LITMIR.BIZ

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inserts I borrowed from Suz’s sister. When they’re in place, I check my reflection again.

      A girl I don’t recognize stares back at me. A girl with wild hair, too much makeup and a big set of ta-tas, as Suz always calls them. A phony. A fake. A Britney Spears clone with brown hair instead of blond. Exactly the kind of girl I can’t stand. So why am I doing this?

      I cross my arms, turn away from my reflection. Because I’m sick of being boring, straight-laced Erin. Because I’m tired of sitting home with Mom while everyone else is out having fun. Because Judd wouldn’t give the real me a second look.

      Judd. Judd Henderson.

      I met him Saturday night at The Beat. He’s twenty, about to be twenty-one, a junior at North Texas. He thinks I’m also twenty, and that I’m a junior at S.M.U. At the club, he didn’t look twice at Suz, though she stood right beside me. He walked straight over and asked me to dance.

      We danced all night. Then, when his ride was leaving and he had to go, he kissed me. Nothing major, just brushed his mouth against mine and said he’d call.

      He did. Night before last at ten. I almost died. He wanted to come over so I had to come up with an excuse really fast. I said I was sick. Strep throat.

      He said he was sorry and promised not to kiss me. Not on the lips, anyway.

      Just the thought of him kissing me again anywhere, especially with Mom and Nana close by, almost gave me explosive diarrhea, so I said that, according to the doctor, the strep throat was highly contagious and he shouldn’t even come in the house.

      So what did he do? He came to my window.

      Like, how romantic is that? Totally romantic, if you ask me, no matter what Nana says. I’m pretty sure she hinted about Judd yesterday in front of Mom. She must’ve seen him at my window. At least she didn’t come right out and say it. Which I can hardly believe.

      Anyway, for maybe the best forty-five minutes of my life, Judd smoked cigarettes and talked to me in a low voice through the window screen. He told me he likes how I act all quiet and shy, but my look says something different. I didn’t tell him that my “look” is the act, and that quiet and shy is the real me.

      Before he left, Judd laughed and said hanging outside my bedroom window made him feel like he was back in high school. I said it did me, too. Then I remembered that I am in high school, and I felt even phonier than I do now.

      Judd promised to call again to check on me and, a half hour ago, he did. Since I can’t pretend to be sick forever, and he’d probably think it weird that a twenty-year-old woman would have to sneak out of the house to meet a guy, I told him Mom caught my strep throat and that the house is still pretty much off-limits. So, I’m meeting him out front at eleven-thirty.

      Except for the strip of light beneath Mom’s bedroom door, the hallway outside my room is quiet and dark. I decide it might be safer to go out my window again instead of risking her hearing the front door open and close. That way, I won’t have to worry about the security alarm, either. I duck back into my room and lock myself in. What I’m really doing, though, is locking Mom and Nana out.

      Ten minutes later I’m beside Judd inside his pickup truck, which is parked at the curb in front of my house with the engine and headlights off.

      Judd turns down the music. “You sure you don’t want to go somewhere?”

      I shake my head. “I still have homework to do. I can’t stay out long.”

      He pulls a pack of cigarettes off the dash and offers me one.

      “No, thanks.” I point at my neck. “The strep. I mean, I’m well and everything, but I don’t want to push it yet.”

      “Oh, yeah. I forgot. I won’t smoke, either, I guess.” He tosses the pack back where he found it. “Sorry I didn’t call yesterday. School and work have been kicking my ass.”

      “Where’d you say you work?”

      “At the convenience store on campus.” Judd reaches across the seat, tucks my hair behind my ear. “Just part-time. Until I graduate.”

      “Oh.” I nibble my lower lip. Oh? Oh? Why can’t I think of anything else to say? It’s like my mind erased the second he touched me. “I don’t work.”

      “Maybe you should.” He smiles. “Then you could rent a place with some friends and we wouldn’t have to sit out in front of your mom’s like a couple of teenagers.” He looks out the window at the house then shifts back to me, tracing the curve of my ear with a fingertip. “Let’s go for a ride. I passed by a park on the way here.”

      My heart does a backflip. “I can’t. Really.”

      I have the strangest feeling. Like there’s this hum of energy between us, a current of electricity stretching from Judd to me, connecting us. Being this close to him makes me excited and freaked at the same time, though I don’t know what I’m freaked about. It’s not like we weren’t even closer on the dance floor Saturday night. But this feels different. Tonight, we’re alone.

      Judd takes my hand and jerks his head, nodding me over. “Come here.”

      I scoot across the seat, closer to him. He puts his arm around me, and I tilt my head back and gaze up at him. No guy has ever looked at me the way he is, like he’s seeing me inside out and naked and memorizing every detail. I could fall right into his dark, narrowed eyes, but something tells me I’d never find my way out again. I don’t want to turn away, but I’m afraid not to, afraid I’ll lose myself, as weird as that sounds. So I move my focus to his lips. They’re not too thin, not too full, nicely shaped, parted a little. Beneath the lower one, there’s a soft shadow of beard stubble.

      When I got into the car, I was sort of cold, but I’m not cold now; that’s not why I shiver. His fingers stroke my arm, right beneath my shoulder, scattering goose bumps across my skin and making the muscles in my stomach pull tight.

      “Erin,” he says, and then his mouth is on mine, soft and firm at the same time, warm, drawing me in, tasting of cinnamon gum and menthol as our breaths mix. It’s not like I’ve never been kissed before; I have. But never like this, like I’ve stepped onto a roller coaster and there’s no stopping it, no turning back. My control is whisked away on a rush of air while another part of me comes alive. The world outside blurs until the only things vivid are Judd and me; the texture of his hair between my fingers, the pull of his cinnamon lips and musky male scent, a soft scrape of beard against my cheek.

      Quiet, insistent sounds come from deep in his throat. He shifts our positions so that I slide down some, my head pressed into the seat back, and he is centered between the dash and me. I feel surrounded, enclosed, cocooned by his hard body, his arms. His warm, dry hand cups my chin then skims my face, across my collarbone, my shoulder, down the side of my breast. Before I realize what he has in mind, his fingers inch beneath my T-shirt and he’s touching my stomach, making my body hum and vibrate…vibrate….

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