Slam by Nick Hornby Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t a virgin. That was sort of the point of it.
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    And suddenly I didn’t want to do it anymore. I know, I know. There was this beautiful girl I really liked, and she had just taken me up to her bedroom, and she’d made it obvious that we were up there for a reason. But when I’d worked out what was going on, it didn’t feel right. There were three of us in her bedroom that night, me, her and him, and I decided that because it was my first time, I’d prefer to keep the numbers down. I wanted to wait until he’d gone, just to make sure she was still interested.
    Alicia came back in, holding a small square silver packet.
    â€œTa-ra!” she said, and she held it up in the air.
    â€œAre you sure it’s, you know, all right? It hasn’t gone past its sell-by date?”
    I don’t know why I said this. I mean, I know I said it because I was looking for excuses. But there were lots of excuses I could have used, and this one wasn’t a very good one.
    â€œWhy shouldn’t it be all right?” she said.
    â€œI dunno.” And I didn’t.
    â€œYou mean because it’s my mum and dad’s?”
    That was what I meant, I suppose.
    â€œYou think that they never have sex? So this has been lying around for years?”
    I didn’t say anything. But that was what I must have been thinking, which was weird, really. Believe me, I knew that people’s parents had sex. But I suppose I didn’t really know what it was like for parents who were actually together. I was sort of presuming that parents who were together had sex less often than parents who were apart. I seemed to be very confused by the whole subject of condoms. If anyone had one, then I ended up thinking they weren’t having sex, and that can’t be true all the time, can it? Some of them had to be bought by people who actually used them.
    She looked at the wrapper.
    â€œ21/05/09, it says.”
    (If you’re reading this in the future, then I should tell you that all this was happening long before May 21, 2009. We had plenty of time to use that condom, years and years.)
    She threw the condom over to me.
    â€œCome on. We haven’t got forever.”
    â€œWhy not?” I said.
    â€œBecause it’s getting late, and my mum and dad know you’re up here. They’ll start banging on the door soon. That’s what they usually do if I’ve got a boy in here and it’s late.”
    I must have had some kind of a look on my face, because she knelt down by the side of the bed and kissed me on the cheek.
    â€œI’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
    â€œHow did you mean it, then?”
    I was just saying anything that came into my head. I wanted it to get even later than it was, so her mum and dad would start banging on the door and I could go home.
    â€œYou don’t want to do this, do you?” she said.
    â€œYeah, course,” I said. And then, “Not really, no.”
    She laughed. “So you’re not confused or anything, then.”
    â€œI don’t know why you want to do it,” I said. “You told me you weren’t ready for sex with your ex-boyfriend.”
    â€œI wasn’t.”
    â€œSo how come you’re ready to have sex with me? You don’t even know me.”
    â€œI like you.”
    â€œSo you didn’t like him much, then?”
    â€œNo, not really. I mean, I did at first. But then I went off him.”
    I didn’t want to ask any more questions about all that. None of it made much sense. It was like she was saying that we ought to sleep together quickly, before she stopped liking me—like she knew she wouldn’t like me the next day, so we had to do it that night. If you look at it another way, though, everyone is like that. I mean, you sleep with someone because you’re not sick of them, and when you’re sick of them, you stop.
    â€œIf you don’t want to do anything,