Evernightteen: https://tinyurl.com/yd8jx57n
“Do you suppose we can share intimacy without intercourse?”
Penny said, “What I'm saying is I love being with you, Charlie Mitchell. I'd love to be close to you, really close. But...” Her voice drifted off.
“That's exactly the way I feel—I want to be close.”
“I don't want to...you know...get involved like that again, like I was with Jason.” She inched back from me on the couch. “Never again...at least not soon.”
“Not to worry,” I said, and then puffed out a tiny breath. I decided to tell Penny the secret I'd been hiding since we first met, a pledge I'd made to myself a while back, right after Mom divorced Dad for cheating on her the second time, and after I found out a seventeen-year-old jerk had knocked up my fifteen-year-old sister. I closed my eyes for a second, bit my bottom lip, and then said, “I'm a virgin. I've made a commitment to stay one till I get married...well, at least until I fall in love and can get married.”
Penny's eyebrows bobbed up. Her eyes widened as if she were trying to look inside my brain. She’d probably never heard anything like that before. “You're kidding,” she said. “Right?”
“No. It's the truth. It’s not like I haven’t dated anyone, but—”
“A commitment to who?”
“Myself.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “But why?”
“Things going on around me. What my sister's going through, having a baby. Her situation is a disaster. It's changing her whole life, and I feel so bad for her. I’d never want that to happen to any girl I dated.” I licked my lips. “My dad’s a serial cheater. He’s hurt all of us, really hurt us, especially my mom, and I don't want to be like him. Ever.”
Penny continued to stare, evidently amazed. “I had no idea.”
“Staying a virgin is safe. No one’s future is in jeopardy. No one gets hurt. Especially a baby who didn’t ask to be born.”
Penny leaned forward, reached out, and slipped her arms around my shoulders. My blood hummed in my ears.
“Do you suppose we can share intimacy without intercourse?” she asked, scooting even closer to me, her lips right in front of mine.
I rubbed my chin. “Um...I'm not sure what that means.”
“It means, like, stop when things get too serious...you know, before anything happens.”
“What makes us stop?”
“A switch in our head,” Penny said, releasing her arms from my shoulders and poking at her head with a forefinger. “When either one switches it off, that person calls timeout. Both of us stop.”
“And if neither one flips the switch?”
“One of us will.”
My eyes narrowing, I asked, “Have you ever tried this before, flipping switches? Like with Jason?”
“No.”
“Think it'll work?”
“What can go wrong?” she said with a shrug. “We've both got plenty of reasons to be committed.”
“True.” We waited a moment. Finally, after I opened my arms, Penny snuggled up against me again. I hugged her, and we kissed once more, our lips dancing.
Is this true?
Had I been lucky enough to find a girl who understood me? A girl who didn't think I was gay, crazy, or a religious freak? A girl who wanted to be loved but wanted to abstain? Just like me? I couldn't believe it.
This was perfect!
But only if one of us always called timeout.
I wasn't sure how that would work.
But that night, Penny and I tangled in each other’s arms in the couch, kissing, we didn't have to worry about calling timeout. Isaac did that for us by suddenly wailing his head off over the baby monitor, demanding to be fed and changed. Penny and I jumped up to tend his needs.
Later, Penny said she was tired, it was getting late, she better go home, and we kissed good night in the doorway. No problem with timeouts at all.
Not that time.
