Page 23 of Sunday Morning
“What other festivities?”
“I made a donation. That makes me a vested interest. So I’m interested. How did it go?”
“What donation?”
Isaac leaned forward, bringing his lips to my ear, whichbrought his bare chest so close I felt actual heat radiating from it.
He wassoinappropriate, and yet, I allowed it.
“Sunday Morning,” he whispered, “I donated the condom.”
I wanted to die.
Matt askedhimfor a condom? I would have preferred anyone, literally anyone else. My face burned with embarrassment.
“It’s none of your business.” I tried to squeeze past him.
“It’s a little of my business.”
I turned and pushed the door shut. “Ask Matt.” With warp speed, I changed into jeans, a pocket T-shirt, and checkered Vans. As I passed Isaac’s closed bedroom door, I heard Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” playing from his stereo.
“Jerk,” I muttered to myself before descending the stairs where Matt waited by the door in jeans and a blue T-shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a frown which made me think he wasn’t sorry at all. He just didn’t want things to be awkward in front of my mom at post-prom.
I offered him an equally disingenuous smile, which only deepened his frown. Matt was my first love, but we fought often, and usually over his temper, which, according to Violet, he learned from Wesley.
And despite the hiccup with getting the football coach’s daughter pregnant and being sent off to enlist, Isaac was supposedly like his mom—cool and even-keeled. However, I had only seen his obnoxious and slightly inappropriate side.
“I think it’s weird that you’re so desperate to do it,” Matt said, breaking the silence a few miles from the school. “I’ve heard it can hurt for girls their first time.”
“You know what I think is weird? I think it’sweird that you haven’t been the one pushing for this to happen. Name one of your friends who hasn’t done it or at least gone a lot further than we’ve gone?”
Matt ignored me.
“If my dad wasn’t your pastor, would we have done more by now?”
He still didn’t respond; he checked his mirrors like I didn’t exist. Matt’s silence always said more than his words.
I laughed, shaking my head. “Unbelievable. So if Melinda or Julie were your girlfriend, you’d walk into the pharmacy like a man, buy a box of condoms, and have sex with them. But I’m the preacher’s daughter, so I have to beg for it, and by it, apparently, that means a condom, which you borrowedfrom your brother,that you fumbled and dropped onto the dirty floor.”
Matt whipped his head in my direction as he pulled the car into the parking lot. “How did you know that?”
With my arms crossed over my chest, I stared out the window at the other students filing into the school. “He was coming out of the bathroom when I needed to change my clothes, and he asked me how it went.”
“What did you say?” Matt put the car inParkand killed the engine.
“I told him to ask you.”
“Great. What am I supposed to say now?”
“I don’t know, Matt. But just make sure you tell him I was incredible.” I climbed out of the car, locked the door, and shut it.
“Har har.” He locked his door and jogged to catch up to me as a few raindrops fell.
As soon as we made it through the line and into the gym, my mom found us.
“How was the dance?”