He drops his face into the crook of my neck, laughing. “Can’t we just do it for once without having some strange conversation?”
I stroke my fingertips over his back and lift his T-shirt off over his head. “Who said you’re getting any?”
“Me. I’m one of those vampires who can control other people’s minds.” He playfully pins me down by my wrists and touches his forehead to mine. “In fact, I’m using mind control on you right now. Do me, Woods. Do me.”
Wow, vampires give good wake-up calls.
? ? ?
Jordan Now
Other reasons why today is a great day?
We have no plans.
Normally on Saturdays, Henry has to go watch college games or visit schools. As a scout for the Titans, he spends a lot of time driving around Tennessee and neighboring states to talk to college coaches. It’s a perfect job for him. He loves talking to people. He loves stats. And most of all, he loves football.
I’m usually busy on Saturdays too, coaching the Hundred Oaks football team, but the boys are only lifting weights right now. We won’t start spring practices until March.
Henry and I sit together at the kitchen table to eat breakfast. He reads the sports sections of the Tennessean and the Atlanta Journal as he eats two bowls of cereal. He keeps clanging his spoon against the side of the bowl. It’s distracting as I’m trying to write in my poetry journal.
“Would you stop that?” I ask, setting my pen down so I can pinch his thigh playfully.
His purposely drops his spoon into the bowl, making an even louder clanging noise. I shake my head at him with a small smile. We’re one of those couples who sit on the same side of the table. He leans over and kisses me deeply, Cheerio breath and all.
“What do you want to do today?” I ask.
“I need to run over to my parents’ place for a bit. Mom wants me to fix her ceiling fan.”
“Exciting.”
We smile at each other. Yeah, fixing a fan is pretty boring, but we both love our lives. We’ve been living together for almost two years now.
“Living in sin,” our mothers say, while our dads grunt and pretend not to hear, even though they don’t approve of us living together either. Even so, our families are very close-knit. His parents treat me like a daughter, and my dad loves watching games on TV with Henry. Mom yells at him to get his feet off the coffee table just like with my brother.
I’m ready to take the next step in our relationship. I might have asked him to marry me a couple of times, but he’s a traditionalist.
Whenever I’ve mentioned it, he says, “Would you hold your horses?” and kisses the daylights out of me.
I’m pretty sure Henry’s saving up to buy me a ring, which I don’t need, but it’s a source of pride for him. I won’t question that.
I can wait however long he needs, because he’s all I want.
And to think, I almost lost him forever.
? ? ?
Jordan Then
We went to separate colleges, four hours apart from each other. Me to Purdue, him to Michigan. In the off-season, we saw each other a lot more than when we were playing football, but it was never enough. In high school, we were together all the time. I rarely went a day without seeing him, touching him in some way.
By the time our junior year of college rolled around, we saw each other less and less. One time we went two whole months only seeing each other over Skype. I missed him, but also felt disconnected from his life. What did he talk about over lunch with his friends? He told me he never missed Tuesday night karaoke at the student sports bar, but I never could go with him. I wanted to see why he loved it so much. Maybe sing a duet.
And I noticed that a particular girl’s name kept coming up in our conversations. Zoe.
Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.
Finally one weekend, I decided to surprise Henry. I had big plans that we’d lock ourselves in his room for two days straight while I’d kiss him everywhere.
But when I got Michigan, he was in his dorm room with Zoe. The door was wide open, and they were sitting on his bed together.
“Henry,” I said, startling him. His mouth fell open. He jumped to his feet, surrounded me in a huge hug, and kissed my lips and cheeks and my lips again. Once he kissed me thoroughly, he introduced me to Zoe.
They hadn’t been fooling around or anything, but it stunned me seeing him with another girl.
I could tell she wanted him: she had been laughing really loud when I first arrived. When he politely asked her to leave, so we could catch up, she slammed her books in her tote bag and went ahead and slammed the door too.
“Who is she?” I asked as I flopped down on his bed.
“We’re in the same psychology class,” he explained.
I trusted him, so I left it at that and proceeded with my plan to kiss him all over.
One night about a week later, after I’d gone back to school, Henry called me. We rarely did that. We either talked on video chat or texted.
“Jordan,” he said in a thick, strange voice.
“What?” I could tell he was choked up. “What’s wrong? Is somebody hurt?” For a second I worried one of his parents had been in a car wreck, or something had happened to his little sisters, who he loved more than anything.
“Zoe kissed me,” he blurted.
I tried to sit down on my bed but missed and fell to the floor. “And?”
“I stopped her.”
“Good.” Now tell her to get lost, I thought, along with some other choice words that girls should never call other girls.
“But I didn’t want to stop her,” he whispers.
My heart died right then. “What?”
He sniffled. “I’m sorry.”
I had a million thoughts in my head and couldn’t process them while he was crying. “I need to go.”
“Woods, wait!”
But I’d already hung up and curled into a ball.
? ? ?
Henry Now
At my parents’ house, I find my sister Maya sitting on the couch holding her guitar. But she’s not playing it. She’s making out with her boyfriend. Only these two would kiss with a guitar wedged between them like a third wheel.
Part of me wants to yell “Boo!” but instead I glare down at Jesse and clear my throat. He lurches away from her. Jesse’s pretty tall—about six feet, but I’m six-four and have a hundred pounds on him—all muscle. The blood rushes out of his face, turning it snow white with a sea of freckles.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You’re interrupting us. That’s what’s going on,” Maya snaps, brushing her hair out of her face.
Jesse smirks at her brashness.
“Does Dad know what you’re up to?” I ask.
Maya shrugs. “He’s in the garage. And you’d better not tell on us or I’ll let Mom know that you and Jordan were the ones who broke her picture frame.”
“Shit,” I say.
My sister is evil. But she learned from the best: me.
Still, I can’t let her tell Mom that Jordan and I were horsing around in the living room, wrestling, when we accidentally broke the pearl picture frame her grandmother gave her as a little girl.
“I glued it back together,” I protest.