The Original Crowd (A Whole New Crowd 0.50)

“I’ll be back,” I remarked, veering off in their direction.

Kayden saw me first, sat up straighter and gave me a small grin. It vanished immediately, but it was a grin nonetheless.

“Hey, guys!” I cried out, sitting next to Molly.

“Hi.” Molly brightened.

I zeroed in on her neck. “You are dating Larkins!” I accused her. “No way are those the same ‘love bites’ from the party. No way in hell.””

She blushed, ducking her head.

I loved this girl.

“He asked me out last night.”

“On a date?” What had they been doing before?

“Yeah. He wants to take me to the play-offs in the cities this weekend.”

“That’s great!”

“It’s…it’s for the entire weekend,” she whispered, looking back up—still blushing.

Wait a minute. “Are you guys skipping school too?”

“No. We were let out. Principal Marshalls said we might as well enjoy the day since everyone else is. We get credit for our classes though.”

“Oh,” I murmured. “So you don’t want to be around Larkins for the entire weekend?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” I was clueless.

“Because,” she paused, looking uncomfortable, “things might…you know…”

“Oh.” Understanding dawned. “Miss Molly, are you saying that you might be tempted for things to…progress?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, her body turning an alarming shade of red.

Angela and Kayden were—shockingly—silent. I can’t imagine what their advice would be.

“Do you want to…you know?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean it’s nice, right? I don’t really want to go to college a virgin and I only have one more year before I graduate, to…you know…”

“Practice?” Was that the word? It sounded cold.

“Yeah.”

“Molly,” I sat up, growing serious, “you can have sex when you want to have sex. I think that you need to be able to talk about sex before you have sex though.” She opened her mouth, but I continued, “You need to be able to talk about everything involved in having sex, without blushing.”

“There’s more than…?” The girl was seriously struggling.

“There’s contraception, STDs, positions—‘cause there’s a lot more than just the missionary position—oral sex…the list goes on and on.”

I really think Molly’s going to have a heart attack. She was hyperventilating.

I added softly, “Larkins is a great guy. If you don’t want it to…progress…just tell him. The guy’s crazy about you, he wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable at all. Trust me.”