“Is this okay? Should I stop?” he asks.
The four-leaf clover he gave me pops into my mind. I take a deep breath.
“Don’t stop.”
The next two weeks of camp basically go the same way—during the day I hang out with Parker, and at night, after everyone’s asleep, I spend time with Matt.
Every morning, I pray in the Woodsong Chapel, asking God to give me the strength to keep my hands off Matt. I haven’t let him go further than touching my chest, but it’s getting harder and harder to stop because I want him to touch me, because I care about him so much. And sometimes I get so sad thinking of Emily that Matt notices. He keeps asking, “Where do you go inside that head of yours?”
I can’t tell him. “Nowhere.”
Then he grins a sad, lopsided grin and kisses my cheek.
The good news is that the fun of camp totally distracts me. One afternoon, the girl counselors challenge the guy counselors to a game of Bonzo Ball. Well, all the counselors minus Eric, who decides to lead a small expedition of campers to look for snakes at the lake because he’s still not convinced I saw one.
With a hundred campers surrounding us, cheering and stomping, Parker, Andrea, Carlie, and I take on the guys. Much trash talk ensues.
“You don’t even know what Bonzo Ball is,” Carlie says to Ian, fake sneering.
“I do so know what it is. Don’t you remember me beating you five times last week?”
“Ooooh,” the boy campers say.
Carlie sets a hand on her hip. “I let you win because you always cry when you lose.”
“Ooooh,” the girl campers chorus.
Squatting low to the ground, Andrea slams the ball at Brad’s shins, knocking him out of the game. The girl campers cheer like mad, and I give Andrea a high five. Matt, Will, and Ian fake pout.
“Come on, girls!” a boy camper yells at us. He’s twelve and clearly has the hots for us.
Matt points at the boy. “Oh, you’re so going down, traitor.”
The game comes down to Parker versus Ian, and they totally start showing off, doing fancy jumps in the air and rolling out of the way of the ball. But in the end, Parker manages to hit Ian in the ankle, and us four girls jump up and down, hugging each other. It makes me smile that Andrea and I are getting along, at least in the name of girl power.
Thursday night before our week off, after I’ve said good night prayers with the girls in my cabin, I’m lying with Matt in the big field, staring at the stars.
“Where do you think heaven is?” Matt asks.
“It’s up there,” I say, pointing past the Big Dipper.
Emily said she doesn’t buy any of it anymore. Religion. God. Faith. Before I decided to help Emily get an abortion, my life was just fine. My parents love me. I have a beautiful home. All in all, everything was okay.
Since I sinned, life has been terrible and wonderful. I never had a boyfriend during high school. I didn’t have many friends except for Emily and my soccer team. But after they were taken away, I found out how little I truly had.
Now I have Matt and my heart is brimming with emotions, with something that feels like love, but I’m not ready to tell him that yet. We’ve only been dating a month. Can you feel love in that amount of time?
What if he still loves his ex?
I snuggle against his chest. “No girls in Cabo, understand?”
“No guys in Franklin, understand?”
“I’m being serious,” I tell him, using an exaggerated warning tone.
“You’re in trouble.” He rolls over on top of me and tickles me until I can’t breathe. I’m screaming at him, probably waking up the entire camp. I try to push him off me but he’s too strong. Then his mouth meets mine and for the first time, he rests his fingers on the button of my shorts.
I inhale deeply, grabbing his hand.
He rolls off me, shutting his eyes and rubbing his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to push you to move so fast I just get caught up in you—and I—”
I climb on top of him. “I get caught up in you too.”
We move against each other and my mind goes away into nothingness and it’s just our bodies, straining to get closer. My shorts are unbuttoned, unzipped, and so are his. He’s wearing light blue striped boxers that I can’t help wanting to touch. His hand gently grazes me through my shorts and then he runs a finger beneath the elastic of my underwear. That’s when I remember I have on plain white panties. I can’t let him see those. I bet Andrea doesn’t even own white cotton underwear.
“It’s late,” I whisper.
“To be continued?” he asks, smiling. “When I get back from Mexico?”
Even though I’ll miss him like crazy, I’m grateful for the break. For the chance to figure out how to balance the physical part of our relationship with the emotional. Andrea would probably give Matt whatever he wants. What scares me is that I want to give Matt whatever he wants. Not because I’m scared of losing him.
Because I want to show him how much I care.
Because I’m falling in love with all of him.
Because I kind of want it too.
“You want to go where?”
Parker and I spent the first few days of break riding bikes, swimming, and lying out in the sun, and that was really fun, but I never imagined Parker would invite me to a Fourth of July party at Jordan Woods’s house. Jordan is Sam Henry’s girlfriend, and like him, she probably has no idea who I am. I, however, know exactly who Jordan is. Former captain and quarterback of the Hundred Oaks High football team.