WHO: Jenny & Dahlia. WHAT: The joking sexual challenge that started it all. WHERE: North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Dahlia's bedroom. WHEN: Spring of 2003. WARNINGS: Nothing much, just some kisses!
At first, Jenny didn't think that she would fit in any better in Rhode Island than she had in Michigan. She missed Michigan, her school, and her friends. Or at least the ones that hadn't turned on her. Her mom had insisted that things would be better in Rhode Island though, where she had grown up, because it had always been her dad's family that kept them in Michigan. Paula Parry had wanted to go back to Rhode Island, as soon as her daughter's school told them that Jenny wouldn't be allowed to keep attending classes once she started showing. Even in a small city, it seemed teen pregnancy carried stigma for her. People, some of her best friends, had been talking shit about her long before the school had stepped in and said anything. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, didn't seem to have anything to say.
She'd been afraid that her sister would hate her, for getting pregnant in the first place, for making mom move them away from home. She was supposed to be the smart one. But more than anything, she'd been afraid that she wouldn't fit in again. That, despite her mother's best intentions, moving to Rhode Island would solve nothing. They'd be closer to their grandmother, who was taking the news of being a great-grandmother fairly well, but that wasn't going to fix anything at school.
She was sixteen years old, six months pregnant, and her idea of an exciting evening often involved hours of reading. She had herself convinced might be a little late to start making all new friends again. She didn't think she was going to make it at a new school.
But that had been until she met Dahlia.
Chase was almost two now, and things were better than Jenny could have ever expected them to be on the day that her mother made her pack up her whole life and move several states away from her home. She had a new home, a beautiful son, new friends, and a best friend, something that she had actually never had in Michigan, outside of her sister. Her sister had her boyfriend in Rhode Island though, and Jenny had.. Dahlia. Really, there was no sense in denying it. Whatever they were, it was where she spent most of her time, or vice versa.
It was Dahlia who had talked to her on the first day. She hadn't been the first person to talk to her, but she had been the first person to talk to her that hadn't asked an obnoxious question about the conspicuous belly that she had no luck hiding anymore, no matter what she wore. They were fast friends. Best friends. There was something about her, and Jenny had never met anyone like her. It had been Dahlia who had brought her homework for her when she'd been in the hospital, it had been Dahlia who came to see her the day after Chase was born, who had brought some of the other friends that she had introduced Jenny to at school. She'd been the one who stood up for Jenny, who put the verbal smackdown on anyone who did say something obnoxious to her.
Hell, it had even been Dahlia that had convinced her she could get her ass in gear and get back into cheerleading after Chase had been born. It had been all Dahlia that had taken her under her wing, and gotten her adjusted to her new home, and maybe the brunette could be a little.. shallow at times, among other things, but she was still Jenny's best friend. Jenny still felt like she owed her the world. They'd be graduating in a few months, and Jenny was happy, genuinely happy, something that she felt she owed more than just a little to Dahlia.
That wasn't to say, of course, that she didn't owe her parents. It had been her mother's idea to move to Rhode Island, after all, something that Jenny had made a point to thank her for retroactively by now. She owed her mother and father a lot, especially for the amount of free babysitting that they provided her with, so that she could have nights like tonight, and actually be a teenager. Jenny adored her son, but she also adored nights away from him now and again, and he was one of the last thoughts on her mind as she turned this way and that in Dahlia's bedroom mirror, scowling at her reflection.
"Does this make my ass look huge, or is that just me? I always thought this was a skinny mirror?"
---
Dahlia was no champion of the people. She wasn’t a hero of the underdogs, either. Truthfully, she wasn’t exactly sure why she decided from the very start that she and Jenny would be friends. It just sort of happened that way. They clicked easily and quickly, and within weeks they were inseparable. Slowly, surely, Dahlia integrated her into the social circle that was her circle, and though the stigma of having a baby at sixteen years old would probably never really be forgotten by their high school, no one said anything about it anymore. At least not where Dahlia or Jenny could hear. Besides, they were graduating soon, and Jenny wouldn’t have to worry about the second looks or the barely-there whispers.
Tonight, Dahlia was strewn out on her belly across the California-King bed, her ankles popped in the air as she glanced over the glossy pages of some high fashion magazine. Coral was in this season, apparently, but she couldn’t help but think that the orange lips looked more than a little ridiculous with that color eyeshadow. So engrossed in her oh-so-important reading, she had to do a double take to process what Jenny said.
“It is a skinny mirror,” she insisted, closing the magazine and tossing it aside amongst its forgotten companions. “You’re either imagining it, or your ass is actually getting bigger.” Dahlia was only teasing, and she let Jenny know as much with a wink of long, dark lashes. They probably should have been practicing for the upcoming football game, but Dahlia knew those cheers backwards and forwards; she practically ate, breathed, and slept those cheers. And when she wasn’t cheering, she was practicing for some upcoming pageant. Tonight, she just wanted to do nothing.
Actually, she wanted to gorge herself on chocolate and marshmallows, but it wasn’t worth the lecture she would get if her mother found out.
