Sorority Sisters by Claudia Welch Page B

ask.
    â€œYou’ll see,” Pete says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, pulling me next to him as he drives a fraternity brother’s borrowed SS Monte Carlo.
    To be honest, I don’t actually care where we’re going; I only care that we’re together and that we’re alone. I lied to everyone about what I was going to be doing tonight, the night of the Beta Pi Halloween party, because I didn’t want to share Pete with anyone. I’m not going to include Barbie in that thought. Barbie is gone. Pete told me all about Barbie, about how his father and her father have been golfing partners for almost ten years, and about how the families belong to the same country club, and that their mothers took paddle tennis lessons together, and how all of that, all of that togetherness, resulted in Pete and Barbie being, by default, together. Barbie was a noose he had to slip. She was the girl his family wouldn’t let him leave behind, but now he has because now he’s with me, and I’m with him. I am most definitely with him.
    Edging along Los Angeles streets, avoiding the freeways, Pete’s borrowed car snakes through Vermont Canyon, climbing up toward Griffith Observatory. Pete’s left arm is stretched toward the steering wheel and the other is wrapped around me, Pete’s hand caressing my breast as he drives. I am breathless. I am shameless and I am breathless. I don’t know when I was reduced to this, to this shaking, quivering girl sitting tucked under the arm of a Rho Delt, but that is who I am.
    Pete parks the car so that we’re on the edge of the view, the Los Angeles basin stretching out before us, lights fading in geometric precision into the haze.
    â€œNice view, huh?” Pete says, sweeping a hand through his hair, his smile moving across his mouth just before he kisses me. “But the best view is right here.”
    I am swept up in this, in him, and yet part of me is still onshore, watching, nervous, hesitant. When his hand slips from my breast to the button on my jeans, I put my hand over his, stopping him.
    â€œYou’re killing me, Laurie. I need this. I need you,” he whispers, his blue eyes staring into mine. I feel
seen
with Pete. I think I’ve been starving for that all my life.
    â€œDo you?” I ask, easing the pressure of my hand, letting him stroke the inside seam of my jeans.
    â€œI do. I want you so bad,” he says, his mouth on my neck, one hand on my breast, the other between my legs.
    I open my legs, releasing one more inch of control to him, laying my head back against the seat cushion, floating away on a wave of sensation.
    I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to lose my virginity to a boy on the seat of a car. I was going to be more careful and more considered and generally more precise about everything, but Pete, with his long hair and his easy grin and his frayed jean jacket, has lured me away from the tedium of being careful.
    With hands that seem to be everywhere at once, hands that push me along the hazy edge of awareness, we tumble into the backseat; Pete is on top of me, his mouth and his hands at my breasts, between my legs, on my mouth, a fury of movement and purpose, and I—I am whipped along in his wake, pulled into waves of pleasure and impatience. Somehow, I am naked from the waist up, my pants hanging from one ankle, my panties pushed down to my knees, and suddenly, it is all too real, and instead of being pulled into passion I feel pushed and shoved into something frightening and serious and not at all worthy of a backseat in a deserted parking lot.
    My hands reach his, stopping him, holding him off, and his breath stops while I keep panting, trying to flick my hair out of my eyes, trying to find myself within my confusion.
    â€œWhat?” he says, looking down at me. The light from a distant lamppost illuminates his eyes so that they look silver; his hair is blackest sable in the dark