“Yes, it does,” I say, quietly, half to the headlight-bright road in front of me and half to Andi. Of course itmatters.
“I don’t really care that your family thinks I’m a harlot. Or a floozy.”
“They can’t justsayit.”
“Sure they can. By their standards they’re probably right, too. Some woman comes along and seduces away their precious eldest son? In above-the-knee skirts with her bosoms threatening to spill out at the slightest turbulence?”
I glance over at her, and she’s smiling but it’s an edged, dangerous smile, like she’s daring me to disagree with her.
“You do look good,” I say.
“Thanks,” she says brightly. “It’s the third-sluttiest dress I currently own.”
I look over again and the car swerves a little. Andi laughs, twisting around in her seat, her right elbow leaning on the windowsill.
“The sluttiest one is the one I wore to roller derby,” she says, and I swear I canhearher grin at my blush. “The second sluttiest is a sundress I’ve got with a cutout in the back. I used to own a couple sluttier things but I hadn’t worn them in while, so I gave them to my old roommate’s little sister.”
“Oh,” I say, as my brain offers an image of Andi in very short cutoffs, a bikini top, and a cowboy hat. I don’t know why the hat. I can examine that later.
“If this dress pissed her off, imagine what those outfits would’ve done,” she goes on, that sharp note back in her voice. “Imagine if she’d seen us the other night in the movie theater.”
I take a deep breath and clear my throat, glad it’s physically impossible for me to blush any more. The movie we saw was terrible and the theater was practically deserted, but instead of leaving like the thirty-something adults we are, we stayed in our seats near the back and made out like teenagers. By the end of the movie Andi’s bra was unhooked and I’d nearly come in my pants, which would have been embarrassing if it weren’t so exhilarating.
“I’d rather not think about Beth seeing that, actually,” I say, and I sound impressively steady.
“Why, she wouldn’t approve?”
“That, and I wouldn’t want my sister seeing us in—that state,” I say, and Andi laughs.
“Good point,” she says, and puts one foot on the dashboard, her knee almost knocking the window, her head back and her throat exposed and her dress puddling into her lap, hiking up higher on her left leg, too.
It’s dark outside, and she’s lit by dashboard lights and the backward-reflecting glow of the car’s headlamps on the road in front of us. My mouth’s gone dry and I can feel her watching me. I glance over every couple of seconds.
“You know what I think?” she says, and her hand’s on her inner thigh, right where her skin is softest. Where I left a mouth-shaped purple bruise by accident a few days ago. It’s half-faded now, and she circles her thumb around it.
“That we’re seven minutes from my house?” I say, voice low. I accelerate a little.
“That if your family’s going to treat me like a whore, I may as well act like one,” she says.
Fucking absurd that my first instinct is to sayno, they don’t, thirty-two years of conditioning bubbling to the surface, the urge to defend them stamped into my hindbrain somehow. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel.
“Now?” is the only thing I can manage to say, and Andi laughs.
“I could wait until tomorrow,” she says. “If that works better with your schedule.”
There’s a soft gasp at the end of that sentence, and in the corner of my vision, I can see the heel of her hand sliding over her underwear.
“Six minutes,” I say. “Five, maybe.”
“Okay,” she says, voice neutral, and then lifts her hips off the seat and slides her panties off.
I swerve, ever so slightly, onto the shoulder, and we both jostle.
“Gideon,” Andi says, and it’s warm and teasing and still a little sharp, and she winds her underwear around the gear shift. “Please drive responsibly.”
“How am I—” I start, then glance over at her, and she’s got her seat back a little and her hand between her legs, moving beneath her skirt, her seatbelt still on. “You can’t wait five minutes?”
“I bet I can get myself off first,” she says. “I’ll race you.”