“Shut up. You’re perfect, and you know it. You know I’d tell you if it was getting bigger.” It was true. Dahlia was always the first person to let someone know when something about their appearance was askew - unless, of course, it was something they couldn’t fix. She wasn’t a monster. Hair, makeup, and clothes? Those were all fair game, as far as Dahlia was concerned. “I don’t see how it could be, anyway. We’ve been practicing non-stop for weeks now.”
---
Jenny heaved a sigh, scrunching up her face a little and shaking her head. “Yeah, I guess so.” Dahlia had a point, on both fronts. They had been working hard for a long time, and she knew that the other girl probably would have told her about her ass by now, if it were the case. Still, she was seriously considering changing her shorts before they went anywhere. That was assuming they went anywhere. Jenny knew just as well as Dahlia that they should have been practicing, doing something productive, but Jenny would have much preferred going somewhere, doing.. something. Anything exciting, really.
But unfortunately, on that front, Rhode Island wasn’t anymore exciting than Michigan had been, really.
“I’m perfect?” Jenny echoed her friend, a little smirk pulling at the corners of her lips as she turned around to watch Dahlia flip through the pages of her magazine. “This, coming from the Queen herself? Such a compliment? What’s the catch, I’m perfect but now you have to kill me, like Snow White? So you can be the most perfect in all the land?” the blonde joked, as she made her way over to the bed. There was plenty of room for her to sit down on it and make herself comfortable, pulling her legs up and folding them beneath her.
“Being vain isn’t all bad, though. I would totally have a much bigger ass if you didn’t work me so hard, especially this month,” she added thoughtfully. It was true. She probably wouldn’t have worked off her baby weight, though she hadn’t had gained too much, half as quick without Dahlia lighting a fire under her. They were coming up to the last football games of the year though, and this year, it seemed like they were working harder than ever. Her sister, who sometimes seemed like she had ten times Jenny’s energy, was even getting tired out lately. “What do you want to do tonight?” she asked a moment later, reaching over and turning the page for the other girl.
---
“Didn’t Snow White have black hair or something? You’d definitely be Cinderella.” To prove her point, she hooked a manicured finger in one of Jenny’s golden waves and gave a playful tug. Dahlia never saw why the people at their high school made such a big deal over Jenny having a baby. She wasn’t the only girl to get pregnant in their class; she was just the first girl to go through with having the baby, which said a lot about Jenny if you asked Dahlia. To go through with having a child at sixteen years old was not only brave, but it was selfless. Jenny’s life revolved around Chase. Yes, she managed to work in football games and cheer practice, but there was no question that those things came second. Chase was her entire world.
Dahlia had a soft spot for the kid, too. Even when he managed to eat an entire set of Chanel cream eyeshadows.
“You going to senior prom?” It seemed like a silly question to ask. Everyone was going to senior prom. It was, after all, their last chance at prom. Daniel Reed had already asked Dahlia, and though he wasn’t the only one, he happened to be the one she was considering saying yes to. “And before you say no, I would like to remind you that I heard a rumor that someone put your name into the ballet for prom queen.” Dahlia had won last year (and the year before that), which came as no surprise to anyone involved, and though she loved the title, it was about time that someone else won the crown. Who better than Jenny?
“You can’t win prom queen if you don’t go to prom,” she said, voice mischievous. Dahlia could be downright manipulative when she wanted to be, even when her very best friend was concerned. “We could go shopping for dresses next week. My treat.”
---
Dahlia knew her all too well, as Jenny had been about to say ‘no’ to her. It wasn’t that no one had asked her, there were a couple of boys that had, but she hadn’t really agreed to anything with anyone. She had gone last year, when Dahlia convinced her to, but she still felt sort of bad whenever she left Chase with her parents all night long so that she could go out and have fun. She had grown into the mother role with extreme ease, perhaps even better than her own mother, whom Jenny thought was almost too easy on her.
She knew that her parents would watch Chase so that she could go to prom, they’d expect her to go, but she had almost been considering not asking at all. She definitely didn’t want to ask them to buy her a dress, when they’d already be buying one for her sister. Prom wasn’t the be all and end all that people made it out to be, as much as she would have loved a night to dress up beautifully and forget about everything else coming. Jenny was a lot more concerned about her exams than she was about prom. But Dahlia did have a way of manipulating things in her direction, and Jenny should have figured that the subject would head that way. It wasn’t the first time she’d brought it up.
“I wonder who would spread around a rumor like that?” Jenny mused sarcastically, tapping a finger against her chin as she regarded her friend. “Whoever put it in there, they’re wasting their time.” She couldn’t possibly imagine herself beating Dahlia for queen, but it did genuinely make her smile to think that Dahlia would put her in the running. Maybe she could be a runner-up, or something. Social events were more of Dahlia’s thing, they were her scene, her lifeblood. Jenny was happy to be her runner-up. Class was about the only place that Jenny Parry wouldn’t accept second place to Dahlia. It was probably part of what made them such good friends.
“I’m not even sure that I have a sitter,” though she was sure Dahlia knew just as well as she did that Paula and Ron were available. Her parents were generally always available. It was part of having retired parents. “But if you.. really, really want me to go, I’ll go. I don’t know who you expect me to go with, though. Three of your exes asked me, three. Do guys have any code of decency like, at all? Like, they know we’re friends.”
