Cherry (4 page)

Zoe focused her attention back on her phone, scrolling through all the new texts in The Chat. Layla was providing a detailed recap of her and Logan's latest epic trampoline make-out session. Zoe put on her pajamas, comfy flannel pants and an oversized T-shirt, as Layla's texts continued. Zoe loved reading the texts in The Chat, but she never really had much to contribute to the conversation. Besides, at this moment, her hair required all of her immediate attention. She had a whole hair routine. First, Dream Curls spray. Second, Daily Moisturizer mousse. Then, Frizz-Ease serum, which she referred to as her secret weapon. And then finally Dep gel. She crunched the thick gel into her red locks as hard as she could. Barring any natural sleep-induced hair disasters, Zoe would wake up with dry, moderately acceptable curls.

Then her phone buzzed again.

Another text.

This one was from Dylan:
Ready?

Zoe noticed that the clock on her phone read 11:11.

She kissed her hand, touched the phone, and then kissed her hand again. Layla wasn't the only one who believed in
little signs from the universe. Zoe had no clue what this particular sign meant, but she always seemed to catch the clock at 11:11, and after today's sex pact conversation, she felt like it must be at least marginally important.

Normally, Dylan didn't text her until closer to midnight, but Caroline, Dylan's girlfriend, must've gone to bed early. Caroline was the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad. Zoe would have to sprout two more cup sizes in order to catch up to her. Not that Zoe was trying to catch anyone. She actually liked Caroline. She was a big upgrade from Dylan's last blond, skinny girlfriend. And the one before that, too. Dylan Riley was a serial monogamist. He was tall, almost six-four, and thin. He'd probably describe himself using the word “lanky.” He kept his blond hair short, usually in a buzz cut. And he had an eight-pack.
Eight
. As in two more abs than the already impressive six-pack. Not that Zoe went out of her way to notice his abs or anything, but Dylan was cocaptain of the varsity water polo team, and their uniform Speedos didn't exactly leave much of anything to the imagination.

Zoe closed her bedroom door, turned off the lights, and then jumped into bed. She called Dylan's cell phone. He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, hey,” he said, as always.

“Am-I-sexy?” she asked, the question tumbling out of her mouth, all quick and jumbled, as if it were a secret.

“What?” Dylan asked, his voice getting squeaky for a moment.

“Okay, fine,” Zoe said with an exhale. “I'm not gonna make you say no.”

“
Last time I checked, ‘what' and ‘no' are not even sorta the same thing.”

“Then you already heard my question.”

“I didn't. Swear.”

“You just want to make me say ‘sexy' again.”

“I
promise
I didn't hear you before, but now that you said ‘sexy,' I want to hear it for real. Also, I am positive that your face is matching your hair color right now.”

“My face matching my hair is the story of at least fifty percent of my life.”

“Nah. Only, like, forty percent,” Dylan teased. “And now you've got this giant, brace-free smile on your face . . . you're probably blinding the bedbugs with your ridiculously bright white teeth.”

“Yeah, yeah . . . thanks.”

“I'm sure it's all matching your pasty skin now too.”

“Pasty? You really want to talk about who is more pasty? Last time I checked, we were both painfully pale,” Zoe fought back, making Dylan laugh.

Point for Zoe.

Then the conversation got quiet for a moment, but it wasn't an uncomfortable kind of quiet. Zoe and Dylan both knew the importance of a good pause. Zoe felt like knowing when to stop talking was almost as important as knowing what to say in the first place, and she and Dylan had spent enough hours on the phone to perfect both. Almost every night they would talk for an hour or two or sometimes even three if there was something particularly exciting to talk about. The tradition had started back
in ninth grade when they were lab partners in freshman Chem class. Their last names (“Reed” and “Riley”) were next to each other alphabetically, so they'd been paired up. Most lab partners split up the assignments and then copied each other's work during passing period on the way to class, but Zoe felt like she needed to do the whole assignment in order to understand it, and Dylan wasn't going to let her do all of his work for him, so they got in the habit of doing their homework together on the phone every night.

