I wake in the morning when something bumps the bed. Outside the sun hasn’t woken, and a dark shape looms over me, blocking out the white oscillating arms of the fan overhead.

It’s a man. My heart skips a beat, and I let out a gasp when he climbs onto my bed. Fear turns me to liquid, and I open my mouth to scream.

“Shh, it’s me.”

Tiago’s whisper fills the space between us, and I close my eyes, exhaling and relaxing in relief. 

“Tiago!” I reach for something to hit him with but I have nothing, so I slap his arm. “You scared the tar out of me.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep, and I knew you were here.” He bends forward and kisses me.

I’m still drunk with sleep and not in my best state of mind. I sink into the bed, pulling him down so his weight lies on me. 

He settles himself against me, breathing with me, getting closer to me with every moment. 

I’m too tired to think. Instead I just feel. He pushes my legs apart and slides between my thighs, and I run my hands down his bare chest. He wears nothing but his underwear.

He kisses me again and then fingers the buttons of my pajama top.

“Can I undo this?” he whispers.

There are a million reasons why I should say no and I can’t think of a single one why I should say yes. 

“Yes,” I whisper.

He undoes the buttons and peels back my top. My nipples pop out and not much else. My heart pounds and I hold my breath, watching him. I’m nearly concealed in darkness, but I know he can see that much from the budding light coming through the window.

He runs a hand over my breast, his palm tingly over my skin, sending a shiver of delight through me, and I close my eyes at the sensation. It sends a corresponding tingle through my navel, all the way to my groin. My nipple comes to attention, standing erect under his hand.

Outside the sun is rising. The soft orange light fills the room.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmurs.

“You really think so?” I murmur back. “They’re not too . . . ?”

“They’re perfect.” Then he dips his head and takes that nipple in his mouth.

I groan and grab the back of his head, holding him against my breast. He lifts his mouth and gives the other the same treatment.

He turns away from my breasts and hugs me, lifting me up and cradling my bare chest to his. His eyes are dark as he studies me in the soft lamplight. He kisses me again, and his hands slide down my flesh, down my torso, down into my pajama bottoms.

“Can I?” he whispers.

In the weeks since the first time he touched me, I’ve remembered that touch with a painfully guilty longing. And now that he’s there again, I am helpless to stop him. 

“Yes,” I whisper, and that’s all he needs before his fingers are between my legs, stroking my sensitive bud.

My breathing comes faster, hitching as his fingers flick and tease me, and I reach for him because it seems unfair that he should be doing all the touching. But I can’t concentrate beyond grasping his cock in my hand, I’m too aware of every nerve ending in my body climbing, building, and then bursting as he takes me over the edge again.

He comes back to kiss me, and that’s when I remember I hold him in my hand. I pump my hand up and down, coating his member in his precum, and he grinds against me. He sandwiches his cock between my stomach and my hand, thrusting harder and faster, kissing me, gasping, until finally he jerks and spasms and hot liquid flows over my hand. Then he clutches me and hugs me, crushing me against him.

“Let me clean up,” he whispers in my ear. He pulls away and finds a shirt on a shelf, which he then proceeds to use to clean my hand and my stomach, and then himself. He lays down beside me again and strokes my exposed breast, down the slight curve all the way to my nipple.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“With what we just did?” I say. A short laugh escapes me. “Yes.” 

He lays me back down and pulls my pajama top closed over me.

“Put this back on,” he says quietly.

He’s not going to take this further. I’m completely surprised, but my mind is catching up to my body now, and I realize how impaired my judgment has been. I button up my pajamas and wonder if I should be insulted.

“You don’t . . .” I shouldn’t even ask. “You don’t want me?”

He sucks in a breath. “I want all of you. If you want to have sex right now, I’m ready. Do you?”

“No.” I shake my head. 

“I know. So I’m stopping.”

“For me?” I finish with the buttons and sit up on the bed, leaning against the wall. He settles in beside me.

“For you. For me. I want to be connected to you. To your body, your heart, your soul. So this has to happen on your time. Or it won’t be what I want.”

