‘No. But I think it’s stupid to be ignorant about sex,’ she flung back.
Angie stiffened.
Debbie stood up and went to leave, then stopped, glancing anxiously over her shoulder at Angie. ‘You ... you won’t tell my parents, will you?’
‘No. You’re over the legal age of consent.’
The girl suddenly smiled at her. ‘Thanks, Miss. And I promise to think about everything you said. See you next Monday!’ And she fairly skipped out of the door.
Angie stayed sitting at her desk for a few minutes, gnawing away at her bottom lip and wondering if Debbie was right. Maybe she was impossibly old-fashioned. And impossibly romantic. And impossibly cautious.
Was it silly of her to wait for Mr Right to come along before she made love? Naive of her to want to see stars when a man kissed her before she let him go further? Stupid of her to hope that it wouldn’t end up a matter of making a conscious choice to go to bed with a man—to believe she would be so madly, blindly and irrevocably in love that it would just happen quite naturally!
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ her flatmate answered to allthree questions, when Angie posed them to her as they drove home together that afternoon.
Angie remained unconvinced. Vanessa was thirty years old and a terrible cynic about men and love. A maths and science teacher at the same girls’ school where Angie was the school counsellor, she was a striking-looking though brittle brunette, who frightened most men off with her superior intelligence and incisive wit. Which was a shame because, basically, Vanessa liked men a lot.
They’d been colleagues at the same private girls’ school for nearly a year, but had only been flatting together for a couple of months, Angie’s previous flatmate having left to go overseas. This was the first time Angie had really opened up to the older woman about her personal life. And, to give Vanessa credit, she accepted the news of her inexperience without too much shock, though she was typically cutting in her advice.
‘For pity’s sake, go out and get yourself laid before it’s too late. How can you possibly counsel all those randy little teenagers who come to you for advice if you don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the subject? Good Lord, Angie, if you wait for Mr Right these days, you might go to your grave a virgin! Frankly, I can’t understand how a girl who looks like you do made it through her teenage years without scores of horny boys jumping on your bones every five minutes!’
‘I didn’t say they didn’t try...’
‘And there wasn’t one you fancied back?’ Vanessa’s tone was sheer scepticism.
An image swept into Angie’s mind. Of brilliant blue eyes and flashing white teeth, of windswept fair hair and golden-bronze skin, of a face like a Greek God and a body to match.
‘There was one,’ she admitted.
‘Only one?’ Vanessa squawked.
Angie smiled ruefully to herself. ‘Believe me, after Lance, no other male has ever measured up.’
Which had always been the problem, hadn’t it? Angie realised with sudden insight. Once you’d tasted ambrosia it was hard to settle for plain bread. She’d always told herself that her shrinking from casual sex had been because of that AIDS chap, who’d come to her high school and lectured them upon the dangers of such activities.
But it hadn’t been that at all, Angie finally conceded. It was because subconsciously she’d compared every boy and then every man she met to Lance Sterling. And they’d all come up wanting.
‘He sounds awfully intriguing,’ Vanessa said.
‘Intriguing,’ Angie repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yes, one could say that about him. Among other things.’
‘Do tell. I’m dying of curiosity already.’
Angie frowned, aware that thoughts of Lance had been teasing her mind a lot this past week. Mostly because tonight was her brother’s thirtieth birthday party, which she would be obliged to attend.
Anything to do with Bud always reminded her of Lance.
Not that her brother had anything much to do with Lance these days. Their once close friendship had waned after Lance married four years ago and moved to Melbourne to live. It had now come down to exchanging Christmas cards once a year.