Sunday eventually rolls around, and before I can offer my virginity to Daniel Caulfield, I must bow at the altar of Madame Garba. Dad and I pull up to the dance studio after a long, silent car ride. We both stare at the door like we’re afraid a tutu-wearing monster might be lurking on the other side.
The door flies open, but instead of a fire-breathing monster, a crowd of women with their hair in tight buns floods out, all giggles and loud talking about dinner plans for the evening. With a deep breath, I walk inside.
“Which class?” Behind a wooden desk and in front of a wall covered with posters of ballroom-dance couples, a youngish woman taps a pencil against her lips with a bored glaze in her eyes, then repeats the question.
“Dad? Which class?” I ask.
“Waltz 101? We’re from the group doing the Princess Ball?” Dad says. I think he’s hoping the class is full or canceled; it’s definitely what I’m hoping. Unfortunately, the woman nods, takes Dad’s twenty-five dollars, then points to a room down the hall.
We weave down the hallway, past signed black-and-white photos of dancers, to a crowd of people—fathers and daughters—waiting outside the last room. The classroom is filled with elementary-school-aged kids prancing around to a Latin beat, way more comfortable with being partnered up than I would’ve been in fifth grade. The music ends, and the flashy teacher dismisses the class. They applaud politely. As they gather their things and file out into the arms of waiting, proud parents, our class meanders in.
The room smells of lemon cleaner laced with the underlying musty scent that all old buildings seem to possess. Unfortunately, there’s not much to look at in a dance room, other than yourself reflected nine zillion times in the mirror. Dad and I mostly stare at our feet, until I hear my name from across the room.
“Hi, Shelby!” a sweet voice calls out. I look in its direction and see a blond-haired, blue-eyed Barbie girl. Mona Banks.
“How are you? I haven’t seen you at youth group in ages!” she says. Her dad is right behind her; he and my dad shake hands cordially and make small talk.
“Yeah, I’m just… busy, you know?” I say. The tiny cross necklace she’s wearing glints proudly. If she had a theme song, it’d be “Jesus Loves Me.” Sung in rounds.
“Oh yeah, it’s tough to fit things in,” she says warmly. “We’ve been doing a lot with the downtown soup kitchen, and it’s been taking so much time.” See, this is why it’s impossible to hate Mona. She volunteers at soup kitchens. She came to my house after Mom died and helped me clean my room. She probably finds orphaned kittens and bottle-feeds them on a weekly basis. But the fact that she’s this excited about God after seeing the soup kitchen, my mom’s coffin, and orphaned kittens makes her voice grating and her bouncy hair infuriating. Why doesn’t she feel let down, like me? Why doesn’t everyone?
Truth is, part of me is jealous of Mona. She believes what her Bible and pastor tell her, and so everything in her world makes sense. There’s just the complete, total confidence that God loves her. I wish I knew how she found that confidence, that certainty—how God is always there when she reaches out.
I sigh.
“I heard you and your dad are planning the whole Princess Ball!” she says brightly.
“Something like that. I’m just helping out here and there,” I say, finally forcing the corners of my mouth into a smile.
“It sounds so fun. I bet it’s just like planning a wedding,” she says. “All the flowers and dancing…”
I frown. “You know, it actually is like planning a wedding. How… weird.” Weird is the softest adjective I can come up with, but it isn’t exactly the one I want to use. I cringe when I remember seeing something in Dad’s stack of papers about a ring ceremony. Marrying Dad. Awesome.
“Let me know if you need any help,” Mona says. “I’ve been planning my wedding since I was, like, three. I have this idea with orchids….”
I never thought I would be so grateful to hear the words “Ladies and gentlemen, our waltz lesson begins now!”
While Mona goes back to her father, a tiny old woman makes her way to the front of the room. She has a cane, but doesn’t seem to really need it for balance, and wears a very tight black shirt that looks surprisingly good on her. She’s trailed by a young blond man who looks like he might be an underwear model. He sighs when he checks his watch. The room twitters into silence as the woman clasps her hands at her waist.