In the beginning their conversations were quick and entirely academic. They didn't have much in common. Zoe was in the theater crowd. She liked show tunes and jazz hands. Dylan liked contact sports and video games. The truth was they
still
didn't have much in common, but something about their friendship just seemed to work. And it worked best on the phone.

So, every night, Dylan would text Zoe when he was ready to talk. And then Zoe would call him. And he would pick up on the first ring. And he'd say “hey hey” and then they'd spend the next few hours talking to each other and trying not to fall asleep. The funny part about these nightly falling asleep phone calls—“phonefalls” as Dylan and Zoe called them—was that they were entirely platonic. Even though Zoe and Dylan agreed that it was more or less impossible for boys and girls to simply be friends—the “sex thing” really did always seem to get in the way—they also believed they were the exception to the rule.

After the comfortable pause had passed, Dylan returned his attention to Zoe's initial phonefall question. “
But really, what were you trying to ask? Something about something sexy?”

“It was nothing. I didn't say anything.”

“Z. You are the worst. Liar. Ever. We've been through this . . .”

“
D
,” she said, matching his playful tone, “I am not lying—”

“It's okay. You're a pasty, freckled, red-haired liar . . .”

“Ohmigod . . .” Zoe giggled.

And then Zoe and Dylan went on like that for another hour or two, laughing and teasing and talking and pausing, appreciating their conversation and the quiet spaces inside of it until finally, somehow, they managed to drift off to sleep.

ALEX
was pressed up against the largest rock on make-out ledge.

Cameron was leaning up against her, his tongue in her mouth, his hands everywhere.

And it was all happening so fast.

Cameron paused just long enough to pull his jeans down to his ankles, and Alex's black Converse high-tops sunk down below her into the soft summer grass. Of all the things Alex had thought about when she imagined having sex for the first time, the location of her shoes was not one of them. If she
had
thought about it, Alex probably would've assumed that her shoes would just simply be off, lying on the floor next to the bed or something. Of course that assumption would also require that there would be a bed in the first place. Alex never thought that her first time might happen outside. On a cluster of rocks. With her Converse sneakers sinking down into the grass . . .

. . . but that'
s what was happening.

The air was cold against Alex's cheeks, but Cameron's breath was soft and warm as he moved his kisses from her lips to her neck and then up onto her earlobe. Whatever he was doing with his lips and his tongue sent a tingle all the way down to her toes and then back up into her arms, which she then realized were entirely covered in goose bumps. Alex looked at Cameron, locking in on his gaze, his green eyes were bright and wide and alive, and this feeling of incredible closeness washed over her, making Alex feel as if she and Cameron were the only two people in the entire world who could possibly exist in this moment. Alex leaned in for another kiss, but before she could find Cameron's lips . . .

Her cell phone rumbled on the top of her wooden nightstand, jerking her awake.

It took Alex a moment to confirm that she was only
dreaming
about that night with Cameron at sleepaway camp, and not, somehow, reliving it. It was confusing because she'd woken up with real goose bumps on her arms, and the feeling that they'd morphed from her dreamland into the real world, but there wasn't any actual morph­ing involved. The goose bumps were just as real as the
car horn
coming from her neighbor's driveway.

Shit
.

Alex's one and only New Year's resolution had been to not be late for car pool anymore.

She wasn't big on unnecessary commitments, and resolutions certainly fell into that category, but she also wasn't
above self-improvement. Even she had to admit that punctuality was her weakest link. But now it was only the first day of the new semester, and she was already mucking it up. She glanced at her phone. It was a quarter to eight. She could've sworn she had set her alarm before falling asleep the night before, but it seemed to have betrayed her. The honking continued, growing louder and longer, as Oliver Miller, the literal boy next door and Alex's car pool driver, waited impatiently in his car.

