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She stood up, still refusing to look at me. “I’m going to my room,” she said, coldly. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Izzy, wait!”
If I could have got to my feet without the use of crutches, I would have pulled her back to me. Instead, all I could do was make sure I explained myself clearly. Isabelle stood in the doorway, still with her back to me.
“After everything that’s happened over the last few days, how can you think that I don’t want you?” I asked.
“Because I hurt you. Because you just said I’m not like the girls in L.A, and because I obviously have no idea what to do with boys.”
How did we get to this? We’d been so close since we sorted things out, and now she was questioning how I felt? I wanted to be mad at her for doubting me when I’d only ever been honest with her, but I understood. I just wished she remembered how much of a risk it was for me too.
“You think this is so easy for me,” I said. “You act like you’re the only who stands to get hurt.”
“You rejected me.”
“That wasn’t a rejection. That was a time out. Maybe nothing would have happened, and things wouldn’t have gone any further than kissing, but you are too important to me to risk getting carried away and doing something we might both regret.”
“So you’d regret it?”
“I’d regret it if I didn’t know for sure we were both ready.”
I watched Isabelle’s shoulders rise and fall a few times, like she was taking deep breaths, and eventually she turned to face me again.
“How do you know when you’re ready?” she asked. “I mean, aside from the obvious physical signs. How do you know?”
It was a big question. And the truth about how I knew I was ready the first time I had sex was probably not one she’d be impressed by. But she always demanded the truth.
“With Taylor, it was pretty simple,” I said. “She made it very clear that she wanted to sleep with me, and I was horny.”
“So … what, I’m just not doing it right?”
Her cheeks flamed again, and I said, “When Taylor made her move on me, she was doing it because she’s one of those girls who knows how to get what she wants, and it wasn’t even me she really wanted. But I didn’t think about that, all I saw was this really hot girl who seemed to like me. You’re not her, and I know better now. I won’t have sex with you just because we happen to have the house to ourselves. It’ll happen when we’re both sure.”
“We’ve only got one day left, Jesse.”
“Have we?”
“Haven’t we?”
I reached out my hand, and she sighed and walked back into my room. Her fingers laced through mine as she sat beside me.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I didn’t come here expecting to meet someone like you, and it really sucks that I have to go home and leave you behind. I can’t even … I can’t imagine I’ll ever meet anyone like you again. But we live so far apart, I can’t exactly ask you not to date other guys, just so we can get together once, maybe twice a year if we’re lucky.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too. And I feel the same. But that isn’t the reason I tried to jump you.”
I laughed at her blunt phrasing, and said, “So why did you?”
“Because I wanted to. I wanted to see how it felt to be brave and to be in control. Turns out, I’m not very good at it.”
Instead of telling her with words that she more than managed to do what she intended, I crushed my lips against hers, drawing her in closer to me. I hadn’t planned to kiss her so hard, but dammit, I needed her to know how much I wanted her, even if it felt too soon to act on it. She wound her arms around my neck, making me forget why I’d stopped her before.
She was different than Taylor. Different in every way. Isabelle was smaller, curvier, softer. When she kissed me, she wasn’t just kissing me. We were, I don’t know … connecting. I never felt that with Taylor, and I never thought it was weird.
I guess you can’t miss what you never had.
“Jesse,” Isabelle breathed against my neck. “If we’re going to be sensible, you need to stop kissing me like that.”
“Sorry.” I kissed her one more time. “Maybe we should find something to do.”
