Ezra and I made it through breakfast easily enough without much incident. The boys surprisingly had some eggs and sausage in the house.  Ezra looked relieved when I offered to make breakfast instead of letting him eat the box of sugar in his hands. He kept creeping up behind me and staring down at the food while I was turning it in the pan.

When we sat down to eat, he devoured his plate in seconds.  I pushed the food around the plate, lost in thought.  I was here in my brother's kitchen making breakfast for his friend who I just had unprotected sex with.  I didn't even want to think about how many girls he was hooking up with and if he was safe with them. It didn't matter in the cover of darkness and fuzzy alcohol-induced desires, but in the light of day, my brain was slowly trying to snap back into reality.

"Not hungry?" He asked, watching me shift the food from one side of the plate to the other.

"Not really."  I said softly and pushed the plate over in front of him. "You can have the rest if you want."

Ezra happily took my plate and finished it.  I wasn't sure where he stored all that food, but I guess when you are twelve feet tall, you had a lot of places it could go.  He sat back and held his hands over his full stomach as he continued to watch me. 

I grabbed the plates from in front of him and took them to the sink to wash them.  I heard Ezra's chair move and he tried to sneak up quietly behind me. I had to smack his hand when he dipped his fingertips into the shorts while I was trying to wash the dirty dishes out in the sink. He was ready to take advantage of our alone time in the house, but we had crucial things we needed to take care of first.

We sat back down at the kitchen table and he pulled his phone out. He was looking up to see what our options were for trying to protect ourselves after last night. He scrolled through a few sites and talked about a couple of our options. He handed me the phone when I asked about side effects, this was my body and if I was going to take something, I needed to know what it would do to me and what the risks were. Making this decision felt unnatural and sick. I felt desperate.

Was I doing the right thing?

We got dressed and hopped into his car to head to the local pharmacy. I didn't know where to look for it. Ezra followed me up and down the aisles until we came to the feminine hygiene aisle. At the end of the aisle, in a plastic case, we finally found what we were looking for. Why did it have to be in anti-theft packaging? This was so humiliating. I grabbed the box after Ezra made no intention of moving towards it. Apparently, I'm the adult in our weird undefined relationship. He was looking a few sections over at the boxes of condoms in the same aisle. He bent down and picked up two 24 count boxes.

"Overkill much?" I turned my head and looked at him sideways.

"These won't make it past this weekend." He leaned over and said with a playful grin.

"You do remember the real reason why we came here, right?"  I asked him, trying to ignore the stirring in me deep within. I shook the package in my hand at him trying to get his attention.

"That's exactly why I grabbed box number two." He held his box up and shook it back at me. 

"You are wrong."  I said, pushing at him.  I turned my attention back to the box in my hand and flipped it over to study the words on the packaging.

I heard giggling in the next aisle over.

When I looked back up, I noticed two girls kept walking past us in the aisle and were staring at Ezra. They kept turning to him and smiling, trying to get his attention. He pulled the corner of his mouth up and looked back down, laughing. He seemed to like the attention they were giving him. Ezra made my blood boil. Ezra was hot, I knew he didn't struggle to attract attention, but I didn't like the fact that he seemed to get some sort of pleasure from it.  He was here with me today. He could have at least pretended that I was enough for him for 24 hours.

My eyes hardened in his direction. I was standing here deciding if I was going to go through with this or not and he was over there flirting with anything that walked by him with breasts.

"What?" He asked like he was surprised when he noticed the look on my face. He knew what he was doing.

I stormed off towards the counter with my box and he followed behind me. I placed the box on the counter in front of the middle-aged woman. She looked down at the box and then back up to me. I could see the judgment on her face. She looked behind me at Ezra, who towered over me. He placed the two boxes of condoms on the counter. She rolled her eyes and grabbed the boxes to scan them before placing them in the bag. She was very rude and I was not in the mood for her attitude. 

I pulled out my card and began to insert it into the machine when Ezra snatched it out of my hands.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to take it back from him. "Give it back."

I went to reach for it and he lifted his arm in the air and held it over my head.  I tried to grab it again and he laughed and lifted it higher. I jumped at it and he laughed when I didn't even come close to getting it.

