Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
FOREIGNER, “I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS”
“Are you wearing a shawl?” Dad asked when I descended the stairs in my pink dress.
Matt’s eyes sparkled as he watched me. He looked handsome in his black tux with a hot pink bowtie and matching cummerbund. And he looked older, a true adult who could have sex. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
It’s all I’d been thinking about since we made the decision in the parking lot.
“Why would I wear a shawl?” I wrinkled my nose at my dad.
He frowned. “Because you’re showing a lot of skin.”
It was a floor-length dress with puffy sleeves that were off-the-shoulder. But I didn’t have much of a chest (as Isaac had kindly pointed out), so it wasn’t as if I had cleavage spilling over the bodice.
“I think she looks beautiful,” Mom said with teary eyes.
“You do look beautiful,” Matt added.
“Thank you. And you look very handsome.” I rubbed my lightly glossed lips together to control my grin.
Despite the makeup restrictions, I felt beautiful. Mom let me wear a little blush, pink eyeshadow, mascara only on my upper lashes, and some lip gloss. No foundation or black eyeliner. She curled my hair, but instead of leaving the perfectly shaped ringlets, she brushed them out into waves. I looked like a flower child from a decade earlier.
“I got you a corsage.” Matt removed it from the box and reached for the top of my dress, above my boob.
My dad cleared his throat.
“Here. Why don’t you let me do it so you don’t accidentally stick her.” Mom smiled, taking it from Matt.
“Thanks.” He seemed content letting her do it. I think his hands were shaking. He should have gotten me a wrist corsage.
After Mom pinned it to my dress and the boutonniere to his jacket, she used an entire roll of film for pictures on the front porch, mostly of us on the porch swing. “Matt, I told your mom I’d get plenty of pictures to share with her.”
“Thanks,” he said, opening the car door for me.
“Remember your curfew,” Dad reminded us.
“Yes, Sir,” Matt said.
“Be good examples for everyone else,” he continued his sermon.
“Of course, Sir," Matt replied, tucking my dress into the car.
“I’ll see you at post-prom.” Mom waved.
I smiled and waved as Matt closed my door. How did we talk my parents into this ?
We ate dinner with Heather and Tyler at the best steakhouse in Devil's Head, and then we arrived at the Holiday Inn, where they held the dance in the ballroom. It was the only ballroom in a fifty-mile radius, so all the wedding receptions took place there as well. You had to book it at least a year in advance.
Violet volunteered to chaperone at the dance. We were the only students with parents who ensured a concerned representative would keep an eye on us at both the dance and the post-prom party. For parents who wanted us to be together forever, they didn’t trust us to be together alone.
“Did you get it?” I asked Matt while we were slow dancing to Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
“Get what?”
“Protection,” I whispered in his ear.
He nodded, and I tightened my grip around his neck. I couldn’t believe I was hours from doing it for the first time. My pubes were trimmed (shaved on the sides, short on top), lotion, perfume, and sexy underwear that Heather bought for me because the preacher’s daughter couldn’t be seen buying lace and satin.
Of course, I couldn’t tell Heather the truth since Matt didn’t want us to tell anyone. So I told her I wanted to feel sexy even if I wasn’t having it.
“Come on,” Heather said, tugging my arm at the end of the song.
I released Matt. “Where are we going?”
“To change our clothes for post-prom. Do you want to come to my house?”
“I figured we were going to my house,” Matt said. “I don’t have clothes in the car.”
“We’ll meet you at the school,” I told Heather while Matt took my hand and led me toward the exit.
“We have an hour,” Matt said as we wormed our way through the parking lot. “Since your mom will be at post-prom, we won’t be allowed to leave early. And you have a curfew, so this is our only chance.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
We had talked about it, but we didn’t make plans beyond getting a condom.
“Doesn’t matter.” He opened my door. “The west side of Johnson’s place?”
