"Tracy, don't sleep with the boy in a hotel room in Portland."
"Callie! For God's sake, don't say shit like that to me. I am your young and impressionable sister. Honestly."
"Horseshit." She took the waffles out of the toaster and put them onto a small plate. She poured a little salt on the plate Tracey was using. "You know about all that shit. I just don't want you to give it up in a hotel room on your eighteenth birthday. That's just too melodramatic. You'll want it to mean so much more than it will. You'll get your hopes up, and you know I'm right."
"How do you know we haven't fucked?"
"Because I would know. I know what to look for."
"How do you know I didn't give it up when I was living in the dorms, and you were away at college? Could you still tell, being the omniscient genius that you are?"
"Maybe not, but I've given you no reason for you to keep something like that from me. Nothing at all should deter you from telling me you've fucked the brains out of your first boyfriend. God knows I wasn't much of an example of chastity. But, I told you. I didn't try to pretend I was chaste and intact."
"Well, I am chaste and intact. I just thought I could shake you up a little bit."
"Sorry to pop your wet, hot bubble kid, but I know that. So, don't get cocky with me."
They both smiled. It was one of their unspoken rules that there weren't to be any secrets between them. It was some kind of rule in the family, actually. It didn't matter what they'd done, they always told their parents. They may have been chastised or berated for a gruesome mistake, but grudges were never held and the truth flowed freely. They were an honest family. Most people found their honesty unnerving, especially Parish, who was taken aback when Callie told him about confessing to her parents and not getting in trouble. She was just put on birth control. These little tête-à-têtes were common practise to them. Just tests for one another's integrity.
"So I can go as long as I don't sleep with him in the hotel."
"Or on your birthday at all. If you are so interested in fucking him, don't make a big deal of it and don't put a lot of emotion on it. It'll be better that way."
"You mean, think like a slut?"
Callie laughed a little, "No, not 'like a slut'. Just don't get your hopes up. Don't make a big deal of it. Just go at it like animals. And don't do it on a significant day that you'll be reminded of consistently. I-e, not on your birthday, Christmas, any significant holiday, et cetera."
"So I won't think about it every time that holiday rolls around, in case it sucks?"
"Precisely."
"God, you're pessimistic."
"No, just realistic."

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