“You’ve been with twenty-two women?” I ask incredulously. “Does that include me?“
He nods.
“Oh my gosh. I feel so inexperienced. If I’d known I’d be locked away with a sexual savant all winter I might have tried to increase my numbers a little bit before then.”
He pulls me into him so our chests flatten against one another in a possessive way. I have a feeling he’d rather I have slept with no one besides him. Rather hypocritical considering. Not that I’m shaming. I just feel inadequate.
“Did you sleep with anyone in high school?”
He stares into my eyes for a moment, the gray of his eyes growing dark for a split second before shaking his head no.
Then it hits me, prom night would have been his first time.
With me.
“Jason,” I breath, “I—I didn’t know—I didn’t think—.” What else is there to say?
Before I can finish that incoherent babble, he stalks over to the dresser and picks up the pencil to write on the sheets of paper he keeps there. He’s only gone a moment before he returns and hands it to me.
Two letters in one day. I feel spoiled.
You would have been my first. I’m sorry you weren’t. But I felt I had something to prove after that night.
However, you were my first kiss. And I don’t know why, but that feels more important.
That does something to my fragile heart. Because I agree, it feels more significant. It feels like a form of trust. Sex can be as emotional or vacant as people want. And I like to think ours carries a deeper sentiment than anything either of us have experienced in the past.
I’ve heard people say that you can learn to love anyone if you spend enough time with them. There’s something to be said about forced proximity. But I’m choosing to believe whatever is happening between Jason and I is bigger than that, that our connection was forged long before this winter.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mara-Present
Glycerine-Bush
A heavy thud against the window jolts me out of my dreamless sleep like a shot to the heart. For a second I can’t recall where I am. I’ve never been in a coma but sometimes when I wake up I’m so numb I imagine that’s what it would feel like.
I crawl out of the warm bed and head to the double doors that lead to the balcony. That’s where it sounded like the noise came from. Peering through the spiderwebs of frozen tendrils on the glass I see a bird of indigo and gray hues lying lifeless in the snow.
What the fuck?
Did a bird just fly into the window and kill itself? I’ve heard of birds doing this before but I didn’t think it was an actual occurrence. And why was it even flying around in this weather?
I crack the door and stick my foot into the frigid winter air to poke the bird with my sock-covered toes. No movement. Must be dead.
If that doesn’t seem like some kind of ominous sign, I don’t know what is. Maybe I need an old crone in a cloak chanting something in the woods to seal whatever spell this is.
After dressing in a pair of jeans and pulling one of Jason’s sweatshirts over my head, I head downstairs braiding my hair with each step.
“A bird just committed suicide on the balcony,” I announce to Jason and (surprisingly) Dylan who are standing in the kitchen drinking their morning coffee. Their perplexed eyes turn to me as if I spoke a foreign language. “A bird flew into the glass upstairs and it’s dead.” The two men exchange a look that screamswhat the fuckbefore Jason walks past me up the stairs, but not without running his hand down my arm as he passes.
“We’ll that’s fucking creepy,” Dylan voices my inner monologue.
“That’s what I thought. I feel like it’s a bad sign or something.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Dylan waves it off. “We’re not on any ancient burial grounds or summoning demons in the garage, are we?”
Although I try to laugh it off, the whole encounter has me feeling a little spooked.
