The Last Girl (18 page)

I sit on his stomach with my legs on either side of him.

“Oh, I like this,” he smirks up at me.

I roll my eyes, “Shut up. On the count of three. One, tw-”

He pushes me off of him and onto my back so that he was on top of me again.

“That’s not fair! I wasn’t ready. You have to do it at the count of three.”

“Fine, let’s do it again.”

He lies on his back and I do the same as before.

“Okay. One, two, three.”

Once again, he ends up on top of me.

“I thought you said you would be ready,” he says smugly.

“You cheated.”

“How?”

I glance at his silver airplane necklace dangling in front of me from around his neck. “Give me a second, I’m working on it.”

“You’re cute,” he leans down and kisses me.
It wasn’t a usual kiss. This one felt different. More passionate, I guess you could say.

I tug on his necklace and he pulls away, “What’s that from?”

“My necklace? I don’t know. I’ve just always liked it.”

“Me too,” I
whisper, fiddling with it between my fingers.

He sits up
and puts his arms behind his back, unhooking the necklace. “You have it.”

“What? No, I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant-”

“No, take it, for now at least. It will look better on you than it will on me,” he says and hooks it around my neck.

I look down at it, feeling the cool metal against my chest. “I love it, thanks
Hayden.”

He smiles and leans back over me again. I tug on the collar of his white t-shirt, pulling him down for another kiss.

Chapter 27: For the First Time

Ding, Ding, Ding.

My eyes sh
oot open. I jump up and hit the alarm clock to shut it off quickly. Hopefully it didn’t wake up Hayden. I slowly climb back into bed so the mattress wouldn’t move and snuggle back up to him. Still asleep, he wraps his arm around me, bringing me closer. He is so warm. I just want to stay in bed all day.

“I know what you’re trying to do,”
Hayden mumbles.

His voice makes me jump.
“I thought you were asleep.”

He chuckles, “We aren’t ditching today, Jen.”

“Hayden,” I whine. “Why not?”

He tries to push me up but I hold on to him tightly. “Jenna, come on, get up.”

“Hayden, why not?”

“Why do you want to ditch so badly all of a sudden?”

For several reasons.

1.) To avoid
Zac and Emily

2.)

Wait, I guess to avoid Zac and Emily was the only reason.

“Because this bed is so comfy and you’re so warm.”

He laughs, “If we skipped school, we would have to get out of bed.”

“Why?”

“My mom doesn’t work, remember? She would get mad if she knew we skipped so we would have to leave the house and make her think we still went,” he explains.

I sigh, defeated. A few seconds later, my head pops off
Hayden’s chest and I look at him. “We can go to my house.”

“What?” he
asks. “What about your parents?”

“They won’t be home, they
are on a trip.”

“Well…”

“Pleaseeee,” I beg, pressing my forehead against his.

He sighs, “Alright.”

“Yes!” I jump up and run to the bathroom to get ready.

“Oh, now you get out of bed.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Hayden asks me, turning the steering wheel to pull out of his driveway.

“Yup,” I say instantly.

He laughs, “Where do you live?”

“Near
Luke’s.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, like a few streets away. Weird, right?”

He nods, and for the next 15 minutes, we blast the radio and sing loud and obnoxiously along.

“Turn here,” I say and he does.

“Which house is it?”

“The one at the very very end.”

We pull up to the place I call home.
Hayden stops the car outside the gate and I look over to see his mouth agape.

“What?” I ask confused.

“This is your house?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s huge.”

I shrug
and roll down the window to type in the code on the keypad. There is a buzzing noise and the iron gates open.

Hayden
drives forward, “You have a four car garage? Are there four cars in there?”

I nod.

“What? Why did you ask for my sister’s car then?”

“The cars aren’t mine. They’re my parent’s,” I explain.

“What do your parents do, exactly?” he asks.

I sigh,
“They are lawyers for celebrities and stuff. They go away on out of state business trips a lot. Our maid usually stays with me, but because I haven’t been home lately, I told her she didn’t have to come over the past couple of weeks.”

He parks the car and I open the door to get out, “Come on.”

“So, I’m guessing your parents don’t know about the Slave Auction?” he asks, walking up the stone bath to my front door behind me.

“Nope.”

“And if they did, would they have let you do it?”

“Nope.”

I pull the key out of my pocket and unlock the door. “I didn’t even want to do the Slave Auction. So of course my parents wouldn’t want me to.”

“Wait, what?”

“Jessica signed me up for the auction without me knowing. I tried to get out of it, but Courtney wouldn’t let me.” I explain open the door.

“I didn’t know…” He stops talking as we walk into the living room.
He whistles, “Wow.”

I watch him as he leans his head back to look up at the tall ceiling. He
takes a few steps forward, his footsteps echoing off the marble tile and large white walls. We had a few paintings and family pictures hanging on the walls, but there were still a lot of bare places all over. The whole room just felt kind of empty. Sure, there was a large leather couch placed along the wall under the window and a large wooden table with ten chairs sat around it, but the room just gave me a weird feeling. I hardly ever come in here; usually I just walk by to get in and out of the front door.

I giggle as
Hayden does a little spin in the center of the room on the tip of his Converse. “Why have we been staying at my house all this time? We should just stay here.”

I shrug, “I like your house better.
It’s not so empty.”

I begin to walk down the hallway and towards the kitchen, “
Plus, I am tired of this place.”

I hear
Hayden follow me, “What do you mean?”

I keep walking through the kitchen and climb the spiral staircase next to the pantry. I sense
Hayden stop behind me and I turn around to see him staring at the kitchen. It was similar to his, except that we had 42 inch flat screen TV mounted on the wall over the small counter where I usually ate.

