The Billionaires Club (12 page)

“
Why would you have to show
me? I have one too.”

“
No, you don't.”

“
Yes, I do.” I scowled at
him.

He stood up and hesitantly began
unbuttoning his pants. “I'll show you, but you have to show me
yours too.”

“
What are you doing?” I eyed
him nervously.

“
I'm going to show you my
penis.”

“
Why? I have one
too.”

“
Just look,” he groaned,
pulling his pants and underwear open.

Not thinking much of it, I stood and
looking into his pants, expecting to see the same plain surface
that was my downstairs. When I saw the short fat pink worm dangling
there, I gasped and quickly looked away.

“
Ew,” I cringed before
taking another quick peak and saying, “Ew,” again. “What is
that?”

“
It's my penis,” he replied,
his voice dull from offense.

“
Ew. Let me see it
again.”

“
No.” He quickly buttoned
his pants.

“
That was gross.”

“
That's my body you're
talking about.”

“
Well, it is.” I shrugged,
thinking about how odd it had been.

“
Show me yours
now.”

“
I don't have anything to
show you.” I gave him a confused look.

“
I showed you mine, now you
have to show me yours. That's how this works.”

“
But I don't have . . . one
of those.”

“
I know. I want to see
anyway,” he sounded as casual as if he was asking to see one of my
coloring books.

Suddenly, I felt embarrassed. Was I
deformed? Was I supposed to have one of those ugly things too? I
wasn't sure anymore.

“
I don't wanna,” I
pouted.

“
Tara, that's not very
fair.” He crossed his arms over his chest, giving me a disapproving
look.

“
Mine isn't like
yours.”

“
Of course it's not. You're
a girl. Boys have penises. Girls don't.”

That did make me feel oddly better. If
there was anyone who would tell me I didn't look right down there,
it was Darren. Maybe I should show him, just for my own peace of
mind.

“
Fine,” I sighed, pulling
open my shorts and underwear with deliberate jerking motions. I
couldn't even stand to look at him as he gazed down into my
pants.

After a few seconds of Darren silently
staring, I let go of my waistband, listening to it snap shut. When
I finally looked at him, he had a thoughtful expression.

“
Well?” I asked. “Are you
happy now?”

“
It's not what I thought it
would look like.”

“
What do you mean?” My mind
filled with horrors. Maybe I really was deformed after
all.

“
There's nothing
there.”

“
Of course there's nothing
there. I thought you said you knew that.”

“
My mom's is
hairy.”

“
How would you
know?”

“
Because she showered with
me when I was little.”

Now I definitely thought I was
deformed. It depressed me, and while I probably should have asked
my mother about it, I didn't. I kept on thinking that my body was
deformed until sex education class in middle school.

***

Darren and I shared a lot of our firsts
together. He was the first boy I ever saw naked, and he handled our
first kiss with the same scientific curiosity as everything
else.

We were ten at the time, and his
parents had finally decided that it wasn't such a good idea for us
to be sleeping in the same bed together anymore. They made Darren
fix himself a pallet on the floor, and I slept on his bed, staring
down at him to talk until the late hours of the night.

That particular night it was storming.
I had always been afraid of thunder, and God was being especially
tumultuous. In the middle of the night, I found myself crawling
down onto Darren's pallet so that he could comfort me while the
weather raged on.

We had got onto a conversation about
two kids who had been caught kissing in the hall and were sent to
the principal's office. At that point, I was kind of getting
interested in boys, but Darren still thought girls had
cooties.

“
Have you ever kissed a boy
before?” he asked me.

“
No. Have you?”

“
I don't kiss boys.” He
smirked, being a smart ass.

“
You know what I
mean.”

“
No. I wonder what it's
like.”

“
I hear it's supposed to be
magical,” I replied dreamily, thinking of all the Disney movies I
had watched.

“
Magical enough to go to the
principal's office for?” He quirked a brow.

“
I guess so. I don't know.”
I shrugged.

“
I'd like to try it
sometime.”

“
You. Kissing.” I wrapped a
hand over my mouth to hold in the giggle.

“
Adults do it. I mean, we're
going to be adults someday. We have to try it sometime.”

“
Do you think kissing makes
you an adult?”

“
I don't know. I think it's
part of it.”

