It gets easier after a while, sleeping with Puck. And you try a few other guys too. You keep coming back to Puck because it's easy, and because at least he tries. It's fun—you never come, but at least he can make you wet and even goes down on you from time to time.
You convince Brittany to sleep with Puck—for some reason, it makes you feel better that you both lost your virginity to the same guy. After that, Britt goes on her own streak of hookups. You tell each other religiously every time you sleep with a new guy, but she outstrips you so fast it starts to eat at you a little. Maybe you're jealous.
But in a way, you're worse. Britt collects bedpost notches the way other people collect flowers or stamps. Her cruelty is incidental and unintentional. You, though—you get to like fucking because it tears you away from whatever you're thinking about and replaces it with hunger and sweat, and more than that, because you get to be unabashedly cruel. Guys like it when you get on top and call them dirty names and scratch them while you're fucking. They think you're doing it to turn them on, but you know better. You like being brutal. Even more than the act of fucking them, you like fucking with them. They secretly love being kicked around. This is a discovery you've made on your own, and because you are fifteen and a girl and have little power, you love the way that feels.
One thing you and Brittany agree on: romance is stupid. Guys try with the roses and the gooey sentiment and the cards—well, you do let them cough up for dinner and bling; why say no to free?—but in the end, all they really want is to fuck you. Best to cut the bullshit and go straight to the punch line. Another thing: sex is a great way to shoot straight up to the top and stay there. Once they know you're not afraid to punch holes in their hearts with stiletto heels, boys—those masochists—trot after the two of you like woodland animals after Disney princesses.
Meanwhile, Britt still sleeps over, though not as often. You watch movies and play with each other's hair and laugh about boys. Sometimes you still kiss in the night. Sometimes you even get that summer feeling again, and you find yourself wanting to run your hands over her skin, under the waistband of her pajama pants and touch her the way boys touch you—the way you touch yourself.
Then one weekend, near the end of the school year, your parents leave town and the two of you break into the liquor cabinet. You drink vodka lemonades and watch Disney movies she brought over and eat ice cream with two spoons straight from the carton until you're in a contented, queasy stupor. You're giggling as you braid her hair, and when she lays down in your lap, seeing as her hair is all fixed, you stroke her neck instead. She stops giggling then, and purrs like a cat. The buzzing makes your thighs vibrate. You feel yourself getting wet as your heart pounds.
You're both drowsy and fall asleep with your legs entwined together, buried in blankets and stuffed with ice cream. When you close your eyes, the room seems to be floating like a little boat on a windy day at sea. You cling hard to Britt, your only safety, your anchor to the world.
In the middle of the night she turns to you, the way she does sometimes, and you kiss. You kiss differently now; you've both practiced on less perfect mouths, but you've also, despite yourselves, grown used to each other. And then it happens—she slips her tongue into your mouth, and the tip of hers touches yours, and god you feel so alive you don't care that this is not the way friends should kiss, ever, not even really good friends—especially not really good friends—and especially not two girls. And you can't help your hips moving closer to hers, and you can't stop yourself from sighing in relief when she pushes up your shirt and strokes your breasts. Your hands mirror hers, and you are drunk in three ways at once: the reeling room, your hands on her skin, and her hands on yours. She is the only hot thing in the cold cold room; her sugarcoated tongue, deep in your mouth, seems to stroke between your legs instead.
You are fearless now. You've crossed the line. You might as well do it. You slide your hand down her tight belly and under her panties, past the soft cloud of hair, and feel the heat of her before you touch the top of the slit. She is whimpering before you part her with your fingers; she is as slick and wet as you know you must be, your pounding heart split between where she is sliding her fingertips over your nipples and the aching place between your own legs.
You find it with your fingers: the little bump you like to linger on when you touch yourself. She gasps into your mouth and bites your lower lip. She wiggles closer to you, drapes her arms around your neck, and presses your breasts and bellies together where you've hiked up your shirts. Your arm is pressed so hard between you that you can feel your own muscles moving as she traces the folds of your ear with her tongue. You swear you're going to die of wanting her.
Your eyes are shut hard, and you refuse to open them.
