“Back off,” he replied sourly. He looked deep into my eyes and bit his lower lip to suppress yet another smile. “So kiss me then.”
They had a card table separating the kissers and the kissees, probably Ms. Rankin’s idea to deter any feel-ups if someone got carried away. I couldn’t reach him without him leaning over it, and since he wasn’t budging, I climbed up on top of it on my knees and grabbed him by the collar of his jersey.
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 want us back, 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 on me. 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 at our star 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, really kissing 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.
chapter
seven
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 th
an 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.