I take his hand and lay back on the bed. He curls up behind me.

But I’m sad. I’m sad that he loves me, and that a part of me loves him, because that connection is never going to happen.

I don’t know yet who it will happen with, but I feel like I’m giving pieces of myself to every boy I meet. To Owen, to Tiago, to Jared. Who else will get a piece of me? It’s unfair. 

I’m tired of dividing myself. I want to find the person I will be with forever and give myself to them and never go through loneliness and uncertainty again.

***

On Monday we take Martha to get her hair cut.

“You should get yours cut too,” I tease Tiago as we watch the hairdresser trim and chop his mom’s hair.

“You should get yours cut,” he returns.

I look in the mirror at my long brown hair. It’s shiny and straight and so boring. I finger the edges and wonder what I’d look like with a pixie cut. 

The idea of doing something so drastic seizes me. “I think I will.”

“You will?”

I go to the couch and open one of the magazines on the coffee table. Tiago sits beside me, and we thumb through it, looking at styles.

“This is pretty,” he says, pointing to one of a girl with an A-line cut dipping below her shoulder blades.

I shake my head. “No. If I’m cutting it, I’m going extreme.”

“Like what?”

I keep thumbing through until I find it. The girl is European, with white blond hair and pale skin and way too much dark eye makeup. But her hair is a darling Tinkerbell cut, full of fun layers on top and choppy pieces around her face.

“Oh my gosh. This.”

Tiago looks at it and then looks back at me with big eyes. “You wouldn’t do that.”

I give him a grin and stand up, my thumb in place in the magazine.

He follows me as I go to the receptionist.

“Can I get my haircut here now?” I ask her.

“Yes,” she answers, and I’m so pleased she understood my Portuguese question that I fail to hear what else she says. 

Tiago asks her something, and the conversation continues without me. He takes the magazine from me and shows the picture. She studies it and then smiles at me and says something.

“What was all that?” I ask as she walks away with it.

“She said it will be very stylish on you. Very chic.”

Tiago leaves me to go talk to his mom, and a moment later the woman is back. She gestures me forward and puts me in a chair in front of the mirror. Tiago grabs another chair and sits down beside me.

“Are you really going to do this?”

“Yes!” I’m excited. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“What if you don’t like it?”

The man who cut Martha’s hair comes over with her in tow. “Ah, que bom!” he says, his eyes lighting up when he sees me. He runs his hands through my hair, lifting it up and letting it fall. “Pronta?” he asks, meeting my eyes.

Am I ready? I nod.

Martha is wide-eyed as she pulls a chair up next to Tiago, and they both watch like this is a suspenseful movie. The hairdresser pulls my hair back into a ponytail, gets out a pair of scissors, and cuts it off.

I gasp. I can’t help it. He puts the ponytail with my long hair on a tray and fluffs up what remains.

Suddenly I’m not sure I’m ready. But it’s too late now.

He talks to me in Portuguese as he cuts and snips, and I nod along with him but I’m not hearing anything. I don’t dare look at Tiago or Martha. 

The man runs his hands along my cheeks and says something about my beautiful face. He doesn’t consult the picture once he’s gotten started, and his style is slightly different, but my worry falls away as he frames the layers around my face, highlighting my cheekbones.

I don’t look fourteen anymore. He just aged me to at least eighteen.

He finishes and takes a step back. “O que você acha?”

“I love it,” I say, so ecstatic that I forget to answer in Portuguese. “It’s amazing!” I turn to Tiago and Martha. “What do you think?”

“It’s different,” Tiago says, his expression uncertain.

But Martha’s face is lit up. “Tão tão tão tão lindo. Adorei.”

I smile. She loves it.

I can’t wait for everyone at school to see.

The hairdresser hands me a small mirror, and I stand to examine my reflection from all angles.

What would Owen say?

He would love it. I know immediately that he would. 

I have this terrible fear no one will ever love me as much as he did.

Did. Past tense. It doesn’t matter how much he did. I have to take what someone else can give me.