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Aria makes a pained face. “Have you already slept with him?”
“No.” I study the cream swirls in my coffee as I mumble, “He found out I was a virgin and backed off. He said I was a beautiful girl who deserves a beautiful first time and he wasn’t the type of guy for me and blah blah blah and then he left.” I roll my eyes. “So, yeah… It was mortifying.”
Aria’s quiet for a long time.
Finally, I glance up to see a thoughtful expression on her face.
“What?” I ask. “Is there a better word than mortified? Humiliated, maybe?”
“No, you shouldn’t be mortified or humiliated, of course not,” she murmurs before falling silent again.
“But?” I prod after another minute passes. “What are you thinking? The suspense is kind of killing me.”
“I’m thinking…” She presses her lips together for a moment before continuing. “I think I’m torn.”
“Torn how?”
“As your sister, I feel compelled to give you one kind of advice.” She sips her coffee. “But if we were just friends, I’d say something different.”
“Pretend we’re friends, then,” I say, laughing when Aria narrows her eyes at me over the rim of her mug. “You know what I mean. Of course, we’re friends, but pretend we’re just friends.”
“Okay, but as your sister, I feel compelled to tell you not to take what I’m about to tell you too seriously.” She leans in, adding in a confidential tone. “I think he likes you. Maybe even really likes you.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”
“Really,” she says. “And I don’t think he’s as wild as he pretends to be. I mean, a real bad boy wouldn’t care if you were a virgin, and he certainly wouldn’t care about protecting you from guys like him.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I say, my heel jogging up and down and I consider our encounter last night through that lens. “I mean, I’m pretty into him. I think it may be more than a crush, you know?”
“Maybe for him, too, but like I said, I wouldn’t take the possibility too seriously. You’d still be playing with fire. If he’s that spooked by what he’s feeling, sounds like your relationship would be off to a rocky start.”
I fight a gleeful grin, but lose the battle almost instantly. “I’m okay with rocky starts.”
Aria holds up a hand in the universal sign for ‘slow down.’ “But I could be wrong. Remember that.”
“I know,” I acknowledge even as I really, really hope she’s right.
“And, either way, you should take it slow,” she adds. “See if you two have anything in common aside from wanting to get naked and sweaty together.”
“Ew,” I say, my prudish side curling its dainty lip. “Don’t be gross, Ra.”
“I can’t help it,” she says with an unapologetic grin. “It’s my nature. It could be his nature, too. He might gross you out long term. Sex, in general, can be kind of gross, you know. Sticky and messy and—”
“Stop.” I cut her off with a hand in the air. “You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?” She blinks, doing a much better innocent impression than mine.
“Try to scare me away from Nick, in particular, by attacking sex in general. I know better. It has to be amazing or people wouldn’t want to do it all the time.” I shrug, feigning a casualness I don’t feel. “Besides, I’m sure Nick won’t gross me out. He has the…opposite effect on me.”
Aria laughs beneath her breath. “Oh, man. You do have it bad. Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay? Use protection. Lots of it.”
My cheeks heat. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“If mentioning birth control makes you blush, I’m thinking you should wait for a while,” Aria says gently. “Don’t you?”
“Talking about it with my sister makes me blush.” I lift my chin. “But I’ve been on the pill for almost two years.”
“Really?” Aria’s eyes widen again. “Brian?”
“Brian and I talked about it a few times, so I went to Dr. Miller and got the prescription. It helped even out my cycle so I stayed on it, but…” I shake my head. “In the end it never felt right with Brian.”
“But it feels right with Nick after knowing him less than a month?” There’s no judgment in her tone, but I feel judged all the same.
Am I being too crazy? Too wild?
Or do I need to stop overthinking things so much and trust that my body knows what it wants and has every right to go after it?
“I’m not sure,” I say, as much to the questions floating unspoken in my head as Aria’s query. “I just know I’ve never felt anything like what I feel when I’m with him, and I don’t want to lose my chance to explore that because I’m trying to live up to Mom’s or anyone else’s idea of who I’m supposed to be. I’m only twenty-two. I’m still growing, you know. It’s okay for me to change my mind and my heart and to just…change. Period. Right?”
