This Is What It Feels Like

Chapter 1

1

I had perfected the art of being an emotional chameleon all the way back in second grade when a girl named Tara Simon asked me why I looked sad all the time. Instead of explaining that I was being raised by my twenty-three-year-old mother who worked the night shift as a nurse and was not home in time to get me ready for school. Instead of saying that I had no idea who my father was. Instead of telling Tara that it had been twenty days since someone had hugged me and that person was a teacher, not my mom, I smiled and told her that I wasn’t sad, I was just tired. Tara seemed pacified, and I learned a new set of rules. Don’t let people see it on my face because they will ask questions. Questions that, honestly, at eight years old, I had no idea how to answer.

Now, years later, in fact, I was only thirty days away from graduating high school, and I still made sure no one saw my feelings on my face. I didn’t want them to know that, at times, I still felt sad and alone. I didn’t want anyone to see how confusing life felt for me sometimes. To make it easier to fake it in public, I got really good at stuffing all of my feelings down super deep in private. If I couldn’t feel it, then certainly no one would see it on my face either.

I got out of bed, shaking off the not-so-fond memories, and looked at the time on my phone: 6:52. Shit, I had wasted so much time in my head that I was going to miss my bus, which either meant walking and being late to school or laying out money for an Uber, which I definitely didn’t want to do. I was saving every dollar I made at my part-time job at the dog shelter to buy a car so I would have a form of my own transportation once I graduated. My best friend Liam always offered to pick me up, but I had been stubborn since it had gotten warmer out and told him not to come by, that I wanted to get my steps in. Really, I just hated relying on people, even the ones closest to me. Tossing my hair up into a high bun, I turned on the shower to take a really quick, no hair included, shower before starting my thirty-minute walk to school.

When my slightly lukewarm shower was complete, I ran a brush through my long, thick, dirty-blonde hair and then pulled half of it back with a claw clip. As I threw my makeup wipe into the garbage, I noticed two tied-off, used condoms haphazardly shoved under some tissues. It made me upset knowing that while I was in school, my mom came home from her night shift at the hospital and had sex. She had plenty of time for these men who I had never met, but she never had any time for me, I thought angrily. We were literally two passing ships in the night. Depending on her shift schedule, I could go six to ten days at a time without seeing her. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me; it just felt like she had never come to terms with the fact that at fifteen years old, she had become a mother. I knew no details about how I was conceived or who my father was, as she refused to talk about it. But I guessed that was how she felt about it because she had continued to live her life with herself as the main priority, and I had to learn to live mine without a maternal figure guiding me. My hand shook as the anger manifested itself through my body, and my mascara wand left a black streak of makeup on my cheekbone.

“Fuck,” I muttered loudly at my reflection in the mirror. My bright green eyes looked so irritated and hurt. Deep breaths, Shaen, I told myself. Do not let these unnecessary feelings mess up your day. I calmed myself down by shutting all of my feelings off. Numbing myself out was not a healthy coping mechanism, but it was one I turned to often. I finished doing my makeup and went back to my room to choose something to wear, shoving those disgusting used condoms into the deep recesses of my mind. This, all of this fuck up of a life, was why I was going to avoid having sex for as long as possible.

It was a decision I came to when I first learned how babies were made from my best friend, Liam Hennessy, in the fourth grade. I was ten years old at the time and was two years into making myself peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on my own and putting myself on the bus in the morning. One day in December, on the way home from school, Liam sat down next to me on the bus and asked if I knew where babies came from. Wide-eyed I had shaken my head no, so Liam launched into a long rendition about sperm, penises, vaginas, and eggs. Apparently, his mother had announced her pregnancy to him and his brothers, which had come with a birds and the bees speech, so now I found myself lucky enough to be included in the coming-of-age talk. At a very young age, I knew that my mother had given birth to me while she was still in high school, but my grandmother, on her rare visits, really liked to point out how hard having me had been for her daughter. I never knew what to say to her when she would go on her rant about how difficult life had become for my mother after I was born. It wasn’t like I had asked to be her kid; in fact, given a choice, I probably would have chosen someone more like Liam’s mother. It was in that moment of Liam telling me how sperm got into a girl’s vagina that I decided I just wouldn’t let sperm anywhere near my eggs till I had my entire life figured out. Because I couldn’t risk putting a kid through what I was currently going through.

It was 7:30 when I left the house, shoving a protein bar in my mouth and slinging my backpack over one shoulder. If I walked quickly, I would get to school at eight, which was about fifteen minutes after the first bell rang. At eighteen, the secretary let me sign myself in without asking to talk to my mom about why I was late. I had done enough dodging questions about why my mom was never at PTA, never sent in permission slips, and would never answer the phone when I was late to last an actual lifetime.

