Take Me Tender by Christie Ridgway

Author:Christie Ridgway [Ridgway, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Billionaire's Beach
Publisher: Christie Ridgway
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

I cried on my eighteenth birthday. I thought seventeen was such a nice age. You’re young enough to get away with things, but you’re old enough, too.

—LIV TYLER, ACTRESS

Fern tossed the steaming brownie from hand to hand, cooling it before biting it in two. It melted on her tongue and bathed her back molars in grainy chocolate before she swallowed it down. Even as she popped the other half in her mouth, she was already reaching for a second straight out of the pan.

Beside her on the bed, Marie was closing her eyes in dreamy appreciation of the undercooked dessert they’d pulled out of the oven ten minutes too soon. “The gooiest ones in the middle are my favorite,” she said. “Better than sex.”

“Really?” Too late, Fern realized she’d spoken the question out loud.

Marie’s eyes widened and her hand paused, a brownie halfway to her mouth. “You and Jenner?”

The Veronica Mars marathon they were watching on TV switched away to commercials and Fern pretended to care about the latest hair remover. After all, she wore short shorts.

With her French-pedicured big toe, Marie nudged Fern’s ankle. “You can’t leave it like that. I figured…”

Fern shook her head, still watching the long-legged girl on the screen dance under a disco ball. The guy watching her spin looked as if he wanted to lick her bare limbs like a Popsicle. Eww.

Marie wasn’t letting the subject go. “Not with anyone?”

Again, Fern shook her head, then pinched her thigh as punishment. Stupid self. How could she have been so careless as to give that much away?

Except she wasn’t careless. She never had been. That was part of the whole problem. Now that she was feeling just a little bit careless and a whole lot reckless, there wasn’t a single Two Shoe available to discuss it with—at least not one who she could talk to about the subject of sex.

Marie might have to do.

She sent the other teenager a sidelong look as she reached for the pan again. “What about you?”

The girl waved her brownie, scattering chocolate crumbs on the paper napkin she’d spread over her lap. “Sure. I had a boyfriend at the end of last year. He moved in June, though. Las Vegas.”

Fern picked up her own napkin and started pleating it into an origami shape she thought she remembered learning in fourth grade summer day camp. “Jenner wants me to sneak out and meet him tonight.”

An hour ago, Marie had braided her hair into a dozen dark tails and now the rubber-banded ends flew out as she whipped her head toward Fern. “Tonight?”

The brownies no longer seemed so irresistible to Fern. Her stomach twisted, protesting the chocolate rush—or at least that’s what she told herself it was protesting—and she pushed the pan closer to Marie. “I haven’t decided.”

“He’s gorgeous,” the other girl said, digging free another chewy square. “And there’s plenty of other girls willing to give it up to him if you won’t.”

“Marie!” Fern frowned. “Didn’t you outgrow that argument freshman year? We don’t give it up for a guy just because if we don’t, we’ll lose him.

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