Free Zarr, Sara - Sweethearts by Sweethearts

someone was supposed to be about intimacy and trust along with feeling good. The point was sharing something with the other person, making this special connection you weren't making with someone else. That's what my mom always said, anyway. Mostly, though, I went inside myself while I experienced it all -- his hands on me and mine on him, his mouth, the warm climby floating, the intensity and release. I stayed utterly silent through it all, eyes shut, concentrating and not wanting it to ever be over and at the same time wanting it done. It was not unlike the way I always wanted food to last forever while also being anxious for it to be gone so that I could breathe again and go on with my life. Afterward I curled into a ball alongside Ethan with my forehead on his chest. He pulled me close. "Was that okay?" he whispered. I nodded against him. "Are you sure? We kind of bent the rules, and . . . Well, I don't want it to be like you felt like you had to or something." "Ethan, I wanted to," I muttered. "It was good." "Okay." He tucked the blankets around my shoulders. Milhouse stretched and jumped off the bed. "Because you seemed kind of, I don't know. Far away." I thought about that, and what I should say back that wouldn't make Ethan feel bad or make me sound weird, but then we heard the garage door go up and scrambled to realign all our clothes and arrange ourselves in a convincing configuration of textbooks and school binders. By the time his mom poked her head in his room, we were calmly discussing The Old Man and the Sea with the door open. "Hi guys, I'm home." She scanned the room, as if looking for evidence of something. Fortunately Ethan never made his bed so it didn't look any more or less disheveled than usual. "Are you saying for dinner, Jenna?" "No, thanks, Mrs. Green," I said, closing the book I'd just opened, as if exhausted from an hour of studying. "I actually have to get home." Ethan walked me out to my car. "I didn't mean to be an ass," he said, holding the door while I climbed in the driver's seat. "About Cameron, I mean." "I know." "Just... you know. I think he likes you." I laughed it off. "No, he doesn't. Not like that." Ethan couldn't possibly understand it, what Cameron and I meant to each other and how different it was from anything like romance or a crush. "Pick me up tomorrow?" "Tomorrow is Saturday, silly. But you're coming over tomorrow night, remember?" He glanced toward the house. "My parents are leaving at six, then Carly and Hannah are getting picked up at six-thirty, so you could come at seven or something?" "Okay," I said. He bent down to give me a slow, sweet kiss, and I drove off. The farther away I got from Ethan's house, the more I felt lost. I wanted to go back and see him again, or drive by Steph's, or even call Katy. The things that made up my life as Jenna Vaughn seemed slippery and uncertain. I didn't go back to Ethan's, though, because I thought it would seem weird or needy, and really it wasn't Ethan per se that I wanted, more the idea of him and the fact of us being a couple. I didn't drive by Steph's because I could tell she sensed something about me and Cameron I wasn't ready to tell her. And I didn't call Katy because I knew she'd only want to talk about how to get Cameron to like her. Mom and Alan couldn't make me feel unlost, either. I was almost certain now that Mom never really believed Cameron was dead. She was smart, she was a nurse, and she knew what he meant to me. If she'd believed the story about Cameron she would have found out more and talked to me about it. I knew she'd lied, but I didn't know how to ask for the truth. Right as I was thinking these things, I drove by Smith's, i circled the block and pulled into the lot. I stayed parked for a few minutes, trying to talk myself out of what I was about to do, but soon the automatic doors were swishing open and I checked out the situation. The store was crowded with moms doing predinner shopping, and lots of their loud