TWENTY-TWO
“No.” My father’s response is absolute.
“Please?”
“No.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“She’s on the pill,” Alana says.
I set my fork down and press a hand to my forehead. I don’t know why I even asked him if I could stay the night with Samson. I should have just snuck out and come home before he woke up. But I’m trying not to break any of his rules.
Sara finished eating before this discussion started, but she looks like she’s enjoying it. She’s seated at the table with her knee pulled up to her chest, watching this conversation like we’re playing it out on a television. All she needs is a bag of popcorn.
“Does your mother let you spend the night with guys?” my father asks.
I laugh half-heartedly at that. “My mother didn’t care where I spent the night. I want you to care. I would just also appreciate it if you trusted me.”
My father runs a hand down his face like he doesn’t know what to do. He looks to Alana for answers. “Would you allow Sara to spend the night with Marcos?”
“Sara and Marcos spend the night together all the time,” Alana says.
I glance at Sara just as she perks up in her chair. “We do not.”
Alana rolls her head. “I’m not ignorant, Sara.”
There’s a look of complete surprise on Sara’s face. “Oh. I thought you were.”
I laugh at that, but no one else does.
With that news, my father somehow seems even more torn.
“Listen, Dad,” I say as gently as possible. “I wasn’t really asking you for permission. I was more or less telling you I’m staying at Samson’s house tonight as a courtesy because this is your house and I’m trying to be respectful. But it would make this a lot easier if you would just say okay.”
My father groans, falling back into his chair. “I’m so glad I punched that damn kid when I had the chance,” he mutters. Then he waves toward the front door. “Fine. Whatever. Just…don’t make a habit of this. And be home before I wake up so I can pretend tonight never happened.”
“Thank you,” I say, pushing back from the table. Sara immediately follows me out of the kitchen and up the stairs. When we get to my room, she falls onto the bed.
“I can’t believe my mother knows Marcos sleeps over sometimes. I thought we were really sneaky about it.”
“You might be sneaky, but you certainly aren’t quiet.”
She laughs. “I can’t let Marcos find out she knows. He likes the forbidden aspect of it all.”
I text Samson to let him know I’m definitely staying over, and then I open my closet door and stare into it. “What the hell do I wear?”
“I don’t think it matters. The goal is to end up in nothing by the end of the night, right?”
I can feel my skin begin to tingle with nervousness. I’ve had sex plenty of times, but never in a bed. Never fully naked. And definitely never with someone I care about.
Samson texts me back a fireworks emoji. I roll my eyes and slip my phone back into my pocket.
“Have you guys not had sex yet?” Sara asks.
I decide not to change clothes. I just throw a fresh T-shirt and a clean pair of underwear into my backpack. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“There hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for that,” I say. “We’re always with you and Marcos. And when we’re alone, we just…we’ve done other things. Just not that.”
“Marcos and I have sex all the time. We even had sex while y’all were getting tattoos last week.”
I look at her and wince. “In the back seat?”
“Yep. Twice.”
Gross. Samson and I had to ride home in that back seat.
“Are you going to give me all the details tomorrow? Or am I just getting another lame high five?”
Sara’s been patient with me considering how little I share about certain aspects of my life, and how blunt I am in other areas. “I’ll tell you everything,” I say, right before walking out of my bedroom. “Promise.”
“I want every detail! Take notes if you have to!”
Luckily, my father and Alana are no longer in the kitchen, so I slip out of the house without having to continue to discuss the fact that I’m having sex with my neighbor tonight. I am definitely not used to having a family who discusses every single thing out in the open like they do.
Samson is waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
“Desperate much?” I tease.
He kisses me and takes my backpack. “Eager.”
We begin walking toward Samson’s house. P.J. is following us, but Samson doesn’t have a dog bed for him. “P.J., go home.” I point to the stairs. P.J. pauses for a moment. I repeat myself, and then he finally turns and goes back up our stairs.
Samson slips his hand through mine and holds it until we’re in his house. He locks the front door behind him, sets the code on the alarm and then kicks off his shoes.
I look around, wondering where this is going to happen. How it’s going to happen. It feels a little weird knowing what’s coming. I prefer spontaneity over plans when it comes to sex. Dakota treated me like I was on a strict, rotating schedule.
“You thirsty?” Samson asks.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
He tosses my backpack against the wall next to his backpack. He grabs my hand and twists my wrist so that he can see my tattoo. It’s been a week since we got them and both of ours healed well. It kind of makes me want another one, but I feel like I need to wait until I have a reason. Getting one with Samson felt important. I’ll wait for another important life moment before getting a second one.
