Junk Miles (40 page)

I could feel the blood hammering in my head, and I had to swallow hard before I answered. “Yes.” It was high-pitched and didn’t sound exactly like my voice.

“
If you don’t want it…just tell me. Okay?” His voice was low and quiet.

Maybe it was all the cloth between us, but I didn’t feel nearly as nervous this time when Jake pulled my underwear down my hips, then over my knees, then around my shoes. His mouth was right at the inside of my thigh, right where the skin was soft and smooth and rarely ever touched. Then he kissed just a fraction higher. I sucked my breath in and felt my hips buck on their own, anticipating what was coming next. I bit my lip a little to contain all of the excitement that was bubbling in me.

“
Are you okay?” he repeated, his voice calm and reassuring, a voice I could trust no matter what.

I told him I was, because as nervous as this made me, I was more curious about it, and I knew if there was one person on this earth I would be comfortable exploring my curiosity with, it was Jake Kelly.

“
I’ve never done this,” Jake confessed suddenly, his face still obscured by all my dress.

“
Never, um, gone down on a girl?” I felt my face pink just from saying it.

“
Yes,” he said into the fabric. “I wanted…I wanted my first time to be with you.”

“
That’s what I want, too.” I bit my bottom lip again as he rubbed his face against the inside of my leg, his breath hot on my thigh.

Then we stopped talking and his mouth was up higher than my inner thigh, and he kissed me where it seemed impossible that anyone would kiss and it felt incredibly better than I could have imagined, just his lips and me in this entire world. Everything we had ever done before had been just as perfect as I had imagined, but this was a different kind of excellent. I loved the way his mouth felt on me, warm and wet and insistent. His tongue drew along my skin and I wanted to scream out how good it felt. Then he licked quickly and I felt myself sinking into an oblivion that was only Jake’s mouth and my body, laid out in front of him and waiting for him to do whatever he was going to do next. My mind went fuzzy. For a minute the reality of the cool night and the cab of the truck and Jake Kelly and his mouth all rushed back and I almost snapped out of it, but his tongue moved slowly and my mind blurred.

My hands dug at the leather of his truck seat. His hands were around my thighs, his fingers pressed into my skin. I could feel his hair brush against my leg as his mouth opened and pressed against me. There wasn’t enough air for me to breath, and once the air rushed back, I couldn’t pull it into my lungs fast enough. Jake’s kisses became rushed and needy, and after a minute or two it was just complete and total bliss. My body shook from it, and I half sat up, my teeth set against how good it felt.

I cried out in the space of the truck, alone, just me and Jake, the two of us happy and loved and loving, and I didn’t know if it was possible that life could feel better. Ever. When I finally came back to reality, I was in Jake’s arms. We sat together, silent and contented in the long, cool night until it was time for me to go back home, to go back to whatever normal life would be like after we had been so close.

Chapter Twenty-One

One week later, I was scheduled for another hair appointment. I thought it was crazy, but Mom said that since we didn’t spend anything on the second prom dress, it was a deal. Only my mother would come up with that kind of insane logic and manage to trick me into believing it all the way to the salon.

In reality, I loved the time she and I spent together. It was fun to have her fuss over me and gossip with Darlene like we were all grown women. This time my toenails were bright red, to match my dress, and so were my fingernails. It seemed a shame since my French polishes were barely chipped, but Mom just rolled her eyes when I made that point.

This time Darlene went in the complete opposite direction with my hair. She pulled the flat iron through it until it was pin straight and so shiny it shone like glass. I was going to argue that I could have straightened it at home, but when Darlene finished, I realized that I could never have worked the wonders she did. She concocted some kind of magic mixture of creams and gels and brushes, and she had done it all with half an eye on my head, chatting ninety miles an hour to my mother.

When she was done, I was slack-jawed with shock. She combed a really deep side part, and it made my whole face look different. Then she took out a red silk flower Mom brought and fixed it to a bobby pin that she slid in and reinforced with other pins so that it would hold the entire night just over my ear. My makeup was smoky and sultry. It was all very prom appropriate.

Back home, it felt a little like déjà vu. Mom got me into my dress and zipped me up, and I stepped into the same magic silver heels. Thorsten came in to snap pictures, and finally, I heard the crunch of tires in the driveway that sent my heart skipping.

Jake!

Jake was coming to see me off. He was glad I was going, in that resigned, he’s-a-great-boyfriend-so-he’s-not-going-to-worry-at-least-to-my-face way. When he got out of the truck, I was already outside to meet him. He whistled low and long.

“
Holy hell, Bren.” He stood next to the truck, immobile. “You look damn fine.”

I ran up to him as well as I could in my column of a dress. “Do you like it? It was Mom’s.”

“
Damn you look hot!” He picked me up around the waist and spun me around easily. “Now, I know this is only your second prom and all, so keep in mind, the way we ended our prom night was highly out of the norm. That’s not usually what happens.” He raised his eyebrows sternly.

“
I know that,” I scoffed. “It usually ends with sex on the beach, right?”

He swatted my butt affectionately. “You’re lucky you’re cute.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and walked me in. “So who’s this guy again?”

“
His name is Nate, and he’s very nice.” I purposefully failed to mention the ‘little crush’ portion of the date.

“
Is he single?” Jake’s voice got a little low and mean.

“
Yes,” I admitted. “But he knows I’m with you.”

“
I’m going to stare him down,” he warned. “No contact, cause I’m not a psycho, but I am going to do a little eyeball intimidation.”

“
No you’re not.” I shook a warning finger at him. “Or I’ll dirty dance with him all night to spite your overprotective ass.”

“
Alright.” He sighed and pulled me aside for a few hurried kisses before we made it to the front door.

