"Come on in! July? Is that you?" Beverly Reed's voice traveled through the front room from the kitchen. I opened the door and headed inside. Adrian's stepmother stood between the kitchen and living room, holding a dish towel. "July! I thought I saw you walking from next door. Why didn't you just go through the garage?"

Because we're not friends or neighbors, nor am I his girlfriend, and I'm shocked you know my name?

"Oh, I wasn't sure who was home, I just—Reagan asked me to pick up Adrian's assignment and—" I  stopped talking as Beverly looked at me oddly. Oh my God. She was just as shocked as I was that I had come here. What was happening?! Could this be more awkward?

"My, we have certainly slimmed down and filled out in all the places, haven't we? Goodness, you... are quite the head turner." She looked me over suspiciously. "Ahh, to be that tan. I used to get so dark in the summer. I loved it. I could wear anything."

"Ah, sorry. Forgive my attire, I was just headed to Prairie Pool for a lifeguard meeting when Reagan got in touch to send this over for their exam." It's just a stomach! Jesus, what was so surprising, the fact that mine was finally flat??? I felt stupid.

"Hey!" A male's voice broke up the weirdness. He was approaching from behind Beverly. I couldn't see who it was yet, but the voice was jovial and far too excited to see me to be Adrian's.

"What are you doing here?!"

Thank God it was his younger stepbrother, Samuel. He could take this stuff to Adrian, and I could be on my way.

"You look awesome! Don't tell me you're here for that loser!" Samuel motioned upstairs as he grabbed his cap and keys.

"Sam! Out! And, please, be careful. I want you back before your dad gets home or you won't take the truck again."

"Later!" Samuel smiled back at me as he bolted to the garage. He was a year and a half or two younger than us and much nicer to everyone in general than Adrian. And... now he was gone. Great. Beverly looked at me and shook her head.

"Learners permit. Be careful on the road when you see him coming." She opened the oven to check a casserole. Maybe she would just let me leave the notebook with her.

"Well, I won't keep you. I just needed to drop this by. Mrs. Keagan left Adrian's assignment with a few equations marked. I can show you the ones she mentioned." The oven door shut, and Beverly looked at me strangely again.

"Are you kidding? If you think I could relay the Greek that woman has you all speaking to each other, well then, I'm flattered. Go on up, he's in there. He can't really go anywhere else right now." She chuckled at her own bad joke, then made a pity face.

I took my time up the stairs, trying to control my nerves. I had no clue what to expect. I took a deep breath, crept down the hall, and tapped on his door.

"It's open." My heart skipped a beat at the sound of a voice I recognized. Just act naturally, whatever that is with him. I stepped through the door and met his eyes. He was sitting on his bed against the headboard in boxers and a t-shirt with his freshly scarred knee straightened out. A large brace lay open beside him.

"Hey." I threw out the first word. He stared back at me as I stepped further into his room, motioning toward the notebook in my hand to immediately establish why I was there. "Reagan didn't get to pick up the assignment before she left, and Lynn had already left for work, so..." Steady. Keep it professional, friendly, but professional. I steadied myself through a beat of silence and no response from him. He was still staring at me.

I couldn't help but notice how meticulous his room was. I knew he was a perfectionist, but good God, did a teenager really live there? It was spotless, apart from a change of clothes tossed on the floor between the door and his bed, but I didn't think that was the norm. He obviously couldn't pick up after himself with his knee. Everything else was in strict order.

Usually when you walk into one of your peers' bedrooms you glimpse what they were like as a kid. An adolescent poster on the wall, ribbons, and trophies from random activities you didn't know they were involved in. Horses, teddy bears, and medals, at least girls still held onto a lot of that memorabilia.

Adrian's room looked like it belonged to an adult. A seasoned bachelor if you will. Everything was organized. Even his bookshelf was sexy. It didn't have stray sheets of paper sticking out of books that they were trapped between or random knick-knacks cluttering the spare spaces. I had to look away from it before I lingered too long and learned it was in alphabetical order.

He had no distractions other than a TV. This was obviously why he was so successful at everything he did. I felt a little inferior, thinking of my own room or rooms since I straddled two houses. I had my own bedroom at my grandparents' house and another a few houses down, in a house Mom and I were seldom home to occupy.

Compared to him, I lived in chaos and complete disarray. It was cozy chaos, though, and I handled it well. I always knew if I had one earring at my grandparents' and another at my house or if the missing curler to my hot rollers was in a drawer in my grandparents' guest bathroom from when I changed there for a football game.

