Page 9 of Roadrunner

I picked at my fries and watched him finish his burger, until I couldn’t sit on the question any longer.

“Would you say you’re an open book?” I asked, licking salt off my fingers.

He didn’t look up from the fry remnants at the bottom of the tray. “Pretty much.”

“Nothing off-limits?”

“Not really.”

“So, I can ask you anything?”

“Sure.” He reached for his malt. “What’s on your mind?”

I wiped at nothing with my napkin. “Why haven’t we had sex?”

He answered like I’d asked him to add two and two. “I want to wait until you’re twenty-one.”

I stared at him like he’d said something disqualifying. “You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

He had to be joking. Some biker thing I hadn’t caught yet from watching the TV show. “No, you’re not.”

He took a drink of his malt, unbothered. “I really am.”

“We’ve seen each other every day for three weeks,” I said. “Why would you want to wait until I’m twenty-one?” I did the math in my head. “I’ll be halfway through my junior year.”

“December tenth, right?”

I was flattered he’d remembered my birthday and less than thrilled about everything else. I sighed and reached for my root beer. “Yeah.”

“You disappointed?”

I dropped my napkin on my half-eaten chili dog. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I really, really like you.”

“Feeling’s mutual. That’s exactly why I want to wait. If we’re still together on your twenty-first, it’s probably the start of something that lasts. Think of it like an engagement.”

An engagement to two years of nothing, more like. And there was no version of this where he actually stayed celibate that long. I may have been young, but I wasn’t stupid. “So over two years, you’re telling me you won’t be sleeping with anyone else?”

He shook his head.

“Anyone?”

He laughed. “Told you the day we met. I’m a one-woman man.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I won’t sleep with anyone.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “For the next two years, I’ll hope every day that when your birthday comes, you still want me around. If you do, and you’re ready, that’s it, the two years are over. And if we don’t make it that far, we shouldn’t have slept together in the first place.”

I wanted to argue with the logic. I couldn’t. If anything, it made me respect him more.

“So this is to protect me. Make sure I still want the same thing in two years that I want right now.”

“More or less. I want you to actually know me by the time we get there. That doesn’t happen in a few weeks. It happens over time.”