Chapter 19
All Our Next Times
“I don't get it,” Trevor says in frustration.
I'm lying on my stomach on Trevor and Meredith's living room rug.
Our class finished reading “The Importance of Being Earnest,” but now our teacher says we have to re-read it and annotate it using colored pencils, highlighters, and sticky notes.
I get the reason for annotating text, but I still find it stupid and a waste of time.
I also hate scribbling all over the pages of the book.
How can anyone decipher all the lines, icons, and tiny hand-written print?
It's not like there's a lot of empty space on the pages to write anything extra.
I mean, seriously, a bunch of jumbled-up, illegible text is not going to be helpful in remembering what happened in the story.
“She's going to look through everyone's paperback copy and grade it. We don't have a choice,” I answer.
Trevor rolls over and knocks into me. I poke him in the side with my blue marker.
“No. I meant I don't get why everyone thinks this play is funny. Victorian Englanders must have been a depressing group of people if this was considered humorous.”
“It's called wry humor. Wilde was an aesthete.”
“Is that going to be on the test?” Meredith asks from the sofa.
I look over my shoulder at her. “More than likely.” She scribbles on a sticky note and slaps it on a page in her book
Trevor nudges my bare foot with his sock-covered one. “There's a party on Saturday at Jeff's house. His parents are going to be out of town. Want to go?”
“I’ve got a date on Saturday,” I blurt out before I realize I’m saying it.
“What date?” Trevor asks me.
Before I can come up with an answer to cover my stupid outburst, Meredith shouts, “I knew it! It’s Ryder, isn’t it? I knew you were lying when you said you guys were only friends.”
I blush feverously and busy myself with flipping pages of the book.
“Oh, my God, you’re blushing like crazy!”
“Can we please just drop it?” I plead.
“Meredith, chill,” Trevor tells her. “If Ace wants to talk about it, she will. It’s none of our business anyway. We’re here to work on the assignment, not discuss her love life.”
“Oh, fine,” she pouts.
I grin at Trevor. “Thank you, Trevor.”
“So, does this mean I can't ever ask you out?” He gives me his twin-dimpled smile and I roll my eyes.
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me when I can?”
“Is he always like this?” I ask Meredith.
“Hey, don't get me roped into your teen dating drama. I already warned you that my brother was bad boyfriend material. What you do with that information is up to you.”
“Thanks for throwing me under the bus, sis.”
“That's my job!” she replies cheerily.
“Yes, if I’m ever available, I will let you know,” I tell Trevor, and he does an enthusiastic fist pump in the air.
“Still in the game,” he says, but I know he’s just messing with me. Trevor is a just natural flirt.
“You haven't even left the bench, doofus.” Meredith chides, and I laugh.
Trevor hops up off the floor. “Getting me a soda. You guys want anything?”
“I'm good, thanks.”
Meredith wads up a ball of paper and chucks it at him. “Diet cola, please.”
Trevor throws the paper ball back at her. “Because of that, you can get it yourself.”
“Oh, come on, Trev!” she whines, but he's already gone. “I told you he had a crush on you.”
“And I keep telling you that he really doesn’t.” I chew on my bottom lip then look over at her. “Hey, Mer. If Ryder and I were dating—something that I will neither confirm nor deny—I will need you to keep it a secret for now.”
She squints her eyes at me. “Why? If I was going out with that gorgeous man-on-a-stick, I would be shouting it from the school rooftop. Ryder is insanely hot.”
She doesn't know the half of it. She hasn't seen him shirtless, let alone been kissed by him. That boy is dangerous to females everywhere. And he wants me. My inside girlie-girl does a happy dance.
“If you come over to my house on Saturday and help me get ready for my date, I'll tell you everything.”
“Deal!” She flings all of her markers and sticky notes in the air and takes Trevor's place on the floor with me. “I'll make sure Trev doesn't say anything either.”
“Hey! That's my spot,” he says, coming back in, soda in hand.
“You snooze, you lose.”
My phone dings with an incoming text.
HellcatClone: Heading your way. Be there in 5.
“You guys mind if I cut out early?”
Since Meredith is beside me, she sees the text and wiggles her eyebrows at me.
I grab my bag and put all my stuff back in it. “Oh. There's a tailgate party before the home game on Friday. Consider yourselves invited. We'll be hanging around Jayson's truck in the student parking lot at school.”
Meredith groans. “I hate football.”
“I don't remember if I do or not. But at least you'll have me there to talk to.”
Trevor flops onto the couch. “Sis, think of it this way. You get to watch a bunch sweaty guys tackling one another.”
“I can be down with that.”
Something in my bag catches my eye. It's another silver origami star. I open it up as I walk to the front door. “Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.”
Ryder hasn’t said anything to me about the stars, and I don’t want to ruin his romantic gesture by bringing them up and spoiling his surprises.
It's such a sweet, romantic thing to do.
Last night, I had a dream where I was sitting on the branch of a tree; one that was sprinkled with a million twinkling stars that looked like the paper stars I've been getting.
I tell the twins bye, and just as I step outside, I glance over to see Ryder’s black Hellcat parked behind my red one. He’s leaning casually back against the hood, his hands in his jeans pocket and legs crossed at the ankles. I can't stop the dreamy sigh that escapes my lips.
