Sexteen

Chapter One

Facebook (1) Cara messaged you

8:09PM Cara: You out tonight?

8:12PM Avery: Do you even need to ask?

At the tender age of sixteen, or more formally known my friends and I as sexteen, we embraced Friday nights like pre-apocalyptic alcohol-driven animals. March 8th was no acception. Music boomed at the expected eardrum beating volume of the night, and the free drinks were flowing. We may have been sixteen, but between our mature faces and large personalities, Cara and I easily moonlighted as convincing nineteen year olds. Those smart enough to doubt us, didn't care. We bar-hopped until the late a.m. gallivanting with the population and went home, scrubbed off our nineteen year old faces and woke up our sixteen year old selves, just with a little less money. It was harmless. Until March 8th.

I think it was the third bar of the night. Absolutely packed, stuffed even. I found myself slightly squished between two tattooed men and Cara.

"FREE SHOTS!" hollered the bartender. He was barely audible above the pounding of the sound system but it was loud enough to immediately trigger a stampede of twenty somethings to the bar as if wild animals responding to a mating call, thus leaving myself pleasantly jammed between a tall Australian guy and one of the tattooed men. Cara was still transfixed on the tray of cherry vodka shots.

"This is fun." the tall guy said with a laugh. It took me a minute to process. Oh shit, he's talking to me. He wasn't intimidating, just visibly older. His eyes were soft, welcoming.

"I now know what it feels like to be a sardine." I said, a little nervously, unsure of whether he'd hear me, or care, or what I was trying to achieve. At that moment my friend Danielle brushed passed me in pursuit of shots making me stumble half a step, my hands now against him. In my mind I wanted the ground to open and swallow me whole out of pure embarrassment from practically groping his abdomen, but another part of me felt something other than his cotton t-shirt as I regained my balance. He laughed.

"You okay there?" he said, smiling warmly. He didn't seem at all bothered by the physical contact, to my surprise. He looked at me as if we were the same age, and I suppose he thought I was. "I'm Jack, this is Jordan." he said, indicating the tattooed man next to him. Behind him I noticed Cara, half dancing and pushing through people, holding two shot glasses.

"Cheers, bitch!" she called out from behind, walking forward and thrusting a shot into my hand. "Hi!" she bursted, wide eyed with a hand placed on her hip, noticing Jack and Jordan.

"I'm Avery, this is Cara." I said, putting my arm around her, laughing. I knocked back the shot, leaned in next to her ear and whispered "Dibs." And I surprised myself. I mean, sure, I'd thought about it before, what it would be like to be with someone older, but the idea seemed crazy and somehow impossible. It still did. Not to mention slightly illegal.

It was so strange. He spoke to me with childish enthusiasm, a real 'kid at heart' likeness about him, but he was a man. A businessman, at twenty-four years of age.

"Let me guess." Jack said with a smirk, looking me up and down "I'm gonna say nineteen." Every part of me knew that if I told him the truth, he'd never look at me the same. Hell, he'd walk away and never have to.

"Bingo." I muttered, as if on autopilot, avoiding eye contact. I felt guilty and I hated the feeling. But I liked Jack, I really did.