I shake my head no, as Ace says to them, “Although, ya know, texting a girl is pretty much considered foreplay these days. Don't you want some!?"

Parker and Bryce both get big eyes, shake their heads, and say, “Not worth the hassle."

Riley goes, “Dallas, you've been awful quiet on this subject."

Dawson has been holding my hand under the table. He picks my hand up and puts in on his crotch to show me exactly how much he’s been thinking about it. He’s sitting here with a boner!

I laugh out loud.

Riley looks at me. “You know about this?”

I have no idea really what they’re even talking about. Something about girls. I just nod my head yes.

Riley grabs Dallas’ phone and sets it in front of me. "Look at this!" Riley scrolls though the list of the eight girls that he's currently talking to.

"Dallas! You're talking to all these girls?"

Dallas grins. “Well, you know, just keeping my options open."

And Riley says, “Dawes, you never play COD with us anymore.”

“I’d much rather hang with Keatie than play COD with you douches.”

“Yeah, cuz we won’t put our hands where hers is. Well, Bryce might. I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”

I try to move my hand, but Dawson covers it with his napkin and makes it stays put.

Bryce says, “I used to be gay with Dawes, but he ditched me for Kiki.”

Dawson laughs.

Then Bryce says, “Keatyn, you gotta set me up with a hottie, but she has to be a low maintenance girl like you.”

“I’m not sure being low maintenance is a good thing.”

“Sure it is.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good thing,” I say again. “Maybe girls just want to know they’re worth a little effort. Think of the effort you put into beating a video game or into memorizing all your football plays. Is it too much to ask for just some of that same attention?”

Ace has been listening to me very closely. I forget how smart he is when I look at him. He totally looks like a dumb jock. “That’s a good point, Keatyn.”

Riley looks thoughtful and nods his head in agreement. I watch him take out his phone and send a sweet text to Ariela.

The boys go on and on discussing sex versus video games.

Dawson whispers in my ear, “Let’s get out of here.” He throws some money down on the table and grabs my hand as we stand up. “We’re gonna go. We have, uh, some errands to run before we go back to school."

I wave at everyone. “Bye. See ya.”

Riley goes, “What kind of errands, exactly?”

Dawson flips him off.

Take them off.

9pm

It's dark outside now. When we get to Dawson's car, he starts kissing me. He has my back against his car door, and he's kissing me fast and with a lot of tongue. Deep, plunging kisses that make me grab the back of his neck and pull him in tighter.

He runs his hand up my dress, grabs ahold of my panties, and pulls them quickly down to my knees.

"Take them off,” he tells me.

Normally I don't like to be told what to do, or given commands, but I do it, no questions asked.

"Right here?"

He goes, “Mhmm.”

"Dawson! No! There are people around!"

He leans into me, his weight pressing into my chest. His breathing is ragged. “This is what I have been thinking about all through dinner. I want to do it like this. Up against my car. Without one.”

“We might scratch it,” I tease him.

He grabs my ass, picks me up off the ground, and pulls my legs around his waist so I can feel just how worked up he is. “I wouldn't care,” he says.

He wouldn't care if he got a scratch? This is a guy that just parked two blocks from the restaurant and takes up two parking spots, so he doesn't get a door ding. He wipes his car off with cloth diapers. And the day the school’s sprinklers turned on it and it got all water spotted, I thought he was going to have a coronary.

But the way he's got his body pushed up against me, I know he’s not playing around. "You better get us somewhere more private then."

He drives to the park where the lake is and pulls off in a desolate treed area. The kind of place where people get killed in horror movies.

The second I get out of the car, he full on attacks me. Pushes my back up against the passenger door. Then he picks me up, wraps my legs around his waist, and cups my butt in his hands. He brings his lips down harshly on mine as he pushes into me.

Dawson talks about nothing on the short ride back to school but how amazing it was. How different it felt without a condom. How amazing he feels.

When he walks me to my door, he says, “I wish you could sleep with me.”

“Why don’t you come sleep with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, sneak out of your room, sneak in my window and sleep, actually sleep, tonight. We can set my alarm for four or something, and you can sneak back to your room. Katie sleeps hard. If you’re quiet, I don’t think she’ll even know.”

At one o’clock he crawls through my window. “You’re sure you set the alarm for 4:30, right?”

“Right.”

“What do you have on?” He runs his hands slowly across my body like he’s blind and I’m braille.

What I’m wearing is sleep shorts and a tank top. What I say is, “Armor.”

He laughs. “Don’t worry. You wore me out tonight.” He kisses softly down the side of my neck, “Well, sorta, I mean I could probably do it again if you wanted to.”

I pull him into bed with me. “Dawson, go to sleep.”

Wednesday, September 21st

I’d bite you. Make you mine.

5:45pm

In French today, Aiden seems like he has gotten over his little tantrum or whatever, so I agree to meet him tonight to study. We’ve just finished up our homework, and I’m standing by his desk, throwing my workbook in my bag.

“Okay, so I gotta go meet Aiden.”

“But I'm right here, Boots.”

“What?”

“You said you have to go meet Aiden.”

“No, I didn’t. I said Dawson.”

“No. You said Aiden. Your subconscious wants to be with me.”

“It does not. I’m just distracted.”

“I distract you, huh?”

He gets up off his bed and stands right next to me. Distracting the shit out of me. But I say, “No.”

My hair is up in a high ponytail today and Aiden moves his face in close to my neck.

“You have a pretty neck.”

“What? No. It’s too long,” I scoff.

“Naw, it’s almost regal,” he says, as his lips move closer.

“Maybe for the Queen of Giraffes,” I joke.

“I've never kissed your neck.” He puts his hand on the side of my head and pushes it slightly. “Tilt your head.”