Thorsten and Mom said hello to Jake, and the air in the room was slightly uncomfortable. Mom’s idea of me ‘dating other guys’ didn’t involve Jake showing up beforehand. But I wanted him to see my dress and my hair. It was exciting, and I didn’t like for him to miss it. After a minute of chatting with my parents, I told Mom that I wanted to show Jake some of the pictures I’d put together from Paris.

“
Okay.” She didn’t really attempt to disguise her reluctance. “Just remember, they’ll be here soon. You don’t want to hold the group up.”

“
We’ll be fast, Mom,” I promised, dragging Jake to my room.

Once we were in, he groaned a little. “She hates me again?”

“
She always hated you to some degree,” I said cheerfully. “Look.” It was a big leather scrapbook. I had filled it with black pages and did all of the pictures in black and white with a white border around them. Then I had put them in with little tabs, just like old fashioned pictures would have had.

Jake sat next to me and we opened the book. It started with Jake’s first group of pictures, plus the ones he’d taken but hadn’t put up before I called him to break up.

“
They look really good.” He traced a finger along the edges.

We looked at his pictures of me in all the places that he made me go that last day before Paris. Then there were some of the pictures I’d snapped when we landed; a coffee shop at the airport, some road signs in French with the countryside a blur behind them, the view from my dorm window, fresh breads stacked in the windows of a baker’s, a stray cat in front of a fancy iron grate.

Then there were Jake’s angry pictures, including two of Nikki. Those two hurt the most, for me. She looked very posed, doing her pouty/kissy/seductive look. She was in Jake’s room. In his room. That stung hard, but I didn’t like to ignore things just because they kind of sucked. I had learned it was better to just face them, air them in the open, and keep them from being secretive and powerful.

But it still hurt to see them.

“
Why would you have put those in?” Jake’s voice was a little sharp.

“
Because that’s what happened when I was gone.” I glared at him. “We’re not pretending it didn’t happen, so why not have the documented evidence?”

He flipped the page and there were pictures of Saxon, his tattooed back, him standing in front of my window before we went out.

We looked through the whole thing quietly, then he closed the book and we sat together for a long minute.

“
When you broke up with me, I listened to
Ethan Frome
,” he said quietly.

“
The recording I made for you?” What could make the most depressing book in the world even more depressing? Probably listening to a recording of your ex-girlfriend read it while she’s macking it with your brother. Geez, Jake really embraced the Wharton.

He nodded.

“
Why would you have wanted to hear my voice then? You didn’t even want to talk to me on the phone.” I twined my hand with his.

“
I never didn’t want to hear your voice.” He rubbed my hand with his thumb. “And I did want to talk to you on the phone. But I felt bad that we’d split up, and I didn’t want to give in to you until I’d had time to think it all through. You’re
really
easy to give in to. Especially for me.”

“
Did you like the book?”

“
Yeah, I did.” He picked my hand up and examined the bright red polish on my fingernails. “I mean, I felt bad for Ethan Frome. Like, what else was he supposed to do when he saw Mattie? I felt like I knew what he was feeling when he first saw her, because that’s what I felt like the minute I first saw you.”

“
Really?” I was surprised. We had never really talked about it too much.

“
Oh yeah. Probably even more than Ethan felt, because I had seen a lot of good-looking girls, but when I saw you, it was like I knew you were something special.” He rubbed his neck self-consciously. “And all my stupid decisions, those could have been my Zeena, you know. I thought about what it would have been like to not have the option to be with you.” He smiled at me, a slow, seductive smile that made me feel like shimmying out of my silk dress and into his arms. “That was the minute I knew I’d never let you go completely. I thought you might need your own time to figure stuff out, but in the end, if I had any say in it, we’d be together.”

“
So you don’t want us to run our sled into a tree?” I attempted to be funny to keep my hammering heart from beating right out of my chest.

He laughed. “No way. No sledding tragedies for us. And I’m glad you were smart enough to take me back.”

I laughed and grabbed him, and the two of us were wrapped around each other when Mom knocked, frowning a little.

“
Kelsie and her friends are here.” She trained her laser eyes on Jake.

Jake pulled away from me reluctantly. “Let’s go out,” he said with a strained smile, set on getting back in Mom’s good graces despite the ultimate impossibility of it.

When we got to the kitchen, Kelsie squealed and made me turn around. She looked like an angel. Her dress was gathered ivory with sparkly beading all over it. She had curled her hair and done her own makeup, and she looked gorgeous. Her date, Chris, looked handsome too. Nate came to me with a plastic box. It had a red rose on a rubbery wrist band. I held my hand out so he could put it on my wrist, then kissed him on the cheek, pointedly ignoring Jake’s withering glares. Nate looked nervous. Mom and Thorsten snapped pictures all the way to the door.

Jake walked out with our group and kissed me despite Mom’s narrowed eyes. “Have fun. Be careful.” He squeezed my hand tight.

“
Don’t worry.” I kissed him again. “I’ll call you when I get home.”

“
I’ll be up. You know that. No matter how late,” he added, as if he were always up late. Jake was one of those people who would go to bed before nine and wake up by seven every day by choice.

We climbed into Chris’s Volvo and waved goodbye. Nate smiled at me nervously. We chatted about Folly and school and people we mutually knew on the way there. Frankford’s prom was held at a hall, not the same one as Tech’s, but they were all kind of strangely familiar after you’d been to one.

We filed in and did the formal picture thing.

“
Thanks for coming with me,” Nate said when he had his arms awkwardly around me. We smiled at the photographer, a bored-looking middle-aged lady.

“
No problem.” We stepped down and went to our assigned table. “It’s fun to get to go to prom.”

“
Well, it’s really cool that you went with me.” He cleared his throat. “And you look really pretty.”

“
Thanks, Nate.” I smiled as reassuringly as I could. “You look really nice. I like your tux.”