Chapter 12
Twelve
Scarlett
18 Years Old
“I need to talk to you,” Scarlett whisper-yelled, jogging across the hallway to Kashvi, who was standing at her locker. Her best friend looked up, eyebrows raised as she slammed the locker shut.
“You good? You look more jittery than usual,” Kashvi said.
She wasn’t wrong. Scarlett was practically brimming with information, and she needed to tell someone. After she and Colin had parted ways the night before, she had drafted a long string of texts to Kashvi, ranging from a borderline novella with thirty paragraphs and an epilogue to a simple one-sentence text that was so underwhelming for what had happened that she decided in person was the way to go.
“I need to tell you something, and I need you to not tell your sister,” Scarlett said, looking over both her shoulders for listening ears.
“I don’t tell her anything anyway.” Kashvi shrugged.
“Yes, but for real this time. If you tell Saanvi, she’ll tell Harper, and I don’t want her to know yet. Promise me,” Scarlett begged. There were perks to their sisters also being best friends, but the free flow of information wasn’t one of them. Since their sisters had introduced them on that fateful day many years ago at a bowling alley of all places, there was no room for secrets between Scarlett and Kashvi. They had commiserated over how lame it was that their sisters were trying to force friendship on them, only to become attached at the hip from that point on. Over the years, both of them had learned to keep their sisters on a need-to-know basis, and Colin was certainly not something they needed to know about. Just as Scarlett had kept every single one of Kashvi’s sexual exploits a secret, she knew Kashvi would do the same for her.
“I promise. Now spill. It must be good if you’re keeping it from Harper.” Kashvi leaned toward her, dark eyes focused and alight with interest.
Clearing her throat and carefully watching as a group of people passed by, Scarlett pulled Kashvi a little farther from the masses before putting a stiff hand up to her mouth to block the sound from leaving the immediate area. “I hooked up with someone last night.”
Kashvi’s eyes widened like a cartoon character as she gasped. “What?” she whispered, darting her eyes around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “You mean, like, all the way? With who? And, more importantly, how was it?”
“Hi, Red,” a voice said behind them, making Scarlett jump. She whirled around to find Colin standing a few feet away, straight-backed and holding an envelope in his hand.
“Shit.” Scarlett clutched at her chest, coming down from the jump scare.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Colin’s eyes softened on her, and a small smile tugged on the corner of his lips. There was only a short amount of time to register that he had used her new nickname before he spoke again. “I like these.” He reached up and brushed his fingers over her teal macramé earrings, and her body responded immediately, cheeks flushing.
“Th-thank you. Is that for me?” Scarlett finally found some words and pointed to the envelope in his hand.
“Yes.” He nodded and started to pass it to her, but pulled it just out of reach before she could grasp it. “It’s a performance chart. I was up until like two AM making it. I filled one out for you, but I’m not going to give it to you until you’re done with this so I know that nothing I say will impact what you say.”
“Chart?” Kashvi finally piped up from beside her. “Fuck. Do we have a chemistry project I forgot about?”
Scarlett ignored her and took the envelope from Colin’s now outstretched hand. “How thorough do you want me to be?”
“ Very thorough.”
“And you won’t be offended?” Her eyebrows rose probingly.
“No,” Colin said. “You can always be honest with me. But at some point, these charts are going to read like the reviews of a five-star restaurant. I can promise you that.” There it was again: the heat. It spread over her body as Scarlett imagined what exactly he would be feasting on at the Michelin-starred restaurant.
“Right, because you’re a quick study?” Scarlett asked, trying to hide her face from her best friend.
“Aren’t I?” Colin reached a hand up and thumbed her bottom lip. “I at least feel like I mastered one thing.” Suddenly she felt like liquid, and she wanted to fall into a pool of herself on the ground at Colin’s feet.
“Oh my God,” Kashvi gasped beside them. Scarlett blinked, coming into her body again, and whipped her head to her best friend as Colin’s hand dropped away. Kashvi jabbed a finger in the air, waving it between Scarlett and Colin. “You two hooked up?”
“ Shh!” Scarlett hushed.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘hooked up.’” Colin stated. “It seems people use that phrase for a wide array of physical acts.”
“I thought you were tutoring her,” Kashvi hissed at Colin.
“I am,” Colin defended. “We went over the basics, and we’ll move on to harder things next time.”
“What do chemistry basics have to do with seduction?” Kashvi asked wryly.
Colin shifted uncomfortably and jerked his head to look at Scarlett before his gaze darted away again. “Seduction? I wouldn’t know how to lure a woman into talking to me, let alone have sex.”
“Is he for real?” Kashvi cackled.
“He is.” Scarlett glared at her. “Colin, when are we… um, when is our next tutoring session?” She tried to give her voice the appropriate undertone so he would realize what she was really asking, but Colin didn’t catch on.
“Any time you’re free. I think I can get you ready for the test in two weeks if we study enough.”
“No, um…” Scarlett looked around again. “I mean for this .” She lifted the envelope, and Colin’s eyes flashed with understanding. “Other than yesterday, because Lindy was sick, my family isn’t usually home till five thirty.”
“Is she still sick? My uncle thinks I’m in Mathletes every Wednesday, so if that works for you, we can practice on Wednesdays.”
