Anatomy of a Boyfriend (2 page)

I couldn‘t care less about sports, let alone ogling athletes, and a school is the last place I want to be during winter break. But I‘m tagging along this year because I‘ve been holed up in my room all week finishing college applications, and I desperately need a change of scenery. Not surprisingly, Amy‘s boy-crazy jabbering makes it impossible even to pretend to focus on the game.

―See him?‖ she asks me while pointing to one of the senior team‘s broad-shouldered linebackers, who‘s also in her woodworking class. ―I had this amazingly intense dream about him last night. We were in this, like, psychedelic art studio, and I was posing nude for him—‖

―Amy!‖ I cut her off. We‘re sitting on the bleachers one row ahead of a pack of pervy-looking freshmen, and I know they‘re eavesdropping.

―What?‖ she looks at me innocently. ―It was really hot! Then he knocked over his easel, tore off his overalls, and said, ‗My canvas is your body, and my paintbrush is my peni—‘‖

―Shhh!‖ I almost choke on my hot dog as I press my hand over Amy‘s mouth. ―First of all, gross! Second of all, the entire population of Florida does
not
need to know this.‖ I motion with my eyes to the cackling pervs behind us. ―Can you please tone it down?‖

Amy tears my hand away. ―Oh, c‘mon, Dominique. You sound like a librarian…and not the kinky kind.‖ She grins at me mischievously before turning her attention to the buff, freckled junior on her right. I just roll my eyes in resignation.

If we weren‘t in a public place, I wouldn‘t mind hearing the steamy details of Amy‘s dream.

That‘s the key to our friendship—we can be open with each other past the point of too much information. She ends up doing most of the talking, though, since she has a lot more experience to draw from. But the fact that I‘m probably the only seventeen-year-old in Fort Myers who hasn‘t French-kissed a guy yet does not mean I‘m a prude. My dreams at night can get just as X-rated as Amy‘s, and sure, I guess I‘d like to have a boyfriend. I just wouldn‘t want to hook up with a guy unless I really, really like him, and in my experience all boys can be classified as either assholes or bores, unless they‘re both.

Maybe it‘s a blessing, because the last thing I need is relationship drama to sidetrack me from my grades. Amy, on the other hand, has never been the studious type but still managed to score an early acceptance to Amherst College. She‘s a master painter and graphic artist, which makes sense given her expressive, exhibitionistic personality. I‘m way more introverted.

My biggie Sprite makes itself known a few minutes into the third quarter. I maneuver my way down the bleachers toward the row of light blue Porta Pottis behind the end zone, but when I get to ground level I see I have competition. A chunky mom type with a bulging fanny pack is waddling in the direction of the only unoccupied stall. Nature is calling loudly, so I start chugging across the green, eyes on the prize. That‘s when I feel my feet slip out from under me, and the next thing I know I‘m sprawled facedown on a patch of newly watered grass.

―Shit!‖ I shout as I scramble onto all fours. I look down at my sweatshirt and shorts, now coated with wet topsoil. I don‘t care if you‘re the most confident person in the world—when something like this happens, all you want is the superpower to become invisible.

―Jeez, you okay?‖ a deep voice asks.

Startled, I gaze up through the strands of my bangs, now shellacked to my forehead with sprinkler water. All I see are blazing blue eyes against a halo of high-noon sunshine.

―Um, yeah, I‘m fine,‖ I gasp, half-frightened and half-hypnotized by his proximity.

―You were fast. You should go out for track.‖ He grins.

I force myself to laugh. ―Thanks, but I think mud wrestling‘s more my style.‖

He grins a little wider in a cute, bashful manner. My stomach suddenly feels uneasy, but not in a bad way. I don‘t need to pee anymore either.

―Let me help,‖ he says.

Without giving myself time to think about it, I reach for his outstretched hand. He clasps my forearm, since my palms are caked with dirt and grass, and pulls me to my feet.

I‘m still squinting from the sun‘s brightness, but it‘s clear that this boy with the sparkling blue eyes is around my age. His angular features are balanced by his gentle, soulful stare and the shaggy blond hair falling softly over his ears. He‘s skinny and tall, around six feet. Amy and I are both five six, except I look shorter because I tend to slouch, which my grandma never fails to give me a hard time about.

―Hmmm.‖ The blue-eyed boy crinkles his brow while staring at my legs. ―Your knees—they‘re pretty scratched up. I have some Band-Aids in my car just over there.‖ He looks at me expectantly.

The part of me that‘s humiliated to be standing there dripping with mud wants to run away. But this boy‘s rare combination of niceness, humor, and good looks is drawing me in. I can hear a tiny Amy on my shoulder whispering,
Whatever you do, keep talking to him!

