Until she gasped into my mouth, I didn’t even know what I’d done—slid my hand down from her shoulder to cup her little tit in my palm. She leaned into me and her dress slipped down, leaving her naked in my hand. Her nipple went hard in the curve of my thumb, and she shivered. Made me shiver, too.

I tried to pull my hand back, but she pressed hers over mine to hold it there.

“Orion,” she said.

She ran her fingers down my belly to my belt buckle and unhooked it. I brushed her hand away, and I was gonna refasten the buckle, except if I sat up and did that, I figured that would be the end of her kissing me. So I pushed her hand away and kissed her some more. Her hand went right back to my belt, like a fly that won’t quit buzzing around. She unthreaded the belt and opened the button on my jeans.

I had to stop her.

I opened my eyes and sat up, but it only made things worse. Her eyes were thunderhead dark, her lips were red from kissing, and I’d turned her hair into a tumbled mess. She was straddling my lap with her skirt riding up. Holding her by the hips, my forearms rubbed against her bare thighs. Just short of letting go of her and dumping her on the floor, I didn’t know what to do.

The zipper on my jeans came down with some help from her, but mostly from the pressure of a hard-on that had built up on me like a temperature gauge going into red.

“Wavy, you can’t—”

“I want to,” she said.

She kissed me until my blood pounded in my ears, like I was fixing to have a heart attack. She held the back of my neck with one hand and, with the other, she petted my dick like it was a wild animal. Real gentle at first. Then she closed her fingers around me as far as they would go, and goddamn, when she squeezed a little harder, it was far enough.

“Wavy.” That was me begging, and not for her to stop.

As much as I always wanted her to kiss me, I didn’t have no idea how desperate I was for her to touch me like that. I couldn’t even recollect how long it was since somebody besides me had. And Wavy. Wavy. Her hand was so soft, not a callous on it. Took less than a minute to get me off. As soon as I came, I knew what I’d done. My stomach turned over and, for a second, I thought I was gonna be sick.

“Oh, Jesus, Wavy. Jesus fucking Christ. What are we doing? Get up. Get up.”

She did what I said, slid off my lap awkwardlike, and staggered back a step. Standing there with the TV flickering on her face, she looked like she was worried about me. A string of cum dripped off her hand and she wiped it on the front of her skirt. I stood up, trying to get my pants fastened, but I was all thumbs, and my dick was still half-hard. Goddamn belt opened up easy enough in her hands and I couldn’t hardly get it to close.

“I did it wrong?” she said.

“No—it’s—oh, God, Wavy.”

“You liked it with the girl at the party.”

“Wha—what party? What girl?”

With the hand she’d wiped on her dress, Wavy drew a slithery line up her arm. She’d seen the girl with the snake tattoo giving me a hand job? That was the last time somebody else had touched me.

“But you, Wavy. It’s not okay for you to do that.” I couldn’t catch my breath and my voice wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Why?” she said.

“Because it’s not. You—it’s—it’s dirty for you to do that.”

She flinched like I’d slapped her.

Standing there, both of us not talking, I saw the thing I shoulda looked at first—the ring on her finger. It was my fault she didn’t understand. When I told her she was too young to get married, I figured she knew I was talking about sex. But I bought her a wedding ring. I promised there wasn’t gonna be other girls, and there hadn’t been. I didn’t even look at other women anymore. Maybe I was the one who didn’t understand.

“Wavy—” As shitty as it was, I wasn’t getting ready to apologize. I was so ashamed of myself, I was gonna say, “You can’t tell anybody about this.”

Before I could, she clamped her hands over her mouth and said, “Mama was right. I am dirty.”

She was gone like a flash, leaving the kitchen door slapping in the frame.

I stood in the middle of the room, shocked as hell, wondering where she learned all that. The kissing, the other stuff? Did Liam’s girls talk about sex with her?

No, that was my fault, too. Except for the one skin mag I threw away, I hadn’t done anything with the other magazines in my nightstand. How many times had she been there without me and looked at those pictures?

Wherever she got those ideas, she was only thirteen. All those times I said, “I’m not that kinda guy,” maybe I was that kinda guy. What happened hadn’t just happened. There was that whole half hour of us making out before she unzipped my pants. I’d had plenty of time to put a stop to it, and I didn’t. Because I liked kissing her. I liked all of it, no matter how messed up that was.

My pa was a crazy, mean drunk who beat the shit out of my ma and us kids. Alcohol did that. It didn’t make you do what I’d just done.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame the booze. I don’t think I’d ever been as sober as I was right then.

11

KELLEN

I paced up and down, until the TV played the national anthem and went to the test screen. Standing there in the quiet, I knew how bad I’d fucked up. Not just that fooling around with Wavy was illegal—considering all the other laws I’d broken, I didn’t care about that—but that up ’til then, I’d never betrayed anybody I loved. Wavy trusted me, and I took advantage of her.