Then her arm squeezes between you and you feel her hand sliding into your pajama bottoms. She slips under your panties with another maneuver, and as they peel away you realize how wet you really are, and you're embarrassed for her to feel how much you want her to touch you. She slides one of her thighs between yours to prop them open—you feel hers open as you lace your legs together—and slides her fingers into the wetness with a deftness and fearlessness that shocks you. For a minute your breaths catch on one another, as though you are climbing together up a cliff face, and then you begin to sync, breaths alternating and speeding up together. You wonder if you're dreaming this. If it's just the vodka. If those are really her fingers making you feel better than you've ever felt, better than with any boy, better even than when you do it for yourself.
Then her fingers slip inside you—two at once—and you arch and shudder, and wonder why it never feels like this when boys do it. She presses her whole hand into you, palm rocking against your clit, fingers buried to the hilt. You follow her example and she cries out and covers your cheeks and nose and mouth with kisses. You wrap your other arm around her waist and pull in the small of her back and press your cheek to hers like you're slow dancing. Every twitch of her body electrifies yours. You add a finger to your first two and use your thigh to press your hand deeper; the gap between you closes until it's just a mess of limbs and wetness and thrusting. You feel her bite her lip and think of her on the edge of the pool, at the edge of climax. Then she's coming and moving helplessly against you, and as she does, she whispers, Santana, and the sound of your own name on her lips—so throaty and desperate and ecstatic—pushes you over the edge. You cling to her as hard as you can, the way you would if you were both falling off that sharp cliff face of your imagination, just to have her to hold on to.
As you lie damp and hot in your mussed pajamas, trying to fall asleep, your own name in her voice pounds in your head. Your limbs are still tangled in hers and you can't remember which belong to you. You're still too drugged with sex and vodka to be afraid. All you know is that Brittany just made you come—the first time anyone has, besides yourself—and that she said your name. Little by little, heaviness replaces the thudding of your heart and drags your mind into shadow.
The next morning, you wake up first. You would think it was all a dream, a trick of the alcohol, except for that lingering whisper of your name, rewinding and replaying over and over. Careful not to stir Brittany's body, you bring your hand to your lips and smell the clinging, musky scent of her on your fingers.
You've never watched her sleep so close and so still as you do this morning. Her eyelids are so thin: just veils of skin and fine veins. They twitch as the light from your window threatens to penetrate them. She's as unaware of this as she is of the way she shivers from cold in the night. Is she dreaming?
That summer feeling is suddenly all over you again, crawling through the deepest parts of you, and you want to darken and still her eyelids with your lips. The ache in you is so hard that you think your heart might collapse like a wet cardboard box.
Suddenly, she turns in your arms. Her eyes open hesitantly, heavily, like a newborn.
Morning, San. Her voice is stretched, soft, like her body against yours. You loosen your hold on her and pull away—have you always done that in the morning?—and fix your eyes on her shoulder. Heat rushes to your cheeks and neck and you're glad your blush never shows. You push away the summer feeling, hard, and swallow.
Morning, Britt Britt. Sleep okay?
Great, she purrs. Especially after… you know.
Your flush doubles back into your cheeks and throat and chest. It's the first time either of you has acknowledged your night kisses out loud. Suddenly, now that you can't deny it, they're all too real for you.
San? she prods, and tilts your face toward hers. Are you okay? Did I do something?
No, you say, a little too firmly. But your heart weakens upon seeing her bewilderment, and before her thoughts have time to coalesce from the fog, you fix it for her. I mean, you didn't do anything wrong at all.
It felt really good for me, she ventures.
Her artlessness pulls the summer feeling into your throat. You smile despite yourself.
Yeah, me too.
Way better than with boys. I mean, I think girls are better anyway.
Your blood reverses. You can't feel your heart.
What girls?
Did I not tell you? I made out with Jenna. Oh—and Bethany.
Two cheerleaders. You feel queasy at the thought; you don't know why.
Girls are way better kissers, she goes on. But—her voice lowers, secretive—no girls have ever touched me there, the way you did.
You melt again, quick and hot as lava, and you are suddenly acutely aware of just how damp and sticky you still are under your pajama pants.
It doesn't have to be a big deal, you say, your voice as careful and cool as your body is burning. I mean, it doesn't mean anything.
No one has to know, she agrees. I just… really liked the way you touched me.
You don't know whether you're in it too deep. You haven't ever really been in it. Hell, you're not even sure what it is. All you know is that when you look at Brittany and she tells you she likes the way you touch her in that sweet Brittany voice, all you want to do is touch her and kiss her for the rest of your life.
That scares the shit out of you.