I nodded. There was a farm lane that no one used since Oren Johnson passed the previous year. His wife hadn’t hired anyone to take care of the ranch, so everything was a neglected mess. My dad said it was only a matter of time before his dad bought the fifty acres from Mrs. Johnson.
Matt and I had parked there a handful of times to make out.
No heavy petting.
No removing clothes.
Not even a hickey.
We didn’t speak a word on the ten-minute drive. I was nervous, but excited. I just wanted to get it over with. Honestly, I was looking forward to my second, third, or tenth time more than the first. Nerves sucked because we both had them. There was no one to soothe the tension—to be the teacher. We were two hormonally jacked-up teenagers eager to take the ultimate rite of passage into adulthood.
And we were clueless.
Matt parked and killed the engine. “I don’t have a back seat. ”
I grinned with a nervous laugh. “Uh, yeah, I know.”
“So,” he scraped his teeth across his lower lip, “I’ll sit in that seat and …” He eyed me.
I nodded a half dozen times. “And I’ll …” I couldn’t even say it.
I’ll straddle your lap and ride you.
We used nods more than words to communicate. Matt stepped out of the car and walked around the front, nervously pumping his fists. He opened my door and helped me out before taking my place. Then he retrieved the condom from his wallet and set it on the dash while I reached for the zipper of my dress and scanned and listened for cars in the distance.
“Your dad’s going to kill me,” he mumbled when I kicked off my shoes and unzipped my dress.
“My dad is a strict Ten Commandment follower. He won’t kill you. And why do you think he’s going to find out?” I stepped out of my dress and draped it over the open door.
“Sarah,” he whispered, his eyes the size of saucers as he wet his lips.
Matthew Cory was the coolest kid in school.
Smart.
Talented.
And every girl was beside herself with envy that he was my boyfriend. He bled confidence in everything he did.
But staring at me in nothing but a strapless bra and sexy underwear as I removed my pantyhose, he looked ready to crap his pants. I had no clue what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to do it.
“You’ve seen me in a swimsuit.” I nervously laughed.
He slowly shook his head. “A one-piece. ”
“Are you going to do it with your clothes on?”
Matt glanced down as if he didn’t know he still had them on. Then he wriggled out of his jacket and unbuttoned his bowtie. When he reached for the top button of his shirt, I ducked my head to climb inside, straddling his lap.
“Let me.” I bit my lip, unbuttoning it.
Everything felt forced and robotic as he rested his hands at his sides.
“You can touch me,” I said with heat crawling along my skin from my chest to my face, and my hands shook while unbuttoning his shirt. “Take off my bra,” I whispered before kissing him. My voice trembled despite my efforts to feign confidence.
I wanted him to be the one taking charge or at least pretending to do it.
He fumbled my bra, failing to unhook it. A groan of frustration rumbled through his chest when he realized he couldn’t kiss me and simultaneously remove my bra. Maybe that only happened in the movies.
“Just leave it on and lie down,” he said in a clipped tone, running his hands through his hair with a long sigh. “In case we hear someone coming.”
I nodded, reaching between us to unzip his pants. His breaths came fast and heavy over my face. When I saw his erection straining against his white briefs, I lifted my gaze to him.
I was so nervous.
He leaned forward, grabbing the condom. With hands as shaky as mine, he tried to rip it open.
“Want me to try?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got it.” He pulled the round ring from the foil packet and held it between his fingers while releasing his erection from his briefs.
I tried not to stare, but I failed.
When I flitted my gaze to him, we stared at each other for a brief moment, and vulnerability bled from his tense expression.
If he was embarrassed, he shouldn’t have been. I had no one to compare him to, but his part looked big.
Big enough.
I wanted to touch it, but I didn’t know how. Heather said a man’s penis felt soft, warm, and smooth—especially the circumcised head.
Before I could make my move, he tried to roll on the condom. I don’t know if he was attempting to put it on the wrong way or what, but it snapped out of his hold, and I jumped as if it was going to bite me before it landed on the floor by the accelerator.
