Page 24 of Sunday Morning
I smiled. “Great.”
“Did you go straight to Matt’s house afterward?” Her question sounded like something my dad would have asked.
But I didn’t give her the response I would have given my dad. With her, I occasionally showed my snarky side. “We parked on a gravel road and did it, then we went to Matt’s house.”
“Sarah!” Mom grabbed my shoulders and pressed her body into mine as if she were trying to smother me before I could say another word.
Matt held up his hands, eyes wide, while shaking his head. “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Mrs. Jacobson.”
Mom’s hands shifted from my shoulders to my face, and she squeezed my cheeks—hard.
“Ow!” I pulled away.
“Behave.” She gave me the hairy eyeball.
I returned a toothy grin and blew her a kiss before following Matt toward a group of our friends playing games next to the snack and beverage table.
Matt eyed me the way I imagined my father would have had he heard what I said. “You’re no fun.” I stuck out my tongue.
Matt couldn’t hold his scowl, so he grabbed me when his grin stole his expression. Pressing his chest to my back, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “You would have been incredible.”
He had a way of talking big when we were somewhere he didn’t have to prove himself, like fish stories, nowhere near a body of water.
Where was that level of confidence when we were half-naked in his car? Why did the fumbled condomruin everything? Matt had ten fingers and a tongue. Where was his imagination?
It didn’t matter. I would not lose sleep over the condom fiasco. Isaac playing “Like a Virgin” was the only memory that would stay permanently stamped into my brain for eternity. I couldn’t get Madonna out of my head or Isaac’s sculpted bare chest.
CHAPTER SIX
SIMPLE MINDS, “DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME”
He wouldn’t stop staringat me.
I’d come to love and hate Sunday morning service in equal parts because Isaac came with his family, but he sat in the back row and stared at me the whole time with an indiscernible expression that involved a wolfish grin.
“It’s hot,” I whispered to Heather while pulling at the neck of my choir robe.
“It’s not. Your dad always has the AC set at fifty,” she mumbled under her breath.
It was Satan. He brought the flames of Hell with him. And he loved watching me sweat and squirm through the whole service.
Matt never told me if they talked about the failed attempt at sex. And I didn’t ask. It was history.
But every Sunday, Isaac taunted me.
When summer officially arrived, I had high hopes of making lots of money working at the farm stand so I could afford a trip to Nashville that didn’t involve visiting Vanderbilt, where I hadn’t gotten accepted. My parents thought a year or two at a community college and volunteering would increase my chances if I reapplied for the following year.
I wasn’t a straight-A student like Matt. My interest in music and writing songs distracted me from academics, so I had silver honors cords around my neck at graduation instead of gold like Matt and many of my friends.
“Congratulations!” Violet hugged me as everyone congregated in front of the school after the ceremony, a sea of graduates adorned in blue with white tassels.
“Thanks.” I unzipped my gown when she released me. Then I glanced up, getting a whiff of cigarette smoke.
Isaac stood across the street, puffing away in jeans and a KISS T-shirt. When he saw me looking at him, he flicked the cigarette butt and stepped on it with his boot before crossing the street. “Way to go, Sunday Morning,” he said.
I searched for Matt, but he was nowhere in sight. My sisters were talking to some of their friends, and our parents were mingling with other graduates and parents. There was no one to save me from Satan.
“What’s up with the loser cords?” He nodded toward me.