“I am Madame Garba,” she says, coughing, decades of cigarettes and a German accent in her voice, “and this is Waltz 101. Welcome.”
A few students politely applaud; I don’t catch on till the clapping is almost over and end up giving out a single, loud clap at the very end. Garba gives me a hard look.
“Moving on. The proper waltz position.” Garba grabs the hand of the underwear model and slams it against her waist with a devilish sort of grin. She places her corresponding hand on his shoulder, then grasps his other hand in her leathery fingers. She tilts her head back slightly, and there’s a hint of old Hollywood in her—like she might have been a starlet back in the day.
“Watch your arms. See how they stay lifted?” she snaps. The class nods obediently. “Then assume the position!” she says, dropping her partner’s hand. She walks over to an old CD player and starts a muffled-sounding song.
My dad turns toward me. We both grimace. And we assume the position.
At the sixth-grade formal, there was a kid named Michael who hadn’t figured out the proper use of deodorant and was covered in speckled, diseaselike facial hair. I felt bad for him, so I danced with him—after all, at eleven my hair looked like a cracked-out poodle’s, so who was I to judge? But when I say that we “danced,” what I really mean is this: I left my arms stiff around Michael’s neck, locking my elbows so he couldn’t wander any closer; he let his hands sit on my hips with all the tenderness of an assembly-line robot; and we rocked back and forth, out of time with the music. I remember counting down the moments till the song ended and I could dash back to the refreshment table and drink sherbet punch.
But I would give just about anything to be dancing with Michael instead of my dad right now.
Here, there’s no refreshment table or sherbet punch. Just the slow, painful clicking of the clock and the never-ending piano song. Dad and I stand as far apart as possible, and we lean backward like the other has something horribly contagious, perhaps the bubonic plague.
“Ladies, step back here; gentlemen, forward. And one-two-three, one-two-three, see-how-I-step-two-three. Now, you do it.” Garba abandons her partner and begins to clap, the sound so sharp that I worry her tiny wrists are going to snap in half.
No one moves.
“Now you do it!” she repeats. Her tone implies an “or else,” and no one wants to see the punishments an ex-starlet can dish out. Everyone fumbles into the steps. Dad and I klutz around, each of us dancing to an entirely different beat. Dad stares over my shoulder while I watch the rest of the class in the mirrors. They look beautiful and happy, and I can picture them waltzing around in formal wear. I look like I don’t have knees. I grimace as I stomp on Dad’s foot, and we accidentally make eye contact for a fifth of a second.
“Yes, yes!” Garba cries. “Now you are dancing!”
I disagree. What I’m seeing in the mirror more closely resembles helping a drunk friend stand than it does dancing. I watch the other girls, trying to take notes on what they’re doing that I’m not. I recognize their faces from school and my church youth group days, but now they look less like my peers and more like models for the Princess Ball pamphlet. They so seamlessly slid into the part of devoted daughter. Do they really care about the ball and the vow? Are they even virgins to begin with?
It doesn’t matter. Liars or not, they’re the girls the church, their fathers, the Princess Ball, and my father want to see, and I’ll never be them, no matter what dance I learn or what vow I take. I’ll always be the one without a mother, the one who questions God, the one who takes vows seriously. I look down at my father’s and my feet shuffling clumsily over the floor, a more welcome sight than fifteen pamphlet photos.
“No, the other foot,” Dad whispers.
“How do you know?” I ask.
Dad avoids my eyes as he answers. “Your mom made me take dance lessons before our wedding. She wanted to start off dancing the waltz, then break out into ‘Thriller.’ ”
“I didn’t know you did that!” I say, louder than I intended and unable to hide a grin. My voice draws a stern look from the instructor. Luckily, another couple backs into her and she’s distracted again.
“We didn’t,” he says. “I finally got the waltz okay, but ‘Thriller’ was a little out of my reach.”
