I Know It's Over by C. K. Kelly Martin Page B

he’d told me over the summer, including the stuff about Xavier, and she said, “You know all the really good-looking guys are trouble.” They both looked pointedly over at me, grins creeping across their faces.
    “Shut up,” I protested, breaking into a smile too.
    “You need a nice guy,” she continued. “The good-looking ones expect you to fall all over them. You have to do all the chasing. And then there’s the sexual expectations.” She poked me in the ribs.
    “Sexual expectations are good,” Nathan said keenly. “I have sexual expectations.” He forced his features into a serious expression and added, “With the right guy, of course.”
    We laughed at that, but it still felt serious. Watching Sasha with Nate made me aware of how restrained I was. She was completely natural about the whole thing. She hugged Nathan and said, “I’m sorry this is so difficult when it shouldn’t be anything.” She rubbed his back. “Anybody who matters will be okay with it in the end. Even your dad.”
    That was hard for me to imagine; for Nathan it must’ve been near impossible. But maybe she was right. After all, he did tell Nathan he loved him. Love does strange things to you sometimes. It can twist you into saying and doing things that you know you’ll regret and still, you do them.
    I didn’t spend my dad’s safe sex money. I put it in my camera box, on the top shelf in my closet along with a pack of condoms I’d bought at the beginning of summer when I thought it might happen with Dani. I’d even practiced putting one on so I wouldn’t fumble around like an idiot when the time came. Only the time didn’t arrive, not then.
    Of course I never forgot the condoms were there. I was conscious of them every time Sasha was in my room, but I never mentioned them. I didn’t want her to think I had a timetable in my head; I wanted to be the patient boyfriend. Most of the time I was surprisingly good at that. The more I liked her, the easier it got.
    She was so beautiful naked that it almost hurt to look at her. Sometimes I’d watch myself touch her, as though I was standing over my own shoulder, and hardly believe I was allowed to do those things with her. Sometimes I felt so lucky that the feeling almost made me sick. Then I’d wonder if it was because those moments alone never lasted long enough, if it was like having a drop of water when you were dying of thirst.
    Maybe I wouldn’t feel so crazy if I could have more, but there was no way to work that out. Normal life swallowed up most of my time and those days with Nathan took an even bigger chunk. Sasha and I talked on the phone, IMed, and saw each other whenever we could, usually in the presence of family or friends. One time Nathan’s dad let him borrow the car and five of us (Sasha, Lindsay, Yasmin, Nathan, and I) went bowling. Yasmin talked too loudly and Lindsay kept ushering Sasha away to discuss some secret crush, but it was still a pretty good night. Everything was pretty okay at the time, except that I was still crazy.
    When Sasha stood by my desk at the end of a Wednesday afternoon law class and asked if she could come over for a while, I beamed at her like a toothpaste commercial. We rushed back to my house after school and headed straight for my bedroom. Holland came home five minutes later and blasted Metric through her speakers. The music was so loud that she’d probably never even discover we were next door, but I got up, banged on her door, and told her to leave us alone, just in case. She was used to me doing that by then and she just nodded, moving her head in time to the music.
    Sasha and I started peeling off each other’s clothes. She was wearing this preppy white V-neck with a blue collar and she had blue bikini briefs on under her pants. I was already poking out of my unzipped jeans and she slid her hand into my boxers and said, “When was this last time we did this? It feels like so long ago.”
    “Nine days,” I said, adding it up