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“You mean like the date and the time and the place? I think that would make me too tense. Like some sort of countdown. I don’t want to plan you. Not that way.” He looks relieved. “That’s how I feel. So I was thinking we should just make sure we’re…well, uh, prepared. Always. Then see when things move there so we’re both…”
“Ready?” I ask.
“Comfortable,” Jase suggests. “Prepared.”
I give his shoulder a little shove. “Boy Scout.”
“Well, they didn’t exactly have a badge for this.” Jase laughs. “Though that one would’ve been popular. Not to mention useful. I was in the pharmacy today and there are way too many options just in, uh, condoms.”
“I know.” I smile at him. “I was there too.”
“We should probably go together next time,” he says, picking up my hand, turning it over to kiss the inside of my wrist. My pulse jumps, just at that brush of his lips. Wow.
In the end, we go to CVS later that night, because Mrs. Garrett wakes up and comes out of her room, rumpled in a sapphire bathrobe, to ask Jase to pick up some Gatorade. So here we are, in the family pla
“They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions.
Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.”
“I don’t get what half these descriptions mean…What’s a vibrating ring?”
“Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.”
I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’”
“I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.”
“But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him.
“Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?”
“For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes.
We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave.
“Do you think he knew?” I ask.
“You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?”
“The sales guy. Why we were buying these?”
A smile pulls the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was…a…housewarming gift.” Okay, I’m ridiculous.
“Or party favors,” I laugh.
“Or”—he scrutinizes the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.”
“Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans.
“Or little raincoats for…” He pauses, stumped.
“Barbie dolls,” I suggest.
“G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.
Brushing my teeth that night, listening to the sound of a summer rain battering against the windows, I marvel at how quickly things can completely change. A month ago, I was someone who had to put twenty-five u
Jase took them all home, since my mom still periodically goes through my dresser drawers to align my clothes in order of color. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t buy the “supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight” excuse. When I asked if Mrs. Garrett would do the same and find them, Jase looked at me in complete mystification.
“I do my own laundry, Sam.”
I’ve never had a nickname. My mother’s always insisted on the full Samantha. Charley occasionally called me “Sammy-Sam” just because he knew it bugged me. But I like being Sam. I like being Jase’s Sam. It sounds relaxed, easygoing, competent. I want to be that person.
I spit out toothpaste, staring at my face in the mirror. Someday, someday not too far away, Jase and I will use those condoms. Will I look different then? How different will I feel? How will we know when to say when?
Chapter Twenty-six
Two days later, Tim’s following my directions to Mom’s campaign office for an interview. He looks like a completely different person than the one at the wheel for the Bacardi run to New Hampshire, neatly clad in a khaki suit with a red and yellow striped tie. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, lights a cigarette, smokes it, firing up another the moment he’s done.
“You feeling okay?” I ask, indicating that he should turn left at the four-way intersection.
“Like shit.” Tim tosses the latest cigarette butt out the window, punching the lighter down again. “I haven’t had a drink or a joint or anything in days. That’s the longest that’s happened since I was, like, eleven. I feel like shit.”
“You sure you want this job? Campaigning—it’s all show—it makes me feel that way and I’m not even drying out.”
Tim snorts. “Drying out? Who the hell says that? You talk like my frickin’ grandpa.” I roll my eyes. “Sorry I’m not all down with the current slang. You get my point anyway.”
“I can’t stay home all day with Ma. She drives me up the frigging wall. And if I don’t prove that I’m doing ‘something valuable with my time,’ it’s off to do hard time at Camp Tomahawk.”
“You’re joking. That’s the name of the place your parents want to send you?”
“Somethin’ like that. Maybe it’s Camp Guillotine. Camp Castration? Whatever the hell it is, it doesn’t sound like anyplace I’ll survive. No way I’m go
“I think you should go for the job with Jase’s dad.” I point to the right as we come to another intersection. “He’s a lot more relaxed than Mom. Plus, you’d have your evenings free.”
“Jase’s dad runs a goddamn hardware store, Samantha. I don’t know the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench. I’m not Mr. Handyman like lover boy.”
“I don’t think you’d have to fix anything, just sell the tools. It’s this building, right here.” Tim skids into the driveway of campaign headquarters, where the lawn is plastered with huge red, white, and blue GRACE REED: OUR TOWNS, OUR FAMILIES, OUR FUTURE posters. In some of them she’s wearing a yellow Windbreaker and shaking hands with fisherman or other heroic, salt-of-the-earth types. In others she’s the mom I know, hair coiled high, in a suit, talking to other “movers and shakers.” Tim hops out and walks up the sidewalk, yanking his tie straight. His fingers are trembling.
“You going to be all right?”
“Will ya quit asking that? It’s not like my answer’s go
“So don’t do this.”
“I gotta do something or I’ll lose what’s left of my mind,” he snaps. Then, glancing at me, his voice softens. “Relax, kid. When not too blasted to pull it off, I’m the master of fakin’ it.” I’m sitting in the lobby flipping through People magazine and wondering how long this interview will run when I get a call on my cell from Jase.
“Hey, baby.”
“Hey yourself. I’m still at Tim’s interview.”
“Dad said to swing by when you’re done if he wants to interview here. Bonus, the guy on staff kinda has a thing for you.”