We’ve been so busy with the move, I’ve been able to avoid that conversation all day. I sigh. “I dated him for, like, two minutes back in high school.”
“And?”
“And we broke up. End of story.”
“No.” She shakes her head vigorously. “You’ve dated plenty since I’ve known you, and you have never given enough of a shit about the guy to be harsh after the fact.”
“Yeah, well, Shane deserves it.” For all that I’ve told Justine, Shane Beckett is one painful, humiliating story I’ve kept buried, convincing myself he was the part of a past I’d never have to face again.
“Spill it, Reed.”
She’s clearly on a mission to ferret information, and I’m too tired to fend her off. I give her the rundown.
By the time I’m done, her face is twisted with disgust. “Why tell you he thinks he’s falling in love with you and then dump you to hook up with someone else?”
“Because he’s a total player and a douchebag.” And I was too stupid and enamored to see it. “He was just trying to get laid before the summer was over.”
“But you didn’t sleep with him, right?”
“No.” I almost did. The night we broke up, I tried to sway him with my virginity, desperate to make him change his mind. Things went further than they ever had between us but stopped before it went too far. He stopped it. I walked away telling myself he obviously wasn’t attracted to me anymore, which was a crippling hit to my ego. In hindsight, I figured it was likely because he’d already started something with Penelope and was struck by a millisecond of decency, warped as that may be. When I look back on that entire disaster, my willingness to so freely give him what he’d clearly been chasing all summer is my biggest regret.
“His friends had bets going about how long it’d take for me to put out. They nicknamed me BB.” I give her a knowing look. “Blue Balls.” I’m not sure if I prefer that nickname over Scar, Scarface, and the tad cleverer, Pacino.
She rolls her eyes. “So original. Man, I would have punched him right in his blue balls.”
“Yeah, well …” I shrug through another sip. “It was my own fault. I knew better.” I’d had a crush on Shane since the Beckett family moved to town in fifth grade. I’d heard the rumors, I’d seen him cycle through the pretty girls, and yet the night he flirted with me during my shift at the drive-in concession stand, I was a giggling fool. All I could think was, “Shane Beckett is interested in me?” I should have turned and run the other way.
But he was the sexy high school football star, and I was nobody. And when he asked me to grab a burger at the Patty Shack, a greasy spoon in town, I was too stunned to use my brain.
Of course, I said yes. I spent the entire next day pinching myself and trying on everything in my closet, and even a few more modest things from my mother’s closet.
He pulled up to our shabby building in his dad’s green Buick with a smile and two cans of Coke. He opened the door for me. In fact, he was the perfect gentleman the entire night, no devious intentions in sight. When he dropped me off, he laid the sweetest kiss on my lips and asked if he could see me again. It was like a dream that I kept waiting to wake up from.
Unfortunately, when I eventually did wake, it was to a nightmare.
I sigh. “Whatever. Once a player, always a player. I don’t want anything to do with Shane Beckett ever again.” It doesn’t matter how attractive he is, and he is up there with the most beautiful men I’ve ever laid eyes on. Despite my anger and attempts to forget him, I still secretly use him as a physical benchmark against the guys I’ve dated since.
They always come up short.
Justine’s lips twist in thought. “So, you really wouldn’t put out at seventeen?”
The incredulity in her voice has me reaching across to smack her arm. “Shut up!”
“What! It’s just … you’ve come a long way since then, Padawan.” She gives me a pointed look.
“Whatever. I had a reputation to uphold.” Or rather, a reputation not to uphold. I’d heard the rumors abound, wondering if I was my mother’s daughter. It’s probably why Shane targeted me in the first place. The last person I wanted to be compared to was Dottie Reed, so it wasn’t hard to keep guys out of my pants throughout high school. The hell if I would provide fodder for any more rumors about the Reed women by even entertaining the idea of a blow job.
College was another story. It was like a “don’t give a shit” switch got flicked somewhere between unpacking my suitcase in my dorm room and downing the nth red SOLO cup of draft beer. I lost my virginity that very first night, to a guy named Chris who was a lot cuter at the party than he was in his bed the next morning. I had regrets—namely, why didn’t I just lose it with Shane? Someone who actually meant something to me? But I quickly washed them away with more parties, more alcohol, and more guys.