Free A Thin Line by DL White

it felt. Preston laughed and laid next to me, pulling me back toward him and wrapped me in his arms until I stopped shaking and my breathing returned to normal and I could stop saying, "oh my God," over and over.
    "Did you like that?"
    I didn't mean to laugh in his face, but it seemed like a crazy question to me. "Are you kidding? Did you hear me screaming?"
    "Yeah, I heard you," he said, a cheesy grin on his lips. "I just wanted to hear you say it was good."
    I was lightheaded, so I'm sure I sounded all dreamy when I assured him. "It was good, baby. So good."
    "That makes me happy," he said softly, stroking my cheek. "I have something to tell you."
    "What? Something bad?"
    "No. Just that... we've been together a while now... but we've been hanging out longer, so I've known this for a long time, but... I love you. A lot. And I want you to love me. And–"
    I stopped his ridiculous ramble with a kiss. When our lips parted, I said, "If you don't know by now that I love you, then you are a really dense boy."
    He laughed a deep hearty laugh that warmed my heart every time I heard it.  "I mean… I had an idea..."
    "But you wanted to hear me say it?"
    "Yeah."
    "Well, I love you. More than anything." I pulled him toward me and he wrapped his arms around me again.  "You’re the only person I’ve ever been with. And I’m the only person you've ever been with. I think I never want to love anyone else. That's a crazy thing to say, huh? Am I scaring you?"
    Preston hesitated to answer, but then shrugged. "Nah. I'm not scared."
     
     
    We had managed to keep our relationship under wraps for a long time. Only Nate and Morgan knew we were dating. Our parents definitely couldn't know, otherwise they'd never let us hang out alone together.  After Preston got the Jeep, everything changed.
    I came home one night, after helping Morgan write a paper for English class, to find both my parents sitting at our kitchen table. My dad pointed to a chair and said, simply, "Sit."
    I dropped my book bag and sat, with some idea of what this talk was going to be about. My mom had been hinting that maybe Preston and I were getting too close, spending too much time together, were too attached.
    "What's up?" I asked, looking from my mom to my dad and back.
    "This," my dad said, dumping a gallon sized Ziploc bag onto the table. My eyes slammed shut and then automatically reopened. It was a bag of condoms. "You're doing the city or you're supplying the city. Either way, we need to talk."
    The condoms were more important to me than to Preston so I always made sure to get them. Otherwise, like our first time, he would use the first thing he got his hands on. I learned from Morgan that we could get condoms from a number of clinics, no questions asked. Every time I went downtown for some reason, I went to one of three clinics and picked up a handful. I had the nurses convinced I was handing them out at school. Maybe I got a little carried away with collecting them, but we were always protected.
    "Baby… are you and Preston having sex?" My mom asked, her voice shaking.  
    "We're obviously being careful," I answered without really answering, nodding toward the bag. "How did you find that? It was pretty well hidden in my room."
    "Actually, it was in the back of Preston's Jeep," my dad said. "Thomas took it in for maintenance, opened rear door and it was like a sex den back there. Preston fessed up, that you and he had been… together.”
    I laughed without meaning to. It was never like a sex den in the back of the Jeep. We were always careful to put the seat back up, fold the blanket and pick up any wrappers. I always made Preston pick up every scrap and take the used condom with him. We couldn't risk our parents finding out that we were doing it at home.
    "Eric." My mom rolled her eyes at my dad. "Thomas said he found a condom wrapper stuck to the blanket under the seat. He kept looking and then he found the bag. He let us know because... well you're our