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“What are you gonna do?” I ask.
“Let’s just stay here,” Todd says, putting an arm around me.
A bolt of nerves grips my chest. He’s so huge, he could probably break me in half without much effort. He’s drunk, and I’m alone with him in this giant house. There’s no way I could fight him off or even alert someone for help if I needed it.
“Relax,” he says, kissing the side of my head. “We don’t have to do anything. We’ll just get some sleep, and I’ll take you home in the morning.”
“Okay,” I say, embarrassed that he could read me so easily.
He leads me upstairs to a bedroom, but a bunch of people are already passed out across the bed. The other rooms are similarly occupied or locked.
Downstairs, we find the living room deserted. Cups are strewn everywhere, some crushed, some tipped over or spilled, and some just sitting there on the floor or any available surface, half full of watery melted ice and alcohol or warm, flat beer.
Todd throws some random items of clothing off the couch and lies down. When he holds up his arm, I reluctantly lie down next to him. I’ve never slept with a boy, and I didn’t expect my first time to be like this.
He wraps his big warm arm around me. “Cold?”
“A little,” I admit. It’s not even below freezing outside, but it’s chilly in here, especially with the glass door broken and cold air blowing in.
I get up and look around for a blanket, but I can’t find any. However, someone has torn the shower curtain down, so I take that. Todd laughs when he sees me coming back wrapped in a shower curtain, but he just shrugs and opens his arms again.
I turn off the lights and crawl into his arms again, pulling the curtain over us both. Todd gives me a squeeze and sighs deeply, and I start to relax. He’s so big and bearlike that I feel safe here, like he’d always protect me. His chest hair tickles my cheek. I smile and turn over, and he curls himself around me.
“Sorry I left you alone tonight,” he says, his voice even deeper than usual, slurred with sleep.
I think about what Lindsey said—ask him where he was. But I don’t ask because then I’d have to know. “It’s okay,” I say instead. “You don’t have to hold my hand all the time. I’m fine on my own.”
“No, it’s not. You’re not. You could have gotten hurt.”
“But I didn’t.”
I remember Chase standing up for me, and that silly smile steals over my face, the one I get whenever I think about Chase. The one I should not have when I’m lying on his couch in his house with his best friend.
“Next time I’ll be with you,” Todd says, giving me a little squeeze again. “I should be there. You’re my girlfriend. You should be my girlfriend.”
“Then I’m your girlfriend.”
I feel unfaithful to Chase for saying it, and I hate that. I keep seeing Lindsey’s face when she called Chase a lying pig. When she got pissed that he got in a fight for defending me. Daria said someone would notice if we weren’t careful.
We have nothing to hide, though.
Nothing happened.
“And I’m your boyfriend,” Todd says. “Exclusively.”
“Good night, my Toddy bear,” I say, smiling sleepily.
“Good night, my Sky bear.”
That makes zero sense, but I don’t correct him. Soon, he begins to snore, and then I fall asleep too, wrapped in a shower curtain and cocooned in my boyfriend’s hairy embrace, in a room full of the debris of a party’s aftermath in the house of the guy I love.
four
Now Playing:
“Obscured”—The Smashing Pumpkins
It takes me a moment to awaken fully the next morning. Half asleep, I’m only vaguely aware of distant noises. My brain aches, and I pull the blanket over my face, only to notice it feels strange on my skin. I pull it down again, open my eyes, and look around.
