Last Stand (3 page)

No dice.

My papers slide off onto the floor as Amber grabs my ankles. In a matter of seconds, she has her hands beside my knees, then around my waist, and we’re lying on the sofa kissing like we haven’t kissed in months.

Screw Trig. Screw F. Scott Fitzgerald and impressing teachers.

I want Amber’s weight on top of me, my hands in her hair, the warm, fulfilled feeling I get whenever my arms are around her. The headiness of being so close I can inhale whatever it is that makes her smell like
her
.

Amber’s hands slip under my T-shirt, and I’m all too happy to reciprocate, sliding my fingers under the sides of her bra, then slowly forward, feeling the soft curve of flesh right at the edge of the cups. It’s our usual routine, her pushing my shirt up and me pushing up hers, so we’re skin-to-skin on the sofa as we kiss, but in a way that allows us to yank our clothing back quickly if there are footsteps in the hallway above.

But tonight, instead of letting her hands continue to explore under my shirt, Amber reaches down and slides her hands along the waistband of my shorts, first on the outside, then along the inside. “One year,” she whispers as her lips move toward my ear. “One year since you kissed me in your garage. I thought you never would.”

We’d been dancing around our connection for months, becoming friends through marching band, then hanging out together whenever we practiced outdoors. She was going out with Connor Ralston most of the year—one of those superjocks who’s good-looking and at ease in every situation—and she started confiding in me about the ups and downs of their relationship. First, in bits and pieces during those outdoor hours in band, then in more depth via texts and late-night cell phone calls when she and Connor had a particularly dramatic day.

In other words, I’d happily relegated myself to the same pitiful role all average, somewhat geeky guys take when around a gorgeous, out-of-reach girl: I became her sounding board, just so I could spend more time around her. I never in a million years thought I’d be anything more than a friend to her, but neither did I want our symbiotic relationship to be put on hold just because school was out for the summer. So when freshman year ended, I asked her on a whim if she wanted to get together to practice over the summer.

She shocked me and said yes, even though no one really expected us to practice.

When Connor dumped her in early August for a girl from another school, her girlfriends assured Amber she’d get Connor back. It bugged her, she claimed, because she wasn’t even sure she wanted Connor back if he wasn’t going to treat her the way she deserved to be treated. I told her to ignore her friends and go with her gut, that if she got back with him, fine. But if not, when she was ready she’d find someone better. Someone who’d spoil her.

I even gave her
names
, I was so pathetic.

To my everlasting joy, she laughed out loud and said, “Too full of himself!” when I suggested Griff.

The day before sophomore year started, when her mom took her to pick up new reeds for her clarinet, she called and offered to grab me some for my sax. She dropped them off a few hours later as I was sweeping out the garage, trying to earn car money. We flirted a little, talked about band and whether she could possibly make first chair as a sophomore, and then I was kissing her. Just leaned over the push broom and did it without letting myself think about it first.

And it was perfect, at least until Keira walked in with a garbage bag full of dirty diapers, yelled, “Whoa! Um…sorry!,” dropped the bag on the floor, and hurried back into the house laughing her head off. One year ago today.

I remember the necklace and whisper, “Hey, I forgot, I have something in my backpack.”

“Really?” She eases back, and the grin on her face is downright heartstopping. I forgot how much I like the way she smiles at me while we’re kissing and no one else is around. Like I’m the only person in the world who makes her feel this happy.

I reach for the floor and unzip the bag one-handed, keeping my other hand in its comfy location, tucked under the side of her bra, and pull out the box containing the necklace. I slide it so it’s on my chest, right between us. “Happy anniversary, Amber.”

Twin lines furrow the area between her eyes, like she was expecting something else, but they disappear when she smiles. “You got me a present! Um…you want me to open it now?”

“Yeah. Is there a problem?”

“Of course not!” She sits up, letting her rear end slide into the space between my thigh and the back of the sofa, so I push myself upright and pull her onto my lap. She eases a finger under the tape, then peels off the wrapping paper without tearing it.

My heart nearly stops at her sharp intake of breath as she opens the box from the jeweler. “Toby, this is gorgeous!”

“You like?”

She nods, fingering the gold-dipped aspen leaf and the small round opal set in its center.

“I thought you might like something outdoorsy.” I explain. “When I saw this one, with your birthstone, it seemed like something you’d wear.”

She doesn’t say anything. She just stares at the necklace, lying against the fuzzy blue velvet inside the box.

“If you don’t like it, I can take it back and you can choose something else.”

Could I sound like a bigger dweeb? I can just hear Keira’s reaction. She’d say,
if she already told you it’s gorgeous, why in the world are you offering to return it? Take a girl at her word!

Amber blinks, then smiles at me. “Never. It’s perfect. I’ll wear it all the time.”

She takes it out of the box and asks me to hold her hair out of the way while she fastens it. Once it’s on, she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me, long and slow and soft. It’s quiet; I can’t even hear the television upstairs. Just me and Amber and the low hum of the DeWitt’s air conditioning. Like no one could ever disturb us down here.

She must have the same feeling, because she slides her hands down my back, then eventually around to the front to play with the button on my shorts again.

I want to stop her, but I don’t want to, either. The sensation of her fingernails running along my waist, then lower, just below my belly button, is driving me nearly over the edge. I think I’m going to combust, but in a very, very good way.

I know she can tell, since she’s sitting in my lap, but it’s not stopping her. I swallow hard and try to think of something else. Cars I might be able to afford. Ms. Lewis’s stupid syllabus. Ms. Lewis herself. But nothing’s easing the problem.

