Addicted

He gave me a peck. A freakin’ peck on the forehead like my grandmother used to give me. I had my eyes closed in anticipation of a deep, passionate kiss and opened them full of disappointment.

He grinned. “Okay, there’s your kiss. Now beat it.”

I let go of his collar, and they all guffawed at me. I was about to get down off the table and sulk away, but something came over me. I grabbed his collar again, pulled his face to mine, and slipped him the tongue. He refused it.

“Kiss me, Jason!” I pleaded with my eyes, and then I saw it. A flicker in his eyes that told me everything I needed to know to let the rest of the words escape from my lips. “I’m so sorry for the way I treated you. I want you back. I wantusback, and I promise things will be different from now on.”

Chandler panicked and tried to pry my hands off him, but he knocked her hands away. “Jason, what is this shit? After the way she treated you, you’re just gonna take her back like that?”

Chandler must have been a psychic, because I was still waiting for a final decision on the matter.

Jason’s eyes and voice softened. “What makes you think things could be different?”

I took the plunge. Right there in front of the whole world. I took a quick survey and noticed all eyes were onme. Even Ms. Rankin was standing over against one of the other booths, smiling at me and raising her eyebrows in encouragement.

I took a short, restorative breath and blurted it out. “Because I love you, Jason. I always have. I want to marry you and make a son named Peter and look atourstar every night while I lie in your arms.” I couldn’t gauge the expression on his face, but I had to get it all out. “I’ve always loved you, even when we acted like we hated each other. I’m sorry for all the things I’ve done, but nobody’s perfect. I don’t know what else to say. I just—”

He put his finger on my lips and whispered, “Shhhh, it’s okay, Boo. I never expected you to be perfect. I never expected you to be anything but you, because it’s you, the real Zoe, that I’m so in love with.”

He grabbed the back of my head and started kissing me,reallykissing me, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I could hear people applauding and cheering and Chandler cussing and stomping off, but none of that mattered. Jason was showing me some affection, and I knew everything would be perfect from that moment on.

chapterseven

Our senior year in high school rolled around, and still no sex. Jason and I had been boyfriend and girlfriend for over three years, and it was killing me. We did a lot of making out; kissing, caressing, and things like that. He sucked my breasts and fingered me quite often, but refused to stick it in. He kept saying he wanted to wait until we were married. We planned to get married as soon as we graduated, attend the same university, and live happily ever after.

All my friends were jealous, thinking I was getting my freak on all the time, but truth be known, I was jealous as hell of them. They were getting sexed better than me. Brina was still knocking boots with Cordell. Hell, even my mother was getting some. She had a new man, Aubrey, that I had mixed feelings about. I missed my daddy terribly. No one and nothing could ever replace him but at the same time, my mother deserved to be happy, so I accepted it.

Looking back, all the signs of sexual incompatibility between Jason and I were there from day one. I just couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Love is indeed blind, and it makes you imagine qualities in a person that don’t exist. I used to tell myself that things would change in time. I convinced myself once we became sexually active, our sex life would be the bomb. I was more than ready to spring into action, reading any book or manual about pleasing a man sexually I could find.

Part of me wonders whether marrying Jason was the right thing. Then I think about how much fun he and I had together, how loving he was to me when my father died, how romantic he was during the years we dated, and it makes it all seem worthwhile. Besides, my love for him is real and it was the night of our senior prom when I realized that love would never die.

I was all decked out in a sexy, strapless red gown with a split going all the way up the back, showing off my welldefined legs. Jason looked too sexy for words in his black tux. My mother had taken some pictures of the two of us in our living room before she rushed off to work.“I have something for you!” Jason handed me a long round tube, capped at both ends. Color me stupid, but I was expecting a wrist corsage or some typical gift like that. Instead, I got a tube.

“What’s this,

baby?” I tried to hide my dismay. He saw right through me.

“Let’s sit down for a sec, Zoe.” He took my hand, led me to the big, fluffy armchair my daddy used to read to me in as a child, sat down, and then pulled me down onto his lap. “Now, Boo, open it and see what you got.”

I popped the cap off the end of the long cardboard tube,becoming more curious by the second. I reached in and pulled out several sheets of paper. It took me a moment to realize they were blueprints. Jason had taken quite an interest in architecture and planned to major in it.

“Blueprints, baby?”

He put his arm around my waist, pulled me closer into him and lightly kissed me on my bare shoulder. “Not just any blueprints. Spread them open.” He helped me to open them up and added, “I wanted to do something very special for you.”

“For me? Ooooh, the plot thickens!” I slipped my tongue into his mouth and gave him a long, passionate kiss. “Baby, I didn’t realize you actually knew how to draw blueprints already.”

“Well, they’re not perfect, nor totally to scale, but yes, I know how to.”

“What are they plans of?” I could make out the basic shapes and rooms but understood blueprints at the time about as much as I understood Japanese.

“Zoe, these are the plans for our dream house.”

“Word?” My smile was hanging so wide open, I looked like I had more teeth than a set of triplets.

“Word, Boo. One day, after we’re married, I’m going to build you this house so we can raise Peter in it and live happily ever after.” I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him with all the strength I could muster. He started pointing out certain things to me on the blueprints. “These are all skylights. Practically the whole house will have a glass ceiling, so we can see the stars from every room. So we can seeourstar.”

That was it! The moment I knew it was forever. Three significant things happened after that. We never made it to the restaurant to meet our friends for dinner; we never made it to the prom; and we made love for the very firsttime. The plans we had for waiting until after marriage became nothing more than a memory.

I was so overwhelmed by the blueprints, my heart started jumping out my chest. It was the single most romantic thing in the world to me. The mere fact Jason had spent so many hours designing the place where he wanted to build a life together made my love and admiration for him even stronger, made my desire to do something just as special for him flourish, made my pussy wet.

“Jason—” I started tugging at his bow tie, trying to get it unfastened.

“Yes, Boo?” He grabbed hold of my wrist, trying to get me to stop. “What are you doing? We have to meet Brina, Cordell, and the others at the restaurant in twenty minutes.”

I got up off his lap and stood in between his legs, carefully placing the blueprints on the coffee table. “Fuck them.” After grabbing both his hands and pulling him up off the chair, I added, “Better yet, fuck me.”

Jason took a double take at me, trying to come up with a response. “Zoe, you’re trippin’.” He slightly pushed me aside with his chest so he could make a path to the door. “Come on, baby. Let’s go! We’re going to be mad late!”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I finally got up the nerve to stand my ground. “I’m not leaving this house until you make love to me.”

He turned to face me, a perplexed look on his face. “Zoe, why are you doing this? We agreed we would wait until after we got married to make love.”

I walked over to him, reached my hands into the opened jacket of his tux, and placed them around his waist so I was pressed as close against him as I could possibly get. His body was so incredibly warm, and I craved to feel him inside me. “Don’t you want me, Jason?”

I didn’t look at him, afraid I might see a look of rejection in his eyes. Instead, I rested my head against his chest, taking special care not to get lipstick on his crisp white shirt. “Baby, you know I want you. Don’t be ridiculous.”

As I began to run my fingertips up and down his spine, I lowered my voice to almost a whisper for no other reason than it seemed appropriate at that moment. “Then why can’t we make love right here? Right now? We’ve waited so long. It’s driving me crazy.”

“I know, Boo, but it won’t be that much longer. We graduate in a few months.”