Whip It (14 page)

We end up sitting on, then laying on his bed, fooling around, talking, listening to music, fooling around some more, listening to more music, talking about how tired we are, then fooling around again.

It feels so perfect just being next to him, I totally forget that in less than forty-eight hours he will be gone.

Now, do not ever repeat this to Pash, but I’m starting to think of Oliver as my best friend. Maybe I can have two best friends, one I make out with (O.), and one I make fun of people at school with (P.). I can tell Oliver anything, and I think he feels the same way.

For instance, we’re laying there, and we start talking about having sex—and not in a completely embarrassing way. Just casual. Like, should we do it now? Or should we wait until he gets back from the tour? We weigh the pros and cons. I can tell he really wants to do it (I mean I can
feel
he does—
ahem
), but he sort of leaves it up to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m up to the task (at least I think I am), but I want it to be right. And what’s the rush? I guess it’s kind of prudish, but I think maybe it might be better if we wait till he gets back from touring, give us something to look forward to.

So, around five
A.M
., with slivers of orange sun sneaking through his blinds, Oliver and I fall asleep tangled up together. No sex, just cuddling, which is so geeky, but the kind of geeky that feels heavenly.

Oh, It ’s Such a Perfect Day, I’m Glad I Spent It with You

W
hen I stir the next morning, Oliver’s already up. He’s looking at me and smiling in this super-dopey, lovey way that’s so not cool but it totally breaks my heart. I didn’t know he had that cuteness in him. I want to bottle it and save it forever.

“What are you doing?” I say, sleepy-voiced, throwing my hands over my face.

“Just looking at you,” he says, yawning. Man, if Malice saw Oliver this way, she would totally agree that he’s not like all the other crummy band guys. She would change her tune—pun intended.

“Well, stop it,” I say, burying my head in his chest.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll never look at you again.”

“Good. I don’t want you to.”

“Good, then I won’t,” he says as he kisses my cheek.

It’s almost one in the afternoon, and technically I should get my ass home to Bodeen (oh, yeah, Bodeen), but I decide to push my luck a little bit further. When Oliver’s in the bathroom, I call home and say that I’m still at Pash’s, and we are working hard on our economics project that is due this week.

“Okay, honeybunch. Y’all don’t work too hard,” my mom says in a rare and surprisingly agreeable mood. I kind of wish she’d put up more of a fight because now I have a little acorn of guilt sitting in the bottom of my stomach. It’s so much easier to defy her when I’m mad at her.

Of course, when I mentally reenter Oliver World (it used to be called Austin, but now, to me, it’s Oliver World), the guilt subsides—mostly.

For his last day in town, I throw Oliver an on-the-move going away party for one, hitting all his favorite Austin spots: Hyde Park Pharmacy (for a few farewell rounds of Stampede), Tamale House, Waterloo Records, and Peter Pan Putt-Putt (home to a gigantic Peter Pan sculpture that was made in the ’60s to be friendly and welcoming to kids but is actually creepy and terrifying—in short, awesome). Before we know it, evening is sneaking up on us.

“I seriously have to get back,” I say, a little apologetically.

“No,” Oliver says.

“Yes.”

“Uh-uh, you can’t leave me hanging my last night in town.”

“You suck,” I say, feeling tormented. Okay, someone tell me again why I can’t just skip to being eighteen already and put this little issue of having to ask my parents’ permission for everything behind me? It’s not fair.

He relents, and as we head back for Bodeen, we pull over for gas. Oliver goes in to pay, and my heart says,
Noooooo! This day can’t end! Not yet.
I grab Oliver’s cell and call home again, really, really pushing my luck.

I make sure to dial our home digits, which rings to my mom’s prized antique phone with the rotary dial. Brooke loves that phone for its old-fashioned charm, but I adore it for its genius lack of caller ID.

“Mom, can I please, please, please stay over at Pash’s tonight?”

“It’s a school night,” my mom says.

