Page 60 of My Life with the Walter Boys
“Dang it, Cole,” I said, hitting him with a pillow. “It’s not funny.” I’d managed to forget about the movie until he brought it up again. Now I would never get to sleep.
Alex paused and glanced between his bed for the night and the empty carpet on my right-hand side. “Oh,” he said. He arranged the bowl on the couch to catch the leak before returning to the recliner.
From the floor, I had a full view of the raging storm through the window. There wasn’t much to see, but every time lightning flashed, I expected to see Crazy Jack standing there with a meat cleaver. I told myself to close my eyes, but I couldn’t look away as my chest pounded.
“Cole?” I finally asked, my voice squeaky.
“Uh-huh?”
“Could you close the blinds?” I was past caring if he made fun of me.
“Sure,” he said, getting up slowly. He pulled on the curtain cord but had to yank it around a few times before the shades tumbled down. Once they settled in place and I could no longer see outside, I finally let out the breath I was holding.
“You know,” Cole said, as he lay back down, “I think the only reason you wanted me to get up was so you could see my perfectly toned abs again.”
“Cole,” Alex and I said at the same time, “shut up.”
He chuckled, but then it was finally silent again. So quiet, in fact, that I could hear the ping of water droplets as they fell into the bowl on the couch. Next to me, Cole had already dozed off, a soft wheezing sound escaping his lips as he breathed in and out. There was a creak of springs as Alex moved on the recliner, but then I saw his shape moving around in the dark.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered. He dropped his blanket to the floor.
“The chair’s uncomfortable,” he responded. I could tell from the way he stood there awkwardly that he was waiting for permission to lie down.
“Okay,” I told him.
That seemed to be enough, because a second later Alex was stretching out next to me, and not long after that he was out. In their sleep, both boys kept moving closer to me, and when I finally drifted off, there was one arm wrapped around my stomach and one hand intertwined with mine.
***
Sunday passed quickly. The boys called Will in the morning and he came over to fix the power. Once it was back on, Cole spent what little time he could watching ESPN before his parents got home. Alex tried to tempt me into playingGoG,but I wasn’t willing to break Katherine and George’s rules. I stayed in my room reading until my phone rang.
“Sammy?” I asked, picking up immediately when I saw her name on the caller ID.
“Hey, girly,” she said. “What you up to?”
“Not much,” I said, pushing away from my desk and moving to the bed. I collapsed on the comforter and switched the phone to my other ear. “Just doing some anatomy homework for next week.”
“Ugh, typical Jackie,” Sammy criticized. I could practically see her sitting on the fuzzy pink rug in our dorm room, painting her toenails. “You’re living with a bunch of hot guys, and instead of finding Cole and experiencing some real-life anatomy, you’re shacking up with a textbook like a pariah.”
“It’s not like I never see him,” I told her. “I mean we did sleep together last night.”
“Youwhat?”
“Okay, wait,” I said, backtracking. “That came out all wrong.”
But Sammy was already in full-on rant mode. “My best friend went and got herself de-virgin-fied and you didn’t think to call me, like…this morning? Seriously, you moved away and poof! I don’t hear from you until five years later and—”
“Oh my God, no!” I said, shouting into the phone.
“‘No’ to what? The five years part, because it’s honestly starting to feel like that. The next thing you know, I’ll be stalking your Facebook just to see if you’re still alive.”
“Would you stop being such a drama queen?”
“Are you kidding me?” she said, clearly upset. “This situation is totally eligible for full-on drama status!”
“Sammy,” I said, lowering my voice so nobody could hear me. “Can you just chill out? I didn’t de-virgin myself or whatever.”
“Sex, Jackie. We’re talking about sex!”
