Never Enough by Denise Jaden

Author:Denise Jaden [Jaden, Denise]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I got home at nine-thirty and went straight to my room. The bathroom door was ajar again, and oddly, I reached over to shut it this time. I’d never really had something to hide from my sister before. But this.

This.

My whole body trembled and shivered, and I threw on my Kings T-shirt over top my clothes. I lay on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, thoughts and feelings piling on one another like a multicar accident, and because I couldn’t process anything of the evening, my thoughts kept returning to Shayleen.

I couldn’t get her and everything she’d told us after the big seventh-grade sex talk out of my brain. The things I questioned were first about her: Had she lied about her sexual experience? Then I started to question myself. Did I do it wrong? Is there something wrong with me? Maybe it wasn’t supposed to hurt like that.

And Josh? I couldn’t even go there. I couldn’t let myself wonder if something so monumental for me had meant next to nothing to him.

I had to talk to someone—and it wasn’t going to be my parents. After a dozen deep breaths, I padded down the hall and knocked on Claire’s door. She told me to wait, and then after what felt like forever, she opened the door with an arm outstretched, inviting me in like she was a welcoming hostess on a cruise ship. I shuffled to her bed and sat down, and the bounce of the mattress caused an M&M’s wrapper to fly out from under it. Claire snatched the wrapper from the floor and threw it into the garbage can beside her desk, which was already nearly overflowing. She shoved it down the side and murmured something about Jasmine. I interrupted her blabbering.

“Does sex hurt?” My foot fluttered beneath me, but I looked at her intently when I said it. If there was any more lying or denial I wouldn’t miss it like I had with Shayleen. I just wished I’d had this conversation earlier, years ago.

“I don’t know, Loey, I haven’t done it yet,” she said, flipping through her desk calendar.

I tried not to let the shock register on my face. “What about Josh?”

“Oh, he wanted to, Loey. Boy, did he want to!” She laughed and I could tell it was true, and that she was over that whole relationship. “That’s why I broke up with him. I wasn’t ready, and he didn’t want to wait.”

She broke up with him? Since when? I’d always assumed Josh had broken up with Claire, since she’d been so upset. I’d thought Josh could have had anything he wanted, with anyone. But no, I guess just with me.

Part of me still didn’t believe it, after all the time they’d spent up in her bedroom. Would anyone really pretend to be a virgin if they weren’t one, though? I’d always felt so behind, so naïve. I studied her. She really wasn’t lying.

I couldn’t process it. She seemed so sure, while I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

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