“It turned out really good,” he says, running his finger over it.
“You never actually said if you liked yours.”
“I told you I loved it the night I got it. I just didn’t say it with words.” He slides his fingers through mine and leads me up a set of stairs. When he opens the door to his room, he lets me walk in first.
The balcony doors are open and there’s a breeze blowing the sheer curtains into the room. The bed is perfectly made, and I still can’t get over how clean he keeps everything. Samson flips on a lamp by the bed.
“It’s pretty,” I say, walking toward the balcony. I step outside and glance over at my bedroom. I accidentally left the light on, so I have a clear view of my bed. “You can see straight into my room.”
Samson is next to me now. “Yeah, I know. You don’t leave that light on nearly enough.”
I look at him and he’s grinning. I shove him playfully in the shoulder and walk back into the bedroom. I make my way over to the bed and sit on the edge of the mattress.
I remove my shoes and then lie down on his bed and watch him. He walks slowly around the bed, staring at me from every angle.
“I feel like I’m being circled like I’m prey,” I say.
“Well, I don’t want to be the shark in this scenario.” Samson plops down next to me on the bed, holding his head up with his hand. “There. Now I’m plankton.”
“Better,” I say, smiling.
He brushes a strand of hair over my ear with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Are you nervous?”
“No. I feel comfortable with you.”
That sentence causes concern to briefly fall over his features—almost as if he finds it uncomfortable that I feel comfortable with him. But the look disappears as soon as it appeared.
“I saw that thought,” I say quietly.
“What thought?”
“The negative thought you just had.” I bring a finger to the spot between his eyebrows. “It was right here.”
He’s quiet as he digests my words. “For someone who doesn’t know a lot about me, you sure know a lot about me.”
“All the stuff you’ve kept secret from me isn’t really stuff that counts.”
“How do you know if you don’t know what secrets I’m keeping from you?” he asks.
“I don’t have to know anything about your past to know you’re a good person. I can tell by your actions. I can tell by the way you treat me. Why would it matter what kind of family you have, or how rich you are, or what the people in your past meant to you before I showed up?” That negative thought is back, so I take my finger and smooth out the wrinkles in his forehead. “Stop,” I whisper. “You’re too hard on yourself.”
Samson falls onto his back and brings his hands to his chest. He stares at the ceiling for a moment, so I scoot closer to him and lift my head up, resting it on my hand. I touch his necklace, then walk my fingers up his neck and begin tracing his lips.
He tilts his face toward mine. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this?”
His words are more of a question, so I immediately shake my head. “I want to.”
“It’s not fair to you.”
“Why? Because I don’t know everything about you?”
He nods. “I’m worried you wouldn’t be saying yes right now if you knew the whole truth about me.”
I press my lips to his, but only briefly. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m actually not,” he says. “I’ve just lived a dramatic life and you might not like it.”
“Same thing. We’re both dramatic because we have dramatic parents and dramatic pasts. We could be having dramatic sex right now if you’d stop feeling so guilty.”
He smiles. I sit up and take off my shirt. The worry in his eyes disappears as he slides me onto him so that I’m straddling him. He already feels ready, but he brings a hand up and traces a finger slowly over the lace edges of my bra like he’s in no hurry at all.
“I’ve only ever had sex in Dakota’s truck,” I say. “This will be my first time in a bed.”
Samson drags his finger down my stomach, stopping at the button on my shorts. “This will be my first time with a girl I have feelings for.”
I try to stay as stoic as him when he makes that declaration, but his words move through me so hard, I frown.
He brings his hand up to my mouth, sliding his fingers across it. “Why did that make you sad?”
I debate shaking my head to avoid answering that question, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned this summer, it’s that secrets aren’t really as valuable as I used to think they were. I go with honesty. “When you say things like that, it makes me dread when we have to say goodbye. I wasn’t expecting to end the summer with a broken heart.”
Samson tilts his head, looking at me with complete candor. “Don’t worry. Hearts don’t have bones. They can’t actually break.”
Samson rolls me onto my back and takes off his shirt, and that’s enough to appease me for about two seconds, but then my thoughts are right back to where they were before he got half naked.
He lowers himself on top of me, but before we kiss again, I say, “If there’s nothing inside a heart that can break, why does it feel like mine is going to snap in half when it’s time for me to move next month? Does your heart not feel like that?”
Samson’s eyes scroll over my face for a moment. “Yeah,” he whispers. “It does. Maybe we both grew heart bones.”
As soon as he says that, I grip the back of his neck and pull him to my mouth. I want to catch as many of those words as possible and trap them inside of me. His sentence lingers in pieces, like his words are floating around us, between us, and absorbing into me as we kiss.
