Chapter 2

After our shocking encounter, Elliott and I spent the rest of the weekend acting as if nothing had happened. At first, we had been interrupted by Linda, but even when we had the chance to talk to each other I don’t think either of us knew what to say about what we’d done. Instead, we just joked like before, as if nothing had happened.

Dad and Linda seemed to have had a very romantic paddle-boat ride and were sugary-sweet to each other at dinner. For the first time, they seemed like more than just an embarrassingly smitten middle-aged boyfriend and girlfriend; they were acting like a proper couple, easily mistaken for husband and wife if you didn’t know better. I was so happy for Dad. As much as it complicated my life, he deserved a woman who treated him right.

I wasn’t thinking about their relationship too much though over dinner. I was still feeling hungover from what had happened, and Elliott seemed to be the same way. He had lost his virginity, I realized, and done it by pretending to rape me. Perhaps that was not a healthy situation to have put him in, but he was the guy and he had clearly been into it. I mean, he got to fuck a cheerleader, how bad could it really have been for him? As for myself, I was disturbed not only let him do it, but that I’d wanted him to, and had an orgasm from it. Of course, he hadn’t really raped me, but even pretending to be raped seemed insane to me, and yet I had cum so hard when he did it to me.

We’re told we live in a “rape culture” at times. I’ve felt most men I’ve been with are not exactly rapists, but they tend to be most concerned with their own pleasure. If a woman will hold still long enough, they’ll have sex with her. I think every guy I’d been with before Elliott had tried to talk me into sex even if I said no initially. Then there’s the fact that I think half my friends have told me they’ve said no to a guy or at least didn’t want to have sex with him, but he pushed for it anyway and they gave in. I hate all of that stuff.

I didn’t want to be raped. But Elliott pretending to rape me had been the sexiest thing that had ever happened to me. I thought maybe the stress of worrying about rape all the time and hearing about women being sexually assaulted had pushed me to find it exciting to have it happen to me but on my terms. On a deeper, more primitive level, it just felt good to be taken. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain that. Especially as it had happened with Elliott, an obnoxious nerd with whom I was constantly arguing.

I spent a while on the balcony after dinner contemplating this. Eventually, I heard a tap and saw my Dad come out. “Everything okay?” he asked.

Oops, I hadn’t thought I’d let on. “It’s fine,” I said, “Just watched the sun about to set.”

“Oh yeah, it’s beautiful over the lake, I’m going to go watch with Linda soon,” he said. “Are you getting along with Elliott?”

“I guess,” I said. Of course, Dad couldn’t have known what a loaded question that had been. I found it easy to keep my composure though. “He’s annoying but ... I guess he means well.”

Dad had come out to tell me we were going to yet another silly tourist thing. The resort was offering was an astronomy demonstration that night which seemed like the lamest thing imaginable to me. If I refused though, I thought Elliott might too, and I wasn’t ready to be alone with him yet.

Astronomy works best away from artificial lights so we had to take a hike with flashlights to a clearing in the woods. There, some tremendous nerds had big telescopes set up and were letting guests take a peek at the planet Neptune. They said that being so far away from the city lights made it ideal for viewing.

“Hey Elliott these guys are bigger dorks than you,” I said as we stood back, watching the middle-aged astronomers help guests look through the telescopes. They were all balding men, like much less handsome versions of my dad, wearing this hideous LL Bean sort of shirts that Elliott loved.

Elliott looked to me, perhaps surprised that I was teasing him again like old times, but he fell back into the habit easily too. “Astronomy is cool. Being able to find other planets and understand how the galaxy works isn’t something to be embarrassed about,” he said.

I smirked. “Understand how the galaxy works?” I laughed, just barely keeping my voice down enough so that the elder dweebs didn’t overhear. me “These guys don’t even understand how an outfit works. Look at those shirts. Yellow and brown flannel? Come on now.”

“Hey that’s the kind of stuff I wear,” Elliott said, but there was a knowing tone to his voice. “Did you know Neptune is the only planet not discovered through direct observation,” he said more seriously, “An astronomer in the 19th century deduced from the orbit of other planets that there must be a large, unknown planet, and he calculated where it was. He wrote to an observatory and they looked with a telescope at that spot in the sky, and they saw Neptune.”

