. “I didn’t. And don’t think it hasn’t been killing me to find out what’s in there. It looks so beautiful. I’ve never had anything wrapped so nice.” That bright, thick paper burns a hole through my heart every time I look at it.
“I’d love to take credit for the wrap job, but my mom may have helped out a little.”
“Your mother who hates me?” I tease. “It’s not going to explode in my face when I open it, is it?”
His chest rumbles with a laugh. “She doesn’t hate you, I promise. In fact, I told her how I feel about you, how much it killed me when Kelly told you what she did. My mom was the one who told me not to give up hope. She said if we’re meant to be—we will be. And here we are.” He leans in and presses a chaste kiss to my cheek. “We’re meant to be.”
“I think so, too.” My heart fills with a surge of elation that I never knew was possible. Just when I think Joel can’t take me any higher, he soars us right past where we were and takes us someplace new. “Let me get that gift. I want to open it in front of you.” I take a step toward the house and suck in a sharp breath. I give it another go, and every step I take feels as if a razor wire is tilling through my insides.
“Wow.” I turn back and whisper, “What did you use down there? Sandpaper?”
He winces. “That bad, huh?”
“Not bad, considering I still have the option of crutches.” I hurry inside, doing a strange little mermaid run, feeling the burn all the way to my room. My parents’ bedroom door is shut. I can clearly hear my father snoring through the paper-thin walls, and for once I’m thankful. The last thing I want is to face either of them after what happened tonight. I’m positive that with just one look at me, they’d know. I’ve always feared the superpower of their sex radar, and I’m not anxious to test the limits so soon.
I grab the gift and smack into a body as I head out the door. It’s Ben.
“You’re up past your bedtime.” I struggle to catch my breath, still thankful it’s not my father.
“I’m a seventh grader.” His shoulders pull back with pride. “And it’s a Friday night. Holly’s here.” He tucks his finger to his lips. “She taped Battle of the Network Stars. It’s purely innocent.” Ben leans in with a devilish look in his eye. “And I may have taped a little something for us, too—Movie Macabre with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.” He wiggles his fingers at the faux horror of it all. “I’m just priming her with this pseudo-celebrity Olympics crap.”
“Elvira, huh?” I glance in the family room and spot Holly already snuggled on the couch. “Don’t get too freaked out. I don’t want you in my room tonight.”
His cheek cinches up high with devious pride as he peers in toward Holly. “I’m hoping we’ll get plenty freaked out tonight.”
“You’re into Holly, aren’t you?” My mouth falls open with the revelation.
“I won’t admit to anything, but if you want to start a rumor, I won’t stop you.” He heads back to his guest, spouting off the lyrics to “Double Dutch Bus”, and I watch for a moment before heading out. Ben is changing from the little boy he used to be—morphing quickly into a manipulative pervert, but I suppose that’s expected. I guess we’re all changing.
I head back out to that grinning face I could kiss all night. Joel is far too handsome for my brain and heart to comprehend, but it’s his personality that captured my heart. I love our banter, the fun we have when we’re together. I guess if there was one thing that truly surprised me about Joel, it’s how down-to-earth he is. And here for all these years, Joel Miller was some untouchable deity that I for sure didn’t feel worthy enough to know. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing that I broke my leg. Maybe it sort of was my lucky break—although, I’d like to think the stars would have aligned regardless.
I give a little hop with my birthday gift tucked in my hand. My actual birthday might have sucked, but the next day my friends tried their hardest to make it up to me. Heather gave me Echo and the Bunnymen’s new album Ocean Rain, and Peter and Amy got back together and took me out to McDonald’s for a burger and a large order of those fries I live for—God knows I love me some Mickey D’s. Jen gave me a new sweater from Esprit, and it was way more than she needed to spend, but since we share clothes, I suppose it was a partial investment on her part.
“Here it is.” I wave the tiny package with its bright pink sharp-as-knives bow in the air. br />
Joel helps me onto the tailgate of his truck before hopping up next to me.
“Go ahead.” He leans in and wraps his arm around my shoulders. His cologne softens the air, making it warm and perfectly spiced. “There’s another part to the gift, but I thought I’d give you that later. It’s bigger, and judging by how upset you were, I thought you might nail me with it. That entire nightmare was sort of lousy timing. In fact, I think I owe you a birthday do-over.”
“Are you kidding? This is plenty, and you didn’t even have to do this.” I peel off the bow and stick it to my jeans. Carefully, I slip my fingers through the seams. There’s no way I’m tearing through this beautiful paper.
“You don’t have to save it.”
“I know, but I want to. It’s from you.” I don’t dare tell him that I’ll probably save it forever—that I usually do when I fall in love with the paper, and that much more the person who gave it to me. I have a bin under my bed with old giftwrapping and party napkins from my birthdays over the years. I’m a geek like that.
I unearth a tiny gold box that looks like a jewel in and of itself and pull the lid off. At a single glance, I suck in a sharp breath and hold up my gift as a mixed tape stares back at me.
“Joel! Did you do this?” I carefully extricate the plain white cassette with Joel’s penmanship printed neatly across the face of it. The new plastic is slippery between my fingers. I lift it to the light to get a good look at what it says.
I Melt with You, Modern English
Love My Way, Psychedelic Furs
Obsession, Animotion
Vacation, Go-Go’s
Every Breath You Take, The Police
You’re No Different, Ozzy Osbourne
Our House, Madness
Under Pressure, Queen and David Bowie
More Than This, Roxy Music
Everyday I Write the Book, Elvis Costello