Chapter 19

Mom grounded me all weekend. Apparently my penalty kick to Dan’s balls almost cost him the left one. When she told me, I busted out laughing and that got me the two extra days.

So Joe and I spent four days stalking around each other. I was sore as hell after my virgin conversion and he was so hard up I bet he went through a whole bottle of hand lotion before Sunday.

I was glad to get back to school on Monday until I found out that Lydia Jenkins had set her sights on the apparently available Mark. The worst part was that Lydia, unlike Sophie, was actually nice and very funny. I was in choir with her and she was the easygoing leader of the Alto section. In an unexpected moment of solidarity, I realized both Sophie and I spent lunch glaring at Lydia while she made Mark laugh until milk shot out of his nose.

I couldn’t actually complain. He was my secret boyfriend after all. We hadn’t so much as glanced at each other at school for weeks to keep it a secret. And despite my confidence that he truly cared about me, in my heart I knew that there was no way we could work out long term. But that didn’t mean I had to be happy about it.

I was grumbling along to my locker Wednesday after lunch. Bethany hadn’t spoken to me for a week, but I’d seen her hanging on Collen all week. Joe had noticed and was acting like a girl on her period. I hadn’t been able to get Mark alone for a second and his daily lunches with Lydia were legitimate torture. I spun the knob on my locker while I silently bemoaned my fate.

“Hey.”

I looked over my shoulder to see Sam giving me a nervous frown.

“Hey.” The last number of my combination lined up and I opened my locker. Morning books went in. Afternoon books came out.

“Look,” Sam started. “I ... uh...”

I sighed and dropped my afternoon books in my bag before shutting the locker and turning around. “When’s your next game?”

Sam blinked in confusion. “Friday. Why?”

“I wanna come see you play. Maybe we can go get an ice cream or something after.”

Come on, like I couldn’t tell she wanted to ask me out. She’s a cute lesbian. I’m fucking lonely. It’s not like my secret boyfriend was gonna bitch about it to anyone but me. Besides, I was nearly positive I’d seen him and Lydia holding hands in the hallway earlier.

Sam sighed in relief and nodded. “That’d be cool. You wanna hang out after school Friday before the game?”

“You mean here?” I asked. I knew she boarded at school, but I didn’t know the rules about guests in rooms or whatever. I’d never been up in the dorms.

“Yeah.” Sam blushed and shrugged. “I mean, if you don’t want to, it’s cool.”

“I’ll meet you here after class on Friday.”

“It’s a date,” she said, then opened her eyes wide in a panic. “I don’t mean a date date. I mean, I’ll meet you here.”

She was older than me, an outspoken lesbian, and totally adorable when she got embarrassed. Before I could consider the consequences, I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

Sam completely froze up. I worried I’d misread the situation, so I headed off to class before I could make a bigger ass out of myself.

I tried not to fixate on either Sam or Mark. Or sex. Especially not sex. Before I’d kissed Mark that fateful day, I thought I knew what sex was all about. The cock got hard and entered the vee, depositing sperm to fertilize a waiting egg. Simple, right?

Of course, I hadn’t considered there was an actual guy attached to the cock who may or may not be a jerk. And if you wanted to enjoy getting the sperm deposited without consequences, it required some unromantic planning and a guy that wasn’t a jerk. No one mentioned that finding a nice guy was the hardest part of the whole process.

Then there is the whole emotional thing that goes along with sex that no one talked about in health class. You really have to trust someone to let them put their cock inside you. I mean, I spent literal hours getting comfortable with Mark before I let him give me a hot beef injection.

I don’t regret it for a minute, but I can say the process was nothing like I had imagined it would be before we kissed. Again, not complaining, but having someone poking around inside you with their cock is fundamentally weird. When I added in my unexpected attraction to certain females, the mortifying experience that is an IUD insertion, and the hours after sex that Mark’s cum leaked in my underwear, I realized I had been woefully unprepared for the realities of sex.

I was especially unprepared for the part when we were cuddling afterwards and my brain melted into mush. I found myself wishing that Mark and I could live together forever and screw endlessly. But then reality struck and I realized that my wish was the exact opposite of having a secret boyfriend.

I was just as dumb as Bethany was with Joe. I’m sure Mark would be happy to continue being my secret boyfriend, but the whole thing was a trap. Because of our difference in ages, Mark would never be able to date me like he could someone like Lydia. We could sneak around for a while, but eventually someone would find out and then I’d be the one running out of the lunch room crying.

God, I’m an idiot.

I was still kicking myself when I got home that afternoon. Mark was tossing a basketball at the hoop above his garage when he saw me walking up.

“Hey,” he said and jogged up with a grin.

He was only wearing shorts and sneakers, just like that first day I kissed him. The sheen of sweat over his muscular chest made warmth bloom in my core. Even my bad mood couldn’t stop my answering grin at the delicious sight of him.

“Hey,” I said and clutched my book bag to my chest. “Is Mason home?” I asked and then kicked myself for being so pathetically needy.

“Yeah, he and Trevor are playing video games.” He glanced at my house and gave me a nod.

“Wanna come in?” I asked. The idea of Joe being hard up and me making animal noises with Mark satisfied a kind of karmic balance.

“Sure,” Mark grinned.

Joe was watching television when I led Mark to the stairs. He glanced over at us heading up the stairs and said, “Aw, hell naw.”

“Payback’s a bitch,” I sang and made sure Mark was right behind me.

I tossed my book bag at my desk and quickly got rid of the khaki slacks and school shirt that made up our uniform. Mark toed off his shoes and pushed down his shorts while his eyes never left my body. I released my puffies and turned to slowly lower my boyshort panties so he could watch my ass appear.