I gave her another weird face. “Well, I mean, yeah, of course.”
“Congratulations, you’re already doing better than sixty percent of guys,” she joked with an annoyed tone. I joined her in chuckling. “I just wanted this to not be more drama and headaches. And I don’t know if it’s because I sent you that n-” She stopped abruptly and looked around. “…because I did that thing, or if it’s because this just always happens.”
I nodded along for a bit. “In the future, I’ll try to solve my problems with your friends myself and try not to get you involved,” I quietly told her.
She shook her head. “No, no, it’s fine. This is my friend group. We’ve been together through everything. I don’t mind doing this for them. I just hate that I’m always doing it, you know? And believe me, this is small. When the school was obsessed with Milo for like a week, that was hell. Every time one of us sleeps with a new guy or has our pictures leaked, that’s hell.”
“…Every time?” I had to ask.
She gave me a sad smile of acknowledgement but said nothing more. We sipped our drinks for a bit longer.
“Well, hey, uh…” I began clumsily. “Do you wanna… I dunno, get out of here and keep chatting? Like, to your place or…”
Taylor shook her head and smiled at me in her trademark, ‘Oh, Quinn’ way.
“No, not like that. I just meant, you keep looking around like you don’t want to talk in public, and I just wanted to show you that I do care about your company and all that too. I didn’t mean anything sexual. I mean you said you don’t know if you want to continue. So, you know, we wouldn’t do anything unless you wanted it. I just wanted to respect your comfort and show I care, and… I’m sorry.”
“Quinn, shut up,” Taylor said playfully. “I don’t know what you’d want to do, but sure, we can at least go to the car or something.”
“I guess just talking is fine. I mean, I’m just enjoying talking with you, and you seem to look around when you get close to saying anything personal. I guess I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
Taylor gave me another smirk and slunk out of her chair, chipperly sauntering to the door. Meekly, I followed, and before long we were sitting in her car.
“If we’re going to get out of there, we may as well go to my place,” she said coolly. “It’s closer to your place anyway.”
“Hey, uh, if that’s what you want, sure,” I replied. For the rest of the ride, we talked about insignificant things – school, teachers, things decidedly unrelated to her friends – on the one hand, it was small talk, so it didn’t carry much weight, but on the other, it was nice to talk about stuff that wasn’t stressing me, and it was clear that it was stressing Taylor a lot more. Plus, whether I offended Morgan or not, I did tell her I’d make an effort to entertain Taylor’s conversations more.
“…And to be honest, I didn’t hate Mr. Graves,” she continued as we parked at her place. “Like, yeah, he could be a bit much at times, but, he was only brutal…”
“…If he thought you didn’t care,” I finished her.
“Exactly! And Mrs. Li is pretty nice. Like, I don’t think she’s the best teacher, but…”
“Did you have a tutor when you were in Graves’ class?” I asked.
“No, but like, it was also simpler math.” She turned the car off and got out of the car. I followed suit. “I dunno if I’d get it more if Graves was teaching data management.”
I nodded as we walked through her front door. “Yeah. I think I agree, Graves is more strict but I find I retain a lot more of what he teaches.”
We walked down to the basement and Taylor sat in a beanbag chair and exhaled loudly and slowly, keeping her eyes closed. I awkwardly stood there until she opened her eyes and laughed pityingly. “You can sit down if you want.”
“I guess I can,” I mumbled nervously as I sat in another chair.
“Is everything, like, alright?” she asked.
This basement had kind of a stigma for me at this point. It’s where I saw my first boob, it’s where Morgan sat drunk talking about what a virgin I was, not knowing what Taylor and I were doing, and it’s where I hung out with a friend, after school, for basically the first time in my high school history. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, clearing my throat, realizing that my dumb brain was putting sex to the forefront, making me hard. I tried crossing my legs and playing it off like I was making myself comfortable. “Did you want to maybe look over data management stuff? Y’know, while we’re here.”
Taylor grimaced lightly. “Um, we could have done that, but I kinda left my data management book at school.”
“Oh, right,” I replied. “Yeah, I left mine there too. Wow, you legitimately wanted to hang out with me.”
Taylor chuckled. “Quinn, that’s what we said, wasn’t it? Even after all this time it’s hard to believe?”
“I mean, when we started we said it was going to be just study buddies, but then w- yeah.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So you’re thinking about that, huh?”
“No, no, Taylor, this is just friend stuff. Purely friend stuff. I’m not thinking about any of that.”
“Uncross your legs, Quinn.”
“…Okay, I didn’t want to be thinking about any of that, it just happened to pop up in my mind,” I admitted, defeated.
She smiled triumphantly. “Knew it. See? Like, everyone thinks about it, especially after it starts. Now think about if you were drunk, or tipsy, like Morgan was. You can’t blame her for that.”
“Yeah, but she’s had sex before. Like, full sexual intercourse. Presumably with several guys. I’ve only ever done some stuff, and it was with you, and it was for the purposes of education. It’s still kind of new and thrilling to me.”
Taylor’s smile got bigger by the second. “Thrilling, huh?”
“I mean…”
“No no, go on, this is kind of fascinating,” she admitted. “It’s like I get to rediscover my own, like, beginning of it all.”
“I just-”
“No, wait.” She smiled mischievously. “You can only go on if you uncross your legs.” Her smile turned a little devious.
I chuckled in discomfort. “…And if I don’t want to do that?”
“Then you don’t have to talk about it! But then I also forbid you from talking at all.”
“Forbid me fro-”
“Nah-ah-ah!” she interrupted, holding up a finger with an entirely serious expression. We stared at each other for a few seconds, while her devious smile returned slowly.
I said nothing. We stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, before I realized I was looking someone in the eye for that long. I turned away, blushing. The silence was getting louder. I turned back to Taylor and opened my eyes to say something, and she held up the finger again and resumed her serious expression. After a bit, a smile of defeat slowly crept across my face and, slowly at first, I uncrossed my legs.
Taylor’s finger lowered back to her side and her smile got bigger. Her eyes flashed down to my crotch, then back to my face. “You were saying?”
“This can not be the traditional way every guy my age has explored sex,” I quipped as I adjusted myself on the beanbag chair.
“Sex in high school. What even is tradition?” Taylor quipped back. “So, new and thrilling.”
I stared at her for a bit. She was really enjoying my hesitancy here. It’s like she was teasing me… or torturing me. A part of me was excited, but another part of me was getting uncomfortable, and maybe that was her plan. Normally I would have been too nervous to continue in the way that I ended up doing, but at this point I realized that if I didn’t shock her in some way, she would continue to have the upper hand.