“She’s okay. So… today?” Scarlett shifted with nervous excitement. The first time didn’t exactly go as well as she would have hoped, but everything up until that point and after they had curled under the covers together made up for it. When she had calmed down enough, Colin had gone into an extremely logical monologue about why it didn’t work. They had skipped over foreplay. They had enough of a break in between to make Scarlett’s brain believe that sex was no longer happening. Then, she was too nervous and catastrophizing everything that could happen, at which point doing anything without proper lubrication wouldn’t work. All of that information probably would have mortified her coming from anyone else, but curled naked into Colin’s chest while he spoke, slowly stroking her hair, it was almost enough to lull her to sleep.
“Humping on hump day. Nice,” Kashvi noted with a smirk.
“What do you normally do on Wednesdays?” Scarlett once again ignored Kashvi’s comment.
“I go to the cemetery,” Colin said. The amused smile on Kashvi’s face fell.
“We can do this on a different day, then,” Scarlett said. “Go visit your parents, Colin, that’s?—”
“It’s a stone and a grave. It’s not my parents,” Colin stated bluntly. Scarlett looked up at him, trying to catch his eyes, but he wouldn’t look at her, so she timidly reached out her hand before committing and setting it firmly on his arm.
“Why do you go if not for your parents?” Kashvi asked. Her voice was soft now, forgetting all semblance of the teasing tone she had before.
“The psychology of visiting graves says I should feel a connection being in the same space as where they were buried. I thought if I—” His Adam’s apple dipped on a swallow, and he looked down the hallway, his eyes growing distant. “My parents used to be part of my old routine. I made a new routine that I thought would include them.” His voice had grown cold and detached. “It doesn’t work, other than occasionally getting me peace and quiet from my family. I have therapy in an hour, and I think that will be enough time spent talking about my parents, so I’d rather have sex.”
Kashvi started coughing loudly, and Scarlett reached up to slap her hand over Colin’s mouth, startled by his abrupt conversation change. Colin encircled her wrist and tugged, removing her palm from his mouth, eyebrows raised. “I, uh, sorry,” she whispered.
“You really need to get used to saying things out loud,” he said.
“It’s not that—well, I mean, it’s partially that, but it’s also that you’d probably get praised for what we’re doing, while I’ll get called mean names.” Scarlett grimaced and looked up to find Colin scowling, his body stiff. “So, if it’s all the same to you, I don’t really want people to know.”
“Except for me. I get to know everything,” Kashvi chirped.
“Except for Kashvi,” Scarlett confirmed.
“I won’t tell anyone. I don’t want to hurt you, and I won’t be the reason someone hurts you,” Colin said. The fluttering feeling in her stomach intensified. “Text me or pass me a note or something if you have questions about the chart?”
Scarlett clutched the envelope close to her chest and squeaked out, “okay.”
With a flick of his eyes to her lips, Colin hesitated before he stooped forward, his mouth going to her ear instead. “I want to kiss you right now, but I can wait.” While she was left gawking and trying to convince herself that she shouldn’t tell him not to wait, he was gone, leaving her to watch with flushed cheeks as he met his brother at the end of the hall. The incredibly suspicious look on Carter’s face was enough to make her pull her attention away from Colin’s backside.
“What the fuck is happening right now?” Kashvi whispered beside her.
“I’m in trouble,” Scarlett groaned and turned to press her forehead into the cool metal of her best friend’s locker.
“I’ll say. That was erotic in, like… a really weird way.” Kashvi had no qualms about looking down the hallway at Colin’s retreating backside, and with his height, Colin stuck out like a sore thumb in the sea of students.
“I’m so into it.” Scarlett flushed and covered her face with both her hands.
“So,” Kashvi leaned forward, her voice hushed, “the sex was good, then?”
“No, actually.” Scarlett shook her head, cheeks still hot, and opened the envelope, pulling out a slip of paper. “Both of us were virgins. It was really terrible.”
“So why are you all heart eyes for him, then?” Kashvi pulled her eyebrows together in confusion.
“Because he’s so sweet. I was sad it wasn’t good, and I kinda started crying.”
Kashvi’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, honey.”
“I know. It was mortifying. But then he wrapped us up like a burrito while he explained everything scientifically so I wouldn’t be embarrassed about it, and we talked about a plan to make it better next time. I mean, he made a grading system for it, look at this.” Scarlett flashed the sheet, and they stood in prolonged silence while they read over each of the categories that were followed by a “circle your answer” grading system of one through five and a freeform section for notes.
Knowledge: Describe anything learned during the session, questions that arose, or things you would like to learn prior to the next session.
Pacing: Record the time elapsed during different activities, whether it was too fast or too slow, and any notes on tempo.
Skill: List all areas where improvement is needed or what was most enjoyable for angle, positioning, pressure, hand placement, etc.
Productivity: Any improvement from the last session? Where is the trajectory of the sessions headed?
Orgasm Achieved? It was the only category that was followed by a “yes or no” and a grading of one through five for the strength of the orgasm instead of a performance meter. The first set of categories was repeated a second time, she noticed, before she found he had split up the chart into two brackets: “foreplay” and “intercourse.” And, finally, at the bottom of the chart, after an additional uncategorized freeform section, was a “total time elapsed” box and a spot for the hypothesis and conclusion of the session.
“This is incredible,” Kasvi whispered.
“Right? It was my idea, and he just ran with it. It’ll be nice to know exactly what I like and how I like it.” Scarlett reached for her backpack and pulled out a pen. She had never been more excited for a science project in her life.