As I began walking briskly toward school, I put one AirPod into my ear and turned the music on my phone onto shuffle mode. I never wore both headphones at the same time when I was out because I knew I needed to be safe. I received the AirPods as a gift from my bosses at the dog shelter last Christmas. I had been so grateful to swap out my string headphones from CVS for an Apple product that if I hadn’t had seventeen years of practice of numbing myself out by then, I would have definitely cried when they handed them to me. The problem with numbing pain and sadness was that happiness got numbed out too. It was a casualty of war, as I liked to tell myself.

I had made it halfway to school when I heard someone call out my name. Startled, I took the AirPod out my ear and turned to look where I had heard the shout come from. It was Liam, yes, how-babies-were-made Liam. We had stayed best friends all these years, even though he had no idea how much his sperm and egg talk had scarred me for life. Liam had definitely grown up since fourth grade and was now over six feet tall and was on the school football team. As much as he jokingly flirted with me, we were just friends, and therefore by proxy, I was forced to hear all of his sexcapade stories. Although they had calmed down a bit since he had started dating my friend, Lia. Clearly, the egg and sperm trauma hadn’t affected him the same way it had me.

“Shaen, get your fine ass in the car,” Liam shouted from across the intersection. I wanted to ignore him and keep walking, but I knew he would just keep yelling until I listened. The reason I wanted to ignore him was sitting in the back seat of Liam’s green jeep and staring at me through the open window: Remi Taylor.

Remi, short for Remiel, who had apparently been some angel in the Bible, was Liam’s cousin who had suddenly moved in with his aunt and uncle at the start of twelfth grade and switched to our school. His family only lived a town over, and his father was a well-known pastor in a megachurch there. To my knowledge, Remi had yet to visit his family since he’d moved here in August, and it was now the beginning of June. He never talked about why he had made the sudden switch, but Liam had made an off-handed comment to me about Remi no longer wearing his purity ring and not participating in the conversation when Liam’s dad would say anything related to religion at the dinner table. I figured one plus one probably equaled some sort of falling out with Remi’s famous pastor dad or God or maybe both.

Liam and I were best friends, so by default, Remi and I were friends, but we had never really hung out, just the two of us. We had maybe had a handful of real, deep conversations in the entire ten months since he had moved into Liam’s house. Most of the time, we just joked around and fake flirted in our group chat. To be honest, I was scared of him. Why? Well, Remi Taylor made me feel things. Not just a tightening in my groin whenever I got a whiff of his cologne mixed with whatever natural spice he had going on, but he just made me feel in general. I would get a little blip of the heart when I would look up and find him watching me with those deep, dark eyes. I felt excited when Liam would get me good seats at their football games because then I could watch six-foot-three Remi in his tight little football pants running up and down the field. I felt both thrilled and nervous when Liam would offer me a ride home from school because usually, his girlfriend Lia would sit in the front, which meant I had to sit next to Remi in the back. Now, Remi was a big guy. Not just tall but really broad with big shoulders and arms. He also had a whole bunch of thigh muscles going on. I had seen him without a shirt on multiple occasions when I would go over to Liam’s house to swim, and while Remi was a big dude, he was not the kind of gym bro who worked out too much. It was obvious that football kept him in shape, and of course, he spent time in the school gym with the team. Although he had a flat stomach, he didn’t have an overly obvious six-pack, which I secretly really loved. My friend Eva’s boyfriend, who was also in our friend group, was obsessed with his six-pack and was always drinking protein shakes and counting macros. I found Remi’s more natural-looking body refreshing because although he was big, muscular, and strong, his body was probably cozier to lay on than Carter, who was all hard muscle. Yeah, it was thoughts like these that meant I had to stay away from him. I began to cross the street, knowing exactly what the drive to school was going to be like. Remi took up a lot of the back seat, so I would try to become one with the door and would then spend the ten minutes it took to get to school trying not to breathe in his scent because, to be super honest, it made me wet. And wet was bad. Because wet equaled feelings all up in my body, and I, Shaen Collins, didn’t do feelings. I couldn’t afford to. I had to get my life in order first. Then, I would defrost my frozen heart and maybe let myself be happy with someone.

As I approached Liam’s jeep, I put on my happy, peppy face and answered Liam and Lia’s calls of good morning. I risked a glance at Remi and confirmed that he was still, in fact, staring at me from under his unfairly long lashes that all the boys naturally had, and the girls paid so much money to get. I went around to the other side of the car, braced myself, and opened the door. Remi was sitting with his thighs spread because, quite frankly, he wouldn’t fit otherwise, and I watched him put his backpack onto his lap to make room for me.

“Hurry up bitch, we’re already late,” Lia called.

