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Even though I’d wanted to.
I knew that Nate had had sex before. I’d asked him and he’d been honest with me. He’d told me that he and Rachel had been doing it since the tenth grade. When I pushed him, he’d admitted that there had been others.
Of course there had been others. Nathan Everets was hot. And it wasn’t just that physically he was smoking. He was the deepest, sweetest guy I’d ever met. Who wouldn’t want to be with him?
So why didn’t he want me?
I shoved the condom into the front pocket of my jeans and glanced at myself in the mirror. For a moment, I didn’t recognize the face that stared back at me.
Who was this girl with eyes that sparkled and skin that glowed? This girl who looked…happy. Excited. And scared.
“Monroe, Nathan is here!”
Gram’s voice made me jump, and I grabbed my jean jacket. I shut the door and didn’t stop until I was at the front door when I nearly tripped over my feet.
Holy. Hell.
Nathan smiled, a slow, soft grin that could seriously melt anyone’s heart. His eyes were soft and I noticed that he’d shaved. I loved it when he didn’t shave—it gave him that edge that I really liked—but tonight, with that smile? My hands were itching to touch all that smooth, tanned skin.
He wore a plain white Henley, his golden skin and burnished hair a contrast that could make any girl lose her head and—I smiled—he wore my favorite jeans. They were old and faded, but they looked amazing on him, and I exhaled shakily as I snuck a look at my mom.
She leaned against the staircase, and I could tell that Nate’s charm was working overtime because she smiled at him. She smiled at him in a way I recognized. God, he was good.
“So,” she cleared her throat. “You kids won’t be too late?”
“Mom, it’s my last night here, and I promise I won’t be out all night, but can I stay out later than midnight?”
I saw the indecision in her eyes.
“I mean, I just haven’t felt so good about things in so long, I kinda want to hold on to it as long as I can, you know?”
Okay, that was low, but I didn’t care. I was willing to work any angle in order to spend as much time with Nathan as I could.
“I promise, I’ll be good.”
Gram and Dad walked up from the kitchen. “You take care of my granddaughter, Nathan.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
I gave my mom a quick hug, but she held me for a second longer. “Roe,” she said shakily. “I…”
There were so many words between us. Simple words. Hard words.
It’s the in-between words that are easy to get out. I guess, somehow, they don’t really matter. They fill in the spaces between the simple ones that carry so much weight and the hard ones that hold everything together.
But the ones that do matter, those ones are the hardest to get out. They get stuck, or buried, and sometimes they get forgotten. But I knew they were there inside my mom, because the same ones were buried deep in me.
Mom shuddered and I whispered, “I know.”
She paused. “You look beautiful.”
I smiled at my dad and kissed Gram on the cheek. She grabbed my hands, her eyes suddenly serious as she bent forward. “Be careful,” she whispered, so low only I could hear, her eyes full of meaning.
God. It’s as if she knew what I was planning.
I nodded, my throat tight, and then followed Nate out into the hot Louisiana night.
The party was huge. It was held in the bush out back at some guy Chad’s farm, and there must have been at least two hundred kids there when we arrived.
