That was really the only problem; Nate hadn't given up on making me a pothead. He talked constantly about my "gift" and what a crime it was to deny myself a high that some could only dream of achieving.
"And you're just a noob," he'd say. "That means it'll get even deeper."
If my high got any deeper, I was pretty sure I'd end up dead. Nate didn't get that. He hoped a good contact high would rope me in—hence the cloud of smoke when I entered.
Part of me was flattered. Sadly for Nate, getting high was life's peak experience. I figured he had to care about me a lot to want to share it with me so badly.
Still, he never let up, and I was tired of finding new ways to say no. Plus to me the "sweet perfume" of pot smoke smelled more like a combination of wet grass and cat pee.
By Wednesday I dreaded going into the house. Then I spent the first half hour there fighting with myself about whether to leave and never come back.
But then Nate would kiss me, and it felt so good that within seconds I wouldn't even notice the pot on his breath.
Claudia always snapped up her phone on the first ring when I called her from the car each evening on my way to Wegmans.
"Sex Addicts Anonymous, this is your sponsor speaking," she answered on Thursday.
"We have not had sex!"
"Right, but you're hitting practically a base a day, which means by my calculations you'll have done the deed by this time next week."
"Okay—in baseball? Three bases. Four, with home plate."
"Whatever. So what happened today?"
The second she asked, I had a physical flashback and felt a shivery jolt. It was so unexpected, I actually let out a scream.
"What?" Claudia wailed. "Is he there? Tell me he isn't there. That's just weird. And aren't you driving?"
"No, he's not here! I was just remembering. It was kind of ... big today."
"It was big?"
"That's not what I mean. I mean, it was big. I think. Not that I've seen it ... Even if I had seen it, I have no basis for comparison, so I still wouldn't know, really—"
"I'm going to start playing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' on the phone keys unless you tell me exactly what happened right now."
"Okay, so you know how I said I was going to wear that stretchy skirt today?"
"Easy access," she confirmed.
"Right. Well ... he accessed."
"OH MY GOD!" Claudia screeched. A loud beep screamed in my ear.
"Ow! What was that?"
"That was my jaw hitting the floor. Or in this case, the pound key," Claudia said. "So was it ... you know ... good?"
"Yeah..."
"But?"
"No, it was good. It was. It was just really... intimate, you know? Almost too intimate. But I didn't think that until it was over. And then I just kind of wanted to cuddle up and wrap the comforter all around me."
Neither one of us said anything for a minute.
"Cair, are you okay?"
"Yeah! I mean, it felt incredible. Honestly, he didn't do anything I didn't really want him to."
"Swear on the Bell?"
"Swear on the Bell. Sorry, Claude, gotta run—Wegmans. I'll call you back after."
I thought about it while I did my quick-change act and decided I was making a big deal out of nothing. It wasn't like I was twelve. I was sixteen. Lots of sixteen-year-olds had actual sex. The fact that I'd maybe gone a little further than I might have imagined I would was seriously no big deal. And I hadn't been lying to Claudia: It had felt amazing. Really amazing. And I'd wanted it in a huge way.
So there we were. I was fine. I was better than fine. I was great.
Except that night I couldn't sleep at all.
It wasn't what we'd done that bothered me. It was Nate, and the way I was with Nate. We never talked. At all. Okay, yes, we talked about music, and we talked about pot, and we talked about how much he wanted me to hear his music and smoke his pot, but we didn't talk about anything real. And that was cool when we were just hanging out, but now we'd had this really deep, intense physical experience. But without the other stuff it felt kind of ... empty.
I desperately needed to know how Nate felt about me, but even the idea of asking made me burn with embarrassment. Too lame and sad-little-puppy. And I was sure anything Nate did feel would evaporate the minute I