“Oh wow,” I said playfully, “But here’s one I bet you didn’t know. I wrote to an observatory too and told them to look at the nerdiest sector of the galaxy and they pointed the telescope there and saw Uranus.”

Elliott laughed loudly. “That was actually really funny, Haley,” he said. I blushed at the compliment, finding it surprisingly pleasing to get sincere praise from Elliott for saying something witty.

My dad shushed us for making too much noise. “Yeah stop making noise, Elliott,” I whispered, chiding him playfully.

“You started it, princess” he teased. I shivered when he called me that. It was the word he’d kept calling me during our encounter.

How was it that fighting with this boy was so much fun? It didn’t make any sense but the more we bickered, the more his every utterance annoyed me, the more I got excited about him. I was pretty sure by now that the feeling was mutual, too. Bickering with me all weekend had gotten him hot and bothered, and it all came to a boil when I got him so mad that he held me down and things got sexual. But of course, we couldn’t talk about it there.

We ended up being stuck stargazing in the clearing until after midnight. I don’t know if Linda was genuinely interested or just humoring my dad, who had always been interested in the stars, but she hung around and kept asking questions and getting us a long demonstration about the wonders of the cosmos. Naturally, I was nearly put to sleep and still struggling to stay awake as we walked back to the hotel.

Back in our room, Elliott took a shower and I meant to stay up to talk to him and tell him I was on the pill, and that he had nothing to worry about with having come inside me. That was such a sexy thing to think about. He had pretended to rape me, to hold me down and ravage me. He’d made me orgasm just from the excitement and penetration as he squirted his sperm inside me. Now, being the worrying sort who overthinks everything, I could tell he was going to freak out I might actually be knocked up. It was fun to torment him about that, but I figured it was cruel after a certain point.

I was so tired from the boring-assed astronomy lecture though that I fell asleep in my bed waiting for him to come out of the shower. I was surprised to wake up that I had been covered with a blanket and it was already morning. Out on the balcony, I saw my “rapist” (who had actually covered me up gently and let me sleep undisturbed through the night). He was wearing a jacket and it looked like it was a crisp, cool morning. I felt oddly contented to see him there waiting for me to wake.

Before I could go talk to him, Linda came in and said we were running late to make the morning checkout. I didn’t want Dad to get a fee so I hopped in the shower and got ready in a brisk (by my standards) 30 minutes.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Elliott alone for the rest of the morning, or the rest of the trip entirely as it turned out. We loaded the truck, had a late breakfast with our parents in the hotel’s restaurant, and then got back on the road. I looked to Elliott occasionally and he looked to me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, except I figured he was worried about if I was pregnant. He seemed like a tremendous worrywart, exactly the trait I usually didn’t like in a guy. Why couldn’t he always be as confident as when he’d “raped” me? Sheesh! Boys these days.

We got back to the city and dropped them off at their townhouse in a very cookie-cutter development. Nursing was a good job but Linda was a single mom and Elliott’s dad didn’t send child support, so I figured money must be tight for them too. They unloaded their luggage then we said our goodbyes and left.

I’d let him figure out how to progress things, he was the guy after all. I actually liked him a lot, I mean, I had let him do such a shocking thing to me, and I kissed him after he’d done it. Sure he’s no high school hunk, but the way a guy acts, the way he makes me feel, that’s way more important than being hot. I’d had sex with four hot guys and what it gotten me? A bit of a slutty reputation and not much bedroom fulfillment until I’d hooked up with the school nerd. I was into Elliott, but I had too much self-respect to start fawning over him. He still had to earn me.

School resumed on Monday. It felt strange to suddenly be returned unceremoniously to my normal life. I’d had the first truly great sexual experience of my life and then I was just back to being a popular cheerleader and not even able to talk to Elliott at school. I suppose I could taken the initiative and talk to him, it’s not like I’d get defriended and kicked off the cheer team just for talking to a nerd, but he didn’t even try to talk to me on Monday. Why are guys like that? He had to know that I wanted him to talk to me but he was just off with his nerd friends and going to chess club.

It was a busy week too. Homecoming week, as it happened. That meant a pep rally, one of the last football games of the season, and the most important dance of the entire fall. I got it into my head that Elliott would ask me to Homecoming. It would be so bold, and yet, he’d “raped” me, so surely he had the confidence to ask me to a school dance. Of course we couldn’t actually go, but I got tingly just thinking about him asking.

