40. Sara
FORTY
SARA
Me: Tell me I need to leave the bathroom.
Lennox: You need to leave the bathroom.
Lennox: Unless there is like a murderer outside the bathroom.
Lennox: Or a python waiting to eat you.
The way the dots dance on the screen signals that she’s got another horror story coming.
Me: There’s no murderer or python or anything else. I’m just freaking out because I’m taking Brooks to meet my family this morning.
Lennox: Oh. Trying to decide if you can go long enough without stripping and begging to feel his piercings again?
Lennox: Maybe you can slip into the bathroom at your mom’s house and get in a quickie with his bedazzled penis.
Me: Lennox! I have no idea why I tell you anything.
Lennox: HAHAHA. Because I’m amazing and you love me and no one else would understand your crazy obsession with your boyfriend’s bedazzled jewels.
Me: He doesn’t have bedazzled jewels.
Lennox: Fine. But wouldn’t that be amazing? I mean, shiny balls. I feel like he really missed the ball on that one. Ha. Get it. Missed the ball?!
Me: I’m officially telling you nothing from now on.
I flush the toilet and turn on the faucet, even though I didn’t go to the bathroom. Not sure what’s more embarrassing: my boyfriend assuming I spent thirty minutes on the toilet, or my boyfriend discovering that I’m hiding from him and all the emotions bubbling up inside me.
Since Sunday night when Brooks gave me his virginity and then told me he loved me, I’ve been a messy bundle of nerves.
Brooks is kind and good and a freaking beast in the bedroom. Seriously, he’s the best I’ve ever had, and it only partially has to do with the bedazzled penis—and I had to go and be the first woman he ever slept with. Now he’s got high school–level feelings for me.
I don’t want high school–level feelings. I don’t trust them. It’s possible he only said those words because of the sex. Now that he’s slept with me and realized how amazing sex is, will he wonder what it would be like with someone else?
I won’t be able to handle that. Losing him after experiencing perfection with him would destroy me. I have very un-high-school-level feelings for Brooks. I like him. A lot.
He can’t possibly love me love me, though. He doesn’t know what else is out there, so how could he?
I’m spiraling. And now I’m hiding. If I don’t hide in here, I’ll probably blurt this all out and then tell him I really, really love him, not just high school–level love him, and he’ll go running for the hills.
Or toward the actual puck bunnies. Not just a woman who wears a hat that declares her as one.
His only one.
Brooks knocks on the door. “You feeling okay?”
And now he thinks I’ve got an upset stomach.
Shit.
Literally.
“I’m fine. Just?—”
Just what? Freaking out because sex with Brooks is the best of my life? Because the man on the other side of the door is the best man I’ve ever met, and I’m so scared he’s going to realize I don’t deserve him?
Yes. That’s exactly it.
Heart pounding in my chest and stomach churning so violently I might actually have to spend another thirty minutes locked in the bathroom, I force myself to open the door.
At the sight of him, some of my anxiety ebbs.
He’s standing close, hands in his pockets, hair loose and wavy around his chiseled jaw—because, oh yeah, the man cut his hair and donated it to charity, for me , then posted about it on social media and challenged every other guy in the league to do the same—and green eyes glassy and swimming with worry.
I fucking melt. How could I not? He’s perfect, and he’s mine.
“I’m freaking out,” I confess.
His responding smile is knowing. And it’s kind, and understanding, and perfect. Just like he is. “C’mere, crazy girl.” He opens his arms to me.
With a frown and a humph , I step into his embrace. The second we connect, I feel lighter.
He bands one arm around me and smooths the other down the back of my head. I love when he does that.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I really like our sex and I really like you and what if you get bored with me because you can’t only ever want to have sex with me and you high-school love me and I didn’t love high school and I really like your penis and no one else is ever going to compare but for you I don’t have a bedazzled anything—I guess I could bedazzle my vajayjay but I don’t really love needles and would you even want that?
” The words float out in one long, incoherent sentence.
That’s what I do. I spill all my thoughts to him all the freaking time, like an insane person.
With a tug on the ends of my hair, he forces my head back.
When I begrudgingly look at him, he’s not smiling.
He’s not laughing at me. There’s no teasing humor in his expression.
And he most certainly doesn’t seem annoyed by my ridiculous monologue.
No, his face is marred with a concerned, thoughtful frown.
