Her name was Jessica

I met her sometime during my junior year. She was a transfer to our little private school community. I remember having a science class with her. And I remember one of my good friends was trying to pick up on her. I was making out with a different girl named Jessica who I had a crush on the previous year but now decided to return the favor. I got invited to a birthday party by a girl who was a couple of years younger than me who I was kind of friends with. I wanted to buy her a present, so I asked if this new girl Jessica wanted to go to the mall with me. At this point my friend wasn't trying to pick her up anymore. After we went shopping there was a couple of hours until I had to take her home and go to this party. I half jokingly asked her if she wanted to go make out. She said sure. I took her to my mother's boss house, who was in England. We took a pad off of a pool lounge chair and put it on the ground and started making out. I got to second base as fast as I could but got stopped there. I spent the next 45 minutes or so with my hand up a shirt, sloppy kisses on my mouth and grinding my crotch into hers, jean on jean. I still remember how uncomfortable that felt. I took her home, we laughed and joked the whole way to her place. We hung out a few more times, hooked up and enjoyed each others company. Then she started dating someone, and I think I started dating someone and we just stayed friends.

About 9 months later I was keeping myself occupied with random girls and thoughts of college and everything that happens the last months of your senior year. My parents were in the process of splitting up. They still lived at the same house but spent a lot of time with the people who would become my steps. One particularly lonely afternoon I called Jessica. I invited her over. We hadn't hooked up since Christmas the year previous probably, or maybe later, or sooner, I don't remember. When she showed up at my door the first thing she said was that she wasn't going to kiss me. I hugged her and said no problem. We walked through my empty house to my bedroom. I think she had been over before, probably for a party. I put on some cd that was killing me at the time and we sat on the bed. Soon we were laying together, sort of spooning, sort of anxious, sort of distant. I think she said she had changed, that she didn't do that sort of stuff anymore. I told her again that it was ok. I told her I wasn't looking for that. She asked what I was looking for. I told here I just wanted someone there, someone to help fill the empty house, but life back into the coffin that had become my bed, my room, my house, my life. She looked shocked, a little. She hadn't signed up for this. I didn't know what she expected. Probably to repeatedly push away my advances. Maybe to give in. Maybe early afternoon sex. Maybe a bible reading. But she didn't get any of that. She just laid there next to me with a hand in my hair until she had to go home. And she left.

We didn't mention that afternoon. We rarely talked, except for school stuff and mild gossip at lunch. I think she is married now with a kid. And on that one day she did more than she will ever know for me.