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CHAPTER 6

The first time I shared a man with Amber had been on my seventeenth birthday.

She’d been hanging around the neighborhood for the better part of the six months before that, and we’d become friends. We’d had the same taste in food and music and movies and, unlike the other girls we’d known, we both preferred a line of coke to a bowl of weed. “Champagne taste,” Amber would say. “That’s us.”

Though we were the same age, our lives had been very different. I’d gone to school during the day, trying to pretend that my grades were salvageable as she’d watched the Home Shopping Network and ate Cheetos on the neighbor’s couch. Amber had dropped out of high school, and since she’d also run away from home, no one was pushing her to go, while graduation was the one thing my mother demanded of me.

I’d hated everything back then. School. My mother. My neighborhood. My body. Everything but Amber. She’d been fun. Sassy. Sexy. She was electric and electrifying and everything I wanted to be. And she cared for me. Maybe even loved me. If I had gone to a shrink they probably would have said that was why I latched on to her – that I thought of her as the mother mine had never been. I knew how screwed up everything seemed. But who could ever know why a person fell for another? I only knew that I had been dull and dim and that Amber made me less so.

She’d also had things I didn’t. Things that money bought. The clothes she wore were designer, her nails were always done. She’d lowered her panties once to show me her Brazilian. Whenever I’d asked how she paid for things, she’d always answered simply, “My uncle.” Even as we’d grown closer to each other that was all she’d tell me about the mysterious relative.

“For your birthday,” she’d said two days before, “I’ve got a surprise. Plan to spend the weekend with me.”

So that Friday, I slipped out of school early and met Amber at the bus station where she purchased two tickets to Santa Monica. Though I couldn’t get her to give me even a hint as to where we were going or what we were doing, I spent the two-hour bus ride buzzing with excitement. Whatever Amber had in mind, I knew without a doubt that this trip would be the beginning of the next phase of my life. I was ready. I was so ready.

Outside the station in Santa Monica, Amber bummed a smoke off a street musician and I scanned the street, taking in the sights of a place I’d never been. A red convertible parked nearby caught my attention – more specifically, the man leaning against it. He was older, maybe as old as my mother, but attractive. Not because he was all that good-looking, exactly – though his body was definitely fit and trim – but because of what he exuded. Confidence. Assurance. Money. He drew my attention, and in the way that a restless, sexually charged young girl often did, I found myself wondering about him. What it would be like to kiss a man like him. What it would feel like to be beneath him. I’d had plenty of sex before. With boys from school. I’d yet to meet one who knew what he was doing, and though I would never have admitted it out loud, I was dying for it, thoughts of it never far from my mind.

When Amber followed the line of my sight, she dropped her cigarette with a squeal and exclaimed, “There he is, Em! Come on.”

“There who is?” I asked as she tugged me toward the very man I’d been staring at.

“My uncle!” After throwing her duffle bag into the backseat, she jumped into the man’s arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. Then she proceeded to make out with him like I’d done on more than one occasion with the boys under the bleachers at school. Never out on a public street. Never with a man who had to shave every day.

When they had finished their display and Amber was back on her feet again, she made introductions. “Rob this is Emily. Em, Rob.”

He may have said something to me. I didn’t really know because I’d been too busy staring at her, my jaw gaping.

“Oh, Emily, he’s not really my uncle,” she told me as she jumped into the passenger seat. “Get in.”

She’d misread the cause of my surprise. I grinned – only one of the many times I’d grin that day – and climbed in the backseat. If Amber hadn’t been the coolest person I’d ever met before that moment, she’d certainly proven herself now.

Rob took us to a fancy restaurant and fed us fancy food and snuck us fancy expensive champagne. Though his hands were never far from Amber’s body, he didn’t leave me out of the conversation, asking me what I thought of the oysters, if I knew that they were an aphrodisiac, if I knew what that word even meant. He was very nice. Interesting and witty. Sexy. The way he touched my friend, the way I caught him looking at me in my baggy T-shirt and loose jeans, as if he could see what they hid. As if he were interested.

In a bathroom stall, Amber laid out a line of coke on her pocket mirror. “Happy Birthday from Rob,” she’d said, holding up the bag of white powder. “He’s married so I only see him when he can get away from her for the weekend. Then we meet here. His other house is in Riverside. He likes you, you know.”

So many questions I wanted to ask – how had she met him? Why hadn’t she told me? Wasn’t their age difference a problem legally? And did she say wife?

But all those thoughts were eclipsed by the compliment from a deeply attractive man. “I like him too,” I’d said, wondering if that was weird to say about my friend’s boyfriend, or whatever he was. Wondering more if it was weird that she’d said it to me in the first place.

Then the coke kicked in and I didn’t wonder much about anything after that.

Later, he’d taken us back to his house, a gorgeous Mediterranean-style home with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a panoramic view of the bay. Rob encouraged us to change into something more comfortable so we’d slipped upstairs to the master bathroom where Amber donned a pair of boy shorts and a tank. All I had to wear was another boring T-shirt, so Amber loaned me one of her tanks and then found a pair of boxers from one of Rob’s drawers.

“He won’t mind?” I asked, already putting them on.

She laughed. “No. He definitely won’t mind.”

Back downstairs Rob waited for us with his shirt unbuttoned and his feet bare. Over and over, I found my eyes pulled to skate the naked skin of his chest and the trail of hair that led beneath the band of his jeans. Over and over, I felt his eyes skim the abundant curves of my breasts pressing at the thin material of my shirt.

He served us more champagne and more coke. When we turned giggly and giddy, he pulled out his video camera. “Get in close together,” he said. Amber moved close to me on the couch, really close, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “Yeah, just like that.” He moved in with the lens, kneeling down on the floor in front of us. “Can you touch each other? Amber, put your hand on Emily’s gorgeous tits.”

My body zinged from his praise. Amber had tried to encourage me to flaunt the girls before. She had a smaller chest and frequently told me how jealous she was of my DD cups, but all I’d ever felt about my boobs was embarrassed and self-conscious. Until then. Until a man out of my league said that they were gorgeous and my best friend put her hand on one. My nipples hardened as Amber squeezed.

“Damn, Emily. You like that, don’t you? Your body says you do.” Rob’s voice was gritty. Tight. “Now, kiss each other.”

I hesitated for only a second, but when Amber’s mouth met mine, I’d been ready. It was strange and different – softer and wetter than the kisses I’d had before. The actual kissing didn’t turn me on the way that Rob groaning and rubbing at the crotch of his jeans did. It was my first taste of the power of sexuality. I could do that to someone. I could bring a strong, self-assured man to his knees. Where a similar realization might overwhelm me in other circumstances, having my best friend at my side only bolstered my new confidence. It was singularly the most electrifying moment of my existence.

Amber pulled away suddenly. “I have to pee,” she announced. She wavered as she headed to the bathroom, but she glanced back over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner and winked. At me or at Rob, I wasn’t sure.