Christmas Presents and Past. Janice Johnson Kay

didn’t know why! Did he think she wasn’t ready? Just because she’d stiffened a couple of times when his hand touched her waistband? She was a virgin! But even though Dinah was nervous, she wanted him to unbutton her jeans and slip his hand inside her panties anyway. She just didn’t know how to tell him.

      The night Dinah started lying to her two best friends about her sexual experiences—or, actually, the lack of them—the three girls were having a sleepover at her house. The family room was downstairs from the bedrooms, so they had complete privacy. Christina had run ahead and claimed the sofa, so now she was queening it over Dinah and Susan, who sat on the floor where they’d spread their sleeping bags.

      “So, what did you and Will do last night?” Susan asked.

      “His parents weren’t home, so we just hung out.” She hadn’t planned to lie, but when she blushed at the remembrance of what she and Will had done, they both got wide-eyed.

      “You finally did it?” Christina crowed.

      She was too embarrassed to say no. So she nodded, and they both cheered.

      “Far out. It’s about time!” Christina exclaimed. A curvy brunette, she’d always been ahead of the other two. She had her first boyfriend when she was thirteen, and lost her virginity when she was fifteen. She always got this rosy glow when she talked about sex. Dinah could tell she really liked doing it.

      “You know, we only started going out two months ago,” she argued, knowing it was futile.

      Susan, who’d lost her virginity on her sixteenth birthday, gave Dinah a look. “Two months is forever.”

      Christina’s eyes widened. “He wasn’t a virgin, was he?”

      “Of course not!” Dinah disclaimed, although she started to wonder. He was a really good kisser, but that would explain why he might be shy about going further, too. “Thank goodness. One of us had to know what to do.”

      Her closest friend from the time they were in the same kindergarten class, Christina gave her an evil grin. “Haven’t we given you adequate instructions?”

      They had, although secondhand descriptions of sex didn’t make it sound very appealing. Which might be one reason, Dinah thought privately, she hadn’t been in any hurry to try it.

      The other reason being guys like Toby, who thought sticking his tongue in a girl’s mouth was enough preamble to sticking his dick into her, too. Forget romance or anything approaching tenderness.

      Susan moaned, “Wow, bummer! If you’d waited just a few weeks, you could have done it for the first time on your birthday, too. That would have been cool, having something like that in common.”

      Her birthday would be perfect, Dinah thought. One of the things she’d wondered was whether Will thought she was too young, but on her birthday she was turning seventeen, and he was still eighteen for a few more months. Officially, only one year older than her until summer.

      Immediately scheming, she realized she would never be able to tell her best friends when she did finally have sex with Will, now that she’d lied. No, maybe someday she could, when they were old, like maybe thirty, and still best friends and could laugh about her being totally humiliated to still be a virgin when she was ready to turn seventeen.

      Her birthday was on Thursday, but her party was planned for Friday night. Thursday would be for family, and for Will.

      Mom invited Will to dinner—by this time, he practically was family—and he was there when Dinah blew out seventeen candles on her cake. Then she opened her presents. Mom and Dad gave her a shirt that was actually okay, and a promise that Mom would take her shopping for a dress to wear to Will’s senior prom.

      Stephen was disgusted. “I can’t believe you’re going to the prom. Nobody goes but the cheerleaders and jocks.”

      Will didn’t act insulted. “I guess I’m a jock.”

      Dinah stuck out her tongue at her brother. “It’ll be fun. You’re just skipping yours because nobody’ll go with you.”

      Stephen was a senior at Half Moon Bay High School. It was a little bit irritating, following him through school. Teachers always remembered Stephen, because he had a big mouth. Fortunately, after a couple of weeks they’d forget she was Stephen Gallagher’s little sister, because she was an A student and always good. Nauseatingly good, according to him.

      He gave her the new Grateful Dead album she’d been wanting. Will’s present was a paring knife, which brought puzzled looks from her family.

      “Will knows I like to cook,” she said. “Chefs have their own sets.”

      “Oh.” Her mother smiled. “How thoughtful.”

      Her father scowled. Of course, he wouldn’t approve of anyone “encouraging” her in such an unsuitable ambition.

      Stephen, of course, looked disgusted. He probably thought Will should have given her some really high-quality LSD, right in front of Mom and Dad.

      “Smothers Brothers is on,” Mom said. “If you two would like to watch with us.”

      But they were okay with it when Dinah said they thought they’d go out. “I did my algebra problems right after school,” she said, anticipating any objections.

      Once they were in Will’s car, she suggested they just go to his house. “Your parents will be bowling, right?”

      “Yeah, they won’t be home until nine.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “We can do anything we want.”

      She wriggled over to snuggle against him. “I know what I want to do.”

      They kissed, right there in front of her house even though it wasn’t dark yet. Then Will drove faster than usual, slowing down only along Devil’s Slide, the stretch between Montara and Pacifica where Highway 101 had been carved out of a cliff high above the ocean. The sharpest curves always scared Dinah. The guardrail wouldn’t keep a car from plunging over the cliff and onto the rocks where the surf crashed dizzyingly far below.

      Will lived in a development where all the houses looked alike, stucco-sided and two stories on small lots mostly landscaped with palm trees, red or shiny white gravel and swaths of ice plant in bloom. Will’s mother had planted bougainvillea in their yard that climbed up to the second-story balcony and smothered the railing with purple flowers. Without that vine, if Will had parked in the driveway of the houses on either side, Dinah would have headed for the front door without noticing they were at the wrong place.

      They left his bedroom door ajar so they could hear in case his parents came home early for some reason. Will flopped on the bed and drew her down atop him. They made out, his hands roving up and down her back and even squeezing her butt. But the moment came, as it always did, when he turned his mouth from hers and rolled to one side, so she no longer lay astride him.

      “Um, maybe we should…”

      She took a deep breath for courage. “Why do you always stop?”

      He froze for what had to be ten seconds. Then, voice hoarse, he said, “You don’t want me to?”

      Suddenly shy, Dinah shook her head, her hair falling over her face to shield the heat in her cheeks. “Not anymore,” she whispered.

      His hand on her upper arm tightened. “You’re sure?”

      She nodded. “I am seventeen now.”

      “Yeah. Wow.” He sounded dazed. “Have you ever…you know?”

      She shook her head again and buried her face against his shoulder. “Have you?”

      “Um…yeah. A few times.”

      He still hadn’t made a move. Dinah mumbled, “If you don’t want to right now, that’s okay. I mean, I just thought I’d tell you…”

      “Not want to? Are you kidding?” He rolled abruptly so