Free Purity by Jackson Pearce Page A

water?”
    “Oh, yeah. Hang on.” Daniel pauses the movie. I grab my cell phone and dial Ruby as soon as he’s out the door.
    “I’m at Daniel’s,” I whisper.
    “Huh? Oh!” Ruby says, giggling. “How’s it going, Aphrodite?”
    “Awful, we’re just watching a DVD.”
    “Try lying down.”
    “What?”
    “Well, you’re on a floor or the couch or something, right?”
    “Yeah, a futon.”
    “Try lying down on him. Like, pretend to be tired. Come on, Shelby, you’ve got some natural seduction techniques in there somewhere.”
    When I hear Daniel’s footsteps, I hang up on Ruby and silence my cell phone. I inhale quickly and lie down, takingup the entire futon and lifting my arms over my head so a line of skin is showing between my shirt and jeans. I always see girls doing it in movies. There’s got to be at least
some
truth to the trick.
    “Here you go,” Daniel says. I catch his eyes darting down to my waist as I raise a hand to take a sip of the water I didn’t really want. I don’t make a move to let him back on the couch. Daniel analyzes my position for a moment, then, without so much as a shrug, sits on the floor, leaning his back against the futon. He grabs the remote and hits play.
    Damn.
    Daniel’s head is right about where my neck is. I sigh.
    “So… any conventions lately?” I ask.
    “Huh? Ah, no, not really. I went to a big one in Atlanta a while back, but that’s pretty much it. I’m taking the stagecraft class next semester, though.”
    “Oh, finally fit it into your schedule?”
    “Yeah. It’ll be fun,” he says without looking back at me.
    “Sounds like it…”
Now take my clothes off, Daniel.
    I inhale and let my fingertips slide forward toward the nape of his neck and stiffly touch the tips of his hair. Daniel tenses for a moment, then leans backward slightly. He turns his head toward me.
    “Wait… what are you doing?”
    “I, um…” This is the death trap I was afraid of. If I say, “I just need to have sex with you once, that’s it,” then he’ll likely say no. If I pretend that I’m interested in getting back together, then I’m a horrible human being.
    “Nothing,” I say quickly. “I just… there are some things about our relationship that I miss.”
Ooh, good one. Nice and vague.
    “Okay…” Daniel says slowly, but even as he does, his head sinks farther back, until my fingers are fully entwined in his hair. Truthfully, it feels kind of gross. He should probably wash it more often.
    Shut up
, I tell my inner voice. You’re not after him for the hair. You just need to have sex with him. It’ll take, like, a minute, probably.
    I lean over and tug on his arms, urging him to join me on the futon. In a tangle of arms and legs involving a lot of “Oh, sorry” and “Hang on, let me move my arm/leg/hip/foot,” he does so, and a sweet five minutes later we’re lying side by side on the futon. The musical number ends in the background.
    “So, was this the only real reason you came over? Because you missed… um… me?”
    I pause. “Something like that. Well…” Maybe honesty will work? Or something close to honesty, I mean. “I haven’t dated anyone since you, and I was just thinking maybe we could… do this for a while…” I let a hand run up his thin chest as I say it, and he gets chill bumps.
    “Right,” he says, breathing heavily. His breath smells like Cheetos, but I kiss him.
    It’s just like I remember—not a bad kiss, but not a great one, either. He could put a little more force behind his lips, I think, and I wish he’d shaved before I came over; the speckling of facial hair scratches the skin around my mouth.Whatever—I pull him closer to me and don’t protest when he puts a hand on my lower back, underneath my shirt. We kiss for a while longer, and finally I decide I’m going to have to take some initiative here. I sit up and pull off my shirt, leaving only the camisole and boring, nonlace bra underneath. He doesn’t seem