The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(62)

“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.”

25

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 were you with this * 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 all 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.