“Safer for what? I don’t have any diseases. Do you?”
In a scornful voice he said, “No. But they say you ought to act like everybody does, anyhow.”
I gave a deprecating laugh. “Oh, the things they teach you teenagers.”
Zach sighed and looked out the window. I asked, “Do you want me just to take you home?”
“You may as well. There’s really no place else to go.”
“Oh, be creative,” I suggested. “It’s suburbia. Parking lots are a dime a dozen.”
“We’ll get caught.”
“Not if we’re careful.” I turned onto the road toward the lake.
“I won’t last.”
I shot him a furtive glance. He sat with his knee against the dashboard, chewing the side of his thumbnail. “What?”
“I won’t last. It’ll be over in ten seconds. There’s nothing in it for you anyway.”
“Zach.” I laughed. “Is that the real reason? Is that why you’re so uptight about covering up? Because I swear you’re like Linus and his blanket with those things.”
“No,” he said, the disparagement thick in his voice. He cut a glance toward me. “It’s because I don’t want you to get
“I don’t want that any more than you do,” I told him coolly. “That’s why I went on the Pill.”
I turned the car into the deserted lot next to the lake and parked toward the back, near the woods. I laid a hand on his thigh and said, “Hey.”
He turned his face toward me.
“Why are you so moody?”
“Because thinking about cops and babies doesn’t turn me on.”
“Is something else the matter?”
“No. I’m just tense. I’m
I slid my hand beneath his hair and massaged the back of his neck. His skin felt warm, warmer to the touch than my own. For a moment he did not respond; then, not drowsily but deliberately, he closed his eyes. The tension in his neck dissipated beneath my fingers, but his body, even slouched low as it was, looked ready to spring. I rubbed my flat palm in small circles down his back. He curled forward in response, little by little, until his forearms rested against his thighs. His jeans puckered at the back of his slim waist, the bumps of his spine disappearing into the gathered elastic of his boxers.
“Do you remember,” I asked, “when I took you out for coffee, back before, and you rubbed my feet, and you asked me—”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to see what you would do.”
I grinned. “After I apologized a dozen times for that episode in the playhouse? That’s not very nice.”
He shrugged. His hair swung freely at the side of his face.
“The apology felt a little phony. I was curious what would happen if I pushed it.”
“Except I called your bluff.”
“It wasn’t a bluff. If it was, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
I stroked the small of his back, the skin so smooth it felt sculptural. “You’re right about that.”
He leaned his forehead against the dashboard and sighed. Then, extracting himself from my hands, he climbed over the center console into the backseat. The car rocked lightly on its shocks.
Twisting around to face him, I asked, “What are you doing?”
He loosened his belt and regarded me with an impatient gaze.
“You changed your mind?” I asked.
“You didn’t change yours.”
“I was just buying some time.”
He beat an edgy rhythm with his palms against the leather. “You want it or not? Because I really do have a ton of homework, and it’s getting late.”
I cringed. “Don’t say it like that. It sounds awful that way.”
“Is that a no?”
I should have affirmed that it was. I knew the full litany of what he did not want to do, and this was where it began. If there had remained any possibility that life could throw a cup of cold water in my face and reverse the course of things, it would have been that moment, that question.
Instead, I climbed into the back of the car.
And it was at that moment that I stopped being a woman who had made a series of exceedingly bad judgment calls, and became a child molester.
PART II:
