“Mom—” Luke says.
“Obviously Ican’t,” Mel says. “But I can get creative, if it comes down to it.”
I look at Luke and know we’ve lost; if Mel has her way, Luke and I are going camping.
14
THEN
“Since when didMel get so manipulative?” I asked Luke, playing with a strand of his hair. We were in his car, his driver’s seat inclined all the way back, as I straddled him. It was the most ... confined space we’d ever been in together, and every part of my body was aware of it. So, apparently, was Luke’s.
“Right?” he said, burying his face in the crook of my neck. “She thought if she told me to grab a box of doughnuts on my way into town—”
“And if she told me to get doughnuts on my way to visit her,” I continued, “she would get double the doughnuts. Except, surprise, we actually talk.”
“At least we’re making her wait an appropriate length of time before giving them to her,” he said.
“Yep,” I said, though the truth was that the amount of time we were spending parked in front of my driveway had very little to do with punishing Mel and way more to do with rewarding ourselves for not having seen each other for the past week. Technically, Luke’s being in town this weekend had more to do with seeing Mel after her stint in the hospital. He’d written his midterms and then driven down after his last class on Friday.
It was past eleven now, and his first stop had been to see me.
He raised his head from my neck now, his gaze intense, and I pressed my lips against his. The kiss started out tender and soft, but as the seconds passed, it grew more urgent. My hands dug through his hair as we kissed, our bodies pressed against each other, and his arms scalded the skin on my back and hips under my shirt.
I broke the kiss and breathed against his lips. “Have you ever ...” My voice trailed off, but I knew he’d understand what I meant.
“No,” he said, chasing my mouth with his. “But I’ve done other stuff.”
I tried not to stiffen too obviously.
“With who?”
He stopped kissing me and looked up at me with heavy-lidded eyes. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
“It was that Meredith girl who used to be your lab partner, wasn’t it?” I asked.
“Jess,” Luke said, half sighing, but even in the dark, I could tell he was blushing.
Meredith was this petite, pixielike red-haired girl who used to come over to the Cohens’ house and work on “bio lab” at least once a week when Luke was a junior and Ro and I were sophomores. Sometimes Luke went over and worked at her house. She had perfectly clear skin, claimed never to have had braces, and called herself a “flexitarian.” She was also super nice, which was how I knew to be suspicious of her.
“Have you?” Luke asked now, making a trail of kisses down the side of my neck, past my collarbone, to the swell of my chest.
“You’re my first real boyfriend. Obviously not,” I said, still kind of put out over the Meredith thing.
“Nothing’sobviouswhen you look like you do.”
I was trying really hard to maintain a healthy level of annoyance—how dare Luke have done “other stuff” with a girl who wasn’t me! And a flexitarian, of all people!—but he was making it really hard.
“Stop,” I said.
“It’s true.”
“Well,” he said, kissing the part of my shoulder where my collarbone met my arm, “we’ll go slow and make everything count.”
I readjusted my body against his and heard his sharp intake of breath. “Slow?” I said. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” I was secretly delighted to have this much of an effect on him and even happier that his body was so quick to betray him. So I did it again.
“You’re a monster, you know that?” he said, leaning back against the headrest for a second, but he was grinning from ear to ear. “I’ll worry about ... that. You, meanwhile, should have other concerns.”
“Like?” I asked.