Still, I had a sinking feeling that this might be why I was such a "Jack of all trades, master of none."

"What are you wearing?" Finally. It was shitty, but at least he said something.

"I have work. I was just on my way there."

"What kind of work?" He was relentless, and I was visibly annoyed with his disdain for me.

"The guard meeting at Prairie City Pool where I work if you must know. What does it matter?"

"You'd go to a job interview dressed like that?"

"I already have the job, and it's a swimming pool, not a law office or nursing home. Everyone there either just got out of the water or is about to go in it. No one's in a suit and tie, trust me."

"I trust this was Reagan's idea?"

"This? What's this... me going out of my way to make sure you get these?" I waved the notebook to bring us back on topic.

"No, the getup for your meeting. Isn't that the shirt her mom made her change out of when she went to wear it that one night?"

For someone who seemed to forget I existed, he had an impeccable selective memory.

"Her mother asked her to change because it was the middle of winter, and she was wearing it with low rise jeans and heels. It was inappropriate for where we were going as well as seasonally inappropriate. It's now summer. I'm wearing it appropriately."

"Come here."

I walked closer to him on his demand.

"Turn around."

"Absolutely not!"

"Don't you want a guy's opinion?" He smiled as he looked me up and down.

"I already got Mrs. Keagan's opinion, so I'm good." Again, bringing it back to the reason I came.

"Wait, you walked into her math lab in that? So that's it, summer's already here?" He sounded slightly taken aback. My eyes drifted to the massive scar on his knee, and I felt awful for him for a second.

"Apart from a week and a few finals including yours in calculus tomorrow, I'd say that's a fair assessment."

The half smile dropped from his face, and he looked away from me, then spoke coldly. "Why do you always have to be such a smart ass?"

Me? He was the one who spun smart-assery into a profession every time we spoke. "Is it not clear that I simply respond to you with whatever you dish out?" There was a scary truth to that statement that made me wish I could swallow those last words. I looked away from him and down at the floor.

"So this is what you're doing? This summer?"

"I'm sorry? I literally just made a pact with myself to not be a smart ass, but I have to ask... As opposed to what? Flying a jet, robbing a bank...?"

"I guess I was just asking if that's what you will be doing... if that's where you'll be all summer."

"Yes. July. Lifeguard. At. Prairie. City. Pool." I delivered my response in a robotic, cavewoman-like tone.

Adrian sighed, and then I felt his hand grab mine. It was unexpected, as were the cascade of tingles that ran up that arm and down my spine. He pulled me to him.

"Sit. You're making me nervous."

I admit my heart nearly jumped out of my chest before I caught on that he was simply leading me to sit on his bed next to him. I looked back at his injured knee opting to be extra careful as I realized I was being led to sit beside it.

"So, what did Mrs. Keagan say?"

I reached to open the notebook. He closed it, still staring at me. "I meant about your attire."

"She asked me where I was headed..." I left out, as opposed to her tutorial. "Then she told me I was really looking good with a thoughtful expression of elegant pride instead of her usual frown of disapproval."

He smiled, mulling over my facetious rant as his eyes floated from my exposed midriff back up to my face. "Elegant, huh? That's what she said?"

"Well, you know Mrs. Keagan is quite a dish for a woman her age. There is a succinct vibe to the way she carries herself in three-inch pumps while writing harrowing hieroglyphics in chalk across four walls of a classroom. All would suggest the woman used to be hot." Okay, we were playing now. It's what we did best in public. "Thus, I value her opinion as much as I'm sure you do over your calculus exam tomorrow." I pushed the blue notebook toward his chest.

"You are one sick ticket." He opened the notebook without looking away from me.

Maybe I could get out of this unscathed without jumping out of my skin in front of a guy with so much power over me, even when he could neither stand nor walk alone.

"I don't know anything about the previous notes in the binder. That's all you, Lynn and Reagan, but she marked your problem areas on the—"

He ripped his assignment out of my hands and flipped it to his last quiz with a grade of ninety-nine and a smiley face marked on top.

"Um, problem areas?" He waved the A+ in front of me. "I can only imagine Mrs. Keagan took, what was it? 'Elegant pride' in drawing a smiley face on my next-to-perfect arithmetic."

Stop it! I was blushing, and that thing that happens to children when they can't hide their ear-to-ear smile was starting to happen to my face. Just get up and leave, dumbass. You have no business in a crop top, and you're not even supposed to be here. Go to your meeting! Take some power back and exit.