"Fucking kids."  The rude woman whispered under her breath.

I turned my head and glared at the woman, wanting to say something back to her.  I began to tell her what I thought of her when Ezra's hand covered my mouth.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out some cash to hand the nasty old woman.

"I got this."  Ezra whispered in my ear and kissed my cheek.  The cashier gave him his change back and he politely thanked her in his best syrupy sweet voice.  He should have let me tell her off.

"Got a short fuse today, Beautiful?"  Ezra asked as he wrapped his arm around me while we walked back out to his car.

"Didn't you hear that lady?"  I asked him. 

"Yeah, I think she needs to get laid."  He said, laughing at his horrible joke.

"Well, you should go back in there and help her out. There are a couple more girls still in there who you didn't get a chance to flirt with."  I stopped and pulled away to glare at him.

"Are you jealous?" He pulled the corner of his mouth up in amusement.

"No." I said quietly, looking down at my feet.

"You are. You should see how green your eyes get when you're envious. Jealously looks good on you, baby." He taunted me before leaning down to kiss my lips gently. 

"You're an ass." I grumbled back against his lips.

"True."  He removed his lips from mine and walked over to open the car door for me. "But that's exactly why you like me."

I rolled my eyes and stomped over to the passenger side of his car.  He was laughing at me as I climbed in.   It might be a little true; Ezra was unapologetically himself.  That made him even sexier. I wasn't ever going to admit it to him. 

When we got back on the road, I pulled the package out to read the side effects again. It said I could be nauseous and vomit, have headaches, and mild cramping. The directions were straight forward and simple, take the pill and swallow. Easy and simple still didn't make this any easier for me.  I wanted to throw the box out of the car window. 

"Are you ready?" Ezra asked me, looking over at my furrowed brow. The atmosphere had shifted in the car.  Everything became so much more real when I held the box in my hands.

"Not really." I said honestly. I didn't want to do this, but I felt like I had no other choice. My mind was telling me this was wrong.  I felt dirty and it shook me to the core.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to. Just because we did it once without a condom, that doesn't mean it will happen." He said softly. He was gripping the steering wheel tightly. Even though he said the words out loud, I could tell he didn't really mean what he was saying.

"We can't take the risk." I sighed. The corners of my mouth pulled down into a frown. I just wanted to get this over with. "Let's go back to the house."

I would never have imagined I would be doing this today or ever in my life. This was not something I believed in, but we were keeping secrets and it felt necessary. I had spent half my life criticizing females in the same situation that I was in right now. I had been judgmental and thought all girls who put themselves in this situation were stupid and irresponsible. I never understood how difficult this decision was and I felt like a terrible person for what I was about to do.

We were both silent for the rest of the drive. I couldn't even look in his direction. The weight on my chest was heavy. I wondered if he felt the same way I did about this or if this was something he had to do before. We didn't know each other very well. This could be something he did every morning for all I know. I wanted to think that I was special and he just got wrapped up in me and that is why this happened. Maybe he did this with every girl he was with?

We pulled up to the house and just like we were promised, the house was still empty. We got out of the car and walked up to the porch. Ezra placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me back into the house.

I went directly upstairs and sat down on the toilet seat in the bathroom. I started fumbling to open the packaging around the little pill. My hands were shaking and not cooperating. Ezra leaned against the doorway with a glass of water he brought up from the kitchen. He watched me as I struggled to get my hands to work right. I felt his large hands on mine and he took it out of the package to open it for me. He handed me the glass of water and placed the pill back in my hand.

I looked up at his soft, light eyes. I stuck the pill in my mouth and grabbed the glass of water from him to swallow it down. He rubbed his hand on my head and pulled me to him. Before I knew it, I was crying over the guilt I felt.  It was too much to handle.

"Please don't cry. I am really sorry." He said, trying to soothe me.

After a few minutes, he took my hand in his and helped me to my feet. He led me back to his room and suggested that I rested in his bed some more. I climbed in and to my surprise, he kicked off his shoes and followed right behind me. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into him. I closed my eyes, wanting to fall asleep and forget what just happened. I had just taken the morning after pill.

Was I a bad person?