“Yeah, no offense, Dad, but you don’t seem the type to rock out to Michael Jackson.”
“I know. We waltzed, though, briefly. That’s the key: only stay on the dance floor long enough to make everyone think you know the steps, then get out of there before you lose the tempo.”
“Don’t we have to do the whole song at the ball?” I ask.
“Yes—oh, sorry,” he says as he steps on my foot. “But I figure one of us can fake an injury before too long.”
I laugh—too loud. The couple next to us look over, but in doing so they tangle their legs together and almost fall. Dad snickers under his breath and I realize I can’t remember the last time we laughed together.
Class goes by faster than I expected—a little bit. I suppose time flies when you’re trying to not fall over or get stepped on, and to keep your arms up. Madame Garba bows as we politely applaud; I race for the door before Mona can stop me to talk.
Outside, it’s already dusk. Cicadas have started shouting from the trees, and the blistering heat from the day has faded to calm, lukewarm air.
“That was, um…” Dad says as he starts the car. “That was interesting.”
“To say the least,” I say. “Remember, you’re dropping me off at Daniel’s.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” Dad pauses. “Are you still dating him?”
“No,” I say, a little surprised—I didn’t know Dad realized we were ever dating. “We’re just hanging out.”
“Good, good,” Dad says. “You know, his mom was on the historical committee with me. She was nice. Nice people…” He nods, playing with the keys in the ignition for a moment. I fiddle with the lock on the door.
“So… are you dating anyone?” Dad asks. His voice cracks, like it’s confused about how to say those words.
I cough. “No. Not now,” I say, still surprised. I’ve always thought Dad overlooked the fact that I’d aged—like when he saw me, he had that feeling you get when someone you haven’t seen in years shows up. You’re confused that they look so different even though you know time has passed, so it makes sense that they’ve changed. Since I was ten, that’s how Dad has treated me—like he’s confused that I could have changed so much and can’t make sense of the current me versus the ten-year-old me he remembers. Sure, he knows I’m sixteen; I just didn’t realize he really knew—knew enough to ask me about dating.
“What about Jonas?” he asks after a strange, stilted moment passes. He coasts through a stop sign.
I laugh. “Jonas is my best friend.”
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean…” Dad explains fast, like he’s afraid I’m mad.
“It’s fine,” I say quickly.
The car falls silent. I refuse to think about my destination or the sea of awkwardness Dad and I just sailed through. Instead, I think about the class and, eventually, about “Thriller.” About my mom wanting to dance to Michael Jackson at her wedding. Mom loved to dance. When she was in remission for a little while, I came downstairs to find her dancing around the living room, spinning, crashing into the couch. I thought she’d lost her mind, but when I tried to stop her, she just pulled me into the dance.
“I’ve been too sick to dance for two years,” she yelled across the bad nineties music. “Come on, Shelby. I’ve got a lot of dancing to make up.”
And so I gave in and we crashed around the living room, singing the choruses when we knew them. Dad showed up and laughed and wrapped his arms around Mom when a slow song came on, and they slow-danced together. I wonder if they were thinking about their wedding, the “Thriller” dance.
“Thriller” at your wedding. That’s living without restraint, I think, smiling. Most of my memories of Mom have to do with her being sick or the tiny, fluttering moments between being sick. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know who she was before the cancer got a hold of her—but “Thriller,” that’s something, a hint to who she was beforehand. I wonder what else Mom did without restraint that I don’t know about. Dozens of things? Nothing else at all? Did she make me promise because she lived her entire precancer life without restraint and wanted the same for me, or because she wished she’d done it more often? Would she have made a vow of purity? I wish I could ask her—
“Shelby?” Dad says.
We’re here.
I don’t know how we got here so quickly. I freeze.
“Huh? Oh, sorry. I… spaced out,” I say. I grab the door handle and force myself out of the car. No turning back. Promise One and Promise Three.
“I guess I’ll see you later tonight?” Dad asks. “Daniel can drive you home, right?”
