"Nah, my mom would nail him if she could tag his stupid ass with something," Randi said and Alex put a beefy arm around her.

"Tag his ass... hmm," Alex said with a faraway look.

"Sims! You're killin' me, quit it. Totally not funny, muscle-head," Jonesy said, drilling him with a look.

"Come on, Jones, it's only three days..." Alex began, trying to console the Jonester, then added with a wink, "It was totally worth it."

Jonesy grinned at first but then he thought of something, his smile turning upside down. "Yeah but my mom will have me watch Monster Micah," he said.

Sophie grinned. "I thought you dug Micah?"

"Yeah," Jonesy turned, sweeping his arm out and thwacking me in the gut with the cast-as-weapon.

"Hey!" I yelled.

"Sorry Hart, watch where you're standing."

Yeah, right. Freakin' bludgeoning tool.

He dismissed me and turned to Sophie. "She was awesome when she laid around, cooing and drooling, babe."

Sophie raised a manicured eyebrow, dragging a nail file over her glittering purple nail tips. "Ah-huh--"

"And now she gets into shit. Like my comic books."

"Oh man, that blows, pal," Alex said, feelin' it and they high-fived their agreement over Comic Book Destruction by Toddler.

The girls watched with a bored detachment that I found insulting.

Sophie gave a subtle yawn behind her fist as Mia's car drove up.

"See ya dweebs," she said good-naturedly, with a cascading ripple of purple nails in a farewell wave. She jogged out into the fierce drizzle, her high-heeled boots bringing rat-a-tat-tat sounds to our ears, muffled by the wet cement.

Jonesy watched her leave as she folded into the tin can with a sigh.

Tiff followed his gaze then said, "Put us out of our misery Jones, just ask her out."

Jonesy scrunched up his face but for once he didn't try to defend himself with the usual lameness and pseudo excuses. "Yeah." Then, "I don't know, it took me so damn long to figure out I was a one-woman man that now I don't think she'd be convinced no matter what I did," he said, striking a lone pebble with his sneaker and flinging it into the growing puddles on the sidewalk.

We all looked at Sophie pulling away from the curb with Mia in the Smart Car a.k.a toaster.

Jade said it best, "I think if you showed ya liked her she might see fit to give it a go."

Jonesy gave a perv hip pop and said, "Give. It. A. Go!"

Jade blushed to the roots of her hair. Somehow, I was thinking she hadn't meant that.

Dear baby Jesus, I thought and got the crooked mouth plastered on my face. I saw the other guys had it too. Like a contagion.

Jonesy grinned, his buoyant nature restored and I gave Jade a gentle squeeze in thanks and she sighed. Of all of the group, Jonesy struggled with anything that resembled the serious. I sure appreciated it when stuff was dire. But day to day... it was time to grow up.

Maybe not all the way though. There was something great about Jonesy. I didn't want that small part to change. Then we'd have to submit to adulthood. Most of us thought that was a last resort.

"Hey, do you need a ride Tiff?" John asked casually.

When it was anything but. John was never casual. He was the most deliberate dude I'd ever met.

Tiff looked up at John and I sucked in a breath, that lump on her head was a humdinger. She cast her eyes down again, moving the dirt on the only patch of dry concrete with a sneakered toe. "Nah... Bry's gonna swoop in here and get me." Her hair had fallen forward and she looked up quickly at John, remembering what passed for manners for Tiff. "Thanks though... John."

It was like the rest of us didn't exist. It was just John and Tiff. She never called John by his given name, just Terran. I watched as his hand flexed by his side, deliberating. Then he jumped off that precipice of indecision, taking a swan dive. He lifted his hand in slow motion, caught that stubborn dark blonde strand that had fallen forward, covering part of her face and tucked it behind her ear.

Her hazel eyes stood out like glittering jewels, flecks of green lighting them from within and I watched as they filled with tears.

I saw it.

But they didn't fall. Bry roared up in his beater, setting the moment on its ear. His door was bashed in permanently and as my mind edged again toward that narrow realization I'd had earlier about Tiff, it slithered away again when Bry jogged up, head bent against the chilly rain.

John and Tiff turned like they'd been caught or something and Bry got a load of Tiff's head, his face filling like a thundercloud, impregnated darkness.

"What the fuck?" he screeched. "Tiffie... what happened to your head, hun?"

Now the Weller family was tight so when Tiff took a step backward from her brother we all looked at him.

"What's going on, Tiff?" he asked in a low voice, his hand dropping from where it had hung midair to touch the knot on her skull.

"I tripped in the hall and didn't catch myself," she said miserably.

"What? Like twelve damn times or something?" he asked incredulously.

John nodded, sensing answers that stood just out of reach.

We were smelling something that seemed off. But Tiff was such a straight chick, we would've never thought she'd hide something this monumental from us.

Damn, I wish we'd known then. It would have given us a head's up for later.

She shrugged, lifting a shoulder. "Let's go bro, I'll tell ya the gory details in the car."

Then Tiff did one of the bravest things I'd ever seen her do. And that was saying something. Tiff had the heart of a lion.

She turned to John, before he had any chance to figure out what she was doing and wrapped her arms around his waist, briefly pressing her face against his chest and he hesitated for maybe a second then pulled her against himself tightly.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She fit against him perfectly, I noticed. I was always a little shocked when Tiff got next to one of us guys. She was really small. But when one of us weren't around to give her petite size scale; she was big, larger than life. It was the Tiff Phenomena.

Then she pulled away, rushing after her brother and slipping through the hole of the window, the soles of her feet the last thing we saw.

