If You Told Me To

It humiliated Sarah to admit it, but her mind was fixated on the feeling of Harry’s hand on her waist, the way it almost completely covered her side and how the soft, gentle touch was enough to send shocks of electricity shooting through her veins. She tried to shove the thoughts out of her head, especially at night when she was trying to sleep, by telling herself that she was being silly; some girls her age had much more done to them by a boy than just touching their stomachs. But Sarah, maybe because of her lack of experience, maybe because of her upbringing, couldn’t keep the thoughts away for long.

Sitting next to Harry was almost as bad as trying to go to sleep. She kept sneaking embarrassing looks at his hands, wondering if he was thinking about the tender skin of her middle when he was drifting off to sleep. Probably not, since he made a habit of making out with every girl in the state of New York, but Sarah wanted to believe she was different than those girls, no matter how naïve that made her. At least he was having a relationship with her instead of using her as a place to stick his tongue when he was bored.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked in a soft voice, snapping Sarah out of her inquiring thoughts and making her turn bright red.

“Of course I am,” she defended, clearing her throat and sitting up straighter. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve just been quiet the past couple of days.” He paused. “Was it about those girls at the lake? Do you feel weird about the fact that I smiled at them? Because I didn’t mean to offend you or anything. I was just having some fun, you know? Obviously, I’m not interested in them or whatever. I mean, they were, like, ten. They probably don’t even know what a bra is.”

Sarah flushed further, but she couldn’t hold back her laugh as she shoved Harry’s shoulder lightly. “Oh, stop. I’m not the crazy, jealous type, and I like to think I’m smart enough to figure out that you wouldn’t go for a middle-schooler.”

“Oh. Okay. So what is it then?”

“Nothing.” Although she could hear the soft false note in her voice, she figured Harry wouldn’t be able to. As it was, she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t known personally that she was lying. “I just don’t want to disturb your writing. You look like you’re in a groove.”

“Just posted,” he responded with a smile. “So you won’t be disturbing anything.”

She returned his grin and looked at his laptop to check the time. Just before noon. Although her stomach was starting to growl a little bit, she wanted to wait at least a half hour more before eating lunch, since she’d just had breakfast a couple hours prior. If she ate lunch too early, then she was going to be starving by the time dinner rolled around, and she hated feeling that hungry.

Just as she went to turn back to the sketch of a flower she had on an otherwise blank page of her sketchbook, Harry’s laptop dinged loudly, piercing the silence. It had only happened a couple of other times during the summer, so Sarah knew it meant he got a comment on his blog, but she was still surprised to hear it so soon after he finished writing it.

“Must have been a good one,” Sarah joked, scooting closer to Harry so she could read the comment, just as she had with the others.

“Hey, no,” Harry said suddenly, leaning away from her, a blush creeping across his cheeks. “Whatever happened to privacy?”

Sarah swallowed and pushed her eyebrows together in suspicion. “I read the other ones. What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything,” he lied, his voice cracking in the middle of the statement.

“Harry. I want to read that comment.”

He looked like he was about to argue, but when he saw the serious look on Sarah’s face, he sighed and moved back closer to her so their hips were just touching. And then, Sarah could read the words: Yeah harry! This sarah girl sounds real cool and if you actually screw her before the summer’s over and pop her cherry once and for all you can enter sophomore year as a man. THE man! Foreign girls are sexy as fuck.

Sarah had never felt so objectified in her life, and her face felt so hot that she was afraid it might melt right off her skull. She was so humiliated, both by being spoken about that way and thinking incessantly about Harry, who was only after her virginity, that she wanted to die. And then she remembered one of their rules: No sharing personal information about her online. Her existing virginity was the exact thing she’d been thinking about when she suggested the rule, figuring that his friends would think she was too much of a kid, and Harry betrayed her.

“Sarah, I’m so sorry,” Harry was saying, and although Sarah could tell he’d been speaking before that statement, she had no idea what the words had been. “I honestly didn’t know that he was going to say those kinds of things. I swear, I didn’t say any of that stuff in my blog post.”

“Let me read it,” Sarah demanded before realizing what she was saying. “Let me read it, and I’ll decide for myself if you said anything I should be angry at you for.” After all, she couldn’t be that upset over something his friend had said about her. Harry didn’t have any control over that.

Without objection, he handed over his computer, and Sarah’s eyes absorbed the text, ignoring the way the bottom of the overheating laptop seared through the skin of her thighs. The more she read, the more she felt her stomach unclench and her shoulders relax; Harry hadn’t spoken about her that way. The part his inappropriate friend had been referring to was incredibly tame, and it was obvious that Harry hadn’t meant any harm about it.

“‘It’s almost weird, the way I feel about her,’” Sarah read aloud, avoiding Harry’s gaze. “‘I look at her all the time when she’s too focused to notice, and, as cliché as it sounds, I can feel my heart start beating even faster. The more I think about her and us, the more I think that I could actually care enough about her to lose my unwelcome virginity to her. And I’d do it in a second, too, if she weren’t a virgin, too. I would never be able to do that to her, knowing that it would be so much more important to her than it would be to me.’”

There was a long pause before Harry sucked in a breath. “Um, yeah.”

Sarah was quiet as she handed Harry’s computer back over to him. Her whole body felt like it was on fire with embarrassment, but she didn’t hold any real anger toward Harry. He hadn’t said anything demeaning about her, and although he’d broken one of the rules, she couldn’t find it in herself to care that much, since he had been so nice about the whole thing. She knew letting it slide was her only real option.

“I know it broke one of the rules,” Harry whispered, like someone might be able to overhear them. “But I thought explaining exactly what was on my mind would prove to my friends just how important you really are to me. I should have cleared it with you first, and I’m so sorry that I just went ahead and did it on my own.” Sarah stayed quiet. “Please say something before I burst.”

“I’m not as upset as I thought I’d be,” she finally assured him, putting a hand on his arm gently. “The more I think about it, the less I think being a virgin is something to be embarrassed about. My worth shouldn’t be defined by whether I’ve had sex or not.” She pulled her hand back, tucking a lock of slightly-frizzy hair behind her ear. “So I’m not angry at you.”

“I’m sorry my friend is such a pig.”

“Me, too. He must be very difficult to deal with.”

Harry grinned shortly before leaning forward and pressing his lips softly against hers. Her blood started to hum through her body as she took in a deep breath, reciprocating the kiss in a way that surprised her. But after how much she’d been thinking about Harry’s hands on her, she shouldn’t have been taken very off guard. Harry didn’t seem to mind, though, as he breathed softly into her mouth, almost like a contented sigh, and brought up one of his hands to cup her cheek.

She finally pulled back, flushing from the top of her scalp down her neck, and immediately turned away from him.

“Whoa,” Harry mouthed, his voice only barely audible, but Sarah could still hear, and a giggle burst out of her before she could stop it.

“Harry, can I be honest with you?”

“I think I’ve been more than honest with you, so I guess it would be your turn.”

“I won’t be ready to lose my virginity by the end of the summer. I’m sorry that you’ll have to go back to New York without having slept with anybody.”

Harry laughed lightly before putting his arm around her and kissing the top of her head. “That’s okay. I don’t think my worth should be defined on whether or not I’ve had sex, anyway.”

“If you use that in any of your future writing, I expect some credit. Don’t make me sue you for plagiarism.”

“You drive a hard bargain, but when you put it that way, how can I say no?”