The Carter Project ✓

eleven

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WE HOOKED UP. About two more times.

The rest of that first week since the party was a hazy rush of me trying to understand what was happening between Carter and I, along with all of the drama that came with it, but there seemed to be no drama when it was just the two of us. No surprisingly avoidant Liza Hamilton, no Landon who I heard dropped our class together because he had enough credits to not take math again until senior year, no Rita and Daniel caring so much about their popularity that they encouraged pimping out my house for a Spring Fling party, and none of the popular kids using me for said Spring Fling party that would take a miracle for me to actually pull off.

Of course, these were all pressing issues, but Carter did his best to have me all to himself when he had me. Wednesday night, his parents saw that his grade in history was atrocious after a quiz he took on Monday — probably with a partial hangover — which led to him being stuck at home while they went out to dinner.

"Just come over," Carter said to me through the phone. "Come on, I bet you aren't doing anything else."

"I'm regretting ever giving you my number, so that's definitely something," I quipped. In all actuality, I was reading a news article on my laptop because it pertained to the topic we were focusing on in debate, yet offered insights that we hadn't been over but were worth considering. Landon seemed to be dropping everything we had, making every space where we lived together into a ghost town. This meant I had to pick up the slack on debate and make sure that my teammates didn't see me crack under the pressure and let them down.

"You know I like seeing you," he said over the phone and I could feel the hairs stand up on my neck.

And just like that, I had told my parents that Carter needed me to tutor him, but really he was showing me all the learning curves. He made my body move and arch in ways I had never understood, taking me to levels of pleasure that Landon and I would need a map to find. I had to admit I was a bit embarrassed at my lack of experience that Carter so easily made apparent with every new stroke and style he introduced me to.

But when we finished, Carter would look into my eyes in a way that he hadn't the first time, that even Landon never had. It was almost one hundred percent better with clarity, save for the fact that I was now well aware of how much of a mistake I was making.

And I kept making out of an impulse I didn't seem to fully understand. The prospect of hooking up with the most popular guy in school was was thrilling yet terribly repulsive. It was crazy how envious or disgusted some people would be with me if they knew what we were doing. I couldn't fathom any kind of reaction people would have, hence why I enjoyed the secrecy.

But the way he would hold me after and run his mouth about things going on in his life like new songs he was writing with his band or silly drama he was going through with his friends made it feel like something worth sharing with the other people in my life. Carter and I were good friends (with benefits, if you say so) and sometimes it felt hard not bringing up something relevant about him in a conversation with my friends.

However, being in school made me realize how futile it really was. I would see the popular kids who were in relationships, all over each other in a way that made me squeamish. Not that Carter was someone who was looking for a relationship — especially not with a girl like me — but I knew that airing out our situation to the public would put those kinds of expectations on it, either killing what we have dead in the water or sweeping us up in a wave of trying to be like our spoken-for peers. I just had no idea if I was ready for complicated and Carter just seemed to think everything would come easy to him, even if it wouldn't.