“Okay, drama. No one asked you guys to stop. I was doing just fine getting my steps in,” I joked back. For a feelingless virgin, I could dish it as good as the rest of them. Lia laughed and turned around in her seat, complimenting me on how nice my hair looked.

“Why are you guys late anyway?” I asked as I buckled myself and then tried to flatten my five-foot-three body as far away from Remi as possible.

Remi mumbled something, at which Liam laughed loudly as he pulled back onto the road.

“I didn’t catch that,” I told him, looking over at his side profile. His cheeks were covered in a warm shadow of hair, telling me that he hadn’t bothered shaving this morning. His lips were full, and they were pulled back in a grin. His hair was a dark brown color, and it fell in messy waves on his forehead.

“They were fucking. That’s why we’re late,” Remi repeated, turning to look at me full-on.

I blinked. I rarely heard Remi talk like that. He would sometimes join in on Liam’s locker room talk stories in a halfhearted way. I never really saw him drink, and no one in the friend group could confirm if he himself was having sex with anyone. If he was, he kept it so well on the down-low that no one knew about it.

“Huh?” I felt slow. I knew what he had said, but my brain was suddenly feeling really foggy hearing those words coming out of his mouth. He grinned, showing me his straight white teeth because, of course they were.

“They were fornicating. Doing the dirty. Making looove,” he almost crooned, leaning forward and smacking Liam upside the head as he said it.

Liam tried to swat him back while keeping his eyes on the road and turning onto the street where our school was.

“Hey!” Liam protested, laughing. Remi just shrugged, keeping his eyes on me.

“It’s true,” Lia admitted, a blush dotting her cheeks. “Sorry, not sorry.”

Liam looked over at her. “I’m certainly not sorry, babe. That thing you did with your…”

“La la la,” I sang, putting my fingers in my ears. “I cannot hear what my friend did to my other friend’s dick this early in the day.”

Liam cracked up again as he pulled into a parking spot and said, “Okay, we’ll save all the dirty details for the ride home.”

“We’ll see. I have a bio test, and I might run late, so don’t wait for me. I’m happy to take the bus,” I replied, hurriedly trying to grab my stuff and get out of the car before I gave in to my body and nuzzled up into Remi’s chest to take a sniff of his intoxicating smell.

“Okay, babe.” Liam came around to give me a quick one-armed hug while opening the door for Lia. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

“Yeah, see you.” I slung my backpack back onto one shoulder and started to shut the car door. As I did, I caught Remi’s brown gaze again, and he gave me a slight nod, one I would have missed if I hadn’t looked up when I did. Tingles ran down my spine. God, he was so hot, and it was so unfair because I was on a dick ban until the foreseeable future. I blinked in his direction, took a deep breath, and firmly shut the door.

I had thirty more days and one summer left until Remi, Liam, and all of my friends would be headed off to college, and I would be left behind. Lonely was a familiar feeling to me and one I would be shoving down deep with the rest of my feelings. Feelings were a weakness, and I could not afford to be weak. Their leaving would keep me safe. Safe and free from weak decisions that included letting myself ponder why my body tingled when Remi looked at me.

Lunch came quicker than I would have liked because all I had packed was a cup of soup and a water bottle, which meant most of my lunch hour would be spent avoiding looking at and smelling Remi instead of eating. I considered skipping and going to the library to give my ovaries a rest, but the rumbling in my belly convinced me to go to the lunchroom to get myself some hot water for my soup. My group of friends included Liam and Lia, who I had gone to elementary school with, Eva, Carter, her boyfriend, who was included only because they were dating, Rachel, and Dee, who had joined the group in ninth grade because they had gone to a different elementary school then the rest of us had. And, of course, Remi was now in the group as well, being that he was Liam’s cousin and on the football team with Liam and Carter. Lia, Eva, and Rachel were cheerleaders. Dee, short for Deidre, and I both chose to stay out of that endeavor. Dee because she had zero rhythm and me because, besides not being able to afford the uniform, I couldn’t sign up for something that would keep me late after school, making me miss the bus as I had no other ride home, and I didn’t want to rely on Liam.

As I walked up to our table, carefully holding my cup of soup that was now filled with piping hot water, Rachel and Dee looked up from where they were whispering excitedly over something on their phone.

“Oh my fucking God, you are never going to believe this, Shaen,” they said in unison.

“Oh my fucking God, what?” I mimicked their tone, putting my backpack down by my feet and sliding onto the bench of the lunchroom table. I laughed at myself sometimes because somehow, I had managed to get all the way through high school being well-liked, in a great group of loyal friends with very little drama, and getting good grades, and yet my home life was the complete opposite. My mother barely talked to me. I lived in a small two-bedroom apartment, and I had to work at an animal shelter to be able to afford my clothes, food, and phone bill. My home self and my school self were so different. I marveled at my ability to manage them both and never have my school friends meet my home self because, honestly, I worried my home self wouldn’t really fit in.