Jenny sighed, shaking her head and leaning back on the bed more comfortably, propping herself up with one of Dahlia’s pillows. “How did we get on the subject on prom, anyway? I said what do we want to do tonight? I’d love to look at dresses I can’t possibly afford with you.. but that doesn’t solve my current boredom. You invited me over, entertain me!” she teased.
---
“Get that shit about a sitter outta here, Jenny,” Dahlia said, rolling over onto her side so that she could get a better view of her best friend. They both knew that Jenny’s mom and dad would be more than happy to watch Chase long enough for Jenny to go to prom. Any shred of normality left in Jenny’s life was encouraged by her parents, and they definitely wouldn’t mind keeping Chase if it meant their darling daughter got to go to prom.
When Jenny crumbled and agreed to go to prom, Dahlia’s victory had her beaming. Prom wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without her best friend by her side. “Mom’s already called the limo company and all that stuff, so the details are all worked out.” Which meant they just needed to find the perfect dresses. It wouldn’t be an issue for either of them; they were both practically made for pretty, expensive dresses. Even if Jenny was worried that her ass was getting bigger.
“You can go with one of ‘em, if you want. You could go with all three, for all that I care.” If they marked the list of Dahlia’s exes off the list for potential prom dates, that would disqualify half of the male population at their high school. “I know Mark wants to go with you. I overheard him and his friends talking about it at lunch the other day, and since Mark is neither my ex nor hard on the eyes, I personally think you should say yes when he asks.”
Right. What were they going to do tonight? They could have always gone to see a movie, but none of the new releases caught Dahlia’s attention. Had Dahlia been any good at bowling (and if she wasn’t sure they would run into Rachel, that whore), she might have suggested calling up some people and getting a group together at the bowling alley. Instead, she groaned and flopped onto her back. “There’s nothing to do,” she insisted, though it wasn’t exactly true. There were lots of things they could do, but Dahlia didn’t feel like doing any of them.
---
Jenny colored herself completely unsurprised that Anna Palmer had already booked the limo and gotten everything all worked out for prom. Just as she was sure that Martin had already paid the bill, and now that Dahlia had convinced her into the plan, it was basically cemented. It would be nice to go trying on dresses, Dahlia had a point with that much. She usually did. Jenny was excited despite her slight misgivings. They’d make a day out of it. “I don’t want to go with them,” Jenny remarked quietly, rolling her eyes.
She had never been a big dater, and as much as she would have denied that it had anything to do with Chase, it had everything to do with him. She didn’t want to try to turn every boyfriend into his dad, but she also didn’t want to date anyone that wasn’t okay with him, that wasn’t okay with her past. It was easier said than done to find a guy who was genuinely okay with that among the high-school boy population. Jenny had only had a handful of boyfriends since moving to Rhode Island, and she had gotten out of one of their cars on the side of the road and stubbornly walked all the way home after he had been dumb enough to ask why she ‘had to get home to her stupid kid so early anyway’.
Generally, the types of guys that Dahlia cycled through, Jenny wasn’t interested in. She had a point about Mark, though. He was okay, and that goatee that he was trying to grow out was actually surprisingly cute on him. He’d driven her and Chase to the mall once, and although that hadn’t been a date exactly, he and Chase were cute together. She had always had a soft spot for a little stubble. He’d be better than going alone. “I might say yes. If you really heard that?” she asked cautiously, watching as Dahlia flopped dramatically onto the bed, causing Jenny to roll her eyes again, although she was smiling.
“There’s plenty to do. You just have to decide on something, you’re too picky,” the blonde informed her, as she leaned over on her side, propped up on her elbow regarding her friend. “Or we could just sit here and do nothing. If you don’t pick something, I’ll make you play Scrabble with me. Or we could do Trivial Pursuit! You know that’s my favorite,” she teased. “Do you really want people to know you spend your Thursday nights playing Scrabble?”
---
“Of course I really heard that. Why would I say it if I didn’t?” Dahlia was a lot of things, but liar wasn’t one of them. Not when Jenny was concerned, anyway. “He’s had a crush on you ever since you moved here. He’s not a bad option, if you ask me.” Mark was one of the few boys that Dahlia hadn’t dated. They didn’t have anything going in the chemistry department, but he was a good guy that ran in their same social circles.
She rolled her blue-green eyes and gave Jenny a pointed look. “Okay, if there’s plenty to do, why don’t you pick something? Why is it always up to me to decide where we go or what we do? Your turn to put on the pants, Ms. Parry.” Dahlia was silent for a moment as she contemplated Jenny’s ideas. Of course she would suggest Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, both of which being games that Dahlia would get her ass kicked in. Dahlia was intelligent - extremely intelligent, even, but Jenny? Well, Jenny was a downright genius. The colleges were already lining up to beg for Jenny’s attendance. She would probably go somewhere far away, maybe even out of the country. Just thinking about it put a damper on Dahlia’s mood, so she shifted her thoughts to other, less depressing subjects.
“Hey, I have an idea. Not for tonight, but for prom.” So, back to prom it was. “Why don’t we go as each other’s date? We don’t need any slobbering, bumbling guys to step on our expensive dresses and buy us cheap corsages.” She sat up on her elbow to face Jenny, and both of her maintained eyebrows quirked upward as she awaited Jenny’s decision. She’d understand if an actual date was something that Jenny wanted; it wasn’t as if she would be at a lack of guys that wanted to take her. “C’mon, it’ll be a fun time.”