Without planning it, I reached toward his nightstand to grab a mechanical pencil I saw sitting by his phone and post-surgery meds. This innocent maneuver put my face and upper body dangerously close to his. I did not linger.

"So let's just say she circled the parts of your previous quiz that would be on the test so that you could make a hundred." I clicked the mechanical pencil so I could write. "Either way, she said you have to watch for the basic quadratic equation within the last two derivative equations. It obviously can't be solved using differentiation only, just like the others. Only on this one, the constant multiple rule applies before the final sum of two functions. It's kind of a basic algebra two trick within the equation set to throw you off. One you got correct, but this one she has marked you did not. From what she implied, she's most likely going to do a bonus question and use the last grouping of that quadratic equation to ..."

"How did you know that one was a quadratic equation?"

"Because it is."

"Aren't you only in trig?"

"Come on, you know I don't take calculus. Stop trying to find something you can beat me at. This is an obvious win for you. Anyway, just watch the last three elements, those are the ones she's going to apply, and I think you reversed them in that one problem." He pulled the test away to look at Mrs. Keagan's notes.

"And she told you that when she explained?" He grabbed the pencil and reworked the section where he had gotten points marked off.

"No, she didn't say that exactly, but it became obvious to me when she pointed out those two equations. They are the only ones with the same three factors in the same pattern at the end, and you got the one reverse when she changed the element. It was just the last two steps you reversed."

"How do you know that? That's almost correct, I think... I mean, I need to put it in the calculator, but I know that's right. How did you see that so quickly?"

"I didn't. I told you I was paying attention when she walked me through it so I would understand how to relay it to you. I know this is your final, and it seemed important to her, almost fun for her that you would potentially get this part correct. Now you can get a hundred plus or the bonus or whatever you freaks need to celebrate."

"No, it's just I don't know that I would have gotten that from her notes, and I'm really surprised someone who is not in calculus did."

"Careful there. It'll sound like you're trying to compliment me."

"I certainly should be thanking you ... in terms of the complement, I'll have to see if you are right first. Can you grab my graphing calculator? I think it's on the shelf up top."

Gross. Something I understood even less than the scribble on Mrs. Keagan's chalkboard was the TI-82 graphing calculator.

"Yeah, but then I have to go."

"Oh, right, your job interview."

I looked to the right above him where he gestured for the calculator. "I told you; I already have the job."

I wasn't an expert on the layout of Adrian's room, much less his bed, but he appeared to have pointed to the shelf four or more feet above his headboard. His queen-size bed was flush against the wall on the other side, so I couldn't walk around the bed, and even if I could, I don't think I could have reached that shelf. His leg brace was also open and ready to be put back on. Some apparatus, which had to be part of his physical therapy, commandeered the other side of his bed.

"You're just going to have to step across. It's fine, you can step on the bed."

I stood up from his side trying to figure this out. I saw the calculator's light blue case peeking between his calculous book and a spiral notebook. Step across? I wasn't going to stand on his bed. I looked down at his fresh scar.

"I would get it myself but..." He was obviously amused by this challenge.

"I'm getting it. I just didn't want to put my shoes on your bed." I bit my bottom lip then I placed a knee on one side of him and swung the other over. Okay, so now I was straddling him, but I was standing upright on my knees. I wasn't sitting on top of him by any means. How did this just get weirder? I stretched up and over as far as I could and tried to ignore the fact that whether he liked it or not, he had a spectacular view of my "outfit."

I stretched my right arm toward the shelf as far as it could reach, and my hand was almost on the calculator. Keeping my knees and stance above his waist rigidly intact in my humble efforts to protect his injury at all costs, I turned at my waist. I extended my left arm as well, trying to flick it down.

I felt Reagan's formerly awesome shirt open at the bottom, exposing the parts above my midriff that it was, in fact, meant to cover. Just keep going, and get the damn thing.  I ignored the fact that I might be exposing more than I intended and that his view just got elevated if he were looking.

Although I'm sure, this unbelievable shitshow only lasted about three seconds, reaching for that calculator felt like an eternity in slow motion, that is, until I felt the heat of two hands on my thighs. Startled by the charge of electricity that shot through me like a rocket, I made a last-ditch effort to pitch it down with my fingertips.

I knocked it down, alright. The calculator, textbook, spiral notebook, and other books above it tumbled onto the bed.

We both ducked for cover, or I guess it's more accurate to say, I covered him. I crouched down to a seated position on his lap and laid my chest on his chest as the books and calculator landed, one by one, on top of his knee brace on the side of the bed. Awesome. Now I was sitting on top of him.

