I was just gearing myself up to face the crowd when Tim stood, pulling me up with him.
“You ready to go?”
“Go?” Really? I wanted to be there with him. But I wasn’t a partier. Still, I didn’t want him to think I was a party pooper. “We can stay if you want to,” I added.
“I want to go. I’d much rather have time with you at my house before I have to take you home.” He looked me straight in the eye, those brown eyes of his glinting, and I melted.
No one was home when we got to Maple Street and Tim took me straight back to his room. Which was the only place in the world I wanted to be.
But I was scared, too. Scared of me. Of what I might do. I wasn’t kidding myself anymore. I wasn’t going to keep him away from my body, or out of my pants, but I had to keep his male body part away from my female body part.
My church had taught me well. I had to be a virgin when I got married. Anything else would be a lie.
And my father had taught me well. If I gave Tim everything now, he wouldn’t ever need to marry me. Or even want to marry me.
I was so afraid of giving him everything.
I was also afraid of getting pregnant and being left to handle the next twenty or thirty years on my own.
And the second Tim touched me, as I’d known he’d do, I clung to him, giving him kiss for kiss, touch for touch. I loved his chest. The contours. The firmness. The way his nipples responded.
I loved his belly. It was different from mine. More coarse. Mysterious.
And below that—his penis. It embarrassed me even to think the word. But oh how the thing fascinated me. It grew. And hardened. I knew it did a lot more than that.
But whenever my Harlequin romances got to that point, the bedroom door closed in my face so I didn’t know quite how that marvelous part of Tim did what it did. I had no idea how it all worked, practically speaking.
But I wanted to know.
An hour later, lying side by side with him on his bed, I was working up the courage to find out. The button on Tim’s jeans was undone. His shirt was undone. My pants were undone and my sweater was up around my neck.
My fingers, moving along Tim’s lower sto
mach, were inching their way downward.
“Tim?” The voice was just outside the door.
I jerked my hand back and flew off the bed.
“Yeah, Mom.” He started to sit up. Slowly.
“Don’t you think it’s time you get that girl home?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
We’d been caught, and right then, all I wanted to do was laugh.
Maybe hysterical laughter. Because life was so far out of control.
I was the first one put back together. I’d had my pants fastened before his mother had asked her question. Standing by the still-closed door, waiting for Tim to tuck his shirt back in, I glanced over at his dresser. Trying not to drown in a pool of embarrassment.
A class ring was sitting there.
A big one. His? I grabbed it up without thinking. Or rather, I was thinking, about him, his ring, his high school, the fact that he still had his ring. His mother knowing what we were doing. And blaming me because I was too easy. I wasn’t thinking about how I might look, standing there gazing at his ring.
“You can have it if you want.”
I swung around, the ring still between my fingers. “What?”