The Virgin Promise

She nods. “Yeah. Don’t you think so?”

“Not really. If he had been the assistant coach I wouldn’t have found it weird.”

“But he’s not the assistant coach.” Kara finishes pulling on her uniform, and I do too.

I don’t know what else to say to her, so I decide to skip it all together. “Come on, if we don’t leave now, we’ll be late.”

She grabs her bag, and I give a final glance at the bathroom door as we leave.

As soon as we enter the gym, Marian confronts me. “I need to talk to you. Alone.” She glares at Kara until she leaves my side and goes to the locker room. “Did you have fun last night?” Marian spits at me, her tone loaded with venom.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t play dumb, freshman. I’m a waitress at Celia’s.”

I nod. “It’s not against the law to have dinner with someone.”

“Then why were you also together at your dorm in the middle of the night? I saw you two.”

My jaw drops open. “So you’re a waitress and a stalker? That’s classy. I know you think I’m out to get you, but I’m not, and this is none of your business.”

She looks my up and down, eyes full of poison. “Make sure you’re put together when you come to practice. With dry hair. I don’t want anyone seeing you and thinking that CGS cheerleaders don’t take care of themselves.”

I walk away and leave her standing there. I can’t imagine she has anything else to say that matters.

I hit the mats to stretch and realize that Carter isn’t here yet. He should have left right after us, so where is he? I suddenly worry that something happened, maybe he slipped in the bathroom after we left. Was he already in practice clothes or did he have to go all the way home first? Why didn’t I notice? I smother the laugh building up inside me. Because I wasn’t exactly paying attention to his clothes.

As I stretch, I feel the toll that last night and this afternoon have left on my body. I’m much more sore than usual, and the way my vagina feels is strange. It’s not used to that much friction. I wonder if I should call Carter and see where he is? But I don’t have his number. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve had sex but I don’t have his phone number yet. We need to fix that immediately.

Carter walks in and I breathe out a sigh of relief. He’s not too late. It can be explained away and nothing happened to him. He’s wearing his normal coaching clothes, sweats, and a CGS t-shirt. The t-shirt clings to him a little more than normal, and his wet hair is flopping down into his face in a way that is so damn cute—

Wait. Wet hair.

Oh shit.

I see it the moment it happens.

Marian walks over to Carter and they speak. I don’t know about what. But she reaches up and touches his hair. He laughs and pushes her hand away. And while he’s coming over to the rest of the group to talk to us about what to work on today, Marian turns and looks directly at me. She smirks. She knows. She saw too much and connected the dots. I don’t care if she knows—I couldn’t give a shit. It’s who she might tell that could be the problem.

The squad gathers around Carter. “Hey everyone, sorry I’m late. There was something I really needed to do,” he says, and I feel him very consciously avoiding looking at me. And I know why, because if he had said that and looked at me we both would have laughed. “It couldn’t wait. But I’m here now, so let’s get started.”

It’s a confusing practice. Between Marian throwing me smirks and glares, and Carter watching me like he’s reliving every moment in the shower, I’m not sure what to do or feel. It’s not my finest practice, that’s for damn sure. In the locker room, Marian makes sure everyone knows.

“You need to step it up, Collins.” Her voice rings across the locker room. “Our first competition is in a month, and we can’t have any weak links. We’ll never be ready if you keep slacking off like you did today.”

I am so sick of her shit. “It’s our second practice, Marian. We’ll be fine.”

“I’m the captain,” she says, going red with rage. “That means when I say something, you better damn well listen.”

“Sure,” I nod, “whatever you say.”

“I told you,” Marian says loudly to one of her upperclassmen friends. “Ungrateful bitch of a freshman.”

I grab my bag, slamming my locker door shut. “What is your problem, Marian? I spilled a drink on you, let it go.”

“You think this is about the drink? It’s not about that. It’s about you think you’re better than you are, taking things you don’t deserve.”