---
“Each other’s date?” Jenny echoed, smiling crookedly at the thought. She considered it for a long moment, before nodding in agreement. “Sure, if you promise that you won’t get wasted at the after party, because I don’t want you throwing up on my expensive dress either,” she teased her friend, leaning closer to bump her forehead gently against Dahlia’s. Jenny didn’t drink, although it had become apparent within a month of living in North Kingstown that it didn’t matter. Her best friend always insisted on dragging her to parties, when she was able, even if Jenny usually went home early.
After she made sure that someone was making sure Dahlia was going to get home safe, of course. Her maternal instinct extended every bit to her friends, Dahlia in particular. It wasn’t unusual for Jenny to strike up a conversation with Anna, out of nowhere, about something silly and domestic like her friend’s grades or general well-being. She worried. She actually much preferred the idea of her taking Dahlia to prom, more than some boy who thought he could do what he wanted, that thought he was God’s gift to women because he was taking Dahlia Palmer to the senior prom.
It’d almost be worth it to see the look on their faces when she showed up, essentially, what would be considered stag. They had been each other’s dates to parties and other dances before, but prom was a pretty big deal. She was honestly a little surprised that Dahlia wouldn’t be taking the opportunity to have someone bowing at her feet, going out of their way to make sure the night was perfect. They would have fun though. “I’ll show you a good time,” she assured her best friend, with a playful wiggling of her eyebrows. “We could go out and eat beforehand, all proper. Do I get to pick the restaurant, since you asked me?” Jenny grinned. “Does that make you the boy? Do you have to buy me a corsage?”
---
“That was one time! It’s not my fault your dress was in the direct line of my vomit.” Dahlia groaned, tossing her head back in a theatrical gesture of exasperation. When their foreheads touched, she scrunched her freckled nose at the blonde. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Jenny didn’t drink, but Dahlia always made up for it and then some. It was nice to have a designated driver, and Jenny didn’t seem to mind that Dahlia drug her to various parties and get togethers. More often than not, they both ended up in the bathroom, with Dahlia’s face over the toilet as Jenny held her hair away and rubbed her back.
“Pick wherever you want. Somewhere classy, though. Not Olive Garden, please, for all that’s good and holy. If we go for Italian, I want real Italian. And as far as the corsage goes, I will definitely buy you one. We’ll have to coordinate our dresses, though.” At the mention of being the boy, Dahlia rolled her eyes and made a face that practically said, ‘are you serious?’ “I am way too pretty to be a boy, and I smell better, too.”
She chuckled, mostly to herself, and playfully tapped the end of Jenny’s delicate nose. “If I were a boy, though, I’d rock your world. And you wouldn’t be raising Chase all by your lonesome, that’s for sure.” Dahlia didn’t know the whole story behind Jenny and Chase’s dad; she didn’t ask about him, but she knew that he didn’t do much to help. When she thought of Chase and his deadbeat dad (not to mention Jenny, who was a single mom), she almost wished she knew the guy so she could kick his ass.
“We could pretend we’re both virgins or something and rent some cheap hotel room. Isn’t that the tradition?” Jenny wasn’t a virgin, as made obvious by the son she had, and Dahlia definitely wasn’t. She lost her v-card years ago, and she didn’t miss it.
---
“That one time on the dress, plus that one time on my shoes,” Jenny gently reminded her friend, with a completely mischievous grin crossing her face. Of course she would never let Dahlia live it down, but that was part of the fun of being the sober friend. She had been through moments at parties where she was jealous of Dahlia and their other friends, that they could drink and have fun while she just avoided the whole subject of alcohol altogether to avoid messing with her medication.
She’d seen way too many drunk idiots by that point, however, to harbour any jealousy. People who got drunk usually got violent, silly, or emotional, or some combination of the three. It made them do things that they wouldn’t normally do. Things they’d often regret in the morning. Her best friend was no exception. She’d slept on the bathroom floor with Dahlia more than once, and she didn’t imagine having alcohol in her stomach would have made it any more comfortable.
“I don’t want Italian though,” she informed Dahlia, just barely resisting the urge to tell her friend that, honestly, she’d rather just go to McDonald’s or something. Jenny was a notoriously picky eater, a chicken nugget fanatic. While she was quick to pick out all organic and natural food for Chase, encouraging him to try new things as he grew, her own palate on the other hand was far from expanded. “I don’t know where I’d like to go.. but we don’t have to decide now. We don’t have to decided at all, if we don’t want to, we could just go somewhere the night of. We can be spontaneous,” she suggested. “Coordinating dresses, however, is a must. Understood.”
When it came to fashion, Jenny generally left it up to Dahlia’s discretion. She had lived her life in Michigan wearing whatever she found comfortable, avoiding being too clashy as best she could. Since moving to North Kingstown, she had learned there were a lot more to what she wore than she realized. She’d never realized how long a shopping trip could be until she met Dahlia Palmer. “I want purple, though,” Which almost went without saying, since almost everything Jenny owned was purple. She even put Chase in it, by reasoning that purple could be just as masculine as feminine. Purple was the color of royalty, of kings. No wonder it was her favorite. “So you’ll have to wear something that goes with that! That’s the trade, if we’re going to go together. I need to wear purple.”
