Page 29 of Never Forever

“Where haveyou been out in this weather?”

I shut the front door behind me. My hair was drenched. My hoodie weighed ten thousand pounds. I was shivering from the cold, but I was also so completely turned on from all that kissing that I was pulsing, hot and achy between my legs.

My mother looked up from the sofa, her phone in her hand.

“Just seeing some old friends, like I told you,” I said, hoping I sounded casual.

I didn’t feel casual. I felt desperate. Urgent. Like I wouldn’t be able to breathe or eat until I saw Matt again.

I knew I’d liked him last summer. I knew I’d missed him this past year. I knew he’d gone to the Formal with another girl, but now I knew he hadn’t kissed anyone all year.

I was his first kiss. He told me that. He was my first kiss.

And my like…hundredth. We’d really made up for lost time at the bandshell. I didn’t know people could kiss like that. Holding each other so tight I could feel the beat of his heart. His chest when he breathed.

His…dick, hard against my stomach. I mean…it was amazing.

I wanted to shout and scream and giggle. I wanted to tell Mom I made out with Matthew Sullivan and for the first time in my life I wanted to have sex. Like I understoodthe needfor sex. It was physical and demanding and all I wanted was Matt.

“You know, things are going to be different for you now. With kids in town.”

I was still buzzing about Matt in my head so Mom’s words made no sense.

“What do you mean?”

My mother sighed. “You’re famous now.”

I rolled my eyes. “Uh, I don’t think six episodes on a canceled show makes me famous, Mom.”

“You’ve been on TV. Trust me. People who didn’t talk to you before will want to be your best friend. Then there will be thejealous ones and they’ll do everything they can to tear you down. And the boys…”

“What about the boys?”

Mom stood, her linen pants wrinkled from all the travel she’d done today. Her hands fell on my shoulders and her voice got lower, like what she was about to share was a secret.

“They’re going to look at you and see you as only one thing. A target. Something they can do and then brag about to their friends that they did.”

“Mom!” I tried to back away. “That’s horrible.”

“That’s your new reality, Carrie. I’ve agreed to let you come home, go to school while we wait for the next best opportunity, but you need to understand you’re not like these people anymore. You’re bigger than they are and people will naturally try to pull you down to their level. You can’t let them. You must stay focused. You must stay committed to your craft. You are meant for more than Calico Cove honey, and you can’t forget that.”

“You’re wrong,” I told her.

Matt wasn’t like that. Matt didn’t look at me like a target. If I asked him not to tell anyone he kissed me, he wouldn’t.

Would he?

“You’ll see.” My mother went back to the couch, dismissing me and my protests.

When it came to me, Mom was sure she knew best.

She was wrong about Matt.

But if she knew how I felt about him, if she knew how much he mattered, she would try and take him away from me. If only to remove an obstacle to the thing she wanted most, and that was my fame.

I watched her scroll through her phone, curled up on the edge of that old velvet couch, and decided Matt Sullivan would be my secret.

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