Punk Love

I wanted to send him off with something to think about, though. Something to remember me by. So, I did something bold. Something he’d never attempted to do before.

I took his hand and guided it between my thighs. Past my skirt. His head snapped up and his eyes widened. He stared at me, mesmerized and drunk with desire. I loved that look on him. Usually, everything about Alex’s expression was sharp and on point. Guarded. Now, he looked almost boyish with desire. Like he wasn’t completely in control, just like me.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“Don’t you miss it sometimes?” I asked. “Sex.”

He rubbed his palm lazily over my panties, creating delicious friction, shaking his head slowly. “You’re not even sixteen. I can wait.”

“And when I’m sixteen?” I asked.

The tips of his ears pinked. “I would never ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. Or something you want to do but aren’t ready to do. And it wouldn’t change jack shit between us. Whenever you’re ready.”

“And in the meantime?” I pressed.

“In the meantime,” he sighed, removing his hand from under my skirt, “I’ll have my right hand and a spank bank full of mental images of you wearing all types of short skirts.”

How do you fill three weeks without your boyfriend, who is traveling all over Europe, in a world where international calls are still more expensive than an actual plane ticket?

Here’s how:

You finally take advantage of the fact you live in a beach town and go to the beach every single day. In doing so, you also ignore every single reoccurring skin cancer ad and turn from a pasty chick to a golden-legged gal.

You succumb to your mother’s pleas to join her at the country club, and take two aerobics and dance classes every evening. You don’t take into consideration the fact that you are almost sixteen, and your body reacts super-fast to the new change. By the end of week one, you actually see your quad muscles poking out of your thighs. You start comparing yourself to Jennifer Aniston. Internally, of course. You may be delusional, but you’re not a narcissist.

You start paying attention to your family, and play family games with them, and even hang out with your brother and his friends a little, and realize that it makes them really happy, and that you should probably give them attention more often.

You binge-watch every teen movie ever made.

You allow yourself the odd, spontaneous meltdown, in which you are absolutely sure your boyfriend is currently grinding against another girl named Anja who is going to steal him away from you and marry him herself, because Anja has really bad teeth and she makes the calculation that marrying a dentist is super economical.

You realize that you can, indeed, survive without love. It just really sucks.

Wasting time became an art I perfected. I was determined to prove to myself—and the world around me—that I was okay. And for the most part, I was.

Two weeks after Alex screwed off to Europe, I met Brent at the mall while hanging out with Pauly, who came back from Greece.

That’s right. My anarcho-communist-whatever-something-something principles were becoming looser, now that Alex wasn’t around to remind me how shopping was akin to some satanic rituals.

“Ladies.” The ever-mysterious, easygoing Brent grinned, stopping to say hi to us. Pauly flipped her blonde hair, as she did often. I gave him an awkward wave.

“Y’all going to the beach party tonight?” Brent asked.

“We are now.” Pauly snorted. Her boyfriend was at volleyball camp. She would use any excuse she could to get out of the house.

“Raincheck. Alex is supposed to call me tonight.” I smiled apologetically.

“Exactly!” Pauly perked. “And you’re not going to sit around and wait for him, just like he is not sitting around pining for you in Europe.”

Pauly had a point. Dang it, Pauly always had a point.

Alex called me a few times a week, and we always arranged a time via email/ICQ. We kept it short, because he didn’t want to sell an internal organ to fund our phone calls. Go figure.

“Besides, you’ll have your phone with you,” Brent pointed out.

“Uhm, Brent.” I frowned. “What the hell are you still doing in town, anyway? You’ve already graduated.”

Brent laughed awkwardly, running a hand over his brown hair.

“I’m in-between future plans.”

“Wow, that came out really lame.” Pauly widened her eyes. “But we’ll still be at the beach party.”

I shouldn’t have gone to the beach party.

That much was clear.

I was standing on the cool sand, the hot wind whipping my hair across my face. I clutched my phone as half-naked people in tiny bikinis and trunks were belting all the words to a Sum 41 song. This was what my life had come to. Hanging out with people who knew the lyrics to Sum 41 songs. The silver lining was that from here, the only way was up.