Dahlia’s comment about Chase’s father caught Jenny slightly off guard, distracting her from the subject of prom for a moment, long enough to smile slowly at her best friend’s words. None of her friends in Rhode Island had ever met her ex, but that didn’t mean any of them particularly liked him. Dahlia included, though she didn’t pry, something Jenny was thankful for. “You’d rock my world, huh? Don’t you think letting someone rock my world is kind of what got me into this situation?” the blonde suggested playfully, reaching over and tapping Dahlia’s nose right back.
“If you were my baby daddy, you might be worth fighting for the support money,” she laughed after a moment. Her pride kept her from demanding child support from her ex-boyfriend, though she knew was legally entitled to it. If he had money like the Palmers, however, that would have been a different story entirely. As it was, her parents helped her, enough that she didn’t need her ex, a fact that she liked. He hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic about being a father. Resigned to the fact, yes, but not excited. Leaving him in Michigan didn’t hurt like it should have.
Laughing at Dahlia’s suggestion of renting a hotel room, Jenny turned her head in the brunette’s direction, tilting it a bit. “I’d love to pretend I’m a virgin. I’d love to have a virginity do-over, actually. Don’t you wish they had those?” She paused for a moment, considering. “I wouldn’t get rid of Chase or anything like that, that’s not what I’m saying, I just.. a hotel, with my best friend, on prom night, would still somehow manage to have a more romantic atmosphere than my first time did. I wish I was kidding.”
---
“You and your purple.” Dahlia didn’t mind the idea of going in purple, though she was much more fond of blue, herself. Still, if Jenny wanted to wear purple, then they would wear purple. Not that she was vain or anything -- except that she was sort of known for her vanity -- but she could make any color look good, so she wasn’t overly worried about what they would be wearing for prom. “You’re so demanding. We haven’t even been on the date yet and you’re making demands,” she teased, putting on her best annoyed-but-not-really face. “What’s next? Are you going to tell me that I have to wear my hair a certain way and wear a certain perfume?”
She liked the idea of going to prom with Jenny. They did everything else together, so why wouldn’t they go to prom? Yes, people would wonder why they weren’t accompanied by boys on their arms, but Dahlia wasn’t concerned. It wasn’t as if their peers would assume they didn’t get asked; anyone who knew anything about their high school would know that Dahlia Palmer and Jenny Parry would most certainly get asked to prom. “You kidding me? Of course I’d rock your world. It would get so rocked that you’d have, like, six of Chase running around. I’m that good.”
There were a few things that Dahlia was absolutely sure of, and those were her looks and her ability to make the opposite sex drool.
“Please, if I was your baby daddy, you’d be so spoiled that you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. You wouldn’t have to fight me for anything.” The Palmers didn’t necessarily throw their money around, but they didn’t exactly try to be discreet about it, either. It was hard to be subtle about money when Dahlia showed up to pageants in multi-thousand dollar dresses or when she came to school in her brand new Mercedes.
Since they were on the subject of first times, one of the few topics that Dahlia hadn’t pressed Jenny about, she raised her eyebrows and scooted closer, obviously intrigued. “How was your first time? Was it with Chase’s dad, or was it with someone else?” Those same eyebrows were wiggled for good measure. “C’mon, give me the details. I can’t believe we’ve been friends this long and I’ve yet to hear about Jenny Parry’s first time.” Honestly, Dahlia had never really understood the importance of virginity. It didn’t do anything, and it didn’t make you less of a person when you no longer had it. Society put way too much stock in a person’s virginity, if you asked her.
“I’m guessing it wasn’t all fireworks and lovesongs, if a cheap hotel room on prom night would be more romantic.”
---
“You’re that good? Think highly of yourself much?” Jenny laughed, entirely good-natured. “Six is a bit much for me, I might have to get you fixed. I want two boys and two girls, that’s the perfect number.” She rolled her eyes playfully as Dahlia scooted closer and prodded her with questions, though she was quick to get comfortable, flopping her head back into the nearest pillow on Dahlia’s bed. That was one of her favorite things about Dahlia’s bed, just how huge it was. It was always easy to stretch out and get comfy. At home, she and her sister still shared a room and slept in bunk beds, although that was at least partially their choice. It was just how things had always been.
“You really, really want to hear about that?” Jen inquired, scrunching up her nose at the thought. She could already tell from the look on her best friend’s fact that Dahlia was completely serious in expecting details. “It was nothing special, really. It was Chase’s dad, he was.. actually the only guy that I slept with in Michigan. He was my first boyfriend, actually, like.. real boyfriend. He was two years older, he fixed cars, a total greasemonkey.. I swear to God, sometimes I just did his laundry for him. He would wear the same shirt for days. Smoked like a chimney, thought he was so cool. Think Sandra Dee and Danny Zuko, with less singing,” she smiled, almost a little wistfully. “I was young, okay? He was pretty cool.”
