Chapter 12 Both Back in the Day
“Truth or dare?” that girl Chloe asks. Chloe is pretty.
She has a pierced septum, a pierced tongue, and a ripped Nirvana T-shirt and supposedly dabbles in smoking heroin—a chic amount.
She is on the periphery of their world—appearing, compliments of Sabrina, for weeks at a time and then disappearing into the ether.
Tonight, she’s here at Sab’s house because Sab’s parents are away. And now that the group is all varying degrees of wasted and draped on living room furniture in an amorphous circle, Chloe has suggested a game of old-school Truth or Dare.
It’s possible that she’s just trying to get some action.
It’s Nellie’s turn.
“Truth,” she says, nerves fluttering despite the alcoholic lubrication.
Chloe leans back on her hands. Tick-tocks her head. Worries her tongue pierce with the tip of her tongue.
“What’s your number?” she shrugs finally.
“My phone number?”
Cara and Sabrina giggle.
“No, your number. Like how many people have you fucked?”
“Dare,” says Nellie, not skipping a beat.
Chloe laughs. She looks scary. Her pale skin, jet-black hair, skinny arms. But she’s good-natured.
“Okay, dare then.”
Noah furrows his brow, leans back into the plush L-shaped leather couch. Glances over at Nellie, lying across the way in a mid-century horsehair lounge chair, trying to read her face. He kind of wanted to know the answer to that question, too.
It’s only been a few weeks since their first museum day, but, since then, they’ve been hot and heavy, meeting up whenever possible for long walks and even longer make-out sessions.
Why doesn’t she want to answer? Is the number that high?
“Okay,” Chloe says. “I dare you to take off your shirt, so you’re only wearing your bra, straddle… hmm. Who should it be? Ah! Sabrina! And suck face for a full minute.”
Nellie looks doubtful. “Wait, really? Sabrina? That seems…”
“Hey!” Sabrina complains. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you!” Nellie says. “But you’re you.”
“Do it, do it, do it!” the others start chanting.
Sabrina looks at Nellie, Nellie looks at Sabrina. They’re drunk enough and close enough to shrug like, okay.
“Here goes,” Nellie says, pushing herself to standing. She pulls her shirt over her head and places it neatly on the lounge. Like perhaps she is stalling. Then, in her baby-blue push-up bra, she crosses to the love seat where Sabrina is curled up.
“I need a lap,” she says. “You’re going to have to uncurl.”
“Okay,” Sabrina says, swiveling around so that her feet are on the ground. But her expression is unsure. Like maybe her earlier bravado was just that. “Come to Mama?”
Nellie and Sabrina both dissolve into laughter. It’s doubtful that this will actually happen.
But Nellie moves to sit on Sabrina’s lap, faces her friend, and settles there. “This is weird,” she laughs.
“You’re weird,” Sabrina says.
“C’mon, guys,” says Chloe. “Just do it. This isn’t a big deal.”
“Okay,” says Nellie. “Speak now or forever hold your…”
“I’ll speak now,” Noah says, suddenly. He has been sitting across the room warring with himself. On one hand, this is the game. Also, part of him kind of wants to see this. On the other hand, he’s feeling possessive. Why does Sabrina get to kiss Nell? That’s his job.
Everyone has turned to face him. “What’s the hang-up, slugger?” Chloe asks.
Noah shrugs like this is inconsequential. Like he is not self-conscious now, with everyone staring at him, waiting for an explanation for why he’s the buzzkill stopping the game. “I just don’t think Nell should have to make out with Sabrina.”
“Have to?” Sabrina scrunches her nose. “Thanks a lot.”
“No, what I mean is, I don’t think Nell should make out with anyone… except me.”
Chloe grins, deeply amused, while the others exchange surprised looks. “Well, that isn’t the game, Baseball. Anyway, on what grounds?”
He rests an elbow on the top of the couch behind him, leaning back like this is no big deal. “Because,” he says, “she’s my girlfriend.”
But this is a big deal. A very big deal. Because they haven’t said the b-word or the g-word to each other. They haven’t agreed to be monogamous—even though they both have been. And they still haven’t told the others anything official.
Cara yelps and brings her hands together in front of her chest like a proud mama. Sabrina shrugs like, who knew? But Nellie, she looks over at him with a barely suppressed smile spreading across her face.
“You guys are together-together?” Ben asks.
“Apparently,” Nellie answers, then she pushes herself up off her friend’s lap.
She crosses to the lounge, picks up her shirt, and readies to put it back on.
