She grinned and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Can’t wait.”
Damn. Damn. Damn.
This was not how I’d thought this week off was going to go, but I was already itching to see her again.
5
Jurnie
As soon as I got out of Bonham’s car, I jogged up to the door of the house and hurried through it so I didn’t turn back and ask if he just wanted to go out tonight. I was supposed to be making dinner tonight anyway and since he hadn’t asked, I had to assume he was busy too.
After I got into the house, I snuck over to the side window and pulled back the curtain to watch him drive away.
Bonham had really saved me from a headache and he’d been so easy to talk to that I could’ve done it all night. Yet I didn’t know this guy and had basically agreed to a date? What was wrong with me? Delaney would’ve said this was part of my breaking away from my parents.
“What are you looking at?”
My entire body clenched, then I turned to my sister. “Why are you here?”
“Uh… I live here.” She tossed her hands in the air.
After rolling my eyes, I said, “Yes. I know. But you were going out tonight.”
She shook her head. “Grace got sick before we ever left, so we’re going to do it tomorrow, assuming she feels better. So what were you looking at?”
“Nothing.” I might’ve said that too quickly, but to get her attention off me and my peeking, I scurried off to the kitchen and dropped my purse on the table.
“Something.”
“Are you helping make dinner tonight then?” I folded my hands like I was begging. In reality, I wasn’t. She was going to help me either way.
“Of course I’m going to help.” She slid into the kitchen with me.
We were making chicken and baked potatoes and a salad. It wasn’t fancy, but it would taste really good.
The potatoes had to go in first, so I scrubbed those while she got everything out for the salad.
“So tell me,” Delaney urged. “I know you were looking at something. Was your Uber driver super-hot?”
“I didn’t take an Uber.” That was all I intended to tell her, but she nudged me with her hip, wanting more. “A guy I met at the bookstore brought me home.”
The knife she’d been holding slammed down. “You got into a car with a strange man? Have I taught you nothing?”
I snorted then went into the story of what had happened at the store. About the creepy guy and about Bonham playing along, hanging out with me while I drank a coffee. All of it.
“Well, that’s just swoony. Like one of those guys from your romance books.”
I shook my head at her. “Shut up.”
“So are you going to see him again? That’s a meet cute to beat all meet cutes.”
“He asked for my number and I gave it to him.” I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Wait.” She put her hands on my shoulders and spun me as I started to prep the chicken. “Was that all it took? A guy not being a dick in your moment of need?”
“What do you mean, all it took?” I wiggled out of her grasp and continued to work.
“For you to go out with a guy.”
“I’ve dated.”
“Pft. You’ve dated. Sure.”
“I have.”
Her face softened. She knew how I felt about that kind of teasing. My lack of a romantic history wasn’t hers to make fun of. I could take a little of it, but eventually, it got annoying. We didn’t all get pregnant at sixteen and she knew that because since she had gotten pregnant at sixteen, I’d spent my teen years living under authoritarian rule that hadn’t let up yet.
I’d played with the idea of living on campus but they’d squashed that almost as soon as I’d thought it. They wouldn’t pay for room and board when there was a perfectly good room at their house. That would’ve meant a lot of debt for me and Delaney helped me realize it wasn’t worth it. I’d lived with their rules this long, I could do four more years.
“What’s his name?” she asked with a much gentler tone.
“Nope. Not telling you that.” Also, I couldn’t really give her that if I’d wanted to. I hadn’t asked Bonham his last name.
With a light sprinkle of salt and pepper, the chicken went into the oven too.
Delaney and I weren’t master chefs, but we could keep ourselves fed.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you to Facebook or Instagram stalk him or whatever you do. And I don’t want to hear anything about him from you before we actually go out and I decide if I like him or not.”
The corners of her mouth turned up in a slightly evil grin. “You already like him or you wouldn’t have agreed to give him your number.”
“Give who your number?” our father asked, bringing us both back to reality. He was wearing dress pants and a button-down shirt, which he wore to the church every day. His brown hair, lighter than Delaney’s and mine, was perfectly in place.
We got our looks from Mom, who came in right behind him. Her auburn hair was cut into a more professional style, but she hadn’t gone with a full-on Mom cut yet. We also had gotten our dark green eyes from her, though our noses had come from our dad. It worked.
Mom kissed Dad quickly before pulling off her suit coat.
“Just someone from school,” I lied straight to his face. When I’d been younger, I wondered if lying to a pastor was a worse sin than lying to regular people. In the end, I didn’t really care. Stretching the truth or flat-out lying like I’d done right there was the only way I had any semblance of a life outside of this house.
As a teen, I’d listened to every rule of theirs and followed them all religiously. Delaney had been my cautionary tale. My own moral to the story. While we all loved Lily, Mom and Dad didn’t want me to repeat Delaney’s mistakes. Sometimes I wondered if they’d let Delaney stay her after she’d been pregnant because of how it would look to Dad’s congregation if he’d kicked his own daughter to the streets. He’d never said that, but the battles that raged within our house when she’d told them had come with so many tears. Mine included.
First, Dad had wanted her to marry Travis. That had been a no from the word go. She’d had no interest in being a child bride.
There had never been a conversation about whether she’d keep the baby or have an abortion, either. As a preemptive strike, Mom had basically forced me onto birth control when I’d been fifteen. I liked what it did for my skin, so I stayed on it, but I’d never needed it for its intended use. Maybe one day when I decided to get naked with a guy, I’d be glad it was there.
For the first time in a very long time, I could imagine that—with Bonham. Imagine what it’d be like for him to kiss me. No way would his be like the overeager, sloppy teen boy kisses I’d had so far. Even in college, there was no finesse with the guys I’d been out with and kissed. That was as far as it’d gone. Kissing.
I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin and was beginning to think that made me a freak.
But if Mom and Dad thought I was saving it for marriage, they were out of their minds. I didn’t intend to get married for a while, but I did intend to lose my virginity the first chance I felt comfortable.