“Tell me you’re going to end this,” Britt said, standing next to my locker after school. Christina and Akia weren’t around to save me.

I shut my locker and started shoving my French book into my backpack.

“End what?” I was focused on the jammed zipper, the hum of bodies in the hall. The way Bryan had winked at me in class earlier.

“The Bryan thing.”

My eyes shot up to her face. “Shut uppppppp.” I looked around to see if anyone had heard.

“What?” She shrugged her shoulders, uncaring.

“You want people to hear?”

“Sev. I love you. But it’s shitty to do that to Aurora and it’s shitty that he is doing that to you.”

I flinched at Aurora’s name. Why did she care about her? “I know.” My voice was low. I knew she was right, but blame was something my friends and I hadn’t given to anyone but Bryan, up until this point.

“Where do you see this going? Do you think they will break up?”

I didn’t want to answer. I knew the answer. So I said a lie. “I don’t know.” I walked off, not wanting more judgment. Not understanding why she was so worried about Aurora. Not understanding why I was letting myself be so weak.

The cornfields were where we liked to go. The stalks were gone, and Kansas open earth stretched out ahead of us. The Winthrop’s red barn sat on the edge, the perfect hiding spot for Bryan’s old truck. We climbed to the second story of the barn most Wednesday nights. Bryan told his parents he needed to work on homework, so he couldn’t attend church. His grades weren’t the best. It was the only way they would let him out of worship.

My father and I never attended Wednesday night services. We were a strictly Sunday morning duo.

I stretched out on the blanket in the hayloft, wiggling my toes. I wanted to sigh – I felt content – but I held it in. I was wary of letting Bryan see me so relaxed. Letting him see how happy these moments with him made me. It was wrong, what we were doing, but it wasn’t sordid. We kissed until our lips were raw. He touched me, slowly, deliberately, but I never let him do more than slip a hand underneath my bra. My panties were on lockdown and I didn’t see that changing. I was still terrified of sex and I wouldn’t let my first time be with a guy who had a girlfriend, no matter how in love with him I was.

He knew that. He didn’t press. And the reason he wouldn’t, would hit me late at night. When I wasn’t near him. Why would he push me for sex when he was getting sex from his girlfriend? I was unsure of his need for me. Their hallway PDA had lessened since I let him kiss me. He seemed pained when I was near. Maybe I made it up, maybe it was real, his shame. It was raining the night I felt daring. The night I decided to question everything.

“Do you love her?” I was staring at the barn ceiling. Bryan was working on biology homework. It wasn’t a complete lie that he was studying. Sometimes we would crack our books open when things got too heavy. When things were too heated. Study breaks from studying the breaks and curves of each other’s bodies.

I heard Bryan’s book close. The shuffling of his body. “I don’t know. To me, love seems to be more of a planned thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“My parents are all about plans. About mapping our lives. They say God has a plan but we need to busy our minds with one of our own. To be worthy of the one God will ultimately make happen for us. We cannot be idle. Aurora is part of the plan.”

“God’s plan? Or yours?”

“I don’t know. Both?” He lied down next to me, ran his fingers over my knuckles, clenched in a fist next to my body. I clenched tighter.

“What is this then?” I pulled my hand away, crossed it over my torso.

“A mistake I can’t stop making.” I didn’t flinch at being called a mistake. I held it in, the wound. My smart mouth came out more and more with Bryan, though muted and diluted. Now I really bit my tongue.

“I’m never going to fuck you.” I said it to the damp air. No bite. No resentment. If he was playing the long game, he needed to know. I would graduate a virgin. I would go off to college. I would fall in love there, and hopefully, forget all of this.

“I know you’re not. That’s not why I spend time with you.”

“Why do you?” I pushed off the blanket, turned to him. His hands were clasped, settled over his stomach. I saw a sliver of skin showing. Pale like the moonlight. He was so soft. I did not touch him.

“I like you.”

He offered nothing else. And it was that way with him. Always. Did he offer more to Aurora? Or did she pull it from him? She was pushy, loud. She filled a room and I sunk into the walls unless I was in safe company. I laughed and joked and howled, with my friends, where I felt safe. Aurora seemed to feel safe everywhere she went. Safe to be herself. She was a force, and I was forced into the shadows of this triangle. “If only life were always that simple. If only life let it just come to that and let us have what we want.”

He could have what he wanted. That was his life. Easy and giving. He was the open palm, taking. Perhaps the problem was that he had no clue what he wanted. I knew I deserved better but I was savoring moments. Counting down until the moment I left this town. I never wanted to come back and at times I wanted to take him with me. He had confessed he wanted to go to school in Topeka. Just a half hour away. The whole world was out there waiting for us and he wanted to go to Topeka. The same place as Aurora, who didn’t want to leave her family and their large open fields, their farm. She was the pretty Dairy Princess. I couldn’t fathom that life. I couldn’t imagine not wanting more.

“I want you.” He went to say more, but the slamming of a car door stopped him.

We both froze, staring into each other’s eyes. I heard his name being shouted down below, outside.

We crawled along the barn second story floor, peering over the edge. Ben Winthrop was down below standing next to his brother’s truck. “Bryan? Where are you? I need a ride into town.”

Bryan rolled over and ran a hand over his face. I pushed into him, my tongue tracing his ear.

“Fuck,” he said. “What are you doing?”

It was so easy to get those reactions from him when I knew our time was ending. It was safe. I didn’t have to see where things would go, because I knew our time was up.

Bryan poked his head over the side, yelled at his brother. “I’ll pick you up at the house!”

Ben yelled back “Okay. And I know who you have up there so riding together isn’t an issue.”

Bryan shot up, looked me in my eyes. They were wide, and my skin began to grow hotter. I couldn’t speak, so Bryan did. “Well, I guess my brother knows I like you.”

I smiled at him, through my fear. He said he liked me, again. And in that moment, it was enough.