Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry,” he said with a frown which made me think he wasn’t sorry at all. He just didn’t want things to be awkward in front of my mom at post-prom.
I offered him an equally disingenuous smile, which only deepened his frown. Matt was my first love, but we fought often, and usually over his temper, which, according to Violet, he learned from Wesley.
And despite the hiccup with getting the football coach’s daughter pregnant and being sent off to enlist, Isaac was supposedly like his mom—cool and even-keeled. However, I had only seen his obnoxious and slightly inappropriate side.
“I think it’s weird that you’re so desperate to do it,” Matt said, breaking the silence a few miles from the school. “I’ve heard it can hurt for girls their first time.”
“You know what I think is weird? I think it’s weird that you haven’t been the one pushing for this to happen. Name one of your friends who hasn’t done it or at least gone a lot further than we’ve gone?”
Matt ignored me.
“If my dad wasn’t your pastor, would we have done more by now?”
He still didn’t respond; he checked his mirrors like I didn’t exist. Matt’s silence always said more than his words.
I laughed, shaking my head. “Unbelievable. So if Melinda or Julie were your girlfriend, you’d walk into the pharmacy like a man, buy a box of condoms, and have sex with them. But I’m the preacher’s daughter, so I have to beg for it, and by it, apparently, that means a condom, which you borrowed from your brother, that you fumbled and dropped onto the dirty floor.”
Matt whipped his head in my direction as he pulled the car into the parking lot. “How did you know that?”
With my arms crossed over my chest, I stared out the window at the other students filing into the school. “He was coming out of the bathroom when I needed to change my clothes, and he asked me how it went.”
“What did you say?” Matt put the car in Park and killed the engine.
“I told him to ask you.”
“Great. What am I supposed to say now?”
“I don’t know, Matt. But just make sure you tell him I was incredible.” I climbed out of the car, locked the door, and shut it.
“Har har.” He locked his door and jogged to catch up to me as a few raindrops fell.
As soon as we made it through the line and into the gym, my mom found us.
“How was the dance?”
I smiled. “Great.”
“Did you go straight to Matt’s house afterward?” Her question sounded like something my dad would have asked.
But I didn’t give her the response I would have given my dad. With her, I occasionally showed my snarky side. “We parked on a gravel road and did it, then we went to Matt’s house.”
“Sarah!” Mom grabbed my shoulders and pressed her body into mine as if she were trying to smother me before I could say another word.
Matt held up his hands, eyes wide, while shaking his head. “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Mrs. Jacobson.”
Mom’s hands shifted from my shoulders to my face, and she squeezed my cheeks—hard.
“Ow!” I pulled away.
“Behave.” She gave me the hairy eyeball.
I returned a toothy grin and blew her a kiss before following Matt toward a group of our friends playing games next to the snack and beverage table.
Matt eyed me the way I imagined my father would have had he heard what I said. “You’re no fun.” I stuck out my tongue.
Matt couldn’t hold his scowl, so he grabbed me when his grin stole his expression. Pressing his chest to my back, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “You would have been incredible.”
He had a way of talking big when we were somewhere he didn’t have to prove himself, like fish stories, nowhere near a body of water.
Where was that level of confidence when we were half-naked in his car? Why did the fumbled condom ruin everything? Matt had ten fingers and a tongue. Where was his imagination?
It didn’t matter. I would not lose sleep over the condom fiasco. Isaac playing “Like a Virgin” was the only memory that would stay permanently stamped into my brain for eternity. I couldn’t get Madonna out of my head or Isaac’s sculpted bare chest.
CHAPTER SIX
SIMPLE MINDS, “DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME”
He wouldn’t stop staring at me.
I’d come to love and hate Sunday morning service in equal parts because Isaac came with his family, but he sat in the back row and stared at me the whole time with an indiscernible expression that involved a wolfish grin.
“It’s hot,” I whispered to Heather while pulling at the neck of my choir robe.
“It’s not. Your dad always has the AC set at fifty,” she mumbled under her breath.