Chapter 2
I walked into my house to find my mom smouching with her new boyfriend Neil. Everything about Neil was beige down to his accounting job and all his stuff. The dude was only twenty-four making him way too young to be dad material. I sometimes creeped myself out thinking that there was a closer age gap to me and Neil than him and my mom.
“How was babysitting?” Neil called.
“Fine.” I grumbled taking my pizza to my room.
“Well, you can’t say you need a car to get there!” Mom hollered.
Mom’s biggest fear had always been that she would have add me to her insurance and increase her insurance premiums.
I blobbed on my bed. I turned on the flat screen tv Neil had gotten to woe me. Before I knew it, I was wondering what had happened to Cam to make his head hurt and lose both feet and most of his shins. I didn’t see the channels that flipped me by.
I felt more than restless and knew not only was this going to be a long summer, so would the school year. I got up suddenly giving my feet a Charlie horse to get to the phone. Derrek had to be up even if he was three hours ahead. Mom and Neil were watching CSI in the beige leather furniture and bickering over the popcorn.
“Everything okay?”
I glared at her. We had never gotten along. I preferred my dad, always had. Mom smoked cigarettes, drank sometimes and occasionally visited casinos often enough that the electricity would have gone out if weren’t for Dad taking two jobs. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mom didn’t dress like other moms. She often wore clothes found in the junior department, liked to go out every Saturday night and had friends: a lot of them.
She had the knack for making friends wherever she went whereas I had always struggled. The four friends I left back in Ohio had been hard to come by. The idea of stealing money for a bus ticket back was tempting, if it wasn’t for the fact dad wasn’t there. I really wanted justice for her being selfish. Again. I picked up the cordless landline and stomped to my room, slamming the door shut.
Derek picked up on the second ring. I imagined his wavy long blond hair from here. I missed his synthetic tanned skin. He had the habit of over-using his employee discount at the tanning place where he had worked for two years.
“It’s me.” I breathed.
I could already hear his curvy mom, smell her hairspray, and envision the conservative cut dresses she always wore. She was hollering at Derek’s triplet brothers. I ached for Ohio then, wishing we were in his room pretending to study or his old car. We would make out too carefully for normal teens because of all his rules. I realized then I needed to make some friends fast.
“How’s Oregon?”
“Very green for summer.” I admitted. “It wasn’t even eighty degrees most of the day, the sun is just setting.”
“Weird. Have you seen any hipsters?”
“I told you I don’t live in Portland I’m like a hundred mile south of there. I saw someone with horns on the bus last week and a guy with dreads past his ass.”
Derek roared with laughter. “I miss you.”
“Come home then.”
“I can’t I sorta got a job, well babysitting. At twenty dollars a day, I think Dad just might buy me a car by September.”
“So, you’re twelve now.”
“Shut up, they like me. Um… what are you wearing?”
My ballsy attempt at phone sex was pathetic, especially since we mostly made out and every time, I made it clear I wanted more Derek talked about waiting till after graduation. Only once had he let me go down on him when we stole some of his dad’s beer and chugged it the garage.
He was so weird about it afterward I knew what the problem was. His granddad was a pastor and grew up being told sex was for things like marriage. With his family and their perfect marriages, he wanted exactly what they had, including being happy and good. I wondered if he would ever wake up and realize I was neither of those things.
“We can’t talk dirty on my parents’ landline. Someone could pick up on the second phone any second.”
“Okay, fine.” I snapped.
I didn’t pay attention to anything he said about his ordinary day at the tanning place or his plans to go camping next month. All I could think about was how I wasn’t a virgin, but I felt like one.
The only guy before him had been so shy on the uptake and we had done it twice. Each time had lasted about three thrusts, leaving me bereft of anything resembling a good time. I had been so sure in the beginning Derek would be the opposite. I had practically begged to fuck before I left Ohio and the boy had the audacity to shake his head like he was my dad tell me it would be too painful in more ways than one. Derek had no idea Jonathan and I had done it; I was never going to enlighten him. So, I lay burning wanting to be in Ohio and stuck in Oregon thousands of miles away from what I wanted.
