4. Second Base and Risque Dreams of... You know who. Not Heather.

I told my mom it was a sleepover at Steve’s. She really likes Steve, after chatting it up with his mother at her new church this month. But Steve is not at all the good Catholic his folks believe they brought up. He’s the one that turned me on to Heather in the first place, cluing me in to the rumor that she was interested. He talks non-stop about her ‘rockin bod’, always digging for details, even though we just met a few months ago and we are not at all that close. I try to keep things fairly vague and polite while still trying to fit in and find common interests with him, but when I asked him to cover for me tonight…

He guessed in a second where I was going. “Fuck yeah I will cover! I’ll lie my lily ass off! But tomorrow, I want details.”

“No! And there’s not gonna be any… We’re just... studying. But at her place, and my mom doesn’t really like her so…”

“Get it good, newbie,” he sees right through the excuse. “’Cause if you don’t… you know.”

“Know what?”

“Uh, she’ll get bored and dump your ass, obviously. Heather Morris only invites a guy over to her place for one reason. You gotta show her you’re a man--”

“Gotta go now. Thanks. Bye.” I hang up and check my room, paranoid that my mom might walk in and see this mortified blush twisting up my expression. She’s bound to ask what Steve and I were really talking about then, dig into where I’m really headed tonight.

I hope Steve actually keeps to his word when she calls him tonight to check in. I could have just snuck out my window after midnight again, but it’s an hour long bike ride to Heather’s house, and this way we get to have dinner together first, before… Steve would call it ‘the main event’. I feel like I am going to hell just thinking of it so casually.

I’ve been avoiding church recently. Dad doesn’t go anymore, and mom doesn’t force us. Even before we moved, ever since middle school really, I just… I know the Catholic church is not the Westboro baptists, but the more I study of the human form-- (just for my art to be clear! I’m not a porn addict or anything) but… I really do not want to go to confession, especially not these days, after meeting Luc – I mean, sneaking into his club with fake ID’s, drinking and making out with a girl I just met. The sinful thoughts… they feel good, and I don’t want to start rambling about it with some old guy priest who doesn’t even know me.

My unrepented crime streak continued this week in an actually serious way. I was too embarrassed to buy condoms, so I just stole a pack off the shelves at work. I know theft is even worse than the lying and the impure thoughts, but it is Heather Morris.

I’ve never even had a girlfriend before this, and now we’re going from zero to full throttle.

There’s no other images in my mind these days. I get why the renaissance painters and the Greek sculptors all focused on the naked human form so much. It’s all consuming. The fact that she’s not wearing a bra when she opens the door. The fact that she made it clear that her dad won’t be home at all, out of town for work the entire weekend. The fact that she’s fine with ordering take-out and eating it right on the couch while she turns on another R rated movie: The Babysitter of all things… Steve was right about where this is headed.

“Would you try to invite yourself in if I was watching someone else’s kids?” she teases.

“No. Never.” Was that the wrong answer? What would be the flirty, confident, boyfriend thing to say? “I mean…” Definitely not that.

“I’d never take a bubble bath that near a strange pair of eight year olds,” she asserts.

“I’d be right there with you.”

“In the bath?”

“No! Right there with you like ‘I agree’--”

“Uh-huh. Well, there’s no kids stepping in now. It’s just you and me…”

That’s it right there. You couldn’t send a clearer invitation than that look. Now’s the moment where I have to ‘prove I’m a man’-- Get Steve the hell out of your head and just focus on Heather! I command myself.

I lean right in and kiss her, and she welcomes it gladly. She pushes me back onto the couch, and she presses down on top of me with her spreading thighs, and my fumbling hands wind up on her ass and breasts--

She catches my wrist. “And now I’m thinking of Brad.”

I blush bright red, pulling back. “Sorry. Should have asked--”

“Nothing less sexy,” she disagrees. “I’m just not sure I want you to feel how hard my nipples are yet…”

She can feel how hard I’m getting, pushing up between those open thighs, even as the sound of Alicia Silverstone screaming in the background kind of ruins the mood.

Heather mutes the TV, looking right in my eyes with her tone gone suddenly serious. “I really like you, you know.”