“I don’t high-school love you. I love you love you.
” Now he’s smiling. It’s soft and kind. “What else? Oh right, your vajayjay is perfect. No bedazzling necessary. And Sar, I waited years to find the person I wanted to give my virginity to. I could have gone out and screwed around like the other guys, but I chose to wait for perfection. And I found it. Now that I have it, why the fuck would I want to test it out with anyone else?”
“But what if you do?” I whisper, though my concerns are seriously waning. The way he’s holding me, the way he’s caring for me, force them further from my mind by the second.
Brooks presses his lips to mine. Then he kisses my cheek. Then he moves to my chin and up to the sensitive spot below my ear. “I’m in love with you, crazy girl. Trust me to love you.”
“But what if you only think you love me because of the sex?” My voice is void of any real concern.
Brooks tips my chin up and waits for me to focus on him.
“I know that for you this all seems new. These feelings, my obsession, my love. I can understand why you think that my feelings for you could be high school–level shit. But I’ve spent a year getting here.
It didn’t happen on Sunday night when I sank inside you.
I knew I loved you when I claimed you as my girlfriend.
I fell in love with you while we sang Lake songs in my truck on the way to the beach this summer.
When we made fajitas and watched Dawson’s Creek on that Wednesday night when you spilled tequila all over my lap.
The day you got poked in the eye with my ‘massive dick’ and ran around my apartment like a crazy person. ”
My heart squeezes so tight it aches. “It really is a monster of an appendage.”
He chuckles and caresses my chin with his thumb. “I’m in love with you. I have been. I’m in love with who you are, the way you make me laugh, the lightness that hits me when I’m around you. You’re my favorite person in the world. If we’d never kissed, if we’d never had sex, I would still love you.”
The vise that’s been clamped around my chest loosens, and I let out a light sigh. “But the sex is a nice bonus, right?”
With a deep laugh, he moves in until our lips are only a breath apart. “Yeah, crazy girl. The sex is definitely a nice bonus. But it’s only this good because it’s with you. Because you’re the woman I’m crazy in love with. I don’t need to test that out to know it’s true.”
“It’s true, you know.” I pull back a little, my confidence growing. “No one else would be as good as me.”
His resounding laugh is silenced when I crash my mouth to his. We’re going to be a little late to meet my family.
“Now who’s the nervous one?” I tease as we stand outside the door to my mother’s apartment.
“I just—” Brooks straightens and stares me down. “I’ve never met a girlfriend’s family before.”
My heart flips over in my chest. Because he’s never had a girlfriend.
I squeeze his hand. “They’re going to love you. It’s just my mom and Ethan.” I take a deep breath and search his face. “Ethan has MS.”
Brooks’s broad shoulders lower, and suddenly, instead of me easing his nerves, he’s the one comforting me. A squeeze of my hand, a palm slipped around the back of my head. Then he’s pulling me close until his lips land on my forehead with a gentle kiss.
Is this what it’ll always be like? Us being there for one another. Us as a team? Because that’s what it feels like.
“It’s one of the many reasons my job means so much to me,” I admit. It’s time to give him this piece of me.
He deserves to have more of me than anyone else. My worries, my concerns, my truths.
I take a deep breath and swallow past the lump in my throat.
“It’s just Ethan and my mom and me. We don’t have a big family like yours, and we never had much.
My mom works herself to the bone every day for Ethan.
My job makes it possible for me to help her pay for his care.
It means he can have more than I ever did. ”
“You’re an amazing person, Sar.” His words are soft, but his gaze is intent, heavy with meaning. “Thank you for bringing me to meet them.” He leans in and kisses me softly. “Thank you for opening up to me.”
Stronger than either of us were moments before, we smile at one another.
“Ready?”
He nods and turns toward the door. “Ready.”
The apartment hasn’t changed since the last time I was here.
Pillows with sayings like thankful and blessed adorn the second-hand brown couch my mother bought when I still lived at home.
The beige recliner in the corner is worn, and the wall behind it is covered in photos that span my entire life.
The scents of crisp apple pie and fall hit me as I step farther into the room, and the sound of my brother’s cheers make me smile.
“He must be playing Xbox,” I tell Brooks, gently leading him through the open space, going in search of my family.
The apartment is small. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a modest-sized living room. Since he moved from a crib to a regular bed, my brother has had his own room. For years, my mom and I shared.