I do as he asks. I know I shouldn’t. I should run away. But it’s impossible to resist an order from a god.

He takes the tip of his finger and glides it from just underneath my earlobe to my collarbone. He blinks lazily and then puts his lips like our almost kisses. He is as close as he can possibly get to my neck without actually touching it.

And even though his lips don't touch, occasionally, he accidentally—or on purpose, maybe; who knows a god’s train of thought on this—touches it with his cheek.

I can feel some stubble on his cheek. He hasn’t shaved in a few days and the hair is so light it’s barely visible, but just that little bit of scruff looks so sexy on him. It changes his perfect face from a work of art to something of museum quality. It makes his beautiful face look more angular and masculine. And even though scruff usually scratches my face, his feels soft against my neck.

Have you ever rubbed a balloon across your hair and made it stick straight up? That's how my whole body feels. All my nerve endings, or synapses—really, I don’t even know what a synapse is exactly; I think it’s in the nerve family . . . Whatever, they are all sticking straight up like balloon-rubbed hair.

He’s still at my neck when he says, “Too bad I'm not a vampire. I’d bite you. Make you mine.”

“Trust me. You don't want me. Dawson tried to give me the key to his heart. I wouldn’t take it.”

“Is that why he’s wearing that key necklace?”

“Yeah, he’s wearing it until I change my mind. And I don’t know why I keep waiting. I didn’t wait for anything else.”

I hope to piss him off with my reference to sex with Dawson, so he will move his powerful lips away from me.

Instead he whispers, “Just because sex is good with someone, doesn't mean you’re destined to be with them. Imagine what it will be like with the guy you’re really supposed to be with. Your true love.”

When he speaks, his lips graze my neck a few times.

“You’re touching my neck. With your lips,” I say raggedly. I can barely breathe when he’s this close to me.

“I’m talking. Not kissing. It doesn’t count.”

And I don't know where this comes from—not from rational thought, obviously—but I make a little breathless moan and say, “Talk some more.”

I feel his mouth form a smile on my neck.

“Remember what I told you? In French. Your lips are my bliss?”

Then he speaks it in French. His lips grazing my neck with each syllable.

I forget who I am.

I forget where I am.

I have but one solitary thought.

Those lips must be on me.

“Aiden, come here.”

“I'm here.”

I grab his face. “No, like, do that to my lips. The not-kissing-kiss.”

“It won’t be enough. You want to kiss me, don’t you?”

Do I? No. Yes. No. I like Dawson. I don’t like Aiden. I don’t love Aiden. I can’t. I shouldn’t. But I’m weak when he’s this close to me, so I mutter out, “Uh, huh.”

He slowly moves his lips up my neck and next to my waiting mouth. His lips are just a quarter of a millimeter—no, more like a gnat’s ass—away from touching me. I lean forward and brush them with mine.

He backs away quickly.

“Boots, Boots. I can't kiss you. Not when you’re dating Dawson.”

Screeeech! All nerve endings feel like they were just in a car wreck. They just hit a tree and the airbags failed to deploy. And I’m pretty sure they just went through the windshield. The nerves come to a sudden horrifying stop.

And I feel like I have whiplash.

“I hate you.”

Why didn’t you tell me?

7:30pm

Dawson is kissing me very enthusiastically. And I’m not really that into it. The almost-kisses with Aiden have made me distracted. And I have no idea why.

Yes, actually, I do. I’m mad. Mad he would tempt me. Mad at myself for falling for his little godly tricks of seduction.

“What’s wrong?” Dawson asks me.

“I just got done tutoring Aiden, so my French homework is done, but I still have Math and an English essay to write. I don’t know why they have to pile on all this homework at once.”

“Wait? The person you are tutoring is Aiden?”

“Uh, yeah, you know that.”

“Uh, no. I did not. You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I did. Everyone knows I’ve been tutoring Aiden. It’s not a secret.”

“Well, you didn’t tell me. He has a crush on you.” He squints his eyes at me. “Has he been hitting on you?”

Has Aiden been hitting on me?

No.

Really, he hasn’t.

What he’s been doing is more in line with godly torture.

“I don’t know. Maybe sometimes a little. Mostly he just succeeds in pissing me off. He sucks at French. Almost failed last year, I guess, but he needs it to go to whatever Ivy League college he wants to play soccer at or whatever. And he knows he has to behave or I will quit and he’d be stuck, so it’s fine. We’re kind of getting to be friends. Especially now that he’s on the Social Committee.”

“He got on the Social Committee too?”

“Yeah, I thought you were going to?”

“Why did he get on the Social Committee?”

“Uh, oh, well, I kinda asked him to.”

“But you didn't ask me?”

“I told you when I first met you that you should get on it, but you didn’t, so I didn’t think you wanted to. And I asked him in the hopes that if he was in there, Whitney might stop hating on me. And I didn’t think you could help with that. I needed a buffer. I mean, I had to dance ten more songs with him, but then he did it.”

Shit. Why did I just say that?

“You danced with him?”

“Yes. Gosh that all sounds kinda bad, doesn’t it?”

“Um, yeah, it does. Do you still like him?”

“No. I like you. ”

“But I’m still wearing the key.”

I sigh. I really don’t want to have this conversation right now. He obviously has no idea how exhausting it can be to fight off a god’s power. But I care about Dawson. I do. I don’t know if I love him, but I do know I don’t want to lose him.

“Dawson, you make me happy. We have fun together and the sex is amazing.”

“But . . .”

“But I’m a little skittish about professing love. You know that it hasn’t worked out so well for me in the past. It didn’t work out that great for you either. I like you a lot, Dawson. Can’t that be enough for now?”