“Hang on a second,” says Chloe. “You’re not off the hook! You at least have to do the dare with your boyfriend over there—you can’t just do nothing.”
Nellie shrugs. She is happy to oblige. She lays her shirt back down, crosses over to Noah, and, without a word, gestures for him to turn toward her.
He smooths the wrinkles out of the thighs of his jeans as she straddles him.
Once settled, she leans in and whispers in his ear, “Girlfriend, huh?”
“Is that okay?” he murmurs.
“That’s okay,” she nods.
“Hurry it up!” Chloe calls.
So, Nellie presses light kisses to Noah’s neck beneath his ear, his jaw, his cheek, then nips his lower lip.
The other eyes on them are strange, but, right now, she couldn’t care less.
He tips his chin up toward her, waits for her to return.
And she does, her lips—progressively familiar—working against his own.
Her tongue slips into his mouth, tasting of St. Ides forties and cold raspberry Snapple.
And maybe it’s part of the dare, only maybe it’s not, but she starts to grind against him, despite the audience.
He pulls her closer to him, his hands on her ass, so that they’re flush against each other.
Her inner thighs squeeze the outside of his, his button fly pressing between her legs.
The heat dials up quickly, and soon they are fully all over each other—his hands finding her pretty blue bra, him hard beneath her, both of them breathless.
“Okay, okay, time’s up,” Chloe is saying, but they’re not stopping. “We should go to the party!”
“I think we lost them,” Sabrina laughs.
And she’s right. They are lost. To everyone but each other. Too drunk to care about the spectacle. Too into each other to care about some party, where they’ll only want to escape together anyway. Too absorbed to even really notice as everyone else grabs their belongings.
“Hey!” Sabrina calls, before she leaves, forcing them to look up, heavy-lidded, for just a moment. “We’re going. Be back in a few hours. Place is yours.”
She winks.
And, with the slam of the door, they go back to their business.
Things get real. Quickly. This is the first time they’ve been truly alone for an extended period of time. Not just a few minutes. Not just outside. Not with friends around the other side of a monument or outside a closed door. Just alone.
Soon, that blue bra is discarded on the floor beside the couch—beside his jeans and T-shirt and her shorts, too. His boxer briefs are pushed down. And the two are horizontal on the couch, skin sticking to the leather, facing each other, entwined.
Their lips are swollen. Their cheeks are flushed. Their hearts are hammering, stomachs rising and falling fast.
He drags his hands down her sides to the elastic of her underwear, readying to slip them down and off. But then he pauses, narrows his eyes. Murmurs into her mouth: “Why did you pick dare?”
“What?” she breathes, distracted by the heat pouring through her body, by an anticipation she hasn’t experienced before.
“Why did you pick dare?” he repeats, still breathing heavily. “Why didn’t you answer the truth question?”
And she opens her eyes to gaze back at him. “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I was embarrassed.”
“Because…?”
“Because,” she shrugs.
He rests his head back against a patterned throw pillow, not separating from her, but creating the smallest amount of distance so he can see her whole face.
“Because the number is high?”
She pauses. Sighs. Slumps slightly back too. “Because it’s not.”
“It’s low?”
“It’s low.”
“How low?”
She bites her lip. “Zero low.”
His own lips part, then meet again, as he processes this.
“What about you?” she asks, her eyes searching his face. “High?”
He pauses. Considers his answer. “It’s zero low too.”
“What?!” she says in disbelief. “No! I don’t buy that for a second. How is that possible?”
He tick-tocks his head. Brings a hand up to cover his eyes, embarrassed though their answers aren’t different. “The same way it’s possible for you?”
She shakes her head. “No way. There have been so many more girls for you—like, I know that. Everyone knows that.”
“Yeah,” he says. “For other things. But not… for this.”
They’re silent for a minute, searching each other’s eyes.
“Well, good,” she says finally. “No time like the present. Let’s do this.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Condom?”
“Sabrina has. In her bedside table. Her mom gave them to her ‘just in case.’ ”
“But—are you sure?” he asks. “I could plan something more… special.”
She gazes into his earthy eyes; he gazes into her overcast ones. “This is special.”
Noah searches Nellie’s face for any sign of doubt. Finds none. “Okay, then,” he says, nuzzling her as he rolls her fully onto her back beneath him. She squeals, laughing.
He kisses his way down her long neck, past her collarbones, between her breasts, to her belly. Then, slowly, he slides her Victoria’s Secret underwear all the way off, past her ankles, heels, and toes. He returns to hover above her, eyes full of a new kind of focus. “Let’s do this.”