“I’m stuck here, day after day alone, doing nothing but homework and watching TV
. It’s just,” I pause, “it’s just nice to get out of here for a while.”

I allow myself to look right at
Hayden. He opens his mouth, probably to say an “I’m sorry” or something, but I turn away and head up the stairs. I don’t feel like going into an emotional conversation about my parent problems right now.

At the top of the stairs, I stop and wait for
Hayden to catch up. I see the top of his curly head appear and I entwine my fingers with his.

“For once we are going to be walking into your room instead of mine. It’s weird,” he laughs.

I lead him into my room at the very end of the hall. It felt good to finally be back in my own room. The familiar smell of my perfume reaches my nostrils and I fall into my bed as if I was doing a belly flop into a pool, the hard mattress barely moves.

“I remember why I like your bed so much,” I say looking at him.

He stops from looking at my cork board covered with pictures of me and my friends from over the years and glares at me. “That’s why you’re dating me, isn’t it? You’re using me for my bed.”

I prop up on my elbows, “Damn, you caught me.”

He shakes his head at me, “I knew it. You did sign up for the Slave Auction. You did it just to sleep in a comfier bed.”

I shrug, “What can I say? I was tired of this stiff old mattress.”

He sits beside me, “Oh my God, I see what you mean. How can you sleep on this?” He stops and looks at me. “I almost forgot!” He pulls out his phone quickly, “What’s your dad’s name?”

“Um, Dan. Why?”

He puts a finger to my lips, silencing me and puts his phone to his ear.

There is a long pause before he speaks, “Hello, this is Dan Brown. I am the father of Jenna Brown and I am calling to say she will not be coming to school today.”

He pauses again and I try to control a giggle at his ‘dad voice’. His voice was already really low, so he being able to make it lower seemed impossible. Apparently it wasn’t.

“Yes, she has
a cold. She should be back by tomorrow.”

Another pause.

“Yes, she can go to detention Monday as well to make up for missing today,” he smirks at me.

I roll my eyes.

“Alright, thank you,” he hangs up.

“Why do I have the feeling that you have done that many times before?” I ask, still holding back a giggle.

“Because I am an amazing actor.”

“Or liar.”

He mimics my position, propping up on his elbows, “I prefer the term actor.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I laugh.

It becomes quiet Hayden grabs my hand. I lay my head on his shoulder, where it fit perfectly in the crook of his neck.

“How come you never told me about your parents?” he asks quietly.

I sigh. I don’t know why I never told him. It never really came up, I guess. I probably should have mentioned it. At dinner the other night, I was kind of hurt when I realized we never talked about our lives much. I never even thought about telling him about them.

“There’s not much to tell,” I reply monotone. “The
y’re just never home anymore.”

“Don’t you get lonely?” he squeezes my palm.

“Linda, our maid, keeps me company; she’s like my second mom. And I have Jessica and Daisy. And now I have you.”

I see the side of his cheek curl up into a smile that soon fades away.

“I’m sorry you never get to see them. I mean it’s hard enough for me not to get to see my dad a lot, but at least I have my mom. It must suck that they are both gone.”

“What can you do?” I ask rhetorically, ready to change subjects.

“I can tell that you’re pretending like you don’t care, even though you do.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I act the same way when people talk about mine; I just shrug it off. But in the back of my mind, it eats away at me. Like I’m too afraid to tell people that I miss my dad.”

I lie on my back and look up at him, his hand still clutching mine. “Do you miss your dad?”

“I do,” he smiles weakly. “I guess I’ve never really told anyone that before.”

I feel chills spread down my back.
Hayden has just opened up to me, and I can tell that this was really personal to him. Forget about Zac- he can be happy with Emily for all I care. And forget about Luke and his secret girlfriend he denies having. They are my friends and I can be happy for them. Hayden is my boyfriend and that’s all I care about.

His large fingers entwine with mine again, “Where are your parents now?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.

“Do you ever call them to talk?”

“I used to. But I stopped because it was like I was talking to a dead line.”

“How often do they come home?”

“About a week every month.”

“Well, that’s good. You get them for a whole week.”

“Yeah, but nothing is different when they are 
home because they still work constantly. It’s like they aren’t even home.”

“I’m sorry, Jenna,”
Hayden looks at me with eyes that made me want to hug him.

I shrug.

“There you go, shrugging again.”

I laugh, “Sorry, force of habit.” I look over at the clock on the table by my bed. “I would be in English right now. Not understanding a single word the teacher says about a poem that the writer probably meant in a different, more straight forward way.”

He laughs, “Studying Shakespeare, huh?”

“Yes,” I yawn, “and it’s hard.”

“Are you tired?”

“A little.”

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Exactly. It is way too early to be awake when one isn’t going to school.”

“Fine then,” Hayden laughs and gets off the bed. “Let’s go back to sleep.”

Before I even know what’s happening,
Hayden picks me up off the bed and carries me bridal style.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting you to bed, baby.”

I laugh as he pulls back the covers and lays me down gently on my purple sheets. He pulls the comforter back over me and leans down close to my face.

“Goodnight, Jenna.”

“Good morning,
Hayden.”

He laughs and gives me a long, passionate kiss on my lips. He pulls away and makes his way to the other side of the bed, getting in himself.

“Honestly though, how do you sleep on this thing?”

I laugh as he lies down uncomfortably. Tugging the belt loop on my pants, he pulls me towards his warmth. Within ten m
inutes, we drift off into sleep, mumbling to each other about how Edgar Allan Poe makes much more sense than Shakespeare.