There was a slight pause before I could figure out how to maneuver the situation. I don't know if I was waiting for him to yell or laugh or... I pushed off the bed to lift my chest off of his. I couldn't look at him. I had to figure out how to get off of him first! I was straddling him.

As I peeled upright from laying on top of him, I felt something holding a part of me in place. I felt him underneath me. Yes, he most certainly had a reaction to the view, and I was positioned right on top of it.

I did not look at him. This is when a sane person would figure out how to leap off the bed, apologize for the falling books, and pretend it didn't happen. I would have to do that for the pride of both of us.

Still concerned about his knee, I peered at it behind me over my left shoulder. The back of my shoe was right beside his large scar. I couldn't just jump off. I needed to raise up on my knees, the way I began, then swing my right leg off the bed and away from him.

This was taking far too long.

Why hadn't he pushed me off or said anything? He was probably wondering why the hell I hadn't jumped off him yet! As I raised myself to stand back on my knees above him, I did not feel the space between us I was trying to achieve. Instead, I felt the two warm hands that had pressed against my thighs seconds before. They had moved to my hips just below my waist and were securing me in place.

I looked at Adrian. He was looking up at me. His eyes locked on mine. I had never felt a stare so intense, nor had I ever felt the intensity I was feeling beneath me. I don't think I had ever experienced an erection before, never grazed one with my hand, and truthfully had never been aware if I had given a guy one up until that point. There were so many things I was naïve to and had not yet done, and there I was positioned like a pro... Our eyes had not deviated from their fixation on each other, and I felt he was burning through me in more ways than one.

He didn't move his hands from where they were pressed into me, but I did feel his fingertips slide further down toward my bottom. His hands were strong. I'm not even sure I felt it at first when he slid me forward and down the length of him. It was such a smooth transaction.

I couldn't breathe. I just watched him watching me. My hands fell softly onto his strained forearms that held us together. Then, he slowly pushed me back, reversing the motion. His hands continued to control the movement of my hips on top of him, and his eyes continued to control my gaze. My heart beat so rapidly that everything felt crazy and heat ignited inside me. I couldn't contemplate my gratitude for the thick jean material or even consider what lay beneath his thin boxers. It was all I could do not to close my eyes and arch backward.

My body got a clue much quicker than my brain, and before I knew it, I was no longer waiting for his hands to slide me down toward him and push me back. My hips began to rock forward in the rhythm he started for us, and my breath got shorter and shorter as they rocked me back. I felt even more of a firmness underneath me as if it could possibly get more intense on his end, and he let out an almost inaudible moan. His breath was getting shorter as he stared up at me. His eyes had still not separated from  mine.

I started rocking faster. My hips dragged me down him, then back.

"F-U-C-K." He whispered out of a low moan, his intense blue eyes now dancing at mine.

The doorbell rang downstairs. It was muted in my mind or from the distance, but we both absolutely heard it. With his eyes on me, watching every rocking motion I made above him, he did not pause nor loosen his grip on me. I continued moving from the waist down but tried to catch my breath. I had to consider— the doorbell just rang, and although I was fully dressed and our lips hadn't even touched, I was, in fact, riding him!

"Adrian! Physical therapy is here!" His stepmother's voice rang loud and clear from the kitchen.

I forced myself to shut down whatever was happening inside me, but I couldn't break eye contact, and neither had he. I moved my pelvis forward to rise up and off him, but something about the way I moved caused an additional response in him. I swung my right leg over and I was off the bed immediately.

"I'm sending him up!" His stepmother warned us from below. As if the magnitude of lines crossed had not been enough, something came over me as I exited the scene. Remembering the day Adrian threw his jacket toward me for cover in the rain, I grabbed the shorts I passed off the floor. I tossed them over my shoulder toward him without looking back. I had a strong hunch he needed them.

I passed a balding, slightly heavy man in scrubs and sneakers that squeaked even on the carpet as I walked down the hallway toward the stairs. That was a nice snap into reality, but how would I get past...

"Did you two get it handled?"

I choked a little, then forced my voice out as strongly as possible. "Yes, ma'am." Keep walking.  Just keep walking straight out the door.

"Thank you for bringing everything by for Adrian. Good luck at the pool!"

The screen door popped behind me. I ran across the lawn to Lynn's drive and flew into the truck faster than humanly possible. My legs were shaking. My body tingled all over. I looked in the rearview mirror to check my face; my cheeks were as red as apples.

Oh my God! What happened back there?