She’d had a soft spot for bad boys since him, particularly the sort with a stereotypical heart-of-gold. She was bad at balancing the spectrum; her boyfriends since moving to Rhode Island had ranged from badasses to sweethearts, with little middle ground between. She always ended up liking the bad boys a lot more. He’d left her with a taste for that much. She was much more careful with boys now though, in general. She might have had her firm opinions on how many children she wanted to have in the future, she loved being a mother, but for now, one was plenty.
“Anyway, he always had extra money. Turned out he used to sell weed, which I later found out and got in his face about, but.. he took me for a drive, and he had bought me this really nice necklace here,” She indicated the one that still hung around her neck, “And.. well, you know. Yada-yada-yada, we ended up in the backseat of his car, which was a two-door and really cramped. And leather. So like.. first of all, my ass kept getting stuck to the seat, and my head was all jammed up against the door, and he was so clumsy, I just-- I mean, it got better, next time.. a little,” she laughed gently, turning her head on the pillow to look at Dahlia seriously.
“I think that was it though, like that night? Like, that I got pregnant. Maybe. I don’t know, exactly, he convinced me to let him try it again.. because like I said, it did get a little better. But I think that first time did it. I think I was damned if I did it again, damned if I didn’t, you know? People still actually believe you can’t get knocked up on your first time,” she scoffed. “Old wives tale.”
---
“You want four kids?” Dahlia sounded horrified at the mere thought of having four children running around. She wanted kids eventually, but the idea of losing her perfect figure was not one that she enjoyed. “Two would be enough for me. Even three kids sounds like it would be my own personal hell. You have to push those things out, and that’s not even the hard part,” she mused, as if Jenny wasn’t already a mother. If anyone knew these things, it was Jenny Parry herself.
She tried not to show her distaste as Jenny described Chase’s dad. Dahlia didn’t go for the bad boy types; she went for the handsome, boy-next-door type. The type of boy that loved his mother and loved his dogs but loved to fuck behind the bleachers. Classy, right? Still, she didn’t go for smokers, nor did she go for grease monkeys, but hey, everyone had a type. She and Jenny just had very, very different types.
“So, he was unhygienic, and he sold weed? What a winner,” she teased, all in good fun. Dahlia knew that Jenny had a soft spot for him. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have worn the necklace he gave her all the time. Come to think of it, Dahlia couldn’t think of a time when she saw Jenny without it. She reached forward and cupped the charm of the necklace to give it a closer inspection. It was a nice necklace, and Dahlia could see why a younger Jenny might think it garnered sex.
The mental image that Jenny painted, ass stuck on the leather and all, had the brunette tossing back her head and giggling. She was right about it being less than romantic, but whose first time was one for the books? Dahlia’s certainly wasn’t.
“I lost my virginity to Ben Kordsmeier.” Dahlia let that set in. Ben was a good looking guy on the football team, but he was stoic and reserved - not the type that she tended to go for. “It wasn’t anything special, but I guess it wasn’t awful. He was pretty nervous, though.” Dahlia chose not to mention the small detail that she, too, had been nervous at the time. “We hooked up in his parents’ bedroom when they were away on vacation. He was terrified that they were going to come back and find out about his dirty little secret.”
---
“He totally wasn’t a winner,” Jenny admitted easily, shaking her head as Dahlia examined her necklace closer, “But in his defense, I guess, he wouldn’t have tried to tell you was a winner, either. I thought I could change him, you know? It was.. one of those situations. Turns out guys don’t really like that,” she smiled wanly. “He thought he was no good, I thought he could be good if he just applied himself.. and he could have been. He just didn’t. He could like, take a whole car apart and put it back together, with no help and no trouble, I swear to God. He was talented. But no ambition.”
Really, no ambition was one of the biggest turn-offs that Jenny could think of in a guy. It almost contradicted her love for bad-boys, most of whom almost always had little to no ambition, for their future or anything else. A lot of them weren’t ideal father material. “I hope Chase doesn’t take after him,” she mused aloud, a thought that she had mostly kept to herself until that point, though she’d thought it many times since her son had been born. She felt bad as soon as she said it.
“In some ways,” she corrected herself quickly. It wasn’t as if her were some monster, he’d been sweet as could be when he wanted, he’d been loyal. But the faults had outweighed all of that in the end.
“You and Ben Kordsmeier?” Jenny let out a low whistle, all teasing. “You want to say my ex is a winner. Ben Kordsmeier is totally on steroids, look at his arms, like tree trunks,” she joked, flipping from her back to her side, to face Dahlia once again. “There is absolutely nothing classier than the away-for-the-weekend parents bed. Was he.. you know, at least good? If not awful? I’m sure you were amazing, or so you’d tell me.” She smirked at the brunette. “You’re all talk, Palmer.”
---
“Hey, at least Ben washed his own clothes,” she argued, and though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone but herself, she still had a soft spot for Ben. He was a nice guy with a big, pretty smile and dark hair that Dahlia liked to run her fingers through, once upon a time. Every now and then, she and Ben would catch each other’s eye across the field, and they’d share a knowing smile. He had a new girlfriend now -- it made Dahlia happy to know that she wasn’t as pretty -- and was getting ready to go off to some fancy college with a football scholarship, but they would always be each other’s firsts. “And he’s not on roids. You should have seen how much he worked out.”
