***
She's leaning against my car waiting for me after school. "I'm going to the mall with Heidi."
"What?" I was smiling a second ago, and now I'm pissed. Not at her, but because Logan's right. About the being whipped thing. Not the sex. Maybe a little about the sex. "You never hang out with Heidi."
"I know." She shrugs.
I drop my bag and step forward, pushing her into my car. Holding her hand, I lift it and place it around my waist, then I drop my head on her shoulder and hope that no one else can hear me. "I feel like I haven't seen you in forever. I miss you."
She chuckles quietly. "We spent all of yesterday together."
"It's not enough."
She twists her finger through the hair below my cap. "Are you being needy?"
"Yes." I kiss her neck.
"I'll come by afterward."
"I can come with you."
She pulls back, her cheeks already red from her blush. "You can't, it's a girl thing."
My eyes narrow. "A girl thing?"
"She's taking me to clean up my wizard sleeve."
***
I don't know what the hell she means by cleaning up her wizard sleeve so I do what any normal teenage boy would do; I go home, run to my room, open my laptop and Google it. I'm on the third page of Google Images when I feel a hand on my shoulder. "Your mom has that landing strip thing."
I shut my laptop and dry heave. No joke. I run to the bathroom and bend over the toilet, trying to mentally remove my mom's landing strip from all the vaginas I've just seen.
Mark leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.
"You're an asshole."
"I try." He shrugs. "Let me guess, you’re going to call it research?"
I stand up and wipe the spit off my chin. "Lucy—" I cut myself off. "Never mind."
"You sure? All jokes aside, if you need to talk about it, I'm here."
I eye him as I pass, looking for any hint of mockery. Mockery? Is that even a word?
Throwing myself on the bed, I cover my eyes with my arm, and then I tell him.
Everything.
Even about the now infamous clitorusaurus-rex.
He listens the entire time, never interrupting. When I'm done, he lets out a breath with a whoosh. "You're on your own, buddy."
And then he leaves.
I just told him about my girlfriend's vagina-lock and all he does is leave.
"I'm never getting laid."
***
"I have a solution to your problems, Luce," Logan says.
It's been three days since Vaginagate and it's been the major topic of conversation during lunch. Everyone's talking about my girlfriend's vagina, and I haven't even seen it yet.
"What's that?" she asks.
"Liquid courage."
I should tell him to shut up, but he kind of has a point, and I'm not the only one that thinks so. Lucy slowly swivels on my lap, her eyebrow raised in question.
I shrug. We've never gone to parties together. I just assumed it wasn't her thing. Occasionally I'd go out with the boys and have a beer, then leave and find myself on her doorstep. After the fifth time, her dad stopped questioning it.
"What do you think?" she asks.
"I think you should do whatever you want, babe."
-LUCY-
"Run back upstairs and change, girly," Dad says, but he's smiling.
"You're lucky," I tell him. "I'm seventeen and going to my first high school party."
His eyebrows rise. "Are you gonna drink?"
I grab my keys off the counter. "Do you want me to lie?"
"Yes."
"Then no. I'm not drinking."
"That's my girl."
***
Cam's front door opens before I can knock. His mom stands at the entryway with her eyes wide. "You look..."
I grimace. "Whoreish?"
She laughs. "No, hon, you look beautiful."
I look down at myself. I'm not wearing anything too different from what I wear every day. My skirt's a little shorter and my top's a little tighter. Heidi helped me pick them out. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. "Hon," she says again. "I'm just—" She laughs and shakes her head slowly. "You're like a daughter to me, and I just feel like I've watched you grow up, you know? You look like a woman, and I'm just used to my little girl."
Her words cause an ache in my chest, and instantly I'm crying.
She raises her hand to pat my cheek, or so I think, but she's wiping away my tears. "You thinking about your mom?"
I nod, because I don't want to speak. I don't want my words to replace the echo of hers in my mind.
She moves forward and wraps me in her arms. "I couldn't have wished for a better girl for my Cameron."
"What did that asshole do?" Mark’s voice booms from behind her. We pull apart laughing.