Page 3 of Well, That Was Unexpected

And again, though there’s an aching need to feel the entire length of his body pressing up against mine, a tiny—or maybenot so tiny—part of me quails. He catches the flicker of hesitation on my face and frowns.

“Babe, if you’re not ready, it’s okay—”

“Oh, I’m ready.” He doesn’t look convinced, so I prattle on. “It’s going to happen, Bradley. Your penis is going to go inside my vagina. Well, actually, your penis is going to go inside a condom, and then go inside—”

“I get it, okay!” He laughs. “If you’re sure.”

“I am.” Probably everybody gets last-minute jitters. Definitely probably. I shake off my doubts and grab his shirt, slightly more roughly than I had intended to. He stumbles a bit—why is this not as sexy and smooth as the movies make it out to be? His shirt comes off at last, and the sight of his abs literally makes me salivate, which is just as gross and creepy as it sounds.

“Can I…” His voice trails off as his gaze flicks down at mybra.

“Yeah, of course. Yeah.” I bite my lip as his beautiful hands go behind my back and unhook my bra. Or try to, anyway. Should I help him? Is that going to ruin the moment? I should definitely help—no, I think he’s got it—nope. I snake my hands up my back and a few excruciating moments later, I feel the release as my bra unhooks. This is it. It’s going to happen. Finally. But instead of relief, what floods me is white-hot panic. Right before my bra falls to the floor, I catch it and hug it to my chest. My face is on fire. I don’t know what’s going on, everything feels right but also really fucking wrong, and my eyes are filling with tears.

“Oh shit, babe.” Bradley puts his arms around me and pulls me close. “Hey, it’s okay. We don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, it’s fine,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head.

I sag against him and close my eyes. Despite how mortified and disappointed I feel, I also feel relief. So much relief. “Bradley,I—”

An unearthly shriek pierces the moment. My head jerks up, slamming into Bradley’s chin.

“Ow!” he cries.

But I can’t pay him any attention right now, because there at the doorway is Mama, wearing the most awful, thunderous expression I have ever seen. She looks at me like she’s seeing an entirely different person, like I’m some stranger who’s broken into her house.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?”

Sometimes I like to daydream about what life might be like if Mama hadn’t passed away. I don’t really remember her; I was only four when she died giving birth to Eleanor. I like to think that life around here would be a lot different with her around. A little less hectic, maybe. I think Mama was a calming force. Her family’s certainly a lot quieter than Papa’s. I think I take after her, is the problem. No one on Papa’s side of the family seems to know what “quiet” or “peace” means, Eleanor included.

Usually, I use this to my advantage. They’re just so loud all the time that it’s easy to hear them coming and slip into my usual hiding places. Our house in Jakarta, Indonesia, is humongous and provides an obscene number of hiding spots—Papa’s unused study, Nainai’s unused library, the playroom that Eleanor and I have grown out of. But today, I guess I got carried away. I didn’t catch the stomping feet in time.

The only thing I can say in my defense is that I’m a healthy teenage boy, and I’m doing what healthy teenage boys do in theirspare time. Also, I even finished my homework before I started doing this super-healthy thing.

There’s a knock on the door, which makes me lurch, my heart ramming up my throat.Ohmygodohmygod—

I only have time to minimize the porn before Papa barges in. He thinks that knocking a split second before coming in counts as knocking. I bet he’s regretting it now, now that we’re staring at each other in complete and utter horror, me struggling to do up my jeans. Luckily, he looks away, his cheeks painfully red, and mumbles, “Waduh, sorry, George—”

Unluckily, what he looks away to is the computer screen. I’m not sure why he looks even more horrified—I’d closed the video, and it was pretty vanilla as far as porn goes—but I’m too busy battling with my jeans to notice. I swear my fingers have turned into sausages and forgotten how to work a button.

Then—oh god, no—more loud stomping feet accompanied by a jaunty humming.

“Hi, Papa.” Eleanor appears in the doorway next to Papa. “What’re you doing—EWW!”

“Eleanor, it’s not what it looks like—” Well, it is. It’s exactly what it looks like, actually. Finally,finally,I manage to button my pants, and I look up to see my dad and my sister staring back and forth between me and my computer with unspeakable horror on their faces. Shit, did I not close the window after all? But seriously, it’s completely vanilla, it’s— Ah.

When I closed the window in a hurry, the screen went to the next tab I had open, which was a game I’d been playing beforenature reminded me I’m a horny teenage boy.Fields of Dreamsisn’t really the type of game I usually go for. It’s a farming game with adorable characters and bright primary colors. I’m usually an FPS guy, but I’d just had a particularly rough session ofWarfront Heroeswith the guys and needed a break. Anyway, I have no idea why Papa and Eleanor are staring atFields of Dreamslike the cute gnome and even cuter badger have just decided to decapitate each other.

“Um, sorry.” Speaking now is amazingly hard, as though my words have to fight through honey to even come out. I should say something else, explain myself, but I’m not sure there’s anything to explain. I mean, again: I’m seventeen, I’m healthy, and I wasn’t doing anything weird or wrong, right?

With obvious effort Papa and Eleanor tear their gazes from my computer and look back at my face.

“George Clooney,” Papa whispers. He always uses my middle name whenever he’s angry at me, which just goes to prove that he and Mama gave me that damn name to punish me. “Were you masturbating to—uh—to—”

“To what looks like an elf and a badger gyrating with each other,” Eleanor says helpfully. She seems to have recovered from her initial shock, and the familiar smirk has crawled to its usual position on her face.

“What the fu— NO!” I look at the screen again, and I see now that the little bearded gnome is indeed dancing with a large badger. “That’s just— No. The gnome’s dancing because, um, the badger gave him this special gift, see…” I desperately clickon the mouse to open my inventory and belatedly realize that what the badger has given my character is…

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