Since Gramps had welded the door shut that was the main access. That made my crooked mouth wink back into existence.

John looked like he'd just got nailed with a perfectly executed sucker punch.

Randi and Jade gave each other the girl stare. I walked up to Terran, clapping him on the shoulder. "You in love, Terran?"

"Yup," he said without hesitation.

I nodded, better to just admit it.

Jonesy looked at John and said, "Join the club Terran."

John shook himself out of his stupor with a small smile, a guy of few words.

He and Tiff couldn't have been more opposite. Tiff was so loud, bold and without a filter.

"You can't help who you love," John said, briefly waxing philosophical.

"Amen to that brother," Alex said, squeezing a red-faced Randi against his side.

"That's what I've been trying to convince everyone of," Lewis said in his dry way.

Jonesy cracked up. "Yeah Archer, like we need convincing."

Archer cocked a brow, giving a level stare at Jonesy. "You might not need convincing, but the world at large. Yeah, they sure do."

The Carson Hamiltons of the world just kept hating. Hating people that were different, that were more. Just hating. They were threatened by anyone that was not like themselves.

We watched the rain come down, soaking the streets outside our school.

"Thank you for distracting that thug," Archer said and Jonesy smirked at the word.

"You betcha. I'm the only one that gets to make fun of your gayness, Archer. He was being presumptuous," Jonesy said, trying out his vocab on the unsuspecting Archer.

Lewis cocked a brow then smirked. "Too true, Mark. But I am grateful nonetheless."

Jonesy came over and wrapped his cast around Archer's neck. "Anytime pretty boy."

Lewis smiled at Jonesy who waggled his finger at him. "Don't get any ideas, pal."

"Oh no Mark, I will have no ideas. You see... I don't think."

John barked out a laugh and the awkwardness of Terran and Tiff, Sophie and Jonesy; his three day vacation for defending our gay friend, well... it washed away with the rain that fell.

Jade and I took off, my coat covering our heads as we headed to the Camaro. When Jonesy pulsed me about getting together because it was Friday I sent a return pulse that was the most important of my life thus far:

Nah, I'm spending it with my hot girlfriend, dumbass- CH

I got ya, Hart winks- Jonesy

The time was finally right. For me it had been right for awhile but for Jade she needed to be ready and that's all that mattered in the end

Jade.

CHAPTER 5

then

I don't know how other guys felt when they had sex for the first time but I was so nervous I had Ball Shrivel.

Jade and I were in her room in the foster housing, a place that held twenty different minors. You had to be between the ages of sixteen to eighteen with no living relatives. Voilà, that was why Jade was here.

Things had finally settled down after Brett's death, her family's extermination, and though Frazier roamed free, there had been almost a solid three months of actual peace. A first for us, I think.

No insanity drug lingered in her system, I wasn't raising road kill anymore, things had been notably silent on the Graysheet front. Clyde was back to his normal steadfast self....

So here we were, breaking in her new space.

I thought we'd robbed ourselves of spontaneity a little with planning it like we did, but after over two years of being together the time was right and we'd set aside the night to come together. Important things were worth waiting for, celebrating.

Unfortunately, I tended to over think things. I guess I had my parents to thank for that.

I couldn't turn off my brain. All these questions came to mind: would I hurt her (yes), would we still be okay once that threshold had been breeched? (I hoped.)

"Stop thinking, Caleb," Jade said (probably saw my eyes rolled up in my head as the first clue, then the pre-Exorcist head spin to follow).

She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her soft lips to mine and my anxiety slid down a notch.

"I want it to be perfect," I said against her mouth. She was an evil girlfriend, distracting me with her lips.

It was alarmingly effective.

I pressed my lips away from her mouth, working toward her neck and lower when she said, "It is perfect, Caleb... look around."

I wasted a glance on the room, noting our position on the third floor which was a special flavor of amazing, given I wasn't sharing anything with anyone but her, our privacy was secured. The candles I'd snuck over here stood at fragrant attention on every horizontal surface. The flames flickered when the gaps in the old windows allowed the air from outside to infiltrate.

A cut crystal vase held a dozen roses; all lavender with a single, inky black bud in the center.

It was kind of an awesome move for me. It had been worth pulling out every romantic stunt I could think of and ones I couldn't. For Jade.

She hadn't looked very hard or she would have seen the velvet box with a little something inside it.

Or a big something.

It was really just a token of what I felt for her. It wasn't enough but it'd have to do.

It'd cost me my summer's wages as a Yardwork Minion.

Again, worth it.

I dragged her so close to my body there was no separating where she stopped and I began. We came up for air and I grunted out my question for the tenth time, panting between the words, "Did you get the birth control?"

"Yes, shhh... they gave me the pulsedose last month."

"Okay... it's not that I wouldn't take care--

--I know you would, remember?"

Her hands were under my shirt, her palms erotic handles gripping my ribs, my breathing hitching with her touch.

There was no hiding my intent from her. My love.

My burning desire.

I'd never wanted to be an Empath but in that moment I would have given quite a bit to know how she felt.

"I brought a condom..."

"No, I told you, that's why I got the dose."

"What about safe sex?" I asked, hanging on to logic with a white-knuckle grip.

"I am safe, you are safe. We're virgins--

"Barely," I smiled and pressed another kiss down between the silky skin that separated her magnificent breasts. Her skin was like velvet, I nuzzled there for a minute, enjoying the softness that was Jade.

Jade leaned back into the hand holding her head and whispered an answer, "Yeah..."