“Okay, so you know Aile from eleventh grade?” Dee asked in a hushed tone. I paused and pictured the tall, thin girl with really long black hair and nodded.

“Okay, so Shantell, who takes art with me is in Aile’s class, and Shantell’s brother Derrick works in a gym right near Planned Parenthood, and he swears he saw Aile and Jackson Morris leaving the building last Saturday!” Dee paused with a dramatic flair.

Rachel nodded, looking excitedly aghast at what Dee had just shared.

“Okay, well, maybe they were going to get birth control?” I offered while peeling the top of my soup cup off and mixing the noodles around with a plastic spoon, watching the little freeze-dried bits of veggie floating around the top.

“Bruh, Jackson Morris is a sophomore in college, and his dad is loaded,” Rachel told me as Liam, Lia, and Remi joined us at the table, with Eva and Carter trailing right behind them, holding hands. “No way would they need to go to Planned Parenthood for birth control.”

“Exactly,” Dee whispered loudly. “Rumor on the street is that Jackson got Aile pregnant, her parents don’t know, and he took her to take care of it before anyone would find out.”

“If that’s true, then Jackson needs to learn to wrap his dick up,” Liam chimed in loudly while biting into his turkey sandwich.

“Who said he doesn’t?” Carter said as he sat down and pulled Eva into his lap. “I bet he just knows how much better it feels bare, right baby?” Carter nipped at Eva’s earlobe, and she blushed and pushed him away.

“Shut up, Carter,” she told him. “No one wants to hear about how you beg to do it bare.”

That had everyone laughing except me and, apparently, also Remi, who barely smiled as he sat down in front of me. I knew I was a virgin by choice, but I found the constant talk of sex, cum, and bareback riding to be tiresome because, truthfully, it sounded fun, but it was a fun I didn’t allow myself to partake in. Remi, on the other hand, could have the pick of any girl he wanted. I often wondered why he didn’t participate in any of the “whose dick is bigger than whose” kind of talk that our friend group often defaulted to. I took a sip of my soup, which tasted more like cheap chemicals than actual soup, and felt a knee knock into my knee, followed by a frisson of energy that ran up my leg and ended as a dull ache in my crotch. I looked up at Remi, but he was laughing over something Liam had said while unwrapping his own sandwich and seemed not to notice that he was basically playing footsie with me under the table. It didn’t happen again, so I chalked it up to him being six-three and having no room for his long legs. I spent lunch finishing my soup and half listening to the chatter around me while making a list in my head of things I needed to remind my mom to do. Like, pay the rent. As a nurse, I assumed she made decent money, but between paying for rent, utilities, her car, a bare-bones health insurance plan through her hospital, and a monthly stock-up grocery run, I knew there wasn’t much wiggle room. However, a rent notice had shown up on the door this morning, and I needed to make sure she left me a check to run down to the super tonight. I crunched up my now empty cup of soup and pushed it away from me slightly while I pulled out my phone.

“Hey, rent was due. Can you leave me a check to give to Bob tonight?” I texted her. She was saved as “Amy” in my phone because I couldn’t bring myself to write “Mom” when she had never earned the title. I placed the phone back down in front of me, feeling a headache coming on. I rubbed my temples, hoping it wouldn’t get worse before I could get home and pop a Motrin. My phone screen lit up, and I saw that my mom had left a thumbs-up on my message. That meant she would leave a check, but it also meant that she couldn’t be bothered to say anything else to me. I rubbed at my head again as the stress of managing my life and her life began to weigh on me. I looked up to find Remi’s eyes on me. His stare turned my insides to lava. I hated it and loved it at the same time. I had read enough romance novels to know that sex was good, forbidden for me, but it seemed so good all the same. For a brief moment, I let myself stare back, wondering what those kinds of activities would feel like with big, cuddly Remiel Taylor. Was everything about him big? Would he moan with that deep, rumbling voice of his? What would the scruff on his cheeks feel like between my legs? I squeezed said legs together as the dull ache I had felt earlier turned into a wetter, more insistent throb. Get it the fuck together , Shaen, I thought angrily to myself. When my eyes refocused and made contact with Remi’s stare again, I noticed that he looked more flustered than before. There was a bit of a flush showing up on his face above his five o’clock shadow, and he seemed to be fidgeting in his seat. Awareness seemed to push all the air out of my lungs, and I took a deep breath as I wondered if cool, calm, collected Remi was as affected by me as I was by him. We played stare-down for a couple more seconds before he blinked and looked away. He then pulled his big body up from the bench, took his backpack in one hand, gathered up his garbage along with mine with his other hand, and left the table without looking at me again. It was such a simple thing, but it felt like the nicest thing someone could do for me.