He might be right. Maybe we did grow heart bones. But what if the only way of knowing you grew a heart bone is by feeling the agony caused by the break?
I try not to think about our impending goodbye, but it’s hard to experience something that feels this perfect without being acutely aware it’s about to be taken away.
Samson sits up on his knees. He fingers the button on my shorts until it pops open. He keeps his eyes on mine as he pulls down the zipper and begins to slide my shorts off me. I lift my hips and then my legs to help him get rid of them. He throws them aside and then takes a moment to soak up the sight of me. I like seeing myself through his expressions. He makes me feel prettier than I probably am.
He pulls the covers over us and lies down next to me while he removes his own shorts. It’s not uncomfortable in any way, so I have absolutely no hesitation when I remove my bra and panties. There’s a level of ease with him, like we’ve done this with each other a dozen times, but I’m filled with the anticipation of someone who has never experienced this at all.
When we’re completely naked under the covers, we face each other, both of us on our sides. Samson brings a hand to my cheek and rests it there softly. “You still seem sad.”
“I am.”
He runs his hand down my neck and over my shoulder. His eyes follow his hand, so he isn’t looking directly at me when he says, “Me, too.”
“Then why do we have to say goodbye? I can go to college and you can go to the Air Force Academy, but we can stay in touch and visit each other and—”
“We can’t, Beyah.” His eyes are back on mine when he says that, but then they flicker away and fixate on something else. “I’m not going to the Air Force. I was never going to the Air Force.”
His words and the expression on his face make my heart feel like it’s already starting to fracture. I want to ask him what he means but I’m too scared to know the truth, so the question never forms.
Samson sighs heavily and leans toward me. His grip on my arm tightens as he presses his lips to my shoulder. I squeeze my eyes shut when I feel his breath against my skin. I want so much from him right now. I want his honesty, but I also want his silence and his touch and his kiss. Something tells me I can’t have all of it. It’s either this moment or the truth.
He tucks his face in the crook of my neck. “Please don’t ask me what I mean by that, because if you do, I’ll be honest with you. I can’t lie to you anymore. But I want this night with you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”
His words roll over me like a wave, crashing against me with so much force, I wince. I run my hand through his hair and tilt my face until we’re looking at each other. “Will you be honest with me when we wake up tomorrow?”
Samson nods. He doesn’t even say yes out loud, but I believe him.
I believe him because he looks like he’s scared he might lose me. And he might. But he has me tonight and that’s all I really care about.
I kiss him to let him know the truth can wait until tomorrow. Right now, I just want to feel what I’ve always deserved to feel during sex—like my body is respected, and my touch has more than just a monetary value.
Samson pulls away long enough to grab a condom out of the bedside table drawer. He puts it on beneath the covers and then rolls back on top of me. He’s patient as he kisses me, waiting for just the right moment to push himself inside of me.
When it finally happens, he’s staring down at me, watching the expression on my face. I gasp, holding in all my breaths until we’re as connected as we can possibly be. He sighs shakily. Then, as he begins to pull out of me as slowly as he entered me, he rests his mouth against mine.
I moan when he pushes into me again, amazed at how new Samson makes this feel for me. There isn’t even a piece of me that doesn’t want to be here right now, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Samson rests his head against mine. “Does this feel okay?”
I shake my head. “It’s so much better than okay.”
I feel his laugh against my neck. “I agree.” His voice sounds strained, like he might be holding back because he’s scared I’ll break.
I press my mouth to his ear, dragging my fingers through his hair. “You don’t have to be careful with me.” I wrap my legs around him and kiss his neck until his skin breaks out in chills against my tongue.
My words make him groan, and then it’s like he suddenly comes to life. His mouth finds mine and he kisses me like he’s hungry and touches me like his hands are starving.
It somehow gets better with every passing minute. We find a rhythm with our bodies, a tempo with our kiss, and a cadence in our collective moans. It becomes everything I’ve never experienced during sex.
It becomes love.
Whatever tomorrow brings with his truth, I already know it won’t change what I feel for him, even though he’s convinced it will. I’m not sure he knows how much he means to me. Knowing I’m finally going to learn the full truth about him doesn’t feel threatening.
Samson makes me wonder if there’s a difference between a liar and a person who tells lies to protect someone from the truth.
Samson doesn’t feel like a liar to me. He feels protective, not dishonest.
And in this moment, Samson is being more honest than he’s ever been, and he’s not uttering a single word.
I’ve never felt more appreciated than I feel right now. Not only appreciated, but savored. Respected. Wanted.
Maybe even loved.