Jackson Ford - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind

“Let’s just stick with Teagan for now.” His smile looks forced, almost painful.

“There’s something else I want to tell you, too,” I say.

“There’s more?”

“Just…” I hold up my hand. I spent quite a bit of the drive over thinking about how I was going to phrase this, and I can’t risk getting knocked off my stride. That happens, and the words will just turn to vapour in my head. I’ve told Nic a lot about who I am, but there’s one thing I haven’t told him yet. If there’s going to be any chance of us ever being together, he has to hear this.

“When you got us that reservation at N/Naka,” I tell him, “you were hoping it would be a date. Like a romantic date.”

He closes his eyes. “I would never have made you—”

“No, it’s OK. It’s totally OK. And I know it looked like I just blew you off, or friend-zoned you, or whatever. I get that. But what I’m trying to say is, if I could have dated you…” Here it comes . “I would have.”

Dead silence. He sits, watching me. The urge to edge closer, to put a hand on his leg, is almost overpowering. I don’t dare, not until this is done.

“Then why didn’t you?” he says after a long moment. “Why make me wait? Were you worried about me… I dunno, revealing your secret or something? You could have gone out with me and not used your ability. Power. Whatever it is.”

“It’s more than that.”

For a few seconds the words fuzz in my brain, and I panic. I make them come back, force them to, like I’m using my PK to drag them into the world.

“Nic, when I have… when I have sex, I can’t control my PK. Things move. Like, really move. I’ve tried, and I can’t stop it happening.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Huh. Hadn’t thought of that.”

“Yeah. It gets a little… intense.”

Intense . Shit. It’s insanity. My PK leaps from my control like a wild animal, grabbing on to anything and everything. It actually starts way before I have an orgasm, slowly building up until objects start smashing against the walls. Believe me when I say that faking it just isn’t something I could do, and there is no way to control my ability when it happens.

“My mom and dad had a theory,” I tell him. “The endorphins boost my PK in… unexpected ways, they called them.”

He scratches his stubble. “OK, that’s… Wait, hold up. How did your parents know about this?”

“What did you do when you were sixteen years old, Nic?”

“I…” Understanding dawns. “Whoa. Wow.”

“Yeah. My room looked like an elephant had charged through it.”

It sounds like a joke. Like something you’d use as a punchline. But I’ve never felt less like laughing.

“Tanner didn’t want you revealing your powers to anybody.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you couldn’t have a boyfriend. I get it. That would… Wait, does this mean you’ve never had sex?”

“It’s not…”

“ Never? ”

Here it comes. The memory pushing itself to the surface. I knew I’d have to tell him about this, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

“I’ve had sex.”

“With who? Someone on the team?”

“Not exactly. His name…” I have to stop. Take a deep breath. “His name was Travis.”

Nic waits for me to continue, but a few seconds go by where I don’t know how. I’ve lived this story in my head a thousand times, but I’ve never told anybody about it. Not a soul.

“Who was he?” Nic says.

“Wait. I have to say something first.” Another deep breath. “What I’m gonna tell you… doesn’t make me look good. I’m not proud of it, and I would give anything to take it back.”

He folds his arms, waiting for me to continue. The look on his face isn’t unkind.

“After I came to LA, I really wanted to… I wanted to try. Sex, I mean. And I knew I would have to be careful. I can’t remember if I told you or not, but my ability doesn’t affect organic matter. No carbon or hydrogen molecules. And there was a wilderness area near the hotel Tanner had me staying at, this park with a ton of trees and stuff…”

Nic tilts his head slightly, gesturing at me to go on. He’s turned ever-so-slightly towards me now, forearms resting on his knees.

“Travis was this bartender I got talking to. He wanted to be an actor, but he wasn’t an asshole about it, like everyone else in this town. I got to know him, a little, and I decided that I wanted to do it with him. I wanted him to be my first. I asked him if he wanted to try, and he said yes.”

I wanted it to be good. I wanted to be good. I’d read up online about what to expect the first time, but it’s never going to completely prepare you. And like most first times, it definitely wasn’t beautiful, or loving, or inspired. It was a crash to the ground, twigs in my back, my skirt rucked up, him barely able to find my bra strap, let alone undo it. Both of us fumbling with the condom. I remember how his body tasted—about the only pleasant thing I remember. Salty and very slightly sweet, like really good caramel. I had a brief moment—a very brief moment—where I thought it was going to be OK.

“What happened?” Nic says gently.

“Well… we had sex.”

“And?”

“You know how sometimes you’re lying in bed and you just can’t get comfortable? You toss and turn and you just can’t find a position you like?”

“Yeah?”

“The more… aroused I got, the more my PK tried to find something to latch on to; and the more it found it couldn’t, the worse the feeling got. It made me wanna throw up.”

Somehow we finished. Travis had started noticing that something was wrong about halfway through. Mostly because I was making little retching noises as I tried to push back the wave of nausea. We rolled off each other and just lay there, panting, neither of us looking at the other. At that moment, if my PK had found something to grab, I would have smashed it into a million pieces.

I don’t remember how I got home. I do know that I didn’t go back to that bar for six months. He tried to call me a couple of times, but when I didn’t pick up, he stopped. Once again, not proud. But I wanted nothing more than to forget that night, which I did, at several other bars a long way from Travis’s.

“I don’t get it, Teags,” he says when I tell him this. “So you ghosted him? It happens. It’s happened to me a few times. It’s not an awesome thing to do, but it’s not the end of the world. Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s not—”

“And it’s not like you raped him. He consented, right? He might not have known about your ability, but you were both adults, and it’s not like you lied to him. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

“But I didn’t wanna lie to you ,” I say, voice thick. This is the hardest part. The part I practised saying over and over in the car. “Imagine being in a relationship, and the only place I can have sex is in the middle of the damn woods—” It sounds stupid, even as I say it. I push on: “—and it’s never good for me, and I can never tell you why. How long would you have stuck around? Not dating you… it meant I could still have you as a friend.”

“We could have made it work.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. Or you could have just told me. I would have… it wouldn’t have been…”

“Even if you knew, and you were cool with it, how long before one of us made a mistake? Or both of us? And then Tanner…”

“She wouldn’t have had to know!”

“And if she found out? Shit, even just being together, as a couple… it would have put you in danger. I put Travis in danger—I really liked him, he was a good guy, and I never gave him a single clue about what he was getting into. You know how many sleepless nights I had afterwards? Wondering if Tanner had found out somehow, and was about to… to do something to him?”