“Exactly. We’re doing schoolwork. We’re gonna be up really late finishing our project, and we need to use her computer because ours is not as fast. There’s no way we’ll get it done,” I lie. Our project isn’t even really due until Wednesday (which reminds me, I need to get started on that collage).

There are several seconds of silence on the other end and then finally, “And that’s okay with Pash’s mom? This makes two nights in a row, Bliss.”

“Of course, Mom. They’re all about the grades over here. Pash is a very good influence.”

“Fine, but this is a one-shot deal. Don’t get used to it. You still live in my house,” she says.

“I understand. Thank you! I love you!” I hang up just as Oliver opens the door and climbs back in the car. I greet him with a radiant grin.

“What?” he says.

“Turn around,” I say. “I’m staying with you tonight.”

The final night is pretty much a repeat of the previously perfect evening. We try to stay up as late as we can, so as not to sleep through our last hours together.

And then somewhere around 1:37
A.M
., Oliver’s in bed next to me, strumming his guitar, and I change my mind. I take the guitar out of his hands and . . . attack him, basically.

We “do the deed” as Pash would say, and not because he pushed or I wanted to be popular or because I have low self-esteem or anything girl-tragic like that, but simply because I want to. And, yes, we do use a condom, which Pash would be happy to know since she’s always lecturing me about stuff like that, even though she’s still a virgin.

Still, the first time totally hurts and ends with me practically yelling, “Get the hell off me.”

Oliver gets really quiet. “Man. I feel like a dick.”

“What for?” I ask.

“Because I didn’t know it was your first time. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I dunno,” I say. “I just didn’t want it to be a ‘thing,’ you know?” I pull his arm around me. And we fall asleep in that position for a couple of hours before we wake up and start making out and fooling around and, well, we’re at it again.

I don’t know if it’s the same for every girl, but for me, the second time is much better. And by the third, I decide this sex thing rocks—thank God. I was a little scared that I might hate sex.

We just had to figure out how to do it right.

Au Revoir

T
he next morning, when Oliver drops me off in front of the Gundersons’ house, I start to regret the sex part. Not really, but I just feel so close to him, like I didn’t even know it was possible to feel that close to another human being, and now I have to let him go for three loooong weeks.

I don’t want to say good-bye. I want to have more sex.

I can tell Oliver feels the same by the way we both refuse to officially say good-bye. We sit in his car for an eternity avoiding those awful words and then we stand by his car even longer, still ignoring the reality of the situation.

It’s one of those early, cold mornings, where fall is flirting with turning into winter. It’s cold, and I huddle against Oliver, shivering.

The band van is leaving Austin at nine sharp, which Oliver says is Hank-speak for nine-thirty, but he has to get back to Austin because he hasn’t even packed yet. I can understand. The boy’s been a little distracted. And naturally, I have to be at school in twenty minutes.

We stand there, eking out every last second with each other, trying not to say it. He just rubs my hair as I lean into his chest.

There’s a lot that I want to say.

I want to say I think all this emo stuff is retarded, and girlie-girls mooning over boys always seemed lame with a capital
L
. And I know I’m sarcastic and defensive and I make a joke out of everything and am highly resistant to anything that reeks of sentimental corniness, but I’m giving you my heart anyway because being with you feels like home, and I know you won’t break it.

I want to tell him I love him. And mostly, I want to hear him say he loves me because I can feel it.

But maybe it’s too soon for all of that, so I finally whisper, “Oliver.”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to have something,” I say, digging into my bag. I pull out my beloved Stryper T-shirt and hand it to him.

“No way,” he says. “This is the coolest thing anyone’s ever given me.”

“Well, it is a guy’s shirt. You can rock it,” I say.

“I’ll guard it with my life,” he says, squeezing me tight. After a moment, he steps back. “Close your eyes.”

I do. I hear fidgeting and feel something cover my shoulders, then I hear the zipper.

“Open ’em,” Oliver says. I look down and realize I’m wrapped in his hoodie—his Stampede, high-score hoodie.

“I’ll guard it with my life,” I say.

