Every Time I Think of You Read Online Free PDF Page A

way,” my mother warned me, “Don’t go running at night. I don’t want you tripping in some snow bank.”
    She knew I had a propensity for off-season jaunts rarely preceded by a proper warm-up, and sometimes without proper clothing or my glasses. I promised to keep myself to a pedestrian pace.
    Our coats on, my parents properly thanked and bid goodnight by Everett, we were soon out in the field, half-heartedly attempting to retrace our footprints from the other direction. All the houses along our street had kitchen windows facing south toward the field. The buffered light afforded an eerie yet safe glow across the field, making night sledding a pastime for younger children.
    Fortunately, no one was playing that night. Everett took his gloved hand in mine. Unsatisfied by our lack of direct contact, he rushed a quick peck to my lips.

    “That was great,” he marveled.

    “You’re quite the diplomat.”

    “You think they like me? Hey, are you being sarcastic?”

    “Yes, they did. And I mean you’re very charming. My parents don’t easily take to new people. I think they’re happy I finally have a friend who isn’t a mouth-breather.”

    Everett broke away, trotting ahead, his arms spread out in a sort of off-kilter waltz.

    “Have you ever gotten stoned?”

    “Duh!” I blurted with a bit too much assertiveness.

    I had smoked pot on three occasions, each of them while en route to rock concerts at Three Rivers Stadium with fellow teammates and a few older boys. Despite my quiet nature, I wasn’t a complete stick in the mud.

    “Good. When we get to the city, we can score some weed with one of her friends.”

    “What?”

    “My sister.”

    “Your sister.”

    “Yup. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll pay.”

    “Um. Okay.”

    “We should just say we’re sleeping over. My sis’ll call your mom. She’ll be cool.”

    “Cool, like a friend of a drug dealer, or cool like you?”

    “What?” Everett whirled about, stopped, rushed to me. “I don’t get to do this at school. There’s no one like you. It’s like…”

    “Like a private school?”

    “Yes. This–” He shoved himself close to me, forcing a kiss, another cold one. I was beginning to develop a preference for visible exhalations and frozen snot. As our lips parted, he kept his arms around me, cocking his head back to gaze at my face with a jaunty admiration. “I want to have adventures with you. I want more.”
    “Okay.” I hesitated, but refrained from glancing around warily. In the middle of the field and the safety of its darkness, I embraced him again fully, kissed him open-mouthed, both of us humming with pleasure, satisfaction and anticipation.
    “Besides,” he added, as we finally pulled apart to merely hold gloved hands. “Stoned sex is so fuckin’ amazing!”
    He darted away, then turned back toward me in a playful tackle that led to us rolling around in the snow, which was fun until he shoved a handful of it down the back of my pants. As much as I suddenly adored him, laughing, I had to say goodnight and excuse myself, since I was almost literally freezing my ass off.

 
     
    Chapter 6
     
    I had hoped our drive to Pittsburgh would provide an opportunity for some lengthy intimate conversation that would bond us, and it did. I had also hoped we might even pull over at a rest stop and take advantage of some mythical erotic playground in the woods nearby. That distant possibility had hatched in my mind through some vague innate instinct, and the recent spate of public indecency arrests that had been documented in our local newspaper. It was probably for the better that nothing like that happened.
    After a call from Everett’s sister Holly about our accommodations, and the promise of an alcohol-free environment, my mother seemed relaxed about our overnight road trip.
    My father expressed some doubts about potential “funny business,” but nevertheless gave me twenty dollars for gas. My mother handed me another twenty, which