“Can do,” he whispered into my ear before sinking his teeth into my lobe.

“Don’t swallow my earring,” I said, my breath all ragged again. “I hear sterling silver can really upset a stomach.”

“No earring here,” he said, piercing another gentle bite into my ear.

I groaned again, but this time it was the frustrated kind. “Then it must have fallen out while you had me pinned against a wall,” I said, sending him a look as I dropped down to the floor, running my hands along the carpet.

“Are you sure you had one in?” he asked, scanning the floor above me. “I don’t remember seeing one.”

“I think you skipped through four senses this morning and barreled on through to touch.” I looked up at him, sitting up taller on my knees to take in more of the carpet. Class was about to start any minute and I’d cordon the entire room off before I left my favorite silver hoop behind.

Walking closer, he continued scanning the floor with me. “That does happen to be my favorite sense, by a landslide.”

“No kidding?” I said sarcastically, ready to get down on all floors and inspect the carpet a centimeter at a time.

“Oww!” I howled, snapping back up on my knees, hoping a chunk of hair hadn’t just been ripped out.

“Luce, wait. Don’t move,” Jude said, gripping my head in place. “Your hair’s caught on something.”

I tried pulling in the opposite direction, but my hair was caught good. “It’s caught on your buckle,” I said, begrudging fate that it would allow hair this short to be caught on such a small piece of metal.

“Stop moving,” he said, holding my head in place. “You’re only making it worse.”

I pulled back again, grimacing in pain. “Stop telling me what to do and start untangling it then.”

He laughed, trying to cut it short, but he couldn’t stop.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I said, looking up at him through a tangle of hair.

“I wish I could say I wasn’t, but I’d be lying,” he said in between his laughter.

“You’re so obnoxious,” I said, grabbing his h*ps and bracing myself for hair extraction.

Right as I was gritting my teeth, about to whip my head back, the door whined open, the overhead lights flashing on right after.

“Dude,” a voice said, stopping short in the doorway.

Another boy popped his head over the first’s shoulder. He lifted a cell phone and pointed it where I kneeled in front of Jude, hands on his hips, his hands on my head, and a flash went off. “This is so going on the internet.”

When all was said, done, and untangled, Jude’s and my picture did go viral, amassing about ten thousand hits all before the lunch bell rang. Two sophomores had their phones snapped in half and would never dare pass Jude alone in a hallway again, but otherwise Jude managed the unthinkable and kept his hellfire temper caged. Save for the phones and one innocent wall, Jude’s wrath fizzled short. I was so surprised and impressed that he didn’t nosedive into a record setting explosion that I managed to stay pretty zen with the whole of Southpointe, as well as the western part of the country, getting an eyeful of our photo shoot. In fact, I didn’t even feel the urge to defend ourselves or explain what had actually transpired before I wound up on my knees, hands at his hips, head at his zipper because, well . . . no one in their right mind would believe the truth.

So I endured yet another flood of stares and whispers, girls looking at me like I was the red light hussy spawned of the devil here to decimate the world, and guys looking at me with dilated eyes and tipped smiles, like they were imagining me on my knees in front of them. The girls I got, they were just worked up because if I’d done it once, what was to stop me from blowing their boyfriends in the bio lab? I got that kind of disdain because I was a girl. However, the guys were just horn dogs, salivating to hump whoever and whatever they could. A couple of the repeat offenders I flipped off in passing.

“Hey, Morrison!” Jude slid into line next to me, hollering at the guy a few people in front of me who was staring at me in a familiar way. “Turn your eyes unless you want to lose them.”

Morrison tilted his chin at Jude. “Ryder, you are one lucky son of a bitch.”

An urge that was almost impossible to resist arose, ordering me to throw my bowl of red jello topped by a dollop of whipped cream straight at Morrison’s smug face. Point blank.

Jude moved in front of me, pressing me behind him with his forearm. “If you’re referring to the fact that my girlfriend is an intelligent, classy, sweet, righteous girl, you’d be right,” he said, squaring himself at Morrison, “but if you’re referencing anything less than honorable, then you might want to make some adjustments to your college applications because I don’t think Arizona State’s going to want you if you can’t run the ball.”

Morrison flipped Jude a salute and turned around, as a round of laughter passed through his trio of friends in the lunch line.

“Lace curtain bastards,” Jude muttered, glaring at the back of their heads. “I hear of any of them running their mouths or their eyes over you again and I’m going to show them how we do things at the bottom feeder level.”

Shoving my way around him, I turned on him. “Does that sound like someone who’s committed to staying on the good side of the law?” I asked, shuffling a piece of pizza onto my tray. “Does that sound like someone who promised their . . .”