“And I like you.” I sound like a grade schooler. “More than like. I--” Whoa, slow down, psycho. You defiantly don’t love her. You barely know her and… What the hell do I say here?

“I like the way you don’t seem to notice how all the other girls stare at you,” she whispers, running her thumb over my lips as I blush bright red. “When I saw you in the cafeteria talking to those other guys, shooting me that quickest little glance…” She grins, then it dies. “I know what they say about me. But Brad is an ass. I never wanted to… and I don’t just go around…”

“I know,” I insist.

“I hope so. You’re way different from those jerks. You’re artsy, and deep, and I know you’re not just looking for someone ‘easy’, right?”

“No! I like you because you’re smart and funny and…” Hot, and experienced, and forward, and other compelling, attractive things I am not supposed to say out loud, or even think about.

“So... you’re fine if we just spend tonight watching the movie?” I feel a surge of half disappointment and half bizarre relief, giving an emphatic nod. “Well don’t get too excited,” she criticizes. “I still want to unzip these jeans and see how big that dick is straining for release…” Fuck. Is that a cue? Should I unzip? I definitely feel as if I am about to erupt soon and I’d be a total loser if I did it inside my pants... “I saw in your bag that you bought the XL condoms…”

Turn on fading beneath the tidal wave of self-conscious panic now. I didn’t even read the package, didn’t think about there being sizes… Heather’s not mocking me yet, but she will be if I actually take it out and she realizes--

“Okay, okay. I’ll stop torturing you,” she laughs, climbing off of me and settling in at my back. “My point was I want to make love, all romantic, like in the movies. That’s why I don’t want to do it right now on a couch in my dad’s basement.”

“Okay.” I wish she’d stop stroking her fingers through my hair then, giving those little kisses near my collarbone and keeping my temperature steadily climbing.

“I always wanted to lose my virginity on prom night. Like Sixteen Candles. You know?”

“Sure.” Even though she’s already lost it, not even with Brad, with that older guy Steve mentioned, the college kid.

“So buy me a corsage, and we can go to this dance, book a hotel room…” I do not have the cash for that. Not even close. But I don’t want to admit that and ruin this for her. “You ever been with someone, closer than this?” she most tactfully pries with thumb stroking teasingly low on my stomach. This is the part where I lie and say yes. As the guy you’re supposed to be the one who takes the reins and-- “You haven’t, right?” I guess it’s written on my red-hot face, and she smiles all the broader, kissing my cheek. “I knew it. I just knew. And it’s perfect. Seriously, so let me be your first. And we can make it really special, and we’ll pretend I’ve never been there either… and you can stop staring at Alicia Silverstone’s tits.”

“Sorry.” I force my eyes away from the muted fantasy playing out on screen. “But we should maybe pick a different movie.”

“No, I like staring at her. It turns me on. Wouldn’t you love to watch the two of us make out?”

Uh… no. But that was just another one of her bizarre tests, and she slaps me on the shoulder. “Oh my God, your face! Brad would have been nodding like ‘duh. Yeah,’” she imitates his dumb, caveman voice. “But you’re committed to intimate scenes of one on one, correct?” She dons a Victorian style accent.

“I just… I really like you,” is all I can stupidly get out.

“And I like to get you flustered, so maybe take me back to that nightclub this week and show me some of your dance moves already. Otherwise I’ll have to spend the whole night dancing with Mr. tall dark and sexy again.”

I blush all the hotter at the image. “I can dance,” I assure her. “And prom will be… It will be great.”

“Good.” She starts making out with me again, but the rules are second base only for tonight and nothing below the belt.

I’m fine with that. It makes my fantasies all the more fulfilling as I picture our prom night just a few weeks from now…

I have a dream of Luc drilling into Heather in the backseat of our limo, taunting me in the aftermath, “Brad was right. She’s a bad lay. Not worth it, Julian.”

I start awake from that nightmare and hurry over to the bathroom to change out of my cum-stained boxers before mom comes to check on me.

Getting back in through the window at 3 AM without setting off the neighbor’s dog was a major challenge. Didn’t leave much time for sleep, though with the things I was dreaming... Maybe I’m just afraid of losing Heather. That’s got to be it, right?

But if that’s the case…

Why am I so eager to take her right back to Club Noctus the very first chance I get?