Shaking my head, it’s a struggle not to just slap her and get it over with. Everyone is watching us now to see what’s going to happen. “I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Marian snorts like she doesn’t believe me. “So you’re not trying to become the first freshman captain this school has ever had?”

“No,” I say. “I’m not. You can keep the captain position. I don’t want it.”

Her face goes cold and cruel, and even though I know it’s coming, it still feels like a punch to the stomach. “So why are you fucking the coach?”

All the air gets sucked out of the room, and I swear no one breathes. Even Marian looks like she’s not sure she should have said that.

Kara breaks the silence. “Geeze, Marian. Stop being such an asshole. There’s no way that would ever happen. Right, April?”

Marian gives me a small smile, like she knows she won. Because if I deny it, I’ll be lying to Kara’s face. To everyone’s face.

“April?”

She looks over at me, and I look at her, but actually meeting her eyes is…hard.

The change that comes over her face is like night and day. Her hand flies to her mouth and her eyes fill with tears. “Kara, it’s not what you think,” I say. She grabs her bag, sprinting past the rest of the team before I can catch her. “Kara!”

Everyone else is staring at me. Some in disgust, others in admiration. Everyone is judging me though. “It’s not what you think,” I say quietly. “We met at a party before school started. We…like each other.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Marian actually looks surprised as I push past her. “So you really don’t want my spot?”

It’s the last straw. I turn and unleash my anger on her. “Go fuck yourself, Marian.”

There’s more than one quiet laugh as I leave the locker room. At least there are some people still on my side.

15

My phone is in my hand the minute I leave the gym, calling Kara. It goes to straight to voicemail. I call again, same thing. It doesn’t even sound like she’s screening the calls, the phone is just off. I practically sprint back to our dorm, making it across campus in half the time. I burst into the room, startling another of my suite mates. “Kara?”

“She’s not here,” Ellen says. “Haven’t seen her at all.”

“Shit.” I change out of my uniform as fast as I can, grab my bag and head out again. Where could she possibly be? This is exactly what I was afraid of, that she’d get the wrong idea, that I wouldn’t get to explain, that now she thinks that I’ve betrayed her. Or maybe she thinks something even worse. I don’t know. She’s not in the dining hall, and she’s not in the little lounge in the science building where she likes to study. I haven’t seen her anywhere across campus. I check the gym again, just in case she circled back to avoid me. No luck. Her

phone is still going straight to voicemail, though I leave one more message. “Kara. Please call me. I can explain everything. Just give me the chance.”

My anger at Marian and my determination to find Kara suddenly vanish, and I’m left with just overwhelming sadness. No one’s here in the gym, so I just sit down against the wall and let the tears come. Maybe Carter was right. Maybe I should have just told her while we were naked in the shower. It would have been better than finding out from fucking Marian.

The tears flow, and I cry until I can’t even breathe normally. I’m starting to hiccup. Kara and I don’t ever fight. Not really. Small arguments that are resolved after a couple of hours. Nothing like this. This feels bigger, and I don’t know if we’ll come back from it. I don’t know if I’ve wrecked it for good.

I feel someone sit down next to me and I lean over onto Carter’s shoulder. My tears soak through his shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, he takes my hand, thumb rubbing circles on my palm. He doesn’t ask but I tell him what happened anyway. It all comes spilling out quickly. It doesn’t take long—he already knows most of it.

When I’ve finished hiccupping through the last of it, Carter reaches around me, cradling me in his arms. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” he says lightly, “but I’ve been told I’ve got very good intuition.”

I want to believe him, but I can’t. Not yet. Not when Kara is somewhere with a broken heart thinking her best friend is a traitor and a liar.

“Come on,” he says, getting up and pulling me with him. “I know what’s going to make you feel better.”

“If it’s sex, now’s not the time.”

He laughs, and it fills up the gym. “It’s not sex. That comes later.”

“Okay.”