Alex jumped out of bed, ripped off her pajama pants, and beelined for the bathroom. Toothpaste, hairbrush, clean underwear, fresh socks—it more or less happened all at once. Her dad was out of town on business, per usual, and her mom had left early with her twin brother, Max, who went to a specialty school on the other side of town. She grabbed her cell phone and a banana and her shoes and her backpack and her wallet and tore out the front door—still barefoot.

Alex was a sprinter on the track team, so she certainly knew how to move quickly, but normally when she ran she would have a chance to stretch first, she wouldn't've just woken up, and she wouldn't be trying to balance all her possessions in her arms at the same time. Her super speed commonly led to stupid jokes about how she liked to move fast in other places as well—like between the sheets, for example. One time she even showed up to school and found the word “slut” spray-painted on the front of her locker. That was a particularly shitty day.

The upside was that Alex was fast enough to leave most
of her haters in the dust. She was also fast enough to be recruited by Stanford, which, gratefully, took all of the academic pressure off her upcoming second semester. Her main concern these days—besides pledging to not always be late for car pool—had to do with the hundred-meter dash. The Southern California high school record hadn't been touched in nearly a decade, but Alex had a real chance to break it, and she was determined to make it happen. If she were to make her own Layla-like to-do list, “break the state record” would be the one and only thing on it.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry—” Alex said as she jumped into the passenger seat of Oliver's black Jeep Grand Cherokee.

“What happened?” Oliver asked as he peeled out of the driveway.

“My alarm clock didn't go off. I swear I set it for 7:05, but I think it must've been p.m. instead of a.m., 'cause I was using it to sleep late over winter break . . .”

“That is far too much information.”

“You asked what happened.”

“Yeah, but I don't really care,” Oliver said, which was the type of statement that contributed to his reputation for being an asshole. “I swear, I'm just going to start leaving without you.”

Even when Oliver said ugly things like that, he was still really nice to look at. Today, he wore his red and black varsity basketball jersey over a white T-shirt. He was the starting shooting guard and the top scorer on the team, and yet somehow he managed to be even cockier off the court than he was on it.

“
You are not gonna leave me. You've been saying that all year.”

“'Cause you've been
late
all year,” Oliver said, rolling his eyes.

“We both know this ten minute drive is the best part of your entire day.”

“Please, don't flatter yourself,” Oliver jabbed back. “Aren't there enough boys at school who will do that for you?”

Now it was Alex's turn to roll her eyes. She was used to getting compliments, but she didn't care too much about them. They were mostly about the way she looked, and the infuriating truth was that she didn't actually
do
anything to look this way. She woke up like this. Literally. Four and a half minutes ago, she had still been in bed. Alex wasn't complaining—she
liked
the way she looked—but she cared way more about what her track performance looked like than what
she
looked like. Sometimes it seemed like she was the only one who felt that way.

Alex put her foot up on the glove compartment so she could pull on her sneaker, a black New Balance running shoe. Then she reached for the second one, realizing it was a bright pink Nike cross-trainer instead of a match black one.

“Oh damn.”

“We don't have time to go back,” Oliver said, noticing the mismatch.

“Ugh. I know,” Alex said as she pulled on the pink shoe. “Whatever. I'll make it work.”

“Knowing you,” Oliver smirked, “you'
ll probably start a new schoolwide fashion trend.”

“I don't think anyone's paying much attention to my shoes.”

“I'm paying attention,” Oliver said without missing a beat. “To everything.”

It was statements like that one that managed to counter­balance Oliver's reputation for being an asshole—and made him so crushable. If Oliver thought
Alex
got a lot of compliments, he should hear the way girls talked about him in the locker room. But Alex wasn't going to tell him that. Oliver had more than enough of an ego already, which was a shame, because if it weren't for that, Alex might have had an actual crush on him. She would've been lying if she said she wasn't
attracted
to him, but that was more or less unavoidable, considering the way he looked and carried himself, all confidence and charm. All year, their morning car rides had been overflowing with sexual tension.