My Life Next Door(56)

“You mean like the date and the time and the place? I think that would make me too tense. Like some sort of countdown. I don’t want to plan you. Not that way.”

He looks relieved. “That’s how I feel. So I was thinking we should just make sure we’re…well, uh, prepared. Always. Then see when things move there so we’re both…”

“Ready?” I ask.

“Comfortable,” Jase suggests. “Prepared.”

I give his shoulder a little shove. “Boy Scout.”

“Well, they didn’t exactly have a badge for this.” Jase laughs. “Though that one would’ve been popular. Not to mention useful. I was in the pharmacy today and there are way too many options just in, uh, condoms.”

“I know.” I smile at him. “I was there too.”

“We should probably go together next time,” he says, picking up my hand, turning it over to kiss the inside of my wrist. My pulse jumps, just at that brush of his lips. Wow.


In the end, we go to CVS later that night, because Mrs. Garrett wakes up and comes out of her room, rumpled in a sapphire bathrobe, to ask Jase to pick up some Gatorade. So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of…“Trojans, Ramses, Magnum…Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars,” Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display.

“They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions.

Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.”

“I don’t get what half these descriptions mean…What’s a vibrating ring?”

“Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.”

I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’”

“I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.”

“But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him.

“Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?”

“For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes.

We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave.

“Do you think he knew?” I ask.

“You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?”

“The sales guy. Why we were buying these?”

A smile pulls the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was…a…housewarming gift.”

Okay, I’m ridiculous.

“Or party favors,” I laugh.

“Or”—he scrutinizes the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.”

“Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans.

“Or little raincoats for…” He pauses, stumped.

“Barbie dolls,” I suggest.

“G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.


Brushing my teeth that night, listening to the sound of a summer rain battering against the windows, I marvel at how quickly things can completely change. A month ago, I was someone who had to put twenty-five unnecessary items—Q-tips and nail polish remover and Seventeen magazine and mascara and hand lotion—on the counter at CVS to distract the clerk from the box of tampons, the one embarrassing item I needed. Tonight I bought condoms, and almost nothing else, with the boy I’m planning to use them with.

Jase took them all home, since my mom still periodically goes through my dresser drawers to align my clothes in order of color. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t buy the “supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight” excuse. When I asked if Mrs. Garrett would do the same and find them, Jase looked at me in complete mystification.

“I do my own laundry, Sam.”

I’ve never had a nickname. My mother’s always insisted on the full Samantha. Charley occasionally called me “Sammy-Sam” just because he knew it bugged me. But I like being Sam. I like being Jase’s Sam. It sounds relaxed, easygoing, competent. I want to be that person.