As the week went by though he didn’t even talk to me, let alone ask me out to Homecoming. Finally, on Friday I looked out the window of my first hour English class and saw Elliott in the hallway wobbling back and forth trying to get my attention, but it looked more like he had to go pee badly. I sighed and made a discrete word to the teacher and was excused to go to the bathroom.

We walked a safe distance down the hall and I said, “Well?”

I was chomping at the bit to turn him down for the dance and tell him off for waiting until Friday to ask me to Homecoming. But do you know what my spastic, overeducated not-boyfriend asked?

“Have you had your period yet?”

“What!?” I gasped, barely keeping my voice down, “My period? What is wrong with you?”

“Ummmm we had unprotected sex, Haley,” he said, being even quieter, “You should be more concerned about this than me.”

I rolled my eyes. Of the four guys I’d been with before him only one had even asked if I’d been on the pill, the others just did their thing and for all I know never thought about if I’d get pregnant. Is this all Elliott’s intelligence really did – made him obnoxiously worried about everything?

“Well no I didn’t have my period, if you must know, Elliott,” I said in a huff. It was technically true, I hadn’t had my period. I could have told him the whole truth – that I was on the pill so it didn’t matter – and put his mind to rest, but he had me feeling so miffed that I decided he deserved to freak out about it for a little longer.

“You have to take a pregnancy test then,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Are you off your rocker?” I said. “Look, I gotta go.”

He tried to get me to come back but I went into the classroom. In hindsight, perhaps I should have been more understanding that he’d never had a girlfriend before, had just lost his virginity, and he was a socially inept nerd in general, but I was just pissed at being treated like that. No romance, no affection, just “pee on a pregnancy test for me okay?” I think any girl would have acted the way I did!

After the debacle in the hallway with Elliott, I went to the pep rally and that night’s football game without incident. I skipped homecoming since I didn’t have a date and didn’t feel like the dance at all. Of course, a few normies had asked me to go with them, before and after the incident with Elliott, but I just wasn’t couldn’t muster much enthusiasm to dance with boys who just wanted to bone me without any emotion or intensity.

Dad and Linda came to the game to see me cheer then gave me a ride home. Elliott wasn’t even there. Since it wasn’t too late, at my encouragement they decided to go see the last showing of a movie they had been talking about seeing. I watched them leave and was home alone. Briefly.

I changed into my comfy pink stretch shorts and a white cotton top then settled down for the only proper way to end a day like I’d just had: watching mindless reality television and eating low-fat ice cream. I felt like a middle-aged woman suddenly, lazing around like that on a Friday night waiting for my Dad to get home from his date.

Before the first show was over though the doorbell rang. I thought it was a real rapist or a burglar, so I crept up and looked carefully out the peephole, keeping the door firmly locked. Maybe I’d have been happier in the moment if it was one of those people but instead it was just Elliott, standing there in cheap generic jeans with a black hoodie over his hefty upper body.

I sighed and unlocked the door.

“What do you want?” I asked in a huff.

“Geeze, I do not understand you, Haley,” he said, “Let me in.”

I reluctantly stepped aside. And then the dork picked up his bike, which I hadn’t noticed before as he’d leaned it against the wall, and he wheeled it in. It was that beat-up red mountain bike, with big fat tires and the duct tape on the handlebars.

“What are you doing? Oh my god!” I said, jumping back out of the way before he got bicycle grease on me.

“I don’t want it to get stolen,” he said as he wheeled the bike into the house’s entry and left it by the door.

“Hey I live in a safe neighborhood,” I pointed out.

“There are bike thieves everywhere,” he said with a shrug.

I closed the door behind him. I suppose he knew I was home alone since his mom had told him she was seeing a movie with my dad.

“Who the heck gets around on a bicycle? You’re such a dork,” I said. He rolled his eyes.

“Well, my Porsche is in the shop. Anyway, I brought you this,” he said, reaching into his hoodie pocket and pulling something out. I looked and it was a pregnancy test.

“You really are a fucking idiot, Elliott,” I said in disdain.

“Because I care about you?” he said, “I don’t get why it’s such a horribly offensive crime against the social order that I don’t want you to get pregnant at age 16.”