Dahlia didn’t think that Jenny had anything to worry about with Chase. Even at two years old, the kid was bright and loving, and he so clearly adored his mother. And why wouldn’t he? She was his entire world, and vice-versa. Jenny wasn’t just a good mother - she was an excellent mom.
“Good? Yeah, he was good. I mean, there were no fireworks or ballads or anything like that, but I don’t regret it. I’m sure he’s gotten better since then, considering how many girlfriends he’s had. I swear, the boy loves ‘em and leaves ‘em. I’m happy to report that it was me who broke up with him. Broke his heart.” Dahlia might have sounded smug, but she actually felt guilty about the way she broke off the relationship. Ben was a nice guy, and he hadn’t deserved the half-hearted phone call Dahlia gave him.
“Woooah, now. I know you’re not questioning my ability to make the boys swoon, Jenny Parry. Tell me I didn’t hear that correctly.”
---
Jenny laughed brightly at her best friend’s reaction, scrunching her face up at Dahlia as a reflex. “Did I stutter? You heard me, I’m questioning your ability,” the blonde challenged, although the entire train of thought was in jest. Dahlia didn’t need to do much except breathe at their high school to attract male attention, and as someone who spent the majority of her day at Dahlia’s side, it would have been hard to miss the gazes that she drew in her wake.
Still, it was Jenny’s job as Dahlia’s best friend to pick on her, to keep her down to earth. Keep her head from getting too fat, which Dahlia’s head had a tendency to do. She was gorgeous, and she knew it just as well as Jenny did, they both did. “I at least call bullshit on some of the more ostentatious rumors. Like, Emily Healy tells people that you can tie a cherry stem with your tongue. There is no way you can do that. Or like, that you slept with Mr. Duvall last year to pass chemistry.”
“As your very best friend,” Jenny went on, reaching over and poking Dahlia’s nose again. “I think people talk you up to be a lot more than you are, when it comes to sex.. and you don’t exactly tell them otherwise, miss heartbreaker.” She grinned. “You act like you like to love ‘em and leave ‘em, too, but I bet you’re really just a big softie like me. Isn’t it like, better to make love?” She always thought using ‘fuck’ was such a vulgar word, other than in the throes of the act itself, when her mouth could get away from her.
---
“Excuse you! I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue. You heard correctly on that one. I did not, however, sleep with Mr. Duvall to pass chemistry. I made an A all by myself. Besides, he’s, like, what? Forty. Ew.” Dahlia was well aware that there were plenty of rumors that circulated the high school in regards to her sexual experience. In reality, she could count the boys she slept with on one hand (less, maybe, if you didn’t count that one time), but high schoolers would say what high schoolers would say. Once, she caught word of a rumor that she slept with their principal. Another time, someone was saying that she had sex with a friend’s father, neither of which were true.
Jenny was certainly onto something, but that didn’t keep Dahlia from scoffing as though her best friend was being entirely ridiculous just for suggesting such a thing. “Make love? What, are you like thirty or something?” she asked, only half teasing. “You’re such a soft-hearted romantic, Jenny Parry.”
Dahlia sat up, then, her expression shifting into something resembling determination. “So, you really don’t think I’m all that, huh? You think it’s all rumor?” Without much warning and even less hesitation, she leaned forward and pressed her lips atop Jenny’s own lush mouth. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed, though it was the first time for Dahlia to be sober when it happened. It happened twice before. The first time had been little more than a playful peck on the lips, but the second was a little more heated. They hadn’t brought it up since, and Dahlia pretended like she didn’t remember it happening to begin with.
This time, she would have no such excuse.
---
She smiled crookedly, rolling her eyes at her friend. If she were honest with herself, she really was the soft-hearted romantic, through and through. On one hand, she liked irresponsible tough boys, but on the other, she wanted passionate, sweet love. She used terms like ‘make love’ and ‘intimate’ instead of ‘fuck’ or ‘screw’, she’d never really thought of sex in a crude way. But most boys did. The two hands didn’t exactly go well together. It was almost no wonder she’d ended up pregnant at sixteen, really. She was a bit of an old soul, looking for something gentle that most teenage boys had no interest in supplying.
There was little time to actually answer Dahlia’s query, before her friend had been moving, sitting up on the bed. She almost laughed at the other girl’s words, she’d barely opened her lips to do so, when Dahlia’s mouth pressed against her own and the laughter died in her throat. Her eyes closed instinctively. It certainly wasn’t what she had been expecting, but her body was quicker to roll with it than her mind. Her lips still partially parted, her tongue explored tentatively, running over Dahlia’s lower lip.
It wasn’t the first time, or end the second, but Jenny hadn’t forgotten about the other times. She’d always assumed that Dahlia had. It wasn’t something they talked about, after all. Once, she’d almost brought it up. She couldn’t even remember what they’d actually been talking about, but the question had come to her, what was the kissing all about, but she’d never actually asked. It was just something girls did, from what she saw, when they drank. Not all of them, but a lot of them. She hadn’t wanted to read into it too deeply. Or act like she was fixating on it or something. But she wasn’t exactly complaining. Dahlia’s lips were softer than any chapped lipped boy she’d ever kissed, even when she tasted like vodka.
