27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Then
"So you really didn’t like my idea of being honest with your parents, huh?”
I crumpled up the wrappers from my burger and fries and tossed them into the grease-stained brown sack between us. Our legs dangled off the tailgate of his truck, swinging over the ground. Two hours ago, we were in the office exchanging admissions of love; now we were parked out on one of the dirt roads near Train Bridge with only the moon and stars to light our way. “I said I’d think about it.”
“But you really wanted to say no,” he rebutted conversationally, putting his trash in with mine before tossing the bag over his shoulder. It landed in the hole of the spare tire that sat in the bed of his truck. “Which is fine. They’re your folks; we’ll handle it the way you want to.”
“Thanks,” I said, even as my stomach twisted uncomfortably. With Mom already suspecting that something was going on and rumors flying around town, keeping it a secret and sneaking around was only going to work for so long. I didn’t know what else to do, though. For now, this was the way it would have to be. “I know you think I’m being overdramatic, but—”
“Nah, Sass,” he sighed. “I know Kelly. You’re right—she would probably make our lives hell.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder, and he put his arm around my waist. Silence fell between us, the comfortable kind. For several minutes we were alone with the sound of the crickets. I could have fallen asleep there, his thumb idly stroking my hip, but he pulled me out of my dazed state with, “I’m ready to tell you about UNC.”
It took me a moment to catch on to what he was saying. Enough had happened lately that the mysterious reason for his deferred acceptance to UNC hadn’t been on my mind. Once my brain caught up, I straightened, peering at his face in the moonlight. “Okay. Sure.”
Theo let out a breath. “I told my parents that I wanted to take a year to work in the store and save up money,” he said, “but the real reason I deferred was that I was hoping that—I hoped that you would come with me.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t have the grades to get into UNC.”
“It wouldn’t have had to be UNC. There are tons of schools around there. Or, you know, if you didn’t want to go to school, you could have found a job or—”
“Theo, I don’t know what I’m going to do after high school. I haven’t decided.”
“I know.” He clasped his fingers together behind his neck, craned his head back, looked at the sky. I could see the silhouette of his throat bobbing as he swallowed. “I know. Sorry. I was being stupid."
“No,” I said quickly, touching his knee, “I didn’t mean—”
Theo interrupted me, his voice slightly raised, tone firm: “It was selfish, I guess, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t be without you.”
The words hung in the muggy air between us.
I didn’t know what to say, but there was no need to respond; Theo plowed ahead, the words tumbling from his mouth as if they’d been trying to get out for some time: “Every time I thought about going away and leaving you here, my chest would hurt just like it did when we were kids and you were in the hospital. The day came to put down the deposit for the fall semester, and I just filled out the form to defer instead. I hoped that with a year to work with, I could make something happen with you, and by the time you finished high school we’d be ready to make a plan together.”
I made a conscious effort to close my gaping mouth, flabbergasted that while Theo and I were going about our normal lives at the store and school, he was making these life-altering decisions based on a hope that he and I might become something more, and I was completely oblivious.
“You wouldn’t even be two hours away,” I said. “You could have come back to see me all the time.”
But Theo shook his head emphatically. “I couldn’t do it, Nina. I just couldn’t.”
And even before the words were fully out, I was already thinking about how devastating it would have been for him to leave me behind. Even when I never quite understood why he chose not to go, there was always that undercurrent of relief that he had. That he was still here, with me, where he had always been.
“Okay,” I told him. “I get it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Do you?”
“Yeah. I think so.” I twisted my fingers together in my lap. “I don’t remember my life without you, Theo. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like not to have you here.”
“Then don’t. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
I looked out toward the pitch black of the woods and let myself imagine what it would actually be like to leave here together. I might go to college, or I might not. I could find a retail job. Maybe even management—I had all the skills. And at the end of the day, instead of going home to criticism and tension and emotional distance, it would be Theo waiting for me.
I liked this idea. I liked it a lot.
“Maybe I will go with you,” I said.
Even in the dark, Theo’s grin couldn’t be missed. “Really?"
I found myself grinning back. “Yeah.”
Just a touch too abruptly, he grabbed my wrists and tugged me toward him. I pitched forward, giggling and catching myself with a hand on the tailgate. Theo didn’t seem to notice as he hauled me up and over his lap, his arms tight around me, holding me close.
“Too bad I won’t be eighteen until November,” I said. “We could have taken off right now.”
Theo slid his thumb down the side of my neck. I knew it was sweaty beneath my ponytail, but he kept his hand there, so he must not have noticed or cared. “You’d drop out of high school?”
I rested my chin on his shoulder, my hands splayed over his back, and stared at that spare tire bolted down in the truck bed. “I never really thought about it before now, but if that would get me out of here faster, then yeah. Maybe.”
“If we left tonight,” he said, “where would we go?”
I knew we weren’t really going anywhere. I was still underage, first of all, and we didn’t have any supplies or money on us. I knew that in less than two hours, Theo would be dropping me off at my parents’ house just before curfew. We’d exchange a few texts before falling asleep in our own beds.
But it was fun to pretend.
“Up north,” I said. I’d never had any particular desire to travel, to see new places, but something about the idea of driving off into the night with Theo, being able to choose whatever road we wanted, had my mind churning excitedly. “To a city. New York or Philadelphia or someplace.”
