Page 80 of Enemies to Prom Dates
I pulled back a little and lifted her face to mine.
“Never,” I repeated. Then I bent down to kiss her.
17
Beth
It was all rather surreal. He’d been kissing me in front of his driveway, when he’d suddenly stopped and told me he would drive me home. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to leave him having just been with him again.
So instead, I’d walked up to his front porch where he’d informed me no one was home.
His parents were at some event and I knew Gigi was at my place having a sleepover with my sisters.
I’d walked inside, found the stairs leading to the second floor and made myself perfectly at home as I searched for his room.
I’d known instantly it was his room by the smell of it. Like some dark, woodsy, earthy scent that never failed to identify him, it was so uniquely his alone. His sheets would smell that way. His pillows.
Now, I was standing at the doorway to his bedroom wondering what he would think if I face-planted in the middle of his huge bed and inhaled his pillows. No doubt that I was a freak.
“Beth,” he said, quietly coming up the stairs behind me. It had taken him a few minutes to catch up with me, so I knew he’d given himself some kind of pep talk. I just didn’t know if he was pro or con about taking my virginity tonight.
I walked into his room and the scent of him grew headier. King size bed, for a future king, with tables on either side. A matching dresser. A spartan chair to sit on in the morning and put on shoes. Other than that, the most dominant feature of the room was the wall covered with shelves that held all his trophies and athletic achievement awards. Mixed in were some plaques announcing his academic excellence as well. It was like a mini history of Fitz, I thought, but in some ways, it wasn’t him at all.
I stood in front of his Shelves of Excellence and the words came out before I could even consider them.
“Do you ever resent your parents?”
I looked over my shoulder and saw he was still standing in the doorway. Almost hesitant to join me in his room. As if, once he crossed over the threshold and we were together in his bedroom, that alone was going to somehow devirginize me.
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because you always have to be the best. At everything. I guess I’m wondering if that’s because you want it, or they want it.”
“Both.”
I turned to look at him wanting more of an explanation.
“They want me to be exceptional. I want to be exceptional because I know it makes them proud, but also because I know I’m fulfilling my destiny. And yes, that sounds stupidly dramatic, but it’s no less the truth. I was born privileged.”
I opened my mouth to remind him he still had to fight the implicit racism in this country, but he raised his hand to stop me as if he knew where I was going.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been stopped enough times driving my Audi to know things would be different if I was white. Still, even black I’m privileged. Rich. Well educated. Strong. Healthy. With an entire world of possibilities open to me. My dad reminds me, all the time, where he came from, so I can see how different I have it. I’m not living his black experience and that’s okay by him. I’m livingmyblack experience. It’s on me to carry that legacy forward. To break down more walls. To be the absolute best man I can be because my parents gave me every opportunity to be just that. Being less than my absolute potential would be an insult to them. I love them too much to do that.”
I smiled. I wanted to tell him he was arrogant, but I couldn’t. Arrogance was an exaggeration of achievements and self. There was nothing exaggerated about Fitz. He simply was who he was.
The guy who would save his sister, my sisters, me from harm because if he believed it was in his power to control. He was compelled to act.
He said once I was his equal. I wasn’t.
I didn’t reach for greatness like he did. I didn’t wear it as coat every day like he had to, wanted to.
Fitz was seventeen, but in so many ways, he was already the man he was going to become. This time I had with him, this was my time. Before college, before more twenty-something girls or college co-eds got their hands on him.
For now, he was mine.
“Beth, let’s go downstairs.”
“Why?”