“Girlfriend,” he filled in the blank, winding his arms around me.

“Their girlfriend they wouldn’t do anything to mess this up? Because going to jail for attempted manslaughter might be considered messing up to some people.”

“Woman,” he exhaled, resting his cheek against mine, “you are busting my balls. In every way.”

“What was that promise you were about to make me about not touching Morrison and his bunch of half breeds?” I said, paying the lunch lady who wasn’t even trying to mask the judgment in her eyes. Someone else had seen our photo.

“Fine,” he relented, steering me towards the courtyard. He’d either read my mind or felt the same way I did: tired of the looks and sick of dodging questions. “I won’t touch the Jerk-off Jockeys.” Grabbing the door handle, he swung it open for me. “But I can’t promise I won’t pay someone else to touch them,” he added as I passed by.

I jabbed him in the stomach.

“I found your earring,” he said, pulling my silver hoop from his pocket.

“Where was it?” I asked, taking it and sliding it back into place.

“Tucked inside my boxers.”

“How the hell did it wind up there?” I asked, going all soft thinking about his boxers.

“Don’t know,” he said as we walked about the mostly empty courtyard, “but let’s just say I was close to becoming pierced. Down there.”

I laughed, giving the missing earring a pat. She’d had a better morning than I had. No one glanced up at us as we walked across the grass and settled onto an empty table. It was a cool day, the kind where you wished you packed a sweater, but as Jude hung his arm around me, I found myself hoping I’d never have to pack a sweater another day in my life.

“Girlfriend, huh?” I said, setting the pizza in front of him.

“Girlfriend,” he stated. “No question mark.”

I smiled into my tray. “What number does that make me?”

He sighed. “One. And only. I told you before, Luce. You’re my first and, God willing I don’t screw this up, my last.”

It was a good thing I hadn’t just sunk my teeth into the apple in my hand because I would have choked on it. It should have freaked me out beyond repair, my boyfriend who’d been to jail three times as many times as we’d been on dates, tossing forever into normal conversation, but it didn’t. He wasn’t saying marriage tomorrow and a baby the day after; he was saying someday, maybe. And someday, maybe sounded appealing to me in ways a seventeen year old girl with dreams of a bright future shouldn’t.

“How many girls have you been with, Jude?” I said, asking the positively worst question a girl should ask a guy like Jude. I was hoping for a number less than fifty.

He lowered the slice of pizza before taking a bite. “Enough to know when something special comes along.”

“And if you were to quantify enough, that number would be . . .” I dropped my apple too. With this kind of conversation circling about, decreased appetites were an expected side-effect.

“Luce, I don’t want to talk about my past anymore. I don’t want to hash out over and over again how many times I’ve screwed things up,” he said, his hands clenching into fists. “I know you girls have some sick fascination with knowing the name, time, and how we screwed the girls before you, but I’m not giving that to you. It was a lot, probably even a lot more than the number you’ve got in your head,”—my stomach clenched-—“but I didn’t love a single one of them and not a single one of them loved me either.”

“Sounds romantic,” I muttered, shoving my tray away.

“You’re the one that wanted to know,” he said, straddling the bench to face me. “Listen, with a guy like me, don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, Luce, because I’m going to do my damndest to be honest with you. Don’t delve into my past unless you want to come out on the other side wishing you hadn’t.”

I’d learned that a while ago, but how could you have a relationship with someone you didn’t know on a past, present, and future tense level? “So if you didn’t care for any of them and none of them cared for you, why did you . . .” every term bouncing to mind was just wrong, “do it?”

“You want to know this?” he asked, challenging me with his eyes. “You really want to know this kind of stuff?”

I nodded once because I was a stupid girl.

Jude’s nod echoed mine. “For me, it was an escape. A way to forget my life was an abyss of shit for a little while. And for the girls,” he said, lifting his shoulders, “they were looking to piss off their mayor and physician parents when they discovered their precious daughters were screwing the quintessential bad boy. That, or they just were really hot for me and wanted to know what I was like in the sack.” His smile curled up on one side which I put to a quick end as my elbow connected with his stomach.

“This isn’t funny,” I scolded, scowling at the picnic table because it was impossible to scowl into his face.

“Sorry, sorry,” he laughed, rubbing my arms. “Sometimes the only way I can get through reminiscing about my shitty life is through humor,” he said, turning my face upward. “But the humorless, honest truth is that I didn’t care about them, and they didn’t care about me.” He stared hard into my eyes, and he couldn’t look at me the way he was now and not be honest.

“Okay,” I said, relieved this topic was officially off the books now.