All We Ever Wanted(71)

   Anyway, Caleb and I had fun hanging out together, and he turned out to be more nerdy (in a quirky, good way) than ghetto (which he wasn’t at all). We spent a lot of time watching funny YouTube videos and playing board games. And of course we hooked up a lot, too, sex seeming more inevitable with every passing day until I finally told him I wanted to do it.

It certainly wasn’t the most romantic thing I’d ever pictured, as there was never any mention of love or even dating. But it still felt right enough, all the important boxes being checked. For one, I trusted Caleb in terms of STDs and stuff (he’d been with two girls before me, but both had been virgins). Second, I trusted him not to blab my business (although our friends didn’t overlap, anyway). And third, I’d just turned sixteen—which felt like the right age to lose my virginity (fifteen had seemed too young). My final concern was the biggest: getting pregnant. Caleb said he could use condoms, although he didn’t like them because he couldn’t feel as much. I wasn’t too concerned about maximizing his pleasure, but I’d heard plenty of stories about condoms tearing—so I decided to get on the pill. I then called the only person I could think of who would be able to help me but who also wouldn’t judge: my mother.

A few days later, she surprised me by sailing into town on a twenty-four-hour birth control mission, taking me to an appointment she’d scheduled herself at Planned Parenthood. I was very grateful, as I knew how expensive her airline ticket from L.A. was (she mentioned it at least three times). At the same time, it was a little bit strange that she chose this, over all the other things in my life, to be proactive about. She was downright giddy about what she called my “rite of passage,” yet oddly never once asked anything about Caleb. It was as if he was totally beside the point. Maybe she was just that sexually liberated. Or maybe she was simply trying to make up for a lot of lost years and missed benchmarks. Or maybe she liked the idea of getting one over on Dad (that thought made me feel guilty).

   Regardless, I told myself it wasn’t about my mother or my father. It was about my decision to have sex—and what mattered was that I was handling that decision responsibly. So after my being on the pill for the requisite seven days, Caleb and I had sex on his twin bed in the middle of the day. It hurt—a lot—and the whole bleeding thing was totally embarrassing and disgusting. But Caleb was really cool and nice about everything. He was very patient and went really slow and kept reassuring me that there was nothing gross about blood, adding that his mother wouldn’t see the sheets because he did his own laundry. So even though I wound up thinking the whole sex thing was pretty overhyped, I still considered my first time a success in that I felt no regret and was glad I’d picked Caleb.

Over the next month, we ended up having sex eleven more times—and toward the end, I actually thought I might be falling for him. But then we went back to school, and we both got really busy, and we talked less and less until Caleb started straight ghosting me. I was a little hurt, but it was more my pride than my heart, especially when I discovered through standard social-media stalking that he had gotten a legit girlfriend. I got over it pretty fast, though, my crush on Finch kicking into high gear.

And now, as I got in Finch’s car the morning after the concert, my feelings were becoming really intense. Like way more than I’d ever felt for Caleb, even after we’d had sex a dozen times. If anything, I think our fight last night had made me feel more for Finch.

   “Hi,” I said, a little out of breath from frantically trying to get ready and out the door before my dad came back from wherever he’d gone. “We meet again.”

It was a lame thing to say, but Finch smiled and said, “Yep. We meet again.”

I glanced up the street, then behind us in the opposite direction.

“You okay?” Finch said.

“Yeah. Just go,” I said with a nervous laugh, motioning for him to drive. “I told my dad I was studying with Grace.”

“Got it,” Finch said, pulling away from the curb. I did a quick scan of his outfit—a pair of gray Windsor sweats, a T-shirt with a sailboat logo of some sort, and Adidas slides. As sharp as he’d looked last night, I decided he looked sexier dressed down like this.

He caught me looking at him and shot me the cutest smile. “What are you thinking?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said, smiling back at him. Because I really wasn’t thinking much of anything. I was too busy feeling things. All of them good.

As we drove toward his side of town, he turned on the radio, then shuffled through his playlist, asking what I wanted to listen to.

“Luke,” I said—because it felt like our music. Our songs.

He nodded and then played “Drunk on You,” singing along here and there. His voice kind of sucked, but for some reason, it only made me like him more.

There was never much traffic in Nashville on Sundays, especially during church hours, so within a few more songs, we were pulling into Finch’s driveway. His house was amazing, even bigger and more beautiful than Grace’s or Beau’s—which was saying a lot. I wasn’t really surprised, as I already knew he was loaded, but I was still sort of blown away—and a little intimidated, too.

   We got out of his car and walked up to his front porch, where Finch unlocked the door and motioned for me to go in first. The alarm started to go off, and he turned and quickly punched a keypad, silencing it.