―Thanks, but I‘ll be fine. Um, so, do you go to EFM?‖ I ask, going for the obvious.

―Yep. I‘m a senior.‖

―Oh? So why aren‘t you out there on the field?‖

―I‘m not into football, but I know some guys on the team, so I‘m here rooting for them.‖

―Cool. Well, I‘m a senior too. Not here, though. I mean, my best friend goes here, but I—‖

―Chiiiild, are yeew alriiiight?‖ I hear in the world‘s most grating Southern drawl. ―Ya fell like a rock in a pond.‖

Damn! It‘s that fanny pack lady I was trying to outrun. I instantly hate her for jarring me out of my cute-boy moment.

―Ya pooor li‘l thing,‖ she croons as she wraps her fleshy arm around my shoulder. ―Ah woulda come to ya right away, but Ah hadda go somethin‘ awful. Those hot dawgs go through ya like a bag o‘ prunes.‖

―Oh. Yeah,‖ I respond, too horrified to come up with something better.

―Now, Ah‘m a registered nurse,‖ she continues, ―so lemme take a look at those legs.‖

―Thank you, ma‘am, but I‘m fine. Really.‖

Oblivious to my brush-off, she bends down to study my knees and in the process displays some major ass crack. The cute boy is visibly grossed out. I sense blood rushing to my face in helpless embarrassment, and all of a sudden my urge to pee returns with a vengeance. It‘s like I traveled from heaven to hell in the space of ten seconds.

I‘m racking my brain for a polite way to tell the nurse to get lost when a breeze streams by, carrying with it the Porta Pottis‘ pungent stench of human waste. I can feel the puke rocket up my esophagus.

―You sure you‘re okay?‖ the blue-eyed boy asks, looking concerned—or maybe just repulsed.

I avoid making eye contact with him as I keep my mouth clamped shut and nod. Then I shake the lady‘s pudgy fingers from my knees and scuttle to a newly vacated stall. I hear her tell the boy, ―Ah guess she hadda go bad too.‖

Upon slamming the flimsy plastic door behind me, I barf up my hot dog and ketchup for the next two minutes. When I‘m done I peer into my compact mirror and groan as I think about the boy‘s last image of me: a swamp thing racing for a foul-smelling Porta-Potti. Does
Guinness
World Records
have a Worst First Impression category?

After peeing I clean my hands, shins, and face as well as the few remaining sheets of toilet paper allow. Then I take off my mud-spattered sweatshirt, turn it inside out, and wrap it around my waist so it‘s hanging over the front of my shorts, concealing the mud stains. Finally I undo my ponytail and let my hair fall over my face. Sufficiently disguised, I slink back up the bleachers and collapse onto my seat. Amy‘s still flirting with the buff, freckled junior, who‘s punching his phone number into her cell. When presented with a member of the opposite sex, some of us get numbers and some of us throw up.

―Did you fall in?‖ Amy asks when I tap her shoulder to get her attention.

―Well…I fell.‖

―What the hell happened?‖ she shrieks, pointing to the dried blood on my legs. Then she picks a blade of grass out of my hair. ―You look like one of my smocks.‖

―Thanks,‖ I say sarcastically, trying to ignore the pervs cackling at me for the second time today. Then I tell her that I just had the worst twenty minutes of my life and I want to go
now.

Even though I hope the blue-eyed boy can‘t see me, I can‘t stop myself from scanning the bleachers for him as we leave. I don‘t find him, of course, as most of the thousand-plus spectators are too far away to make out. No matter. Even if I did spot him, I wouldn‘t approach him. I‘d be afraid I‘d lose my cool again, especially in my current state of extreme fugliness.

Why am I even obsessing about this? I never get worked up over guys. Maybe that‘s the problem—our interaction wasn‘t long enough for him to ruin his good first impression with the inevitable stupid comment or dude behavior. A minute longer and he would have belched in my face or tried to touch my butt. Boys are all assholes or bores, anyway.

2

“W
e‘ll find him,‖ Amy announces confidently as we drive back to her place. ―This is exciting, Dom. You met a guy besides Matt who you actually
want to get with
!‖

Matt, Amy‘s gorgeous stepbrother, is a junior at Cornell. He‘s also been with the same girl since high school. But in a way, that makes things easier—since I know he‘s taken I‘ve never had to worry about getting him to like me back. Still, stealing glimpses of him sunbathing in his Speedo whenever he‘s home on vacation remains one of the perks of being Amy‘s best friend.