Then Amber maneuvers my shorts down a few inches, so they’re barely covering me, and pushes me backward on the sofa, so she can get them the rest of the way down if she wants.

“Amber, we can’t.” I tell her in between kisses. “If you keep…any more and I might come.”

She smiles against my lips and moves her body—with her porno-mag worthy breasts—against me. Then she slips her fingers into the waistband of my underwear.

“Really, Amber. We need to stop.” I can’t believe I’m saying what I’m saying to her—it’s bad enough I just used the word
come
in sentence out loud—but what’s my alternative? “If…well, it’ll make a mess. Your parents are gonna know.”

And I don’t want to.

When it gets right down to it, no matter how good this feels physically, my brain’s telling me it’s
wrong
. I can’t get a hand job in her parents’ basement. It was bad enough that she gave me one at Sophomore Blast last year, when we were hidden away in her tent. Okay,
good
, as in how it felt, but bad in the sense that we could have been discovered—by Meghan, who was sharing the tent, by one of the chaperones, by anyone who happened to stumble away from the annual sophomore class lakeside party. And bad in that when I realized what she really wanted then was to have sex, that the hand job wasn’t the destination, but a prelude to what Amber considered the main event, I squirreled my way out of there before she could say the words. I cut her off mid-
I want to…
and told her Griff was going to come looking for me because I’d promised to play on his team in the flag football game.

“We’ll figure something out.” Her eyes lock onto mine, but her hands stay right where they are. “Toby, it’s our anniversary. I—I think today should be the day. I’ve been thinking about it for months, and Toby, we’re ready for this. We are.”

“So you really—?” I can’t say the words, but it’s plain from her face that she’s planning on way more than a hand job tonight. That in her mind, we’re picking up where we left off in the tent.

It felt all out of whack then. It feels out of whack now. Surreal.

“That’s a big step,” I say.

She’s a virgin. Connor pushed her, but she never went all the way with him. I know because she gave me all the details back when I was just her friend, hoping I could give her, in her words, “the guy’s perspective.”

Like I’d have the slightest insight into a mind like Connor Ralston’s. Just because I’m male doesn’t mean we’re the same species. But I wasn’t going to admit that to her.

A blush creeps across her cheeks. “I, um, actually thought when you went for your backpack earlier, that you might have a condom in there. Maybe.”

No
.

“But the necklace was okay,” she adds in a rush. “I just thought, after having virtually no time together this summer, and with it being our anniversary, it’d be perfect. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Your parents are upstairs.”

She laughs. “You know they won’t check on us for awhile. Their favorite show’s on, and there’s no way they’re leaving to check on us. We’re focusing on homework, remember?”

What I remember that I’m supposed to be doing my homework instead of my girlfriend.

I reach up with one hand to push her hair back, looping a long strand behind her ear. Man, she looks cute like that, with her hair hanging down on one side of her face and tucked back on the other.

“I really want to, Toby. I think it’s time to take our relationship to the next level, don’t you?”

I know I should make an excuse, like I did in the tent. Say that the timing’s not good since it’s nearly nine p.m. on a Tuesday and I have to get home. Point out that I do
not
have a condom, not in my wallet or backpack or even at home in my nightstand.

Tell her I think she’s too special to lose her virginity on a basement sofa.

A dozen gentle let-downs run through my head, but what do I say? “No.”

A
s soon as the word leaves my mouth, I know I’m screwed, and not in the way Amber originally intended.

Her eyes widen for a moment, like she’s not sure whether I’m kidding around, then fill with tears as she realizes I mean it.

“I don’t believe this,” I think she says. It’s more to herself than to me, so I’m not sure. She shoves at my shoulder, unable to get off me fast enough.

I sit up, grabbing her hand to stop her from leaving the sofa. “It’s not that I don’t want to keep going, Amber. I mean, this is fantastic. I just didn’t think tonight…” I swear, I must be insane. “I’m not ready.”

She glances at my shorts. “All evidence to the contrary. Unless you mean you’re not in love with me enough yet.”

I scoot so one of the pillows from the back of the sofa gives me some cover. “It’s not that, either. Definitely not that.”

I can’t imagine being as into someone as I’m into Amber. Who else in the world would tell her friends that it’s cute when I describe the hand-to-hand combat that occurred during the sea battle marking the final defeat of Blackbeard? Who else would appreciate how much I want to be first chair sax? And I can’t imagine anyone else calling me at exactly midnight on February 28th to wish me a happy birthday, telling me she’s thought of me on this date since she first saw my Leap Day birthday posted on the hall calendar outside my kindergarten classroom and thought it was cool.

I cup her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me, to see how serious I am. “Amber, I love you. I hope you know that.” It’s not like I haven’t told her before.

“Is it…is it a protection issue, then?” she asks.

“I don’t have any.” I can tell from her lift in her expression that she’s about to tell me she does, but I don’t want the discussion to go down that particular road. I let my hands drop into my lap. “But that’s not it, either.”

“A religious thing? I mean, I completely understand if that’s it.” She gives me a lopsided grin. “It didn’t stop Keira from doing it, obviously, but she did tell me she doesn’t believe in abortion, that it’s part of her Catholic upbringing.”

“You talked to Keira about us?” Who asks a guy’s
sister
about this kind of thing?

“No! I stopped in for coffee on my way to work last week and she mentioned that Stewie loves his new daycare. So I asked if it was hard for her sometimes with a baby, or if she ever worried about how she’d handle it all when she first found out she was pregnant. And she told me not handling it wasn’t an option; she knew that she could never have an abortion as a good Catholic—those were her exact words—and said she knew she’d have to find a way to make it work. That’s all.”