“Right,” I answer quickly. I shut the door and step from the curb onto Daniel’s lawn. The grass is wet from the heat of the day. I trudge through it as I hear Dad’s car pull away behind me. I have to do this. I reach forward and ring the doorbell.
It doesn’t take Daniel long to answer. He swings the door open, wearing an old T-shirt and jeans.
He looks at me, like he’s evaluating something. “Hey,” he finally says, leaning against the door frame.
“Hey.”
We stare at each other for a moment before Daniel steps aside and lets me in.
Daniel can afford to do the whole costume-making thing because his mom is heir to some sort of pharmaceuticals fortune. I don’t think she actually has a job, yet she still goes to charity galas and owns a yacht and all sorts of stuff. So naturally, Daniel’s bedroom is their house’s “second master bedroom.” It’s not only huge, but it also has a wall of video games with a built-in cabinet for a zillion different consoles. The “reading area” has been converted into some sort of costume-making office. The walls are lined with pictures of him and his friends wearing Daniel’s various creations. He’s pretty brilliant at it. No one else could make the school’s mythology club actually look like a horde of Spartan warriors.
“What movie did you bring?”
I hold up a DVD of this eighties movie full of puppets and costumes and weird songs. A strange wanna-have-sex movie, but I thought all the fancy outfits would thrill Daniel. My evil plan has obviously worked, because his face lights up.
“I have the special edition of that! Awesome,” Daniel says, taking it from my hands. He walks over to the gross display of electronics and puts it in the player. I sit on the futon beneath his lofted bed, painfully aware that my rainbow camisole straps are slipping off my shoulders.
Daniel fiddles around, pressing various buttons until the movie cues up with surround sound. I cringe at the THX theme that makes my teeth vibrate, it’s so loud. He finds the correct remote and joins me on the futon—on the opposite end. I give him a nervous smile, which he immediately returns.
This movie is questionable at best. As is my ability to get this guy to sleep with me, especially if I don’t make a move soon. I draw my feet up on the couch and move so I’m leaning against the arm and my toes brush against him. He meets my eyes quickly and, in classic teenage-guy oblivion, goes back to watching the movie.
Ten more minutes pass. I lean forward. Brush my hair back. Laugh at jokes that I really don’t think are funny.
Daniel stares at the television, and I can tell he’s analyzing glues and costume-sewing techniques and appliqué patterns. I nudge him with my feet to distract him; he looks over at me, eyebrow raised.
“Something wrong?”
“Um…” Think fast, Shelby, think fast. “Could I have some water?”
“Oh, yeah. Hang on.” Daniel pauses the movie. I grab my cell phone and dial Ruby as soon as he’s out the door.
“I’m at Daniel’s,” I whisper.
“Huh? Oh!” Ruby says, giggling. “How’s it going, Aphrodite?”
“Awful, we’re just watching a DVD.”
“Try lying down.”
“What?”
“Well, you’re on a floor or the couch or something, right?”
“Yeah, a futon.”
“Try lying down on him. Like, pretend to be tired. Come on, Shelby, you’ve got some natural seduction techniques in there somewhere.”
When I hear Daniel’s footsteps, I hang up on Ruby and silence my cell phone. I inhale quickly and lie down, taking up the entire futon and lifting my arms over my head so a line of skin is showing between my shirt and jeans. I always see girls doing it in movies. There’s got to be at least some truth to the trick.
“Here you go,” Daniel says. I catch his eyes darting down to my waist as I raise a hand to take a sip of the water I didn’t really want. I don’t make a move to let him back on the couch. Daniel analyzes my position for a moment, then, without so much as a shrug, sits on the floor, leaning his back against the futon. He grabs the remote and hits play.
Damn.
Daniel’s head is right about where my neck is. I sigh.
“So… any conventions lately?” I ask.
“Huh? Ah, no, not really. I went to a big one in Atlanta a while back, but that’s pretty much it. I’m taking the stagecraft class next semester, though.”
“Oh, finally fit it into your schedule?”
