This Little Light - Lori Lansens Page 0,76
“I could see his shadow against the screen.”
“Did you go to him?”
She nodded.
“And then?”
“I sat down on the bed.”
“Did he keep touching himself?”
“He…took my hand. He showed me what to do.”
Holy fuck. Just, holy fuck. I was shaking.
“And while you were touching him? Did you kiss him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you let him touch you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Where did you let him touch you?”
“Under my pajama top.” Fee bursts into tears. “It’s not incest, right?”
“God respects your honesty, and God thinks it’s brave that you risked your friends’ judgment.” Jagger patted Fee’s knee, but he was as thirsty for the rest of the story as we were. “Then what happened?”
“We heard my abuela opening the door to her room. I jumped back into my cot, but she must’ve suspected something, because she made me come sleep with her. And she gave me the evil eye for the rest of the time I was there.”
Fee’s been holding back, pretending to be inexperienced and naive like the rest of us. My bestie stroked a dick and didn’t tell. I wanted to spit.
“What else, Fee? What other experiences have you had?”
I braced myself, sure she was gonna tell about the two of us practice-kissing when we were twelve. Or about how we lifted our shirts for the security guard at the drugstore. Malibu Sunset. Those were our secrets. Ours.
“Do you preach abstinence to boys too, Jagger Jonze?” I blurted.
“I would preach chastity to boys, Rory,” Jagger said, “but teenaged boys won’t attend a Virtue Ball with their mothers—no incentive whatsoever—so God seeks to move through you.”
Fee asked shakily, “Does our virginity really mean that much to our future husbands?”
“It’ll mean a lot to your husbands, I promise, Fee. It means everything to God.”
I go for it. “Is it true what you said tonight at orientation—that you don’t…at all…ever?”
“I am abstinent. Celibate. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Does that include self pleasure?” I asked. Bold. I was bold.
“I don’t,” he promised, “touch myself.”
“Never?” Brooky sounded skeptical.
He could see by our faces that not one of us believed him. We aren’t stupid. We have Internet. We know that guys jerk off a hundred times a day. Even Christians.
Delaney asked, “Don’t you ever feel…you know…?”
“The urge? Of course I feel the urge, Dee. I feel the urge many times a day. It’s called temptation.”
“Do you feel the urge right now?” I asked. Did I really want to know? I was playing with fire, drunk on this real talk. It occurs to me now, and did occur to me when I woke up the next day with a wicked headache, that Jinny Hutsall, or someone, had spiked the lemonade.
“I felt the urge five times on my way here tonight,” Jagger said with a laugh. There were five of us—six with Jinny. I was pretty sure I was the one who didn’t make the cut.
I poked the bear. “Just…I guess you’re, like, made of wood? No pun intended.”
The girls busted out laughing. They weren’t mad because it was funny.
Jagger snapped his head in my direction. “I am made of steel. In fact. My strength comes from my Maker.”
“But you never polish the steel?” I asked, setting the girls off again.
“Callin’ me a liar?” The way he said it. Like a punk.
We all stopped laughing.
Zara goes, “Rory, seriously, if Jagger says he doesn’t, then he doesn’t.”
“It’s just, if you get a…you know…don’t you have to, like, do something about it?” I asked.
Dee was curious too. “I mean, doesn’t it hurt? If you don’t…you know…let the air out?”
Jagger twisted his neck this way and that, and you could see he was pissed, really pissed. He goes, “I don’t have to touch myself to get release. I don’t have to do anything. It just…happens. It’s an act of God.”
“Are you saying God, like, jerks you off?” I asked.
The girls exploded with nervous laughter again, but I hadn’t actually meant to be funny. I was fascinated. God always seemed so against sex for all but procreation. Jagger Jonze was suggesting He was all in. And that—what?—God brought him to orgasm through prayer? Okay then.
“Oh my God, Ror,” Brooklyn, still laughing, said. “He doesn’t mean it that way. Or do you?”
We all pretended we had conversations about God and sex with a celebrity Reverend every Saturday night.
“I do,” he said.
“So you just sit there and do nothing, absolutely nothing, and it, like, happens?” Brooklyn said.
“I let Jesus take the wheel,” Jagger Jonze said.
The wheel in this case is his dick, so we laughed pretty hard about that. But