Page 64 of Haunt Me

“It’s so embarrassing,” she says once she’s done laughing. “I don’t even know why I’m showing these passages to you. These books I’m reading… I know it’s wrong. But I can’t stop.”

I raise an eyebrow at that. “How could reading be wrong?”

“Well, I started on the classic literature, but I’ve kind of finished it.” Her cheeks are turning pink again.

“You what?” How can onefinishthe classics?

“I read a lot of it, or all of it, and now I’ve moved on to more… contemporary authors, let’s say.”

“Your mom’s Victorian romances,” I say. “I remember.”

“Not my mom’s. Not Victorian.”

She is hiding a paperback behind her back, and I reach for it. It’s got nothing but typography on the cover, but once I open it… There is a couple on a fully-colored page, and let’s just say they that they are hugging a little bit too much and wearing a little bit too little. On a bed.

“It’s a stepback cover.” She tries to grab it from my hand, but I hold fast.

“Show me,” I tell her, letting my guitar fall to the grass. Now this is interesting.

“Are you crazy? Absolutely not!” She goes even redder and I don’t know how I stop myself from grabbing her and devouring her right here right now. She smacks my arm, but eventually she lets me hold the book. Then she goes back to hiding behind her hair.

“There are…” I swallow, “explicit scenes in this book, right?”

“I don’t get them,” she replies, looking away. “They scare me sometimes. Other times, they… make me feel things I shouldn’t.”

“Do you want to keep talking about them?”

She nods.

I leaf through the book while she hides behind her hair, and finally, I read one of the sex scenes in the book (to myself, not out loud). I swallow.

Wow. That was… wow.

I lick my suddenly dry lips and I try to explain to her a few things about what I just read: what is realistic and what is not, what she should be careful about and how everything works in real life. A lot of what I read is just plain ignorant or pure idiocy—but there were some parts that helped me start the conversation. I tell her that personally, I have no experience in this department, and that makes her sit a bit straighter. As if she is relieved.

I am not sure I am the person she needs to be talking about this stuff with, but there is no one else to do this. Apparently, her loser of a dad won’t do it. She and I have already kissed—it’s important that she is educated. And I might be an idiot at explaining things, but I have a mom and she does not. She knows very little except for the stuff she has read in these romance books, so I do my best to explain what I can.

She listens carefully, her cheeks glowing deliciously pink.

As I talk, I can feel myself changing from a stupid, moronic boy that stared at girls’ boobs, to a man who talks to a girl about becoming a woman respectfully and carefully. It all happens in the span of half an hour. I become a man. For her.

I don’t know if I measure up to the challenge.

I only know that I want to.

“Do you have anyone… any girl friend or relative…” I start asking, then pause to swallow. I mean, it’s obvious she has no one: she didn’t even know what to do when she got her period. That’s not right. It’s not fair. “Do you have anyone in your life that you can talk about this stuff to?” She just shakes her head quietly. “Well, you do now.”

I take her hand and, for the first time since our kiss, she lets me.

I am already planning on going to my room and researching the hell out of the subject matter, to be better educated for her if she ever has any questions. If she ever decides to trust me enough to kiss me again.

Or to do more than kissing…

To…

I can’t breathe again. I need to breathe. I need to talk about something that won’t make me lose my mind.

“Which of the classics have you read?” my voice comes out in a croak. “Surely it can’t be all of them.” I hardly know what I’m saying. “All the Austens and the Shakespeares?”

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