“Yeah. It’ll be fun,” he says without looking back at me.
“Sounds like it…” Now take my clothes off, Daniel.
I inhale and let my fingertips slide forward toward the nape of his neck and stiffly touch the tips of his hair. Daniel tenses for a moment, then leans backward slightly. He turns his head toward me.
“Wait… what are you doing?”
“I, um…” This is the death trap I was afraid of. If I say, “I just need to have sex with you once, that’s it,” then he’ll likely say no. If I pretend that I’m interested in getting back together, then I’m a horrible human being.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “I just… there are some things about our relationship that I miss.” Ooh, good one. Nice and vague.
“Okay…” Daniel says slowly, but even as he does, his head sinks farther back, until my fingers are fully entwined in his hair. Truthfully, it feels kind of gross. He should probably wash it more often.
Shut up, I tell my inner voice. You’re not after him for the hair. You just need to have sex with him. It’ll take, like, a minute, probably.
I lean over and tug on his arms, urging him to join me on the futon. In a tangle of arms and legs involving a lot of “Oh, sorry” and “Hang on, let me move my arm/leg/hip/foot,” he does so, and a sweet five minutes later we’re lying side by side on the futon. The musical number ends in the background.
“So, was this the only real reason you came over? Because you missed… um… me?”
I pause. “Something like that. Well…” Maybe honesty will work? Or something close to honesty, I mean. “I haven’t dated anyone since you, and I was just thinking maybe we could… do this for a while…” I let a hand run up his thin chest as I say it, and he gets chill bumps.
“Right,” he says, breathing heavily. His breath smells like Cheetos, but I kiss him.
It’s just like I remember—not a bad kiss, but not a great one, either. He could put a little more force behind his lips, I think, and I wish he’d shaved before I came over; the speckling of facial hair scratches the skin around my mouth. Whatever—I pull him closer to me and don’t protest when he puts a hand on my lower back, underneath my shirt. We kiss for a while longer, and finally I decide I’m going to have to take some initiative here. I sit up and pull off my shirt, leaving only the camisole and boring, nonlace bra underneath. He doesn’t seem wowed. Damn the girls who wear these thin little shirts as real clothing, desensitizing the male population! I inhale and pull the camisole off.
Daniel has seen my bra before, even had his hands under it, but we never got so far as actually removing it. To be honest, the prospect of it is a little frightening. I bite my lip and try to quell my nerves, then lie back down to kiss him again. Finally, the Cheetos smell has dissipated. Daniel moves to pull his shirt off, displaying a level of pale skin that rivals any white powder makeup he has in his collection.
Stop being a bitch, Shelby. You dated him. You put him at the top of the list. I press my boobs against his chest. He shudders, but I take it as a good sign and kiss him again. Halfway there, I tell myself.
“Whoa,” he exhales, grinning. “It’s been a while….”
“It has,” I say. Should I take off more clothing? Probably. I lean forward and kiss him again, and while I do, I unbutton my pants. I try to think sexy thoughts.
Daniel seems both bewildered and thrilled that I’m removing my pants, and before I can do much else he unbuttons his own, revealing boxers with shamrocks all over them. I look away. Not quite ready for clover underwear, I don’t think.
We kiss again, but God, I’m ready to stop kissing and just get this over with. Simple act, it’s just sex, it’s no big deal. Daniel grabs one of my boobs the way someone might catch a baseball. Jonas would probably point and laugh at Daniel’s ineptitude; I pretend to like it and reach into my pocket for a condom before twisting out of my jeans entirely.
“What are you doing?” Daniel asks under his breath as he grabs my other boob. Sexy, man. Way sexy. I smile in what I hope is a seductive fashion and hold up the purple condom wrapper. Grape-flavored, apparently.
Daniel’s face falls. “Wait, what?”
“Come on,” I whisper, slinking one of my legs around him. I press the condom into his hand.
“Wait, Shelby,” Daniel says, his voice loud and filled with surprise. “I can’t have sex with you.”
