Free Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop Page A

okay?”
    I frowned, then gasped as I realized how he knew this.
    “Because you had sex here with Catalina? That’s how you know they’d be okay with us being up here?”
    Michael lifted his arm and I could see his teeth were gritted and his jaw tight. “No,” he said.
    I was relieved—but only for about a second. Then I made myself ask the question I felt compelled to the same way you can look at a roaring fire and think, What if I stuck my hand in here …despite knowing the result.
    I asked, “But you did have sex with her, right?”
    “Yes. Last summer. And believe me, it did not require a tense series of negotiations to accomplish it,” he snapped.
    I burst into tears. I don’t know what hurt more, the knowledge that my foolish jealous fears had not been so foolish after all or that my sense of timing and self-preservation was so off I had invited the confirmation.
    “Georgie, it was before I even knew you existed,” he began, sounding slightly less defensive, and he turned to the wall for a moment. Then he sat up and said softly, “Georgie, please, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about it being easier.” He reached for me and I let him pull me into his arms.
    We leaned back against the pillows and I snuffled through my tears, “I shouldn’t have asked, at least not now.”
    “You do know how to kill a mood,” he agreed, but he ruffled my hair with is fingers so I hoped he wasn’t mad anymore.
    “Have you been with anyone besides … besides Catalina?”
    “No,” he said into my hair. “Never even tempted.”
    “Well, I haven’t been with anyone before, so this is kind of a big deal for me.”
    He nodded and assured me, “I get that.”
    “I don’t want to do anything to upset your family again and … and I don’t … ” I hesitated but he nodded at me again, once, so I admitted in my smallest voice, “I don’t want to be bad at this.”
    I felt a laugh rumble in his chest. “How would you be bad at it?”
    “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
    He kissed the crown of my head and laid his cheek against it and I was really glad that I had showered before dinner. “Being disappointed is the last thing I’m worried about. I’m pretty sure I’m going to like it, Georgie. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to want to do anything else for, like, the next week and a half.”
    “That’s a lot to live up to.”
    He sat up and turned so that he was facing me. He wiped the last tears off my face with his thumb and told me, “It was one time with Catalina. I never really cared about her in that way. She was there, and I was curious. I didn’t feel about her at all the way I feel about you. I’ve never felt about anybody the way I feel about you.”
    I whispered, “Me either. And that scares me.”
    “Me, too.”
    He pulled me to him and we lay with our arms wrapped around each other in silence. It was so quiet that I could hear the clock ticking on the nightstand, until Michael said, “It’s okay … if you don’t feel right about doing anything with my parents down the hall.” I nodded against his chest and he kissed my head again. “My mom and dad are driving back to Longbourne tomorrow but we can stay here, ourselves, tomorrow night. Just us.”
    “I’d like that.”
    We kissed, but much more slowly and softly than we had been a few minutes ago, when both of us were trying to chew each other’s mouths off.
    “I’m sorry,” I said after a few minutes of this less terrifying restraint.
    “Some things are worth waiting for,” he said to reassure me.
    “You don’t have to leave for your room, you know. We could just stay like this?” I suggested.
    He frowned for a moment in consideration before admitting, “I’m not sure I can. Even if you put on that awful PETA T-shirt again, I’ll still remember what you look like underneath it. And that will make it very hard to sleep.”
    I blushed and he sat up, collecting himself for a moment before kissing my