Wild Reckless

He doesn’t finish his words, instead sucking in his bottom lip, letting his teeth hold it in place while his head falls to mine one last time.

“So are you,” I say, letting myself have something I want, say something I mean—something risky and scary.

When Owen’s eyes close completely and his smile slowly pulls his lips loose from his teeth, I understand what the rest of that sentence is.

Everything.

Owen Harper is everything.

Chapter 13

“So?” Willow says, her face full of nosey curiosity while she watches me climb into her car.

“So…what?” I respond. I’m not going to make this easy.

“Come on!” she says with a laugh while she backs down my driveway. “You can’t text me that you kissed Owen, and then pretend it never happened! You ignored every single follow-up text and my two phone calls after that. You’re a bad bomb dropper. No cleanup afterward. Like…at all!”

I giggle, and the sound of happiness coming from my mouth is nice, foreign…but nice. It’s a sound I haven’t made in a while. “You kissed him. You know what it’s like. What’s to tell?” I tease, moving my book bag into my lap and pulling my gloves out to slip on my hands.

“Kens, I was fourteen when I kissed him. We were still dancing with bent elbows and rocking back-and-forth in the school gym at that time. I’ve seen that boy kiss now, and trust me—it’s different! I want deets,” she says.

“Deets?” I say, slowly, one eyebrow cocked in her direction.

“Gahhhhh! Details. Deets! Don’t make fun of my hip language, now spill it!” Willow’s gum snaps, and I study her for a few seconds while she signals at the light and turns down the street to our school. She’s so different from Morgan and Gaby. They both come from money, lots and lots of money. My family was comfortable middle class, sure. But I also used to have to listen to my mom dodge creditors and argue with my dad over bills. Those conversations never happened in my friends’ worlds. And while I always found Morgan and Gaby to be more down-to-earth than the rest of our peers at Bryce, that feeling of not being a real member of their club was always there—even with Gaby. Willow looks like someone I’m supposed to know, like the friend that perhaps I was always supposed to have.

Like someone I can trust.

“How long have you been with Jess?” I ask, changing the subject, but with a reason.

“Uhhhh, like, more than a year. Why? Is this still about that thing Ryan said? That I’m into Owen? Kens, you know I’m not…” she says, and I interrupt.

“No, no. I know, I was just curious,” I say, leaving my gaze on her. I bite at the inside of my mouth, a little nervous to push our friendship. “Have you and Jess….you know?”

I know she knows what I mean. I can tell by the way her eyebrows flare quickly, and the way she adjusts her grip on the steering wheel.

“Uhm, you did only kiss him, right? I mean…was there…more?” she asks, and I correct this quickly.

“Yeah, I mean no. I mean…yes, just a kiss. We just kissed,” I say. My armpits are actually sweating, and my chest is pounding, I’m so uncomfortable. I’ve only ever talked about things like this with Gaby. She had a lot of…experience, clearly more than I was aware of, and now she’s gone. And I have so many questions. “It’s just…I like him, Will. I like him…a lot. I’m pretty sure I’ve never liked a boy like this. No…I know I haven’t. And he’s…”

“You’re afraid he’s going to try to push you too fast?” she asks, and I feel silly just hearing it out loud.

“Oh wow. I’m seriously living an after-school special, huh? Uhhhhhhg!” I say, throwing my face in my hands. I feel a little ridiculous, and presumptuous that I’m even thinking about things like Owen and sex at all. But I am. I’m thinking about it, about a me and Owen, down the road, when sex might enter into the picture. And when I think of that, I start to think that for him—a guy like Owen—sex is probably already in the picture. And then I replay that thing he said, the night at the party, when he accused me of having a problem with people having sex. I’m such a fucking prude!

“I just like him, Will. I like him a lot, and I’ve never…” All of my attention goes to my lap, to my fingers that I’m picking at, to my knee bouncing up and down.

“This summer,” she says, and I stop breathing, waiting for the rest. “Jess and me, our first time was this summer. I wanted to wait. And really?” She pauses, looking to the left at our school while we wait at the light, Jess’s car parked in its usual spot. “I wanted to wait more. I mean…I don’t regret it. But I wasn’t really ready.”