My mouth drops and my breath escapes. He doesn’t want me. What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with me?
I jerk away from him, and he falls to the floor in surprise.
“Wait—look, sorry, but—”
“What?” I drop the condom. “I’m good enough for second base, but not a home run?”
“Jesus Christ, don’t go all crazy. I just don’t want to have sex.”
“Why not?” I snarl as I stand up and button my pants, trying not to look at the happy rainbows on my underwear.
“I don’t know,” Daniel mumbles as he grabs his shirt off the futon. “God help me if you got pregnant. My mom would kill me.”
“I don’t know, I just… no. Come on, we can make out, maybe even do some other new things….”
“No,” I say flatly. Boob squeezing and Cheetos aren’t going to get me out of being a thirty-five-year-old virgin, thank you very much. “You know, it’s not that big a deal, Daniel. It’s just sex.”
Daniel looks taken aback for a moment; then angry surprise sweeps over his face like a wave. “So what are you, some kind of slut now?”
“Not hardly,” I growl. I grab my purse and leave the condom lying on the floor, where I genuinely hope his mom finds it. I storm out of his room, down the stairs, and toward the front door. I feel stupid, silly, embarrassed, like a failure. I knew this was crazy but—
“Wait!” he yells from upstairs. I freeze. Did he change his mind? “You forgot your DVD.” He appears at the bottom of the stairs with the case but doesn’t hand it over. “What was this really about, Shelby? You break up with me because you don’t like my hobbies, then come over for the first time in ages and want me to have sex with you?”
I sigh. I never explained the Promises to Daniel, and I’m not about to now, much less explain the LOVIN plan. Instead, I settle on, “I just was hoping to lose my virginity finally. You know, I figured I’m getting older, it’s about time—”
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Daniel asks. “So… I was your booty call?”
“Sort of,” I say. “Forget it. I’m going home.” I spin on my heel, but Daniel catches my arm.
“Look, Shelby, I’m sorry.”
“Whatever,” I say. I can hear myself sounding like a bitch, but I’m too frustrated to rein myself in. Daniel opens his mouth again, but I turn and dodge his attempts to stop me. Five minutes later, I’m trudging down the dark street alone. I open up my cell—Ruby has called four times while it was on silent. I dial her back.
“You disappeared! How did it go? Did he argue about the condom? ’Cause guys are sometimes dicks like that, no pun intended.”
“He argued about the condom, all right. But then he also argued about the sex in general. So instead of having sex, I’m just walking home.”
“What? How is that possible! Did you wear the right panties?”
“Apparently he’s still a virgin, and he’s not interested.”
“Wow. Have you told Jonas?”
“No.” I cringe. “And so far the only other guy on my list is Ben Simmons….”
“Is he a Ridgebrook guy?” Ruby asks.
“Yep. Drama kid.”
“I think I’ve heard of him before. Nice guy, kind of sleeps around?”
“That’d be Ben.”
“Huh. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? That when you were dating Daniel and maybe able to have sex, you weren’t really interested, but now that you’re interested, it doesn’t work out.”
“Thanks, Ruby. Being willing but not able is exactly the problem I wanted to reflect on.” I sigh.
“Sorry,” Ruby says. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just that life always seems like that—the minute you want something, you can’t have it.”
“I guess,” I say. “Anyway, call you tomorrow?”
“Sure thing, Shel. Don’t worry about it too much, okay?”
“Right.”
I trudge down the main road. It’s wide enough to walk on, and I’m too irritated to get nervous when cars drive by. Not my safest move, but right now I don’t care. I’m too focused on Ruby’s words. Willing but not able. Such a simple, primal act, and I’m not able to do it. It seemed way easier when losing my virginity was just an idea, a something-that-might-eventually-happen thing instead of a plan. I look up at the moon.
Maybe it’s God.
