“What’s he like, really?” she asks.
“What you see is what you get, with Wes,” I answer. “How he is, how he’s been around you and Mom and everybody? That’s Wes.”
“So…he’s, like, legitimately that freaking amazing?”
I grin, biting my lower lip. “Yeah.”
“God, I’m jealous.” She cuts a look at me. “I mean that funny, not for real. I’m not actually jealous.”
I roll my eyes at her. “Bethy, come on. It’s me. You don’t have to qualify your jokes. I know what you’re thinking before you do.”
She nods. “I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be…this.” She gestures at me. “Like, I hope this doesn’t offend you, but I expected it to fizzle out. For him to turn out to be…different. Like, this was a publicity stunt, or just being nice to you for…for obvious reasons. But it seems like it’s genuinely something else. Something…more. Like, there’s real affection between you guys.” She looks at me, questioning even as she keeps talking. “I know you told me you guys have, like, fooled around. But is it…is it just fooling around for fun? Or…?”
I roll a shoulder. “You and Derek…” I say, suggestively referencing her short-lived relationship with a guy from her AP Chem class back in high school. “I’ve always felt like you guys maybe did stuff that you didn’t entirely share with me. Which, you know, I get, especially now.”
She’s quiet a moment. “I…I didn’t want to hurt your feelings or make you feel left out, or…or something.”
I squeeze her hand. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Bethy.”
“But if Wes is actually, genuinely your boyfriend and this isn’t just some weird flex for him or…” She looks at me, and I know she’s about to say something she’s worried will offend me or hurt me, but because we’re so close, she’s going to say it anyway. “Or a desperate ploy for you to check off that last bucket list item, you know? And I’m not judging, if that’s what it is. I’m really not.”
“It honestly did kind of start off that way,” I admit. “I thought, when he first showed up and was like, yeah, I’ll marry you—I was like, okay, right. This will be fun and then it’ll be over and maybe I’ll get a kiss out of it, or…or something. Like, a first kiss before I go, right? And with Westley Freaking Britton, who I’ve had a bigger crush on than even my guy Harry Styles. You know this. But then…at some point, it…changed. For both of us, I think. I don’t really even know…how, or when. Maybe it’s when I got sick, in Cheyenne? I guess I expected it to scare him off. Like, seeing me sick, being faced with the reality that I’m not just a skinny little waif, I’m actually sick? I thought it would scare him more. But it didn’t. He stayed. He handled it.” I swallow hard. “This last one was…” I blink tears. “It was really, really bad, B. Like, Dr. Miller told me it had spread and it wasn’t responding, and I saw the scans and I know he’s right, but I didn’t…feel it, you know? I didn’t feel worse. It felt like it always has—some days are better than others, and some days are just pure unmitigated hell. But…that? When Wes called my parents? I’ve never felt that way before. I’ve always felt sick. But…” I let out a shaky breath, remembering. “That’s the first time I actually felt like I was dying.”
“Oh god, Jo.” She sobs, holding my hand and pressing her nose into my shoulder.
“For the first time, I really feel it. I feel scared. And most of all, I feel a whole hell of a lot less ready than I thought I was.” I laugh. “I think it’s because I have Wes. And I want…I want more time. Because this feels real, Beth. It is real. And I was ready before because I didn’t have him. And I know I have you and Macy and Mom and Dad and Grandma, but it’s not the same.”
She nods. “I do understand, to a degree. It wasn’t like that with Derek, obviously.”
I glance at her. “I’m curious about him. What actually happened that you didn’t tell me.”
She grins. “I…” A drop of her eyes, and a widening of her grin. “We actually slept together.”
“You lost your virginity with him and you didn’t tell me?” I stop walking, let go of her hand and glare at her. “We are so fighting, Bethany. Like, I’m mad.”
She sighs. “I’m sorry, Jo, I just…I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought…I thought it would be harder for you if you knew I’d done that and you hadn’t.”
“What was it like?”
She grins again. “Amazing. Not what I expected, though.”
“Was it his first time, too?”
She nods. “Yeah.” A laugh and a shrug. “Or at least, he said it was. And even though I’m obviously no expert, it seemed like it was. Like, he didn’t seem to have any more of a clue what we were doing than I did.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Did it hurt? I heard it hurts, the first time.”
She shrugs. “I mean, a little? Kinda like…a quick pinch, and then it started to feel better, and then it was good.” A laugh. “And then it was over.”
“So it was quick?”
She bites her lip, stifling a cackle. “Yeah, it was. But it got better.” A wiggle of her eyebrows. “You what they say…practice makes perfect.”
I cackle with her. “When? Where?”
We start walking again, and she takes my hand back. “We actually only really dated because we both wanted to lose our virginity. We talked about it, before. I thought he was cute, he thought I was cute, but neither of us were like, oh god I’m love. So, we decided to date, specifically to get comfortable enough with each other to have sex. So, we started out kissing, and kissing turned to making out, and making out turned into grope sessions, and that became getting naked together, and then we did it. But…” she hesitates. “As for where? We, um, actually skipped school a few times. His parents both work, so we skipped seventh period and went to his house.”
“So…why’d it end?
Another shrug. “It was coming to a point where we either had to, like, make it a real relationship, or end it. And we talked and decided neither of us actually liked the other enough to make it a relationship. We had physical chemistry, but that was it.”
I huff. “I still can’t believe you had sex and didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Jo.”
I bump into her. “I forgive you.”
She kisses my cheek. “Thanks.” A giggle, then. “So, you and Wes. Have you and him had sex? You were kind of vague.”
“Because I thought you were a virgin!”
She laughs. “Now you understand why I didn’t tell you!”
I huff. “Fine. I get it.” I shake my head. “No, we haven’t had actual sex, yet. Everything but, though.”
She groans, somewhere between excited and jealous. “With Westley Freaking Britton!”
“I know!” I let myself feel that excitement. “I don’t really think about him like that anymore, though. Or not often. Mostly, he’s just Wes.” I shrug. “If I think about him as Westley Britton, celebrity, and object of my childish celebrity crush, it makes it weird. I dunno. When it’s just…us, like just Jo and Wes, it’s…natural. A man and a woman, together. Instead of, like, celebrity and nobody.”