After another five minutes, I decid
ed it was safe to make my way toward the cashiers. The line for the self-checkout was really long, and after all my dawdling around the pharmacy, I didn’t have the time to spare.
My hands were shaking as I approached the checkout lane. There were two people ahead of me, which was fine, but when another person came up behind me, I had to change lanes. I did that two more times before I managed to get to the front without anyone coming up and watching what I put on the conveyor belt.
I saved the Cheerios and the hidden box beneath them for last, stacking them together on the belt and shoving the bananas and apples around them to hide the words on the box. Of course, the checkout person had to pick everything up separately to scan it so I could pay, but at least it was a guy.
“Hey there, Matthew!”
My body went completely stiff and not in any good kind of way.
Samantha stepped up behind me with a bottle of Diet Coke in one hand and a large bag of powdered donuts in the other. For a moment, the sheer incongruousness of it distracted me enough that I didn’t consider what she might see on the conveyor belt. Diet Coke and a huge bag of donuts? Really?
“So, looks like you’re playing a little ‘poke the fish’ tonight.” Samantha giggled and pointed toward the bagger, who was carefully examining the large box of forty Trojan Ultra Ribbed condoms.
I couldn’t figure out what she meant, and there was no way I was going to form words to express a response, so I just handed the cashier my debit card and ran the hell out of there without uttering a sound.
I made it out alive and with condoms, which counted as a win.
Chapter 18—Sex is Better than Cake
Three hours.
Three hours before I was supposed to pick up Mayra and bring her back to my house so we could have dinner and end the night up in my bedroom, giving our virginity to each other.
I was a fucking mess.
Even though I had actually made it out of the grocery store with all my purchases, I was still on high alert. I had to make sure none of the neighbors could see what I had bought, so I closed the garage door after pulling inside. After I checked the side windows to guarantee the neighbor who was mowing his lawn couldn’t see inside, I opened up the trunk and pulled out the bags of food and…and…and…
Condoms.
I should have asked Travis to get them for me, except then I would have been barraged with questions for hours afterwards. The whole experience, even without Samantha’s strange interruption, was horrifying. Now that I had a chance to think about our classmate’s remark, I had no idea how she knew about Mayra’s birthmark, my obsession over it, or why she was bringing that up in the first place. My hazy memories of the beach party weren’t any help in this regard, either.
I recalled something about jellyfish, but the memory was unclear.
I carefully unpacked all the food, avoiding that bag until the very last second. Once everything else was put away, I pulled the large gold box out of the plastic sack and looked at it. It didn’t seem quite as frightening as it did at the store, but it was still definitely intimidating as hell. I had no idea where to put the damn things but figured somewhere in my room made sense.
What if Mayra didn’t want to be in my room? What if she’d rather do it on the couch? Or a chair? Or the kitchen table? People did that, didn’t they?
Hell if I knew.
I opened up the box and pulled out a long string of little square packets, all attached to each other. Taking a deep breath, I tore them off in groups of four—so I knew they would come out even—and placed some in every room of the house, even the bathroom. Maybe Mayra would want to do it in the shower—the same shower where I touched myself and thought about her, the very idea of which would likely send me into a panic attack if she were there.
I ran to the basement to punch the heavy bag.
It didn’t help.
Neither did television, working on my websites, or reading. All I could think about was how many different ways I could single-handedly screw it all up.
Fall asleep after dinner.
Not be able to make her come.
Not be able to get hard.
Not be able to get the condom on right.
Come too soon.