Page 3 of A Good Book

Those were good questions, but did I know her well enough to share the answers? We would be roommates until summer. Aside from her, Matt, and Ben, I didn’t have any other friends yet.

“Fine.” I zipped my makeup bag. “If you must know, Matthew Cory has not only been the muse for my poetry, I imagine he’s the one who I will be with on my wedding night. We’ll be in a white canopy bed with Roberta Flack’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’playing, and he’ll whisper in my ear, ‘It’s always been you, Gabriella.’ After we finish,” I cleared my throat, “doingit,we’ll spoon the entire night, and I’ll wake with perfect hair and minty breath. And if you ever tell anyone I told you that, I will have to kill you, which means I’ll also go to Hell. So please give me something to hold over your head. It’s only fair.”

Olivia cupped a hand over her mouth and snorted. “Oh my gosh, Gabby!”

Embarrassment worked its way up my neck and settled in my cheeks.

“Are you a virgin?” Her eyes bugged out.

“I’m serious, Olivia. Tell me your darkest secret.”

“Fine. Whatever.” She tapped a finger on her chin. “I have a crush on someone too.”

“That’s not good enough. I need to know who, and you have to tell me something embarrassing about it that would make you want to slit your wrists if anyone found out.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll tell him.”

“If I don’t know him, how can I tell him? And I’m a good friend who can keep a secret.”

“You won’t tell Ben?”

I shook my head, feeling mostly sure that I wouldn’t tell Ben. I usually told him everything. My messed-up reasoning made sense of it because he was a boy and therefore exempt from secrecy rules because he rarely interacted with my girlfriends.

Olivia’s leery gaze studied me through her thick glasses. “Since he’s a lot taller than me, I’ve imagined sixty-nine with him.”

“Sixty-nine what?” I parked a hand on my hip.

She laughed. “Like … you know.Sixty-nine.”

“Is it a movie?”

“Gabby! I’m talking about the sex position.”

I nodded slowly then shook my head. “No. I uh, don’t know what you mean.”

Olivia gaped at me. Total crickets.

“I’m a preacher’s daughter from a small town,” I said because it was the number one reason I wasn’t prepared for real life outside of Devil’s Head.

“Well,” she pressed her lips together for a beat, “that explains why your fantasy involves Roberta Flack and spooning.”

“What’s sixty-nine?” I ignored her jab at my limited sex knowledge.

“It’s basically oral sex at the same time, like six and nine are the same shape just inverted. You do him and he does you simultaneously.” Olivia waggled her eyebrows.

A little bile worked its way up my throat. “That’s …”

“Hot?”

I shook my head. “Weird.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well,” I tried to envision it, “his thingy points up, so that’s probably fine, but if he does that to you, then his nose is awfully close to your uh,” I wrinkled my nose, “butt.”

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