The thought comes to me like a flash, something I didn’t mean to think that zips through my head. Maybe God is stepping in and keeping me from having sex. Not that that really meshes with that whole free-will thing that they were always telling us to be grateful for at church, but it wouldn’t be the first time God—and the church—disappointed me. After all—I prayed. I prayed more than anyone has ever prayed. And it didn’t do a thing to help Mom.
I kick a rock in the road, then return my eyes to the sky. People talk about how they can’t believe anyone could deny God’s existence, with things like stars and sunsets and circulatory systems and creativity. I understand, though. Because losing your mom is way, way more powerful than stars.
I bring my eyes down to gaze at the road ahead. Maybe God is more like me. Maybe he couldn’t save Mom, maybe he couldn’t answer the millions of prayers I sent his way, the millions of prayers everyone sends his way. Maybe the church, Princess Ball lead sponsor or not, has it all wrong—God’s mysteries aren’t because we can’t understand his plan, but because he doesn’t have one at all.
* * * *
Walking home seemed like a better idea when I was storming out of Daniel’s house. Two and a half miles later, my feet hurt and I’m incredibly sore from the dance lesson. After much debate, I pull out my phone and call Jonas.
“I thought you were on a hot date tonight,” Jonas says.
“Not quite.” I sigh. “I’m really sorry to ask, but do you think you could pick me up?”
“Absolutely,” Jonas says, his voice now serious. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Nothing bad happened. Nothing happened, actually. I’m on the corner of Cypress and Regan Street, over near the drugstore.”
“You’re where?” Jonas asks, and I hear the muffled sounds of him pulling on clothes.
“We can go grab something to eat maybe? I’ll buy.” I hear the rattling of keys and then the sputtered sound of Lucinda cranking up.
It takes Jonas only fifteen minutes to reach me. He rumbles up with a wary look. I climb in and chuck my purse to the back. The McDonald’s smell of Lucinda combined with the sandalwood and fabric softener scent that hangs around Jonas sweeps over me. I inhale. It’s a comforting scent, one that drives the lingering Cheetos smell from my head.
“I’d really, really love to know how a sex date with your ex turned into you standing on a street corner,” he says. His hair is all stuck up on one side, like he’d been lying on the couch when I called.
I sigh. “Can we go get milk shakes or something?”
Jonas looks down at his T-shirt, which screams of having been in a ball on the floor. “I think Harry’s is still open. They have milk shakes, right?”
“I guess.” I lean my seat back and close my eyes. “My date bombed,” I explain as Lucinda trucks toward the restaurant. “I thought it would be easier.”
Jonas glances my way as we pull into the Harry’s parking lot. I continue, “I thought Daniel was kind of a sure thing. He was always more than happy to fool around when we were dating.”
“So were you, but you wouldn’t be hitting him up for sex if you weren’t loopholing out of a sex ban,” he says.
“True… I guess…” My throat tightens a little. “I guess I figured he’d want to have sex with me regardless.”
“Wait,” Jonas says, turning the engine off. “Are you worried that he didn’t… want to?”
“He clearly didn’t want to, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” I say, sharper than I intended.
“No, he thought he shouldn’t. Sort of like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t eat that candy bar because I’m on a diet’ or whatever. It doesn’t mean he didn’t want the candy bar. Just that he didn’t want to… uh… have sex with the candy bar.”
We stare at each other for a moment, then laugh. Jonas hops out of the car and comes around to my side. I reluctantly open my door and step out.
“Does this mean you’re on to guy number two?” he asks, his voice a little tense as we walk into Harry’s. It’s one of those restaurants where they stick up junk on the walls, and I have to duck under the antlers of a jackalope before answering.
“Yep, on to Ben Simmons, I guess—I haven’t thought of anyone else for guy number two. At least he isn’t likely to miss the hint when I throw myself at him.”
“Ben Simmons isn’t likely to miss a girl in any regard….”
“Exactly why he’ll be perfect,” I say. “I just have to figure out a way to… you know. Cross his path. We haven’t talked in years.”
