It Happened on Maple Street
Page 13
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Couldn’t stop wanting him.
My father would say it was wrong. That I wasn’t a nice girl.
I didn’t answer to my father any more. I answered to Tim. I was his.
“So?” They weren’t even out of the Wright State parking lot before Steve, Tim’s closest buddy from high school, started in on him.
“What?”
“How’d it go?”
“It was nice.” The fields and trees were there, just like always. The bridge and the water below. And nothing was the same.
“Nice.”
“Yeah.”
“What’
s nice?” Huddled over the steering wheel in a jean jacket that couldn’t possibly ward off the cold, Steve scoffed at him.
“Just nice.”
“Come on, man,” Steve chided. “What was she like?”
“She was nice.” Tim stared out the window, wishing Steve would just shut the hell up and step on the gas.
“Nice, how? Did you kiss her?”
“Shut up.”
Grinning, Steve turned onto the highway, sat back and said, “You did, didn’t you? You kissed her.”
“I was at her house. Her mom was there.”
“So did you like her?”
“She’s nice.”
Eventually Steve shut up.
Saturday morning, I woke up early. And sick to my stomach. What in the heck had I done? I wasn’t a good girl anymore. I’d let a boy touch me in places no one had ever, ever touched me before.
Worse, I’d liked it.
And he wasn’t there with me. He was working, in the meat department of the grocery store in the small town where he lived.
Forty-five minutes away from me.
I did my house chores. I had to dust. The most boring occupation known to womankind. Until now. Now as I dusted, I thought about Tim. I felt him. Dusting gave me the freedom to let my mind wander wherever it wanted to go without interruption. Dusting freed me from having to explain my silence. I went downstairs and sat on the couch where Tim and I had sat.
And wondered if he’d ever talk to me again.
Had I been a total fool? Letting a guy use me, just like I’d been warned they’d do? I’d been too easy. Loose. All of the horrible things I’d heard about “those” girls.
And I’d done it all on a first date.