“
I want to be an
adult.”

“
Me too. Do you want to try
kissing and see if it makes us feel any more adult?”

I thought for a moment. In all the
movies that I'd seen, kisses were reserved for your one true love.
I loved Darren, but not like that. Still, the thought of kissing
was exciting, and I didn't know if I could wait until I got older.
Having a boy as a best friend gave me an opportunity to get ahead
of the game, and I did like trying new things.

“
Sure,” I said finally,
feeling suddenly nervous.

“
Alright.”

A bolt of lightening streaked across
the sky, illuminating the room. The thundering that followed made
me press myself into Darren's chest. He grinned at me, gently
rubbing my back and soothing my fears.

“
I hate that,” I
grumbled.

“
I know.” He paused for a
moment, “So, um, how do we go about doing this?”

“
I think you're supposed to
kiss me. The boy always kisses the girl.”

“
Um, alright.” He stared at
me awkwardly for a moment.

“
What?”

“
Aren't you supposed to
close your eyes or something? That's how they do it in the
movies.”

“
Uh, yeah. I guess so. I
mean, I think you're right.”

“
So, close your
eyes.”

I took a deep breath and closed my
eyes. My heart was drumming in my chest, partly from fear of the
storm but also from anticipation. Was this the right thing to do?
Best friends aren't supposed to kiss each other. But I was too
curious to stop it.

“
Pucker your lips,” Darren
told me, and I did.

The moment was far from magical and too
quick to calculate. For a fraction of a second, I felt Darren's
lips graze mine, as gentle as a summer breeze, and then he was
gone. When I opened my eyes, part of me wondered if I had imagined
it. Wasn't I supposed to feel different?

“
How was it?” he asked,
giving me a look as if he was processing his own
feelings.

“
A bit disappointing,” I
admitted, trying not to frown.

“
Yeah. I thought it would be
different too.”

“
Do you feel any
older?”

“
I think so. Maybe a
little,” he replied thoughtfully.

“
I'm not sure if I feel any
different.”

“
Maybe we should try
again.”

“
No. I don't think so.” I
shook my head, thinking that it probably hadn't worked because he
wasn't my one true love.

“
Oh, alright,” his voice
sounded different, but I couldn't quite pick up the emotion. Maybe
he was hurt that I didn't want to do it again. I couldn't
understand why he would be. Neither one of us felt anything from
the kiss. There was no point in doing it again.

***

Everything I learned about sex came
from Darren. While my parents sheltered me from the world as much
as possible, his parents did their best to educate him. When he was
eleven, they gave him 'the talk', which he passed on to me. The
whole idea of sex seemed silly to me at the time. You put what in
where and a baby comes out nine months later. Why would anyone want
to do that? It sounded horribly uncomfortable.

Darren furthered my education by
letting me watch porn with him in his room. While his parents had
put an adult filter on his computer, he easily found a way around
it. The guy was too smart for his own good.

The first time I watched porn with him,
I remember thinking about how weird it was for two people to do
something like that. We were both twelve at the time, and while our
bodies were changing, we didn't have a full understanding of what
that meant. Still, the act of doing something forbidden was
exciting, and I strangely never felt awkward around Darren, no
matter what we did.

When we turned thirteen, Darren's mom
stopped letting us sleep in the same room together. My parents put
a stop to that long ago. That didn't keep us from winding up in bed
together though. It didn't matter whose house we were at or which
room I was sleeping in, every night after midnight, Darren would
come crawl in bed beside me. He'd wrap his arms around me, and we'd
fall asleep cuddled up together. To anyone else, it might have
seemed inappropriate, but for us, it was strictly platonic,
something that we always did—always had done since we were
kids.

Darren would set the alarm on his phone
and make sure he was up and back in his room before our parents
woke up. It was probably more of a hassle than it was worth, but
Darren didn't mind. He said it would feel strange being under the
same roof as me and not waking up beside me. I felt the same
way.

In fact, we continued to sleep in the same
bed together until I got my first boyfriend when I was fifteen. I
felt bad telling Darren he couldn't sleep with me anymore, but it
just didn't feel right dating another boy and still having Darren
in my bed. It would feel like I was cheating, and I wasn't about to
start my love life out on the wrong foot.