“Welcome to Harry’s, home of the Harry Hot Dog. Table for two?” a bright-eyed hostess interrupts us. Jonas nods, and the hostess leads us through a maze of empty tables to a two-person booth tucked away by the kitchen. An old baseball glove and a bat are nailed to the wall beside us.
“You could talk to Anna,” Jonas says as he browses the menu. “She hangs out with him from time to time.”
“Didn’t she say she made out with him at a party?” I ask.
Jonas pauses to order us both chocolate milk shakes when the waitress arrives. “Yeah,” he finally answers me. “But it was a long time ago.”
“I guess I could ask her.” Anna isn’t someone I really talk to outside of school. Surely there’s an easier way to meet Ben.
“Here,” Jonas says. “I have her number.”
I’m surprised, but then again, Jonas has always been a bigger fan of Anna’s than I have. I copy the number into my phone, finishing just as our shakes arrive. I’m not as hungry as I thought—I stir my milk shake till the whipped cream vanishes. Ben Simmons. Who’d have thought? I didn’t really want to have sex with Daniel, but I remember that back when we were dating it had crossed my mind. So it didn’t seem too crazy to have sex with him. But Ben? I’ve never wanted Ben, not really.
“Are you okay?” Jonas asks.
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Just thinking about Ben. I never really pictured how I wanted my first time to be, you know? But now that I’m trying to have it, I feel like I’m giving up some fantasy that never even existed to begin with.”
“Like what?” Jonas asks cautiously.
I flush a little. “I don’t know. With someone I love, I guess. I never thought I’d do the whole wait-till-marriage thing, but I think I wanted it to be with someone I cared about.”
Jonas sighs and sits back in the booth. “You can always try to talk to your dad again,” he suggests, and I’m grateful that he knows me well enough not to try to persuade me to break the Promises.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m afraid that if I fight it too hard, he’ll get the wrong idea and think I’m shacking up nightly. Besides, it’s not the sex itself that bothers me, so much as having to make a choice about my virginity so soon. I didn’t realize I had secretly planned how I wanted my first time,” I say, trying to make it a joke. “I mean, you probably have a secret plan for how you want it to go, too. Think about it.”
Jonas grins, but his ears turn a little red. “I guess I do. And mine doesn’t involve Ben Simmons, either,” he says, and I laugh. There’s a moment’s silence in which I zone in on the cherry at the bottom of my milk shake glass.
For Jonas’s sake, I change the subject and let him show me his most recent list—colleges he wants to apply to, the ones that need extra admissions essays marked with a messily drawn star.
An hour later, we’re pulling into my driveway. “Thanks for picking me up,” I tell Jonas as I swing my feet out of the car.
“Don’t mention it,” he says. “What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief.”
“I don’t know that quote,” I answer, frowning.
“The Winter’s Tale. Not one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. But seriously—Daniel’s loss.”
I smile, then step back and shut the car door.
Inside, Dad is planted in front of the television, sound asleep. It’s almost eleven, so whatever show he’s watching has long gone off to make way for a Super Shammy infomercial. I try to shut the door quietly, but he sits up anyway.
“Shelby? What time is it?”
“Eleven,” I say. “Sorry I woke you up.”
Dad looks at me carefully, his expression a mix of curiosity and confusion. I don’t really have a set curfew, but eleven is later than usual. He wants to ask me where I was, I can tell, but he won’t, because he never has before—it’d break the routine. Even so, the weight of the night’s events is heavy in my mind, and something that tastes oddly like guilt forces me to look at the floor. Dad exhales.
“I wrote you a note,” he says, pointing the remote to turn off the TV. I grab a slip of paper off the counter: Cake Tasting Friday at Noon!
“There’s a cake tasting?” I ask. “Like, at the grocery store?”
“No,” Dad says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s a wedding cake bakery. Sweet Cakes or Sweet Caking or something. I can go alone, if you want,” he adds quickly.
“Uh, no. I’ll go. No problem.”
We stare at each other for a moment longer.
“Well… good night,” Dad says.
“Night.”