He lies: "We're just friends"

“What? It’s Elizabeth, we’re friends. Just like me and you. Just like me and Talia. I’ve screwed around with everybody. Well, everybody except… you-know-who.”

The memory of Corrine tasted bitter in our minds, so I quickly pushed past, “I like Elizabeth a lot, but it’s not like we’re a couple or something.”

Amy frowned at me, “If it was me in that shower with you, instead of Elizabeth, you’re saying that all we would have done is kissed? Come on! You’d have been inside me in less than a minute. Friends-with-benefits don’t take a long, hot, soapy shower together and just kiss. That’s something else entirely.”

She was right. Or at least partially right. I had always lusted after Elizabeth, just as I’d lusted after all my beautiful friends, but there was something about what had happened between us that morning that was twisting me up. Sure, I was happy—damn, I was giddy—but that wasn’t it. Giddy, I could handle.

No, there was also another, stranger sensation that I didn’t recognize at all. Fantastic, thrilling, and terrifying all at once, like the universe had suddenly taken the training wheels off my bike and pushed me down a hill. Like some phantom hand had reached inside me and made a fist.

It scared the shit out of me.

“Sucks for me,” Amy whined, scurrying back over to the toilet. “No parents around for a whole week, and the only two guys both have girlfriends. I’m not gonna get laid ONCE.”

“Amy, Elizabeth is not my girlfriend. I don’t know what she and I are, exactly, but we aren’t that. Not yet, anyway. Not until we decide we are.”

A short while later, Stephanie relieved me of my post at Amy’s side, and I sought out Elizabeth to discuss what was happening. I could see in her big, green eyes that she was just as confused as I was.

Even though it had been me who had said I wanted to talk, I was at a complete loss as for where to begin. We took a walk outside, in the rain, huddling beneath our umbrella for a surreal forty-five minutes, during which time neither of us said a word.

Finally, just as we were almost back at the cabin I blurted out, “Are we a couple now?”

“I don’t know. Everybody’s acting like we are and it’s kind of pissing me off.”

I nodded in agreement. “I feel the same way, but I’ve gotta admit, I really, really liked making out with you this morning.”

“Me too.”

I reached to take her small hand in mine, but she pulled it away from my grasp.

“I just don’t know if I want a boyfriend right now. Not a serious one. And if I was with you, it would be serious. It would have to be. And I don’t want that weighing on me when we go away to college.”

There it was. College. The looming apocalypse that promised to annihilate every high school relationship, no matter how blissful. It was just four months away. We’d all stopped talking about it because it was so damn depressing, but Elizabeth had a point: Did I really want to let myself fall for her, only for us to be ripped apart against our will?