He isn’t laughing. “I don’t understand. Do you love me or not?”
Poor, poor, simple boy. I grab his cheeks with both hands. “I love you, Danny. I love you so much.”
He sniffs and tilts his chin up. “Oh. Okay then.”
Grabbing his neck and tugging his face toward mine, I smile into our kiss as we start making out again. His fingers brush up against my bra strap underneath my shirt. We’ve only done over-the-bra-and-underwear-stuff since we started dating, and I’m ready to move this whole shebang forward.Tooready. Danny’s always saying there’s no rush, because we’re “in it for the long game.” But I might die from his chivalry.
After a few minutes, I pull back and decide I want more tonight. Breathing heavily, I announce, “I’m ready.”
It takes him a few beats before he understands. “Gracie,” he whispers. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. But if you don’t want?—”
His voice lowers. “I want. You haveno ideahow much I want.”
“Oh.” My cheeks warm. “Good…that’s good. Um, do you have a…?” I trail off.
Danny knows I take birth control every night. We can thank Mae for that prescription. I’m religious about the timing. He blushes every time my reminder alarm goes off. But I still want to be extra safe.
“Yeah. Um, you said I could keep whatever I wanted in the desk drawer, so I, uh, put a condom and a small bottle of lube in your pencil pouch last month.” My eyes widen in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting anything from you,” he hastily clarifies, “but I wanted to be prepared.”
I give him a small smile. “I’m glad you did.”
He nods and moves toward my desk to collect the condom and lube. As he does that, I stand up and start taking off my clothes. I think that’s next in this whole order of events, but what do I know? It’s the first time for both of us. We’ll just have to make sense of it together.
First, my sweater, then my shirt, then my pants, then my socks, then my?—
“What are you wearing? Oh my God. I…what. You?Jesus Christ.”
I glance down at my body to make sure everything’s in place. Looks good to me, so I’m not sure what’s going on here. I frown. “Do you not like it? Ben said…”
“BEN? Did you golingerie shoppingwith Ben?” Danny screeches in confusion, looking like he’s trying really hard not to be mad.
I wince. Bringing up another man while propositioning this one probably isn’t in good form. Standing in the emerald green lace lingerie I bought at Victoria’s Secret, I quickly correct myself.
“No, oh my God. Sorry. Ben mentioned that he loves when Mia surprises him in different ways since they’ve been together so long. So I thought I’d…are you surprised?” I gesture toward my body like it’s the latest computer model.
“I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasmoresurprised,” Danny squeaks out in a high-pitched voice I’d only ever heard him use with Charger.
“Not even at the end ofThe Sixth Sense?”
“Not even then,” he says solemnly.
We both stand, in silence, for another thirty seconds. Now that Danny’s come down from The Ben Lingerie Fiasco, he’s openly gawking at me. A minute passes, and I wonder if I should blow on him like I do his Nintendo 64 game cartridge when it doesn’t work, just to see if that does something.
When I start to lean in, he says, “Gracie, I don’t want to assume. You have to be specific. You want to…”
“Go all the way. Have sex.”
He takes a deep breath and blows it out through his teeth, looking a little out of control.
“So I can…”
“Do everything. Take my clothes off, touch me anywhere, talk me through it.”
“Fuck.” Then he starts muttering a flurry of words under his breath. “Slowdownkeepittogether.”
I wonder if he knows I can hear his inner thoughts and patiently wait for him to either acknowledge me or come back to reality. It doesn’t appear that he will be doing either anytime soon, so I reach behind my back to unhook my bra.