Meredith giggles behind me and I jump.
“Will you kindly stop sneaking up on me? You're like a fairy ninja.”
She blows me a kiss. I cross my eyes at her.
“Girl, you are so gone for that boy—allegedly,” she adds with a wink.
Yes, I absolutely am.
Meredith waves to Ryder and he waves back. He gives me a chin jerk, which is a guy's way of asking you to come here. It should look cocky, but when he does it, it only makes me swoon. I practically skip across the driveway to meet him.
“Hey,” I tell him.
“Hey back.” He traces a single finger down the side of my uplifted, smiling face before pulling it back.
I want to grab ahold of his front belt loops in his jeans and lean in to kiss him, but I know we have an audience, so I try to behave myself. It’s really hard.
“What’s up, man,” Trevor greets him from the porch.
“Not much. Just picking up Elizabeth.”
That would make sense if my car wasn’t parked right in front of his. We’ll need to brush up on our “keeping things secret” excuses.
“Good study session?” he asks me.
“Yeah.” My tongue is stuck on spouting only monosyllabic words again.
“See ya at school tomorrow, Ace.”
I turn around. “Bye Trevor. Bye Mer.”
Ryder takes my bag and places his hand possessively on my lower back as he walks me to my car.
“That guy has it bad for you.”
I spin around to make sure that the twins have gone back inside, then I fist my hands in Ryder’s shirt. Because let’s face it, my hands won’t pass up any opportunity to touch him.
“Everybody needs to stop saying that. Besides, even if he was interested, which he is not, I’m taken.”
The humid night’s air hangs heavy with a tinge of ozone as lightning flashes from a lone cumulonimbus cloud somewhere in the distance.
I feel my back being gradually pressed up against the cool metal of my Hellcat as Ryder slowly pushes into my body, one hand splayed flat on the hood of my car.
He hasn’t done anything more than that and I’m already desperate for him.
My fists grip tighter to his shirt, and I pull him in closer after checking to make sure that Meredith and Trevor aren't peeking out the living room window or watching us from the house.
“Coast is clear,” I say.
Dipping down, Ryder rubs our noses together while breathing in deeply. “You always smell so good. Jasmine, right?”
I hum my reply as I return the favor by rubbing my nose up and down his cheek. Ryder has a unique smell—a mixture of something citrusy and spicy. “Would you like to follow me home? I could whip us up something to eat?”
“I could eat,” he replies in a tone that alerts me that his words mean more than their literal translation
“Let’s get going then.”
The dizzying feeling of my body being lifted and settled causes me to shriek then giggle as Ryder’s body lands on top of me, his lips eagerly finding mine. We're in my bedroom and Daniel is working in the study.
“I thought you were hungry.”
“I am.” He kisses me again.
A single bright light flashes outside, followed by a boom of thunder; the sound rattling the windows. I tug at Ryder’s shirt, and he gets the message, pulling it over his head and tossing it.
“Kiss me again,” I demand.
“Patience,” he taunts me, and I growl at him.
Another crack of lightning chased closely by a long roll of thunder plays out like a drumbeat to our frenetic make-out session. Because I don't remember ever touching another guy's body before, I push Ryder to a sitting position and hover my hands over his chest.
“May I?”
He swallows thickly and nods. Wow, the heat coming off his skin is unreal.
It's like touching a smooth, hot stone that's been sitting in a campfire.
Biting my lip in concentration, I start at his shoulders and move my hands down his arms to his wrists, then I trace the path back up again.
Ryder exhales loudly and I look up into his eyes.
They're so dilated, they're almost black.
“What is that John Mayer song?” I ask him.
“Something about your body being a wonderland,” he says, grabbing the back of my neck and pulling me in, his kiss hard and rough this time. “Elizabeth, we need to stop before this gets out of hand. I'm so close right now to not even caring that Daniel is in the house.”
He's right. I'm also not ready. The thought of having sex kind of terrifies me. But I did have sex before, didn't I, with Jayson? He's basically said as much.
The thunderstorm that had been building outside bursts open in a crescendo of lightning strikes and loud thunder. It’s like mother nature is giving us our own personal fireworks display. A memory appears in the recess of my mind.
“I love you, Liz.”
He kisses me slowly as his hand slides up to cup my face then wrap around the base of my neck.
A round of fireworks go off in the distance, casting a rainbow of colors over my face. My eyes pop open and we look up just as the finale of the fireworks begins in a cacophony of detonations above us.
“Wow,” I say, looking at him. He doesn't know whether I am saying that about the fireworks or about our kiss.
We fall back on the towel, eyes watching the smoke left over from the firework explosions drifting across the night sky. He pulls me to his side, and I snuggle in.
"You were right."
He turns his head to look at me. “Right about what, baby?”
“We did make our own fireworks.”
“Elizabeth? You okay?”
I blink a few times as I emerge from my trance-like state. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just zoned out.” I pop off the edge of the bed while Ryder puts his shirt back on. “How does a bag of popcorn and a Netflix movie sound?”
“It sounds perfect,” he replies, taking my hand and leading me out of my bedroom.
“All our next times,” I hear Jayson’s voice whisper in my mind.