Theo barked out a laugh. “Philadelphia?”
“What?” I pushed myself up so that I was sitting back on his thighs. “I’ve never been anywhere bigger than Charlotte, and Sage said Philadelphia was cool.”
“Sage liked Philadelphia? With the Liberty Bell and shit?”
“They weren’t doing that kind of stuff. She was there with her mom and sister to see a concert.”
His hands grazed my thighs. It was an innocent touch—barely a touch at all—but heat sparked in my belly nonetheless. “Well, what about us? What would we do there?”
“Spend a few days looking around and exploring. Then move on. Go see someplace else.”
“Would we ever come back?”
“Of course. It would just be for the summer, and then we’d back in time for you to go ahead and start college this year.” I liked the idea that ultimately, we’d come back to our home base—the same one, of course.
“What would you do?”
“Get a job,” I said. “Earn money for us.”
“And let me live off you like a bum?” he asked. “Hell, you’d be better off staying here.”
I shook my head at him. “You could live off me for a while, yeah, but when you finished school, we could switch places,” I said. “I could do something for me. Go to school, or—or start a business, maybe.”
“Huh,” he said, as if he were really considering it. As if this weren’t just an elaborate fantasy that would fade like a dream by morning. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Yeah.” Reality set in, and I felt my shoulders sag. “But…”
Theo read my mind. “Yeah. I know.” He ducked his head and pressed his lips just above my collarbone. I closed my eyes, savoring it. “We’ll get there, Sass.”
My legs and butt were going numb from the position that we were in. I went to move away, but Theo slipped his hands past the hem of my shirt to hold my waist. His mouth ghosted up my neck, dropping tiny kisses along the way, and over the shell of my ear. With my hand curled over his head, I let out a hum of satisfaction that turned into a loud gasp when he abruptly sucked my earlobe into his mouth.
“What?” he murmured, his voice giving off warm vibrations against my skin. “You don’t like that?”
“No, I do.”
He did it again, and I found myself bucking in his lap. The movement put me right over where he was hard. By that point, we’d done plenty of making out and fooling around; I’d felt him there before. Usually I backed off, not ready to explore that yet.
That night, I wasn’t in the mood to retreat from Theo. We might not have been able to start a new life together yet, but we did have this little patch of backroad all to ourselves, and I was feeling daring.
“Oh, fuck,” Theo muttered. He gripped my hips hard enough to leave fingerprint-shaped bruises, guiding me back and forth over him. “Fuck, that feels good, Nina.”
It did feel good, and even though I didn’t quite understand the mechanics of why, I had figured out how to build the oddly pleasant pressure inside of me.
I pressed closer. Our lips crashed together. Theo didn’t bother to go through the motions of being gentle; he gripped me everywhere, mouth open, tongue ravenous, and I gave as good as I got.
It might have been minutes or it might have been hours by the time Theo drew back for a shaky breath and murmured, “You want a blanket?”
Dazed and hot all over, I blinked at him. “What?”
He gestured behind him at the bed of the truck. “To lay down on?”
“Oh.” I licked my lips and slid my fingers through my hair, freeing the black scrunchie from my ruined ponytail and tossing it aside. “Yeah. Sure.”
Theo disappeared around the side of the truck. I listened as he opened the door and shuffled around in the backseat for a minute. The door slammed shut, and he reemerged with a comforter in his arms.
“It’s clean,” he told me as he climbed up on the tailgate and spread out the blanket. “I put it in there just in case.”
I started to tease him about planning for a night of rolling around with me in the bed of his truck, but the words died in my throat when he tossed something down between us. Even in the dark, I could see what it was.
Are we really doing this? I thought as I stared at the foil packet, and then Theo was laying back on the blanket, taking me with him, sliding his hands down my back and over my butt, and it appeared that the answer was a resounding yes.
Our shoes and shirts went first. We laughed in a fit of exhilarated joy when Theo tried to cast my bra aside and instead dropped it on his face, one cup covering his left eye like a pirate.
“Ahoy,” I managed through my laughter. Theo plucked the bra off his face and whacked me with it.
Hands slipped lower. Our voices faded out, replaced by sighs and gasps and heavy breathing. The last bits of clothes between us were shed, and Theo reached for the condom he’d retrieved earlier.
I didn’t know where to look while he put it on, so I lay on my back and counted the stars in the sky. I got to thirty-six, and then he was moving over me, balancing with his elbows on either side of my head, and suddenly there were no more stars. Only him.
“It’s your first time, right?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. Relief flitted across his face.
“Me too.” Theo began to rub my shoulders, and I realized that they were bunched up around my neck. He brushed my nose with his and spoke against my mouth: “It’s just me, Nina.”
I met his gaze, the same one I’d been looking into my entire life, and the tightly coiled tension in my body begin to ebb. It’s just me. Just Theo, my constant. My rock. The one person in this world who would never, ever hurt me.
I exhaled and nodded. “I know.”
“Are you ready?” he asked.
With one more deep breath for good measure, I wrapped my arms around him, pressing my palms to the warm skin of his back and pulling his body ever closer. “Ready.”