FRIDAY
At school on Friday, I continued to be greeted by more people who never previously acknowledged that I was alive, and I continued to be genial back. Fred tried to get more details from me about Dana, but I put him off with vague generalities. I was focused on putting into play my two ideas from the night before, plus trying to make up with Gina for whatever it was that I had done wrong and get her to come to the party.
I waited for Dana to walk by my locker, and called her over to speak. A week before, even if I had the guts to call her to my locker, she would have pretended not to hear. Yesterday, on the other hand,
she
asked
me
to fuck her and told me that
she
was thinking about
me.
But that is not why I wanted to speak with her, although I certainly didn't mind that everyone saw us talking—I needed her to work with me on the two plans.
"Hey, Jack, what's going on?" she asked, touching my arm.
"Not much," I responded. "But I have a couple of ideas I wanted to run past you."
She gave me her "sex look", which as usual flustered me a little, but I recovered and said, "No, not about that, at least not about us, I guess." She looked at me and waited. "O.K., so first, I was thinking—your mom and my dad should meet—maybe they would like each other, I mean, they are both single and kind of lonely."
Dana thought about it for a second. "Actually, that seems like a good idea. Let me ask Ariel what she thinks and if she likes the idea we can try to make it work."
"You know, I should discuss it with Sarah, too."
"O.K., what's the other idea?" she asked.
"This is sort of a reciprocation thing," I started, keeping my voice low. "My friend Fred, you know, until last week, we could commiserate about being 18 year old virgins. But now I'm not, and I know he is jealous."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked skeptically, "fuck him?"
"No, no, no," I responded. I really hated
that
idea. I continued, "But what about Emily? Do you think that she would agree to sort of continue the 'pay it forward' thing?" I asked.
Dana chuckled. "So Ariel was your first, then I asked you to be Emily's, then we ask Emily to be Fred's?" I like it. I'll ask her later. Based on how much she enjoyed her first time with you, I'm guessing she would be up for it."
"Great," I responded—"let's talk later."
"O.K., she said. "And same time tonight for tutoring?" she asked, giving me that look again. "Just me, this time, by the way."
"Sure," I stammered.
She turned, and I watched her awesome ass as it glided down the hall.
At lunch, I nearly begged Gina to join Fred and me at our table, and she finally did, but she was still distant. I talked up Dana's party, as a chance for us to finally go to the kind of party we had never been invited to. Fred was totally up for it, but Gina just said, "Why would I want to hang out with those morons?"
"Because we could have a few beers and have some fun. Maybe not be so judgmental all the time," I responded.
"You're just saying that because you are fucking Dana," she snapped.
"If that were true, then I would just go—why would I care so much if my friends came? I want us all to enjoy the end of high school. We got into our colleges. We have our class ranks. We did the work and paid the price. Now, we can relax and go a little crazy."
Gina thought about it. "O.K. You make a good point. I'll go to your party and see if is worth the trouble."
At the end of the day, I was walking to my car, and heard Dana calling my name. I turned, and she was with Emily. I walked back to them and Emily said, "Dana told me your idea, and, you know, I'm in."
"That's great, you can't imagine how happy he will be."
Emily smiled at me. "Actually, I can," she responded, and it was my turn to smile.
"Three things, though," I said. "Please don't let him know that we had sex, or that we planned this. And try to make it look natural."
She responded, "Makes sense to me."
"See you later," I said to them and went to my car.
I did a little studying, then took a swim. After showering and dressing, I came downstairs, and Sarah was watching TV, with her laptop on her lap. I told her my idea about Dad and Mrs. Angelo, and she told me that she would talk to Dad and try to get him to call her. I told her that Dana was going to discuss it with Ariel, and that I'd let her know what they thought.
I went off to Dana's house, and she told me that Ariel thought my idea was a good one, so I texted Sarah and encouraged her to talk to Dad. Then, we got right to studying. Dana really had come a long way. Which was good, because the final was on Tuesday. She never would be a physics expert, but from virtually zero, she was regularly getting about three quarters of the questions right, which would be more than good enough to pass and keep her scholarship.
We worked hard for a couple of hours before reaching the point of diminishing returns, so we stopped.
"It's Friday, you know," she said.
"Meaning?" I asked.
"Meaning that most normal people don't study late on Friday."
"Are you going out?" I asked.
"No, not tonight," she responded. "How about we do something?"
Really? I thought, and tried to be cool, so I asked, "O.K., so what do you want to do?"
"Let's have a beer and chill," she suggested.
Although I was anxious to get to the fooling around part, I agreed, and we popped a couple of bottles and drank, sitting next to each other on the couch, watching TV.
I noticed that despite the fact that she was wearing loose clothing, her breasts were moving freely, as if she was braless. I was so turned on just by sitting next to her that I wanted to grab her and kiss her. But if she had wanted to, she could have taken me upstairs, like the last times. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I sat there, trying to gauge her intentions.
She turned to me and said, "Thanks so much for everything. I really feel like I'm going to pass this thing. And I actually am starting to enjoy it."
"No problem," I said smiling, "I've enjoyed this, too." There was an awkward silence. I decided to take the bull by the horns, despite the risk. "What are we? I enjoy spending time with you. You must know I am unbelievably attracted to you, and the sex is amazing," I blurted out. I couldn't believe I said it.
Dana looked at me tenderly. "You deserve better than me," she said, softly.
"Are you kidding?" I responded. "You are perfect."
She shook her head. I took a swig of beer.
"Look," she said, "you are so smart, so interesting, and you deserve a girl who can keep up with your mind, and give you the physical things you want, too. I can't do all of that that and you know it."
Although I could see her point, I refused to agree.