“Dammit!” He hissed, stretching to the side to retrieve it.
We wrinkled our noses at the fuzz and dirt stuck to it.
“Did you bring more than one?” I asked.
Matt shook his head. “I’m an idiot.” He tucked his shrinking erection into his briefs before closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You could pull out.”
“No way, Sarah. This is a sign that I’m not supposed to be taking the pastor’s daughter’s virginity out of wedlock.”
“Are you mad?”
He continued to shake his head. “I’m just … frustrated.”
“At me?”
“At us.” He opened his intense blue eyes. “This was a stupid idea. We’ve waited this long; what’s a little longer?”
I laughed. “A little longer? Time’s running out. Whatever. We don’t have to be each other’s firsts.” As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. I was guilting him into having sex with me.
Father would be so proud.
He frowned. “You act like I did this on purpose. Besides. You know the second we do it, you’ll have instant remorse because you act like you don’t care what your dad thinks, but you do. You end up doing whatever he asks you to do.”
I climbed out of the car and tried to balance on one foot while threading my other into my pantyhose with dirt stuck to the bottom of my feet. “Well, he didn’t ask me to have sex with you, but here we are.”
“ Not having sex,” Matt said, buttoning his shirt.
“Because you fumbled the stupid condom.”
“You mean the condom that I had to figure out how to get? And then we weren’t even in a bed. Instead, we’re crammed into the front seat of my car, and you were crowding me when I was trying to roll it on. What did you expect to happen?”
“You’re such a romantic.” I hiked up my pantyhose and stepped into my dress while he slid across the bench seat.
“Whatever,” he mumbled.
Not a peep was uttered on the way to his house to change our clothes for post-prom.
Matt didn’t open my door or wait for me.
“You beat your mom home,” Wesley said, glancing up from the newspaper when Matt stepped into the kitchen, letting the door to the porch nearly hit me in the face.
“We have to change our clothes. We won’t be here long,” he said on his way up the stairs.
“How was the dance?” Wesley asked me before I had a chance to sneak around the corner to the main-level bathroom.
“It was good.”
He gave me a quick glance before returning his attention to the paper.
I turned left.
“Remember to use the upstairs bathroom if you need a toilet,” Wesley said.
With a sigh, I headed up the stairs with my bag over my shoulder. Just as I reached the bathroom, the door opened. Isaac stood in front of me wearing nothing but a faded pair of jeans and a smirk. He took the liberty of inspecting me without a hint of regret.
And I instinctively did the same to him. Earlier, I thought Matt looked like a man, but I was wrong. Isaac was the man—sculpted from hard muscles. He didn’t have tattoos on his torso, so I had no excuse for staring for so long.
“I need to change my clothes,” I murmured, checking my chin for drool.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
I forced my gaze to his scruffy face. “The dance was fine.”
“Not the dance.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“The other festivities,” he said.
He was probably drunk. That seemed like the most logical explanation for his random babbling.
“What other festivities?”
“I made a donation. That makes me a vested interest. So I’m interested. How did it go?”
“What donation?”
Isaac leaned forward, bringing his lips to my ear, which brought his bare chest so close I felt actual heat radiating from it.
He was so inappropriate, and yet, I allowed it.
“Sunday Morning,” he whispered, “I donated the condom.”
I wanted to die.
Matt asked him for a condom? I would have preferred anyone, literally anyone else. My face burned with embarrassment.
“It’s none of your business.” I tried to squeeze past him.
“It’s a little of my business.”
I turned and pushed the door shut. “Ask Matt.” With warp speed, I changed into jeans, a pocket T-shirt, and checkered Vans. As I passed Isaac’s closed bedroom door, I heard Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” playing from his stereo.
“Jerk,” I muttered to myself before descending the stairs where Matt waited by the door in jeans and a blue T-shirt.
“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.