It took me far too long to mutter, “No, I haven’t.”
“Huh,” he whispered, as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard. “No dating, no boyfriends…” Calum trailed off, and because he was a guy, I knew exactly where his mind went. “Hold on, does that mean you’re a…”
I toyed with the long sleeves on my sweater, the cool night air blowing a gentle breeze around me, caressing my skin. I stared off to the side, at the trees the hanging lights were strung to; anywhere but Calum. To look him in the eye right now would be horrifying. I said nothing, hoping he’d drop it, because it wasn’t something I was comfortable talking about.
But, because Calum was a man, and men were all about the sex, he finished, “A virgin?”
I didn’t look at him, didn’t respond. In fact, my legs stopped walking, causing him to continue on without me for a few moments before realizing I’d stopped.
“Hey,” he said, his tone softening as he returned to my side, standing before me, all but forcing me to look at him. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I said nothing. I knew there was nothing wrong with being a virgin, just like there was nothing wrong with sleeping with whoever you wanted. This was the twenty-first century; as long as it was consensual, your choices were your own.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel like, again, I wasn’t good enough, mortified that Calum knew this fact about me.
“Bree,” he said. “Look at me.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to do anything but that.
And yet, slowly but surely, my eyes moved to look at him, my head tilting up just a bit to accommodate the height difference between us. The way he stared at me made my breath catch in my throat, my airways close up and heat to flood my body. He didn’t look at me like he was laughing at me, like he thought less of me. I…I didn’t know what he was trying to say with that expression, only that I knew he was trying to make me feel better.
“I know what you’re probably thinking,” he said, and before I could say anything, he went on, “well, now you’re probably thinking that there’s no way I could know you well enough to predict what’s going on in that head of yours, but that’s beside the point.”
Damn. He was good.
Calum took a tiny step closer, angling his head down to stare at me with eyes full of emotion. His almost white hair reflected the light from above, his blue gaze sparkling as he looked down upon me. “I’m not making fun of you, I’m not laughing at you.” He paused before saying, “And now, of course, I know I shouldn’t have brought it up. There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, Bree. Nothing at all.”
I knew that already, but still. Beyond the fact that I felt broken, I also felt like, these days, it was a given to toss your virginity away. Everyone was all about sexual empowerment nowadays; it was like the other side of the coin was completely forgotten about. It was okay to sleep with whoever you wanted, but it was also okay not to, to save yourself, to wait.
That still didn’t change my opinion on the male gender, though. Girls were usually the ones who wanted to wait. I couldn’t say whether I’d heard of many guys keeping their virginity on purpose.
Calum might say it was okay to be a virgin, but I bet he could never be with one. I bet he could never date one, because that would mean no sex. For a guy who’d had sex in the past—and a handsome face like his surely had a lot of it—it would be next to impossible to go on without.
Or maybe that was just me trying to rationalize why Calum and I would never work. Just one of the many, many reasons.
“You don’t believe me,” Calum spoke after silence overtook us for a few minutes. “You think I’m just saying this stuff to try to make you feel better, don’t you?”
I shrugged. I hated that this guy could predict my thoughts so well. It was ridiculous.
“Of course, I want to make you feel better,” Calum admitted, his hands tapping his sides. “So that’s part of it, yeah, but that’s not all of it. I’m not a liar, Bree. I mean everything I say. I want you to know that.”
I tore my gaze away from him, once again staring at the trees to my right. The wind blew again, this time strong enough to make my hair go crazy, to whip it in my face and get some of it in my mouth. I didn’t care enough to reach up and fix it; as far as I was concerned, my hair hid me from him.
In fact, I wanted nothing more than to shrink into myself and disappear, end this date before it got any worse—because surely it would.
I heard him chuckle softly, heard him take another step closer to me. He was as close as he could get without touching me. And then—then he did. Touch me, I meant. I felt a finger sweep along my forehead and my cheek, gathering my messy hair and once more tucking them behind an ear, like he’d done in the car.
Only this…this felt so much more intimate, too raw.
And what was worse? When my hair was safely behind my ear, his fingers didn’t leave my space; they trailed along my jaw, eliciting strange, conflicting feelings inside of me. Heat gathered anywhere he touched. I wanted to pull away, I wanted to lean in and let him touch me more. I didn’t know what I wanted.
