Robin Wasserman - Lust

“I just wanted to say-”

“I missed you-”

“I love you-”

They stammered, and babbled, and then, finally, they embraced.

Adam held her tight, breathing in the fresh, clean scent of her hair. Thinking, She can never find out .

Beth dug her fingers into his flesh, wishing she would never have to let go. Deciding, He can never know .

They stayed like that, frozen in the empty hallway, for several long minutes, leaning on each other. Two minds with a single, desperate thought: This time, I’ll make it work. This time, I have to .

She was lying in bed, stumbling haplessly through her math homework, when she heard it. His car, pulling into the driveway, a loud rumbling and clinking that could belong to no one but Bertha the beat-up Chevy. She would know it anywhere.

Harper flipped the book shut and leaped to her feet, creeping over to the window-there was nothing wrong with taking a quick look at him, she told herself. Just because she wasn’t speaking to him (not that he’d seemed to notice-it probably didn’t even count as the silent treatment if she hadn’t actually seen him face-to-face yet and had the chance to snub him) didn’t mean she couldn’t watch from afar, just to see what he was doing.Who he was with.

The car pulled to a stop and Adam jumped out, walked slowly around to the passenger’s side, and held the door open. A blond head appeared, and he put his arm around her waist.

Harper couldn’t actually make out the girl’s face from her perch, but who needed to? She should have guessed this would happen. Adam and Beth walked together up the pathway toward the front door, his hand still resting on her back, her head against his shoulder. Harper couldn’t bring herself to look away. He unlocked his front door, but they paused before stepping inside-Adam cradled Beth’s face in his hands and turned it up toward him. And they kissed.

That was more than enough.

Harper shut her blinds in disgust and flung herself back down on the bed.This was getting ridiculous. First she had to watch Adam getting it on with Kaia in public, right in front of her-on her date, no less. Then, just when she’d finally decided to embrace the silver lining (i.e., the imminent demise of Beth and Adam’s lovers’ paradise), he pulls into his driveway and heads inside with Little Miss Perfect herself in tow.

Was Adam hooking up with everyone in town but Harper?

It was beginning to feel that way.

“Remember when we used to play GI Joes out here?” Adam asked lazily, lying back on the large, flat rock and staring up at the stars.

So he hadn’t apologized. So what? After a few days Harper’s anger had burned down to a low simmer, and with Beth back in the picture and Kaia up to God knows what, Harper didn’t have time to waste sulking in a corner. If she was going to win Adam, she was going to have to get in the game. Besides, she thought, looking fondly over at her oldest friend, lying next to her on the cool granite, it was Adam . Too dense to realize he’d done something wrong, so what was even the point in making him feel guilty? Especially when he called out of the blue with a mysterious request to meet him outside, at their place, to talk about some “stuff.” When he needed her, she was there-that’s just how it worked.

“I remember when I used to play GI Joes while you spent most of your time with my Barbie collection,” Harper teased him.

“Hey, Barbie was hot!” Adam protested.

Harper rolled her eyes. “Right, and that’s why you used to beg me to let you dress her up and drive her around in the Barbie Corvette.” She propped herself up slightly to give him a close look at her skeptical expression. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

“I slept with her, Harper.”

She froze, still facing him, and it took every ounce of strength she had to keep her face still. No eyes widening in shock or horror, no mouth turning down in disappointment, no tears or telltale blushing-she just looked at him steadily and concentrated on remembering to breathe.

“Who, Barbie?” she asked, narrowly managing to keep her voice light. She let some of the tension leach out of her muscles and sank back onto the smooth surface of the rock.

“Kaia. I’m serious, Harper. I slept with her.” He made a strange keening noise, half between a groan and a yelp. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Get yourself checked out for STDs?

But Harper bit back the comment and was glad for the darkness-it gave her a place to hide.

So he’d slept with her. At least now she knew.

Though she wished she didn’t.

“So that’s why we’re out here?” Harper asked. Though she’d suspected as much. The rock bridged the boundary line between their two small backyards and had been a favorite spot for years-it was here that he’d told her, just after moving to town, that his parents were divorced, here that she’d confessed her seventh-grade terror of having no friends, here that, at twelve, they’d shared their first kiss. It was where they ran to when they needed to run away, where their most terrible secrets lived. It was their place, the only thing in the world they truly owned-and they owned it together.

But they hadn’t needed their rock in a long time.

“Well, what do you want to do?” she asked simply.

“That’s all you’re going to say?” He rubbed his eyes furiously, like a little boy trying to rub out his tears. “Don’t you want to tell me what a disgusting pig I am, or something?”

“I think I’ll let Beth have that honor, if she ever finds out.” And Harper almost immediately began sifting through her options-maybe she could play this to her advantage after all. If she could find the right angle, if little Bethie heard the news in just the right way è

“Oh God,” Adam gasped, his voice filled with horror. “Do you think she will? What am I saying, of course she will. And then è”

“Adam, chill out,” Harper advised, trying to keep her voice steady. “She probably won’t find out-I’m obviously not going to tell her, Kaia has no reason to tell her-and I assume you’re not going to tell her?”

Though the spineless brat would probably take about five seconds to forgive you,Harper thought with disgust.

“God, no. Unless-should I? Harper, I’m so screwed up. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“So, like I said, what do you want to do?” Harper repeated. “Ball’s in your court, Ad.”

She shivered. It was a cold night, a brisk wind blowing through the yard, and she was dressed in only cords and a lacy tank top. Before she could even say anything-not that she would have said anything, nothing could have forced her to interrupt this train of thought-Adam pulled off his sweatshirt and tossed it to her. Beneath it, she noticed, he was wearing a vintage Transformers T-shirt she’d bought him for his birthday last year.

“What I want?” he mused, as Harper zipped herself into the cozy red fleece. “I want to go back to the beginning of the year and start over, do everything different.”

“Not an option,” she pointed out. “Try again.”

He was silent for a moment, and Harper wondered whether it was time for her to take a harder line. If he didn’t know what he wanted, well, maybe she should just enlighten him.

“Remember when I kissed you out here?” he asked suddenly.

“Barely,” she said casually, hoping he couldn’t hear the heartbeat pounding in her ears. “Our braces got stuck together and you accidentally stuck your tongue up my nose-but other than that, it was a success.”

They laughed quietly together.