“Want to get with?”
I exclaim from the backseat, where I‘m changing into Amy‘s gym uniform, which lucky for me she keeps in the car. ―I just said he was nice. I never said I
want to get with
him.‖

―Well, you should! You spend hours staring at bodies in textbooks, yet you‘ve never gotten off on one. It‘s just not healthy.‖

―Whatever.‖ I crawl into the passenger seat. ―I haven‘t gotten sick yet.‖

Amy loves making fun of the fact that my favorite book is
Gray’s Anatomy
(basically the bible of human biology), which in my opinion is a lot more interesting than the trash romance novels she reads. The truth is, I‘ve wanted to be a doctor ever since I played my first game of Operation when I was six, and I‘m constantly amazed at how strong and complex our bodies are, especially considering we all start off as single cells and are composed mostly of water.

Meanwhile, Amy‘s convinced my fascination with human anatomy is really some kind of Freudian sublimation of my nonexistent sex life. (Amy‘s mom, Dr. Susanna Braff, is a psychotherapist, so Amy‘s picked up a lot of the lingo.) I think that‘s all nonsense, but maybe she‘s right about my
wanting to get with
the guy at the game today—I‘m a lot more enthusiastic than I expected as we spend the next hour sprawled out on her puffy Papasan chair poring over EFM‘s yearbook. It‘s also so refreshing to have something besides college apps and premed programs to think about for a change.

Like I was beginning to tell Mr. Blue Eyes before we were so rudely interrupted by Mrs. Ass Crack, I attend Shorr Academy, a K–12 private school that‘s so small we don‘t even have a football field. Amy went there for middle school, but after eighth grade she transferred to EFM

because she craved its massive art studio, lack of uniform requirement, and hundreds of new guys. I seriously considered following her to public school, but my mom teaches algebra at Shorr, and my parents didn‘t want me to pass up the free tuition for faculty kids. I also wasn‘t eager to give up Science Quiz, which is like varsity level
Jeopardy!,
and EFM doesn‘t have its own team.

As we search through the yearbook, Amy‘s having a ball pointing out all the guys she‘s hooked up with, all the guys she hopes to hook up with, and all the guys she thinks I should hook up with. I‘m interested in just one guy in particular, and my heart lurches when I spot him among the Gs. Even in black and white, his intense blue eyes seem to leap off the page.

―Bingo!‖ I shout. I yank the book away from Amy, hold it up close to my face, and pronounce his name. ―Wesley Gershwin.‖

―Really?‖ Amy leans in and gawks at the photo in amazement. ―Gersh was the dude?‖

―Uh-oh, is he on your wish list?‖

―Oh please, he‘s way too lanky for me. Don‘t you remember him from my meets last season?‖

I study the headshot for a moment. ―Wait, was he a sprinter?‖

―Only the best one on the team. In fact,‖ Amy teases as she elbows me in the rib cage, ―I bet he‘d look
more
familiar if you actually
watched
the events and didn‘t just do your homework in the stands, best friend.‖

―Yeah, yeah. So why‘d you sound so surprised he‘s the guy?‖

―Well, Gersh is a puzzling breed,‖ she says, stroking her chin like a mad professor type. ―He‘s cute, smart, well liked, but very shy. He transferred to EFM just last year, and he still has that

‗little orphan chipmunk lost in the woods‘ feel to him, so the fact that he even came up to you and started talking says
a lot.
Oh, Dom!‖ Amy looks at me, awestruck. ―He must have been really drawn to you to come out of his shell like that and offer you Band-Aids!‖

―I think you‘re jumping the gun here. It was a damsel in distress situation, so he was just being chivalrous.‖

―Exactly. Guys love being the knight in shining armor.‖ Amy takes my cell phone out of my purse and flips it open. ―Since you were the one who ran off, you gotta make the next move. Go on, damsel.‖ She poises her forefinger over the keypad. ―You know you want to call him. I‘ll get his number.‖

―What are you talking about?‖ I reach over and flip the cell shut. ―No way am I going to
call
him! He probably thinks I‘m a total dorkus, and that‘s assuming he even remembers who I am.‖ I settle back into the comfiness of the chair. ―The most I‘d consider doing is e-mailing. It‘s a lot less confrontational.‖

―Ugh. That‘s so wussy,‖ Amy groans as she flops back next to me. ―What if he thinks you‘re spam and deletes it?‖

―It‘s worth the risk. What I‘m
not
willing to risk is being tongue-tied on the phone with a shy boy I‘m not even sure I like yet.‖ I grin, satisfied with my pragmatism. Then I catch sight of the time on my cell. ―Shit! I need to run to my bratsitting gig.‖