Can't Resist

Dale

She was only sixteen, thirty-something months younger than me.

Veronica knelt on a patchwork blanket beside a picnic basket, fluffing two pillows. We’d claimed a ledge just above the river, the big cottonwood spreading wide shade from the intense heat.

“What’s going on?” I asked, towel in hand and scanning for inner tubes. Or fishing poles. Or Greg. “Where’s your brother? I thought we were swimming.”

She bit her lip. “I didn’t tell him. He thinks I’m with Wendy. And as long as you don’t tell him you’re with me, everything should be fine.”

I tilted my head. This wasn’t the first time we’d floated the river without Greg, but she’d never been sneaky about it.

"I made a decision.” She tugged her blond hair from her ponytail, shaking out the length, and it spilled down past her shoulders. Color rose in her cheeks when she met my eyes.

What the heck was she doing? Was my best friend’s little sister flirting with me?

She took my hand. “I’m just going to say it. I want you to be my first.”

Air caught in my throat. “First what?” I popped the picnic latch like I could wish a safer answer into existence.

“You know,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to be a virgin anymore.”

Every reason to say no lined up like fence posts. “Ronnie, that’s a bad idea.” Greg. Her folks. This town. The law. The way I’d have to live with myself after.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked.

Hearing her ask that felt wrong in ways I couldn't name.

Greg’s little sister was the prettiest girl in Jefferson, hell, probably in our great state of Texas. Her almond-shaped eyes didn’t need that heavy black liner. The blush on her cheeks as she looked at me made the artificial color she used unnecessary. Without it, she already rivaled any model. Not that it mattered. “Why me?”

“Because I trust you,” she said, picking at some loose threads on the blanket. “You don’t run your mouth. You look out for people.” A small shrug. “I like you, Dale.”

Memories flickered in my mind: the knee scrape from the apricot tree I’d bandaged; the time she outsmarted us after the spider prank and stole our clothes; her beating me at chess while Greg begged to play Monopoly.

When she was only eleven, after a tornado leveled the Fergusons' ranch, Veronica didn’t just feel sorry, she took action. Marched around town with cartons of eggs, knocking on doors to raise money for them. That was her: clever, always thinking two steps ahead.

Now, she sat here too close, her beauty testing my will. Back then I’d wanted her on my side. I still did. Just not like this.

On the first day of ninth grade, she insisted everyone call her Veronica. “Ronnie is a boy’s name,” she’d said, hands on hips. Her family still called her Ronnie. I try to honor her request. I’m practically family—had wished for siblings of my own and grew up with a soft spot for Greg’s little sis and a lot more patience than he had for her.

“You always have a girlfriend,” she added. “I can’t wait forever.”

“Veronica.” The name felt heavier than it used to. “I’m not asking you to.”

She leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek...but lingered. Every nerve in my body clenched at her proximity. “Dale,” she said, punctuating the words with kisses as her lips made their way to my mouth, and her fingers threaded into my hair. “Touch me. Please?”

Strawberry ChapStick hit my senses and beneath it a trace of her perfume—the same fresh, flowery scent I’d teased her about on her birthday. It wasn’t a kid’s spray. It made her seem older, bolder. The river lapped softly against the rocks, and for a second, I forgot I was three years older and who she was to my best friend.

I took her hands in mine and pulled my face away from hers. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Veronica.”

“I know, silly,” she said. “But you do.”

If she knew what she was doing to me, she wouldn't be asking. “No, that’s not what I mean. I can’t do this with you.” Gently, I set my hands on her shoulders and eased her back an inch. “I can’t,” I said. “Not now. Not like this.”

“It can be our secret,” she whispered. “I brought protection.”

First, nothing about her deserved secrecy. Second, where the hell did she get condoms? Crows squawked judgmentally in the distance. Leaves rustled in the breeze. It was just us. Alone. That was exactly the problem.

“I’m not going to be a secret for you,” I said. “You deserve more than something that would break your brother and your folks.” And break me too.

She looked past me at the water. “So that’s it?”

In three seconds, her lips had bridged the gap in my perception from child to young woman. How did she go from cute to desirable so quickly? My heart beat a little faster at the thought of kissing her again. I stood before I could second-guess myself. “I’ll walk you home,” I said. “And I’ll still be your friend tomorrow.”

But even as I left, something in me had already crossed a line I couldn't uncross.