18. Mackie #3
“Because I didn’t want you to stop!” It comes out louder than I mean it. “I thought you’d figure out I was just some inexperienced kid and I’d lose you. You already felt weird about my dad. If you knew I hadn’t done this before on top of everything else—”
“Mackie.” He cups my face with both hands. “You really think that would make me want you less?”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“No. I just wish you’d told me so I could have been better for you.”
It’s so completely, perfectly Zach that I want to cry. The guy who ties your dress back together after being caught. The guy who bought condoms after the first date just in case. He would have spent an hour making sure I was ready if I’d let him.
“Can we start over?” he asks. “Can I try again?”
“We don’t have to start over.” I shift my hips, and we both groan. “Just go slow.”
He rolls us so I’m underneath him and starts moving, watching my face the whole time, adjusting when I flinch, pressing deeper when I arch into him. His thumb finds my clit and I make a startled sound because I wasn’t expecting it. He keeps his thumb there, circling, while he moves inside me.
“Better?” he asks against my mouth.
“Yeah.” It’s a lot better. The fullness is still there, but now there’s something building alongside it, warm and spreading. “Yeah, that’s—keep doing that.”
It’s not graceful. We’re both sweaty. The sheets are bunching up under me.
At one point he slips out entirely and has to fumble between us to push back in, muttering “shit, sorry” against my neck while I laugh breathlessly.
But it’s good. It’s so good. The weight of him, the sounds he’s making, his face in my neck so I can hear every grunt and gasp directly in my ear.
I didn’t know it could feel like this: being completely overwhelmed and completely safe at the same time.
He’s not going to last. I can tell by the way his rhythm changes, the way he keeps whispering my name like he can’t help it.
“Mackie, I’m—” He tries to pull back, but I wrap my legs tighter.
“Inside. I want to feel it.”
He makes as almost wounded sound and then he’s coming, shaking apart on top of me. I feel him pulse inside me, a strange, intimate flutter that I’ve never felt before and didn’t know I wanted until right now.
He collapses, pinning me to the mattress, his face smashed into the pillow beside my head. I like the heaviness. His heart hammering against my chest. His breath hot and ragged by my ear. I press my lips to his shoulder because it’s there, and because I can.
We stay like that until my legs start to cramp and I tap his shoulder.
“Sorry.” He pushes up on his arms, looking down at me, dazed. “Sorry, I just—”
“If you apologize one more time I’m going to smother you with this pillow.”
He laughs and pulls out carefully. I wince at the weird emptiness, and he notices immediately.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. Just feels strange.” I gesture vaguely. “The after part.”
He nods and rolls off to deal with the condom. I lie there staring at his ceiling, taking stock. Sore, but not bad. Sticky. Definitely need to pee.
I follow him to the bathroom door. “Can I get a minute?”
“Yeah, of course.” He kisses my forehead on the way out. “I’ll be in bed.”
I close the door, sit on the toilet, and try to process the fact that I just lost my virginity to my father’s teammate in his apartment in February. Cool. Great. This is fine. I clean up, splash water on my face, and stare at myself in the mirror.
Same green eyes. Same messy hair. Different everything else.
When I come back, he’s under the covers, propped against the headboard.
He’s watching the door like he was worried I might climb out the bathroom window.
He lifts the edge of the covers. I crawl in, and he pulls me into his side like I belong there—like there’s a specific shape against him that I’m supposed to fill.
“Was that good for you?” He sounds genuinely worried. “Like, actually good? Be honest.”
“It was good. Different than I expected. But good.”
“We can do it again,” he says fast, then catches himself. “I mean, when you’re ready. Whenever. No rush. But if you wanted to, I would be... available. For that.”
“Available?”
“Shut up, I’m trying to be respectful.”
“You’re trying to get laid again.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He’s grinning now. Relaxed and happy and younger somehow. The tension is gone, replaced by a quiet, dopey contentedness I’ve never seen on him before. “Did it hurt? I tried to go slow but—”
“Only a little,” I admit. “Is that gross to you?”
“What?” He looks at me like I’ve said something insane. “No. Why would that be gross?”
“I don’t know. Some guys might be weird about it.”
“You could never be gross to me.” He says it simply, pulling me tighter against his chest. His fingers start tracing an absent shape on my shoulder blade and I’m almost asleep when he speaks again.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he says into the dark.
My throat closes up.
“I think I’m falling in love with you too.”
I listen to his heartbeat and think about a boy on a porch waiting for street hockey. A boy who learned to be quiet in a house where nobody taught him how. Who ended up here, in this bed, saying he loves me like he’s not sure he’s allowed to.
He’s allowed. He’s so allowed.