Which Jenny was glad she didn’t today. The flavor of vanilla was the same, but it came from her lipgloss, and not her drink. Dahlia wasn’t drunk, unless she’d been doing shots before Jenny got that which the blonde highly doubted, and that made everything a little more confusing. She wasn’t sure what to chalk the brunette’s actions up to, really, but she still wasn’t complaining. Her body was still doing most of her thinking for her, the hand of the arm not propping her up moving, sliding up Dahlia’s neck, fingertips in her hair.
---
Dahlia wasn’t expecting Jenny to respond in kind - at least not quite so quickly. She was anticipating a gasp, maybe a surprised little lift of her brows. The whole purpose of the kiss was to prove that she was every bit as good of a lover as the rumors led people to believe she was. In all of two seconds, the kiss went from a childish, humorous attempt at proving herself to a full-blown meeting of lips (and a brush of tongue, for good measure.)
Jenny’s fingers felt more like ribbons of silk than digits as they slid up the long, slender column of Dahlia’s neck, eventually finding a home in dark hair. She didn’t let herself think in much detail about what was happening. It started innocently enough, as kisses between friends often do, but it was most certainly more now. Her first instinct was to pull away and apologize, maybe even assure her best friend that she wasn’t some kind of lesbian or anything like that, but she didn’t want to pull away long enough to speak.
When she was sure that Jenny wasn’t disgusted, Dahlia pressed closer still, her tongue slipping playfully and teasingly across Jenny’s. The kiss wasn’t hurried or frantic, but was instead slow and experimental, all tentative brushes and feather-light caresses of wandering fingertips. Dahlia wasn’t entirely sure where to put her hands, so she settled one at the side of Jenny’s neck and the other on the curve of a hip.
---
With every passing second, Jenny waited, expecting Dahlia to pull away from her. The playful slip of tongue, the feeling of the brunette leaning into her, had not been what she was expecting. But still, she made not a single sound of complaint herself. She’d kissed plenty of people, for one it was just something that people seemed to do at parties. Whether it was spin the bottle, or just plain making out. But she’d never really had a kiss that made her stomach do flips, sending shivers down her neck from her spine, the way that Dahlia’s was.
Not since she’d been in the backseat of her ex’s car, thinking that she was in love. It’d been at least that long since a kiss had made her feel like she was tingling all over, right to her fingertips. Her legs, stretched out, hung partially off from the side of the bed, and she curled her toes inside of her sneakers as Dahlia’s hand came to rest on her neck. She moved her own fingers deeper into her friend’s dark hair, twisting strands gently, the touch of her hands are tentative as her tongue.
Only when she needed to pull back for a moment of breath, and to frankly gather her thoughts, did Jenny break away from Dahlia. She wasn’t sure exactly how long they’d kissed, but it had certainly gone on too long to pass for any kind of joke, and she quickly found herself averting her gaze, blue eyes focusing on something over the brunette’s shoulder instead. “Sorry,” she said, although she knew she hadn’t really done anything wrong. She felt responsible. She was the one who had turned it all serious. But she still had no complaints.
---
Dahlia felt lightheaded. She couldn’t remember the last time she kissed someone and felt so nervous. Dahlia Palmer wasn’t a nervous person; she owned whatever room she stepped in, and yet she was absolutely sure that Jenny could feel the way her heart slammed against her chest. How could she not hear it, when Dahlia’s own thoughts were drowned out by the furious pounding in her ears?
It was Jenny who broke away from the kiss, and it was only then that she realized she desperately needed air. Her lungs were screaming for it, but she somehow kept herself from gasping and carrying on like some kind of sniveling virgin. Instead, she took a deep, even breath and studied Jenny’s flushed, pretty features for some kind of … something to go off of. All she got was an apology. “Hey,” she said, forcing a smile that almost looked confident. “What are you apologizing for? I’m the one that made the move.”
She was trying to play it off, make it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal when it was, in fact, a very big deal. Dahlia wasn’t drunk. She couldn’t use it as an excuse, and there was no pretending that she didn’t remember anything about it. There was no going back, a fact that was slowly starting to register with the brunette. “That was …” She trailed off, unsure of what to say next. “Something.” There was a moment of silence as Dahlia struggled to come up with the words. “Nice.”
---
Dahlia’s smile comforted Jenny a little, but not very much. It was better than a lot of things she could have reacted with. Like perhaps asking why Jenny had put her tongue in her mouth, when they had just been kidding around. She was smiling, but there was something off. She knew her best friend well enough to pick up on the force behind it. She managed her own, nervous and a little toothy. “Something,” she repeated firmly, unsure of what to say herself, a rare occurrence for the blonde. Words were Jenny’s thing, she had every intention to make her living with them. She was a writer, she rarely struggled to express herself. But she had nothing.
“Definitely nice,” she agreed as soon as the brunette said it, maybe a bit too eagerly, her cheeks flushing more within seconds. Embarrassed, she couldn’t help but laugh, pulling the hand out of Dahlia’s hair finally, and rubbing her own face with it instead. “You don’t think I’m a total weirdo?” she inquired, from behind splayed fingers, her lips curling into a smile despite herself.
“I don’t know if I believe you can tie a cherry stem, still..”