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Back The First and The Last Save as PDF
Chapters (25)
  1. The First and The Last
  2. 1. One
  3. 2. Two
  4. 3. Three
  5. 4. Four
  6. 5. Five
  7. 6. Six
  8. 7. Seven
  9. AFTERWARD
  10. 9. Nine
  11. 10. Ten
  12. 11. Eleven
  13. 12. Twelve
  14. 13. Thirteen
  15. 14. Fourteen
  16. 15. Fifteen
  17. 16. Sixteen
  18. 17. Seventeen
  19. 18. Eighteen
  20. 19. Nineteen
  21. 20. Twenty
  22. 21. Twenty One
  23. AFTERWORD
  24. ABOUT THE FIRST AND THE LAST
  25. A LITTLE ABOUT ME

“Hmmm,” he said. His eyes ignited and burned gold striations into the brown of his irises. I made myself drop my eyes down. I expected to feel small being alphaed by him, but I didn’t. I expected to feel nervous or put in my place, but I felt nothing at all, except for simple determination to get my own way.

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And I did get my way. When I started college that fall, I did it with Jules at my side. I’d enrolled to study business management and Jules was doing sports science. College was way better than high school had been. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was significantly better.

I took Jules’s advice about smiling at girls and after overdoing it—“You’re showing too many teeth. You look like you’re fixing to bite someone”—and then under doing it—“I couldn’t even tell you were smiling. You just looked like you were trying to take a shit”—I finally struck a balance. I lost my virginity less than a month after I started college. Her name was Clara. I’d been smiling at her for a couple of weeks, and she’d asked me to help her with an economics assignment. Her skin was soft, and she smelled like tuberose and grapefruit. The first time we had sex, we were in the rare books section of the campus library. She hiked her skirt up and when I asked her what she wanted, she buried her face in my chest and simply said, “Everything you’ve got.”

The whole thing lasted less than four minutes. I liked it a lot, but not as much as I’d thought I would.

Jules couldn’t have been prouder.

8

AFTERWARD

It was the winter break of our third year of college. Mrs. O’Malley was out on her porch, taping the windows and shutting the blinds. The sky was clear blue. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. In fact, it had been unseasonably warm for Colorado from fall into winter that year. I checked the weather app on my phone. There was no hint of a storm headed our way. I wondered if Mrs. O’Malley was all right. I’d been noticing some changes in her. The other day, she leaned her head out of the window and yelled, “Yoooo, boy. Too loud!”

I hadn’t even been talking or anything. I was just crunching over the gravel on my way home from hanging out with Jules. It wasn’t the only change I’d noticed. She was talking a lot about shifting. She was still leaving me without any real detail, but sometimes she’d look up and say things like, “Ah, I was a little deer once. It had just rained, and the woods smelled brand new. I was a happy little deer, and sometimes I think I still am.”