“Are you a virgin?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not.” I hold her hand. “You can ask me anything, you know.”
She frowns thoughtfully. “I think…for me to ask anything more would feel like I’m prying. Like it’s not my business.”
“Well, then, I can offer the information. It was my first girlfriend, back home in Vermont. We’d known each other since, like, kindergarten. I’d had schoolyard crushes, right? Like holding hands on the bus and stuff like that. But she was my first real, serious girlfriend. We started dating exclusively sophomore year. We were both virgins, and we waited until we were seniors to be together like that. We dated until the Swan Song thing happened, and everything got crazy. I barely managed to graduate, and then I immediately moved to LA.Sheactually broke up withme.” I can’t help a smile. “She said—I remember very clearly—she told me she didn’t want to hold me back, and she knew I’d be too worried about hurting her to break up with her, so she was doing it first, for me. And…she wasn’t wrong. I knew it was my chance, and I couldn’t deal with a long-distance girlfriend and all that, and she was going to college anyway, so…” I shrug.
“And that was…it? With her?”
I roll a shoulder. “No, not exactly. This isn’t public knowledge, but I actually secretly dated Alessa Howell. We kept it secret from everyone, even our management teams. So…there was her. But media pressure was too much and we mutually decided to call it off. It was just too much hype. We got photographed at dinner together,once, and the world went apeshit. That was too much. We didn’t want our brands, our images as actors and artists, to become conflated with who we were dating.” I pause, sigh. “I was sad about that, actually. Alessa was sweet and really funny. But it just wouldn’t have worked.”
She nods. “Mmm-hmmm.”
I smirk at her. “What? Jealous?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, of course not.”
“Then what?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
She winces. “I guess I had some false assumptions about you.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you’re so good-looking and so famous that I figured you could snap your fingers and have any woman on the planet.” She rubs her head. “And I guess I assumed you would have…you know, taken advantage of that. You’ve only been with two people?”
I bump her with my shoulder. “It’s an easy assumption to make, and I think most people would assume the same. And, I guess there’s some truth to the basis of the assumption, in that I probablycouldfind someone to date or…you know, just sleep with…pretty easily. But that’s not who I am. And I’ve set out to try to make sure being a star or whatever doesn’t change me as a person. I want to be the same person I would have been had I not gotten discovered. I wouldn’t be sleeping around with every girl who batted her eyes at me, and I’m not going to be that guy now that more people know who I am and maybe would want…I don’t know, just me, I guess, simply because I’m famous.”
She nods. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
I shrug. “Of course.”
She’s restless, foot kicking in a relentless rhythm. Abruptly, she slides forward off the bed and stands up, crouches by her suitcase and opens it, prods at the tight rolls of clothing, and pulls one free. A shirt, it looks like. She stands again, facing me. Gnaws on her lower lip, gazing at me. Considering.
Then, she turns away from me, slips one arm out of the sleeve of her dress, then the other, and the garment billows the floor around her feet. She’s wearing seafoam green underwear, silk briefs. A white bra. She hesitates, and then reaches behind her back and unhooks the bra, slides it off, tosses it to the floor. For a moment, then, she just stands there. Contemplating turning around, maybe?
She doesn’t.
She shakes the rolled-up shirt out, sticks her hands through the sleeves, and then shrugs it on. The hem falls to her waist, leaving a slight gap of pale, freckled skin above the elastic of her underwear. It’s a tank top, deep blue, worn—a favorite item. She turns. Faces me.
Her legs are long and slender. The underwear cup her sex, and I force my eyes upward. Her nipples are hard, poking against the shirt.
She shifts her weight, and her arms cross around her middle—briefly, and then she drops them. Just stands there, as if inviting me to look at her. It strikes me that this moment is one of bravery, for her.
I can’t help but to rise to my feet, cross the small distance between us. Take her face in my hands, tilt her mouth to mine. Claim her lips in a kiss. Soft, slow.
“You’re beautiful, Jolene,” I whisper.
“When you look at me like that,” she breathes, “I feel…” she trails off, lets out a sharp breath. “I feel beautiful.”
“You should feel beautiful, because you are.”
She ducks her head. She’s shaking all over. “Thank you, Wes.”
“Why are you shaking?”
