Page 86 of Old Acquaintances

“Ella!” Serena calls down to me. “What about you?”

I breathe through the bumpy rhythm of my heart.Don’t look at him.If I look at him, they will all know.

“Um, I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

“That’s fine.” Her voice goes dreamy, “But was it nice? Or was it like everyone else’s? An embarrassing and painful rite of passage.”

Tucker draws lines through the condensation on his glass. His hands move so slowly, so gently, just like they did that night. I’ll never forget it. My voice comes out heavy, “Nice.” My eyes twitch to his and back down. “It was really nice.”

“What about you, Tuck?”

He answers, “I barely remember the first time. But I remember thebesttime.”

I feel his eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Two

That Night

In February of freshman year, I drove to Clemson on a Friday night, arriving just after midnight. I hadn’t planned on this, I didn’t pack any clothes, I just jumped in my car and drove. I had hours to think about what Oliver had just said to me.

“I’m not sleeping with a virgin,” he said, grabbing my phone and ushering me to the door. “I don’t mess with that.” Before he shut the door in my face, he snorted a laugh and said, “Good luck finding someone who will.”

We had been dating for two weeks at that point. I stood in his dorm room hallway, holding my jacket, reliving a similar comment I’d received a month earlier from Charlie Price. He didn’t want to have sex with a virgin either, thinking I would immediately fall in love and be obsessed with him.

I texted Tucker when I parked my car. When he didn’t answer immediately, I panicked that he was in his room with a girl. I’d spent the entire drive down there convincing myself that it wasn’t a bad idea, that I wasn’t about to offer him a crazy proposition.

His non-answer was my sign from the Universe that this crazy venture was not supposed to take place. I could have gone to Johnny’s to spend the night, but he could be with Serena, and he would probably turn me away. I had nowhere to go but back to school, and I’d just driven hours.

I pressed my feet into the seat and started to cry. I liked to cry. I liked having emotion pour from me and, being with a group of mostly boys, it meant that my friends knew something was wrong.

My door handle pulled.

“Ella?” Tucker called from behind the window. He wore short sleeves, his breath hung in the cold air. He rapped his knuckles and called my name. When I unlocked the car, he opened the door and squatted down, cupping my face.

“Are you okay?” he demanded.

It was as if he knew I would only present myself to him if something was wrong.

“I’m fine,” I sobbed.

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m physically okay.”

He pulled me out of the car and reached in to turn it off. I didn’t have my jacket on, so he put his arm around me, something he hadn’t done since my first morning at college. He held me to him and walked me toward the door. I promised I would tell him what was wrong when we got inside.

Tucker lived in an apartment-style dorm where he shared a kitchen and living room with roommates, but he had his own bedroom. He guided me inside. He shut the door behind him and said, “What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”

I stood in his room, looking at the disheveled bed sheets, the books on his desk, the lamp Lori picked out when she went shopping with me and my mom. He waited in front of me in a white t-shirt and sweatpants, hands on his hips.

I swallowed. “Oliver broke up with me.”

“Who’s he?”

“This guy I was seeing.”

“Okay. And?”

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