Free All of You by Christina Lee

that,” Rachel said, laughing. She was busy making eyes at a prospect across the
     
café. She was in constant player mode. I paled in comparison to her antics. She had something to prove,
     
and I had something to . . . avoid. Ella grabbed my hands. “Do you have feelings for this guy?”
     
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said. Then I saw the look on Rachel’s face. The one that said that our
     
solidarity would be ruined if I said yes. “Of course not. Other than lust.”
     
“Okay, pretend Rachel’s not here and your slut-o-meters are not in mutual heat,” Ella said, shooting
     
daggers at our other friend. “You are so feeling something. You just don’t want to admit it.”
     
“Does it really matter?” I huffed. “I’m a train wreck. You’ve said so yourself.”
     
“As a joke, yes. You’re so not,” Ella squeezed my hand. “You just think you are, asshead.”
     
“She kind of is .” Rachel snickered with those disgustingly perfect pouty lips.
     
Rachel’s story was different than mine. She’d been in a five-year relationship with her first love.
     
They got engaged and she joined him at an out-of-state college, then she realized that she just wasn’t
     
ready for the ’burbs and marriage. She broke it off with him and moved back home to attend the local
     
university.
     
We met Rachel at a party last year. The same drunk guy was trying to hook up with both of us—
     
together, I might add—and instead of Rachel’s claws coming out, as might be the case with other girls,
     
we laughed it up and decided to play a little prank.
     
Rachel was decidedly more evil than I was. She got the guy naked and horny as hell in one of the
     
frat bedrooms. Then she hid his clothes instead of coming to find me, which was what she told him
     
she’d be doing. He was ready for a ménage à trois and what he got was a limp dick and a bunch of jocks
     
razzing him.
     
Rachel admitted to blazing through all the men she hadn’t been able to have for the last five years.
     
Ella thought she was still in love with her ex-boyfriend, but she’d never admit it. I assumed she just
     
needed a break to grow up a little and figure things out. She wasn’t into talking about feelings, so we
     
kept things light—when it came to discussing her life, at least. But she was funny as hell and great for
     
comic relief.
     
“Besides, how totally cool would it be to bed a virgin?” Rachel’s eyes gleamed with something I recognized—the hunt. “Teach him what to do. He’d be like an eager puppy, wanting to please the hell
     
out of you.”
     
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve already been with a virgin,” I said. “Gavin, my boyfriend in high
     
school?”
     
“Yeah, but that was different. You both were virgins. Neither one of you knew what the hell you
     
were doing.”
     
“How did I end up friends with the two of you?” Ella rolled her eyes. “You’re both full of shit, no
     
matter how many boys you mess around with.”
     
Ella was always telling us how we were both just running away from our own hearts. More of her
     
psychology bullshit.
     
“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, taking a huge breath. “That boy knows how to kiss—he’s no virgin
     
in the tongue department.”
     
“That’s a damn good sign,” Rachel said, high-fiving me. “Wear that boy’s defenses down.”
     
As I imagined Bennett’s tongue tangling with mine, a heat wave broke out over my skin. I also
     
entertained thoughts of what might have happened had we not had to stop the other night.
     
I was bummed that I wouldn’t be feeling those lips, those strong arms, or that sinful body of his
     
again. It was more than that, but I’d never come clean to Rachel. To anybody, really. But I also enjoyed
     
Bennett, the person—his sense of humor, his taste in music and movies, that look in his eyes when he
     
described his art.
     
But that still didn’t change the fact that we