We finally agree not to say good-bye. So, as Oliver’s car pulls away, I shout, “Hello!”

“Howdy!” he shouts back, disappearing down the street. I have never hated the idea of three weeks more in my entire life.

Feel Sorry for Me

H
eading into school after my momentous weekend feels like three giant life steps backward. I’ve suddenly grown past this town, this quaint little high school thing. I wrap Oliver’s hoodie around me for consolation.

I look up and see Pash camped out at my locker. Even from a distance, I can tell she’s pissed. I don’t know what for, but I’m sure I’m about to find out.

“Hey, Pash—” I start.

“Don’t ‘hey, Pash’ me,” she says, cutting me off.

“What? What’d I do?”

“You left me at the derby bout, you idiot. I had to go to the party all by myself, and when I got there they wouldn’t let me in because too many people were already there. They were worried about another fire marshal bust.”

“Pash! I didn’t even know,” I say.

“I sat outside for an hour waiting for you. Until I gave up and drove home.”

“I’m sorry. I texted you. Why didn’t you text me back?”

“You texted me?” she says, unconvinced. “Well, I didn’t get it. Just tell me you have our damn collage.”

“Collage?” I say. “What collage?”

“The collage. For our economics project,” she says, overenunciating every word, as though English were my second language.

“Pash, calm down,” I say. “I have two days to finish.”

She stops and looks at me. “No you don’t. It’s due third period, as in today!”

“No it’s not. It’s due Wednesday,” I argue, as if saying it out loud will make it so. The only thing it makes is Pash more pissed off. She spins back to me and lets it rip, talking a thousand miles a minute.

“Bliss! I did the whole report by myself, and all you had to do was the stupid, rinky-dink collage. Easy A for both of us, and you can’t even do that. Y’know, not everyone has Roller-Derby-rock-star-boyfriend life to fall back on. If I can’t make valedictorian at this joke of a school, I won’t get a scholarship, which means I can probably kiss being a surgeon good-bye. I’m not just a grade whore, y’know. I’m trying to get out of this crappy town. Just like you.”

“Pash,” I say, feeling like a piece of mud on the bottom of a shoe. She waves me off with a dismissive flick of the wrist.

“Whatever. Thanks for never hanging out with me anymore. Thanks for standing me up at the party. Thanks for using me as a decoy so you can spend the night with your stupid boyfriend. But most of all, thanks for ruining my GPA. You’re an awesome friend, Bliss,” she says with brutal sarcasm. “Don’t ever talk to me again.”

Before I can respond to the conversational grenade, Pash turns and disappears into the hallway crowd. I feel like I’m gonna puke.

In third period, I plead with Mr. Smiley to punish me, not Pash, for the lack of collage action happening in our project. Yoda-man is not having it. I can feel Pash glaring at me from her seat in the back of the class. When I try to catch her eye, she defiantly turns her gaze in another direction.

I lost my best friend, and the truth is Pash is right. What kind of total lame-o flakes on an easy A when Pash is doing the heavy lifting? Me. I suck.

For the rest of the week, I try desperately to lure Pash back into the friendship fold, but she won’t take the bait. I can’t catch her at her locker, no matter how much I stake it out. Every time she sees me coming, she promptly turns and goes the other way. And during lunch, she disappears. (Is she eating in some dark corner of the library? I wonder.)

By Thursday, I start leaving hilarious notes in her locker (genius observations about the suckiness of Bodeen High, the kind of stuff she adores), but every one is boomeranged back to my locker with “return to sender” angrily scribbled in Pash’s handwriting.

It hurts. I remember the days when that handwriting was used for me, not against me.

I know, I know. I fucked up. You don’t have to rub it in.

This Is How I Roll

I
n light of the great Pash Amini / Bliss Cavendar Best Friend Break-up of 2007 and Oliver touring, I’m back to riding the bingo shuttle to get to Austin. Not that I mind. It’s cool to hang with Helen again. We blue-haired gals gotta stay together, especially in times of crisis.