Anatomy of a Boyfriend Read online

  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– 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.”

  “One sec.” She wriggles off the chair. “Let me dig up the student directory before we forget.”

  While Amy’s searching through her desk drawers, I resume examining Wesley’s handsome face. What a contrast to the sea of goofy, unflattering headshots surrounding his. I turn to the varsity sports section and find a shot of Wesley breaking a finish line ribbon. He looks really sexy with his sweat-saturated nylon EFM singlet clinging to his pecs and abs. I love his arms. They’re very thin, but toned. I wonder how much he can bench? I’m a hundred and fifteen pounds—I bet he could bench me. I don’t know why I’m even thinking this. I rub my temples.

  “And FYI,” Amy says as she slaps the directory onto my lap. “Word on the asphalt is Gersh doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

  Subject: Hey, we sorta met at the game today….

  Date: Wednesday, December , : p.m.

  Dear Wesley (a.k.a. Good Samaritan),

  Hi. My name is Dominique Baylor, Amy Braff’s best friend from Shorr Academy. Amy helped me figure out who you are and gave me your e-mail address so I could write and thank you for pulling me from the mud today and offering to get me Band-Aids. I’m sorry for leaving you alone with that lady, but I was pretty out of it after my tumble and wasn’t feeling well. Anyway, I’ve regained sanity and am perfectly fine now, and I just wanted you to know how much I appreciated your help.

  I hope you had a good time at the game otherwise and that you have a great rest of your winter break.

  Gratefully and klutzily, Dom

  P.S. Merry Belated Christmas!

  I pressSEND and feel an enormous sense of relief now that I’ve redeemed myself somewhat. But suddenly I’m scared Wesley’s going to think I’m some kind of stalker for tracking him down and e-mailing him. I stare at the computer screen in a mild panic, but then I remember what Amy said before I left her house this afternoon: What do you have to lose?

  I sigh as I sign off, and then I amble to the dining room, where I see my parents for the first time since

  Amy picked me up this morning. Even from the kitchen my mom notices my bruised knees right away.

  “Oh, Dommie, you’re hurt!”

  “What the hell happened?” my dad booms after throwing down his newspaper. Then he notices I’m still in Amy’s gym clothes. “I thought you were going to watch football, not play it.”

  “Oh yeah, Dad, that’s me.” I flex my muscles. “EFM MVP.”

  “Hey, as long as you made the other poor saps look worse.” He laughs. “Did you bust some ass out there on the gridiron?” He grinds his fist into the palm of his other hand and grins roguishly.

  Mom shoots Dad a cut-it-out look and scurries over to me. “Oh, Dommie, you babysat looking like this? Let me get the Neosporin.”

  “Mom, I have white blood cells. I’ll be fine.”

  “Let her alone,” Dad tells Mom. “I say let her wear her scars proudly. Check this out.” He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a long gash of a scar down his bicep, which he got from a shark-fishing accident twenty years back. Mom ignores him as I pretend to nod appreciatively.

  The whole “opposites attract” thing definitely applies to my parents. Mom prides herself on being articulate and orderly, befitting the math teacher she is. Dad, on the other hand, is always swearing and kidding around, which I suppose helps him cope with his job—as the Fort Myers chief of police, Dad has to deal with a lot of heavy stuff.

  I know it sounds like juvenile detention, living with a schoolteacher and a police officer, especially since I don’t have any siblings to deflect their attention. Luckily they’re pretty laid-back in their off hours, and I don’t cause them much trouble anyway. Amy bets that Dad brings his handcuffs into bed and that Mom disciplines him with a ruler in kinky role-playing sex games, but I seriously doubt Mom would go for anything that risqué. It’s not that I think my parents don’t do it anymore. I just figure they keep it really routine and boring, at least compared to the kind of stuff Amy imagines.

  Sometimes I’m amazed they’re still even attracted to each other after nineteen years of marriage, what with Dad’s baldness and stereotypical law enforcement gut and Mom’s graying hair and wrinkles (or

  “wise lines,” as she calls them). My parents actually met through a personal ad Dad took out when he was still in the police academy and didn’t have much time to meet women. By then Mom had suffered through dozens of bad dates and lost all hope of finding a man she could love. She reluctantly answered the ad on a dare from a fellow t
eacher and, amazingly, she knew on their first date Dad was her one and only.

  Since then very little has changed about them. We still live in the same sixth-floor, two-bedroom apartment they moved into as newlyweds, and we still drive the same station wagon they bought two years later when I was born (though just about every part has since been replaced at least twice).

  Although Mom and Dad bring in decent salaries, we purposely live below our means so they can put a lot of it toward my college fund. I’m glad my parents found each other, but I’m always embarrassed when people ask how they got together. Using personal ads just seems sketchy and desperate. I hope to meet the love of my life in a more fateful and romantic way.

  After dinner my parents time me as I play a few solo rounds of Operation. I realize I’m the only human past age eight who still owns this game, but my human anatomy teacher says that playing Operation or even Pick Up Stix under time pressure is a great way to develop the fine motor skills necessary for

  performing surgery. I’m not sure I want to be a surgeon yet, but it can’t hurt to practice. Tonight on my seventh try I pluck out all thirteen pieces in only twenty seconds, a new record for me. My parents applaud and cheer, which is sweet but makes me feel like a baby.

  Soon the three of us migrate to the living room, where Mom and Dad cuddle on the love seat to peruse Fishing World magazine, and I channel surf on the couch until I find The Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies, which I can watch again and again. I must have been exhausted, though, because next thing I know I’m waking up groggy and confused on the couch. The lights are off, the remote control has fallen onto the floor, and the DVD player is flashing : a.m. in bright green numbers. When I stand up I feel my knees sting. Then I remember. I stagger as fast as I can to my computer and log on to my e-mail.

  Subject: Re: Hey, we sorta met at the game today….

  Date: Wednesday, December , : p.m.

  Hi Dominique—

  You say you’re Braff’s friend? You must be the redhead I remember seeing hanging around her at our track meets last season. You sit in the back left on the bleachers, right? I wondered who you were.

  Glad to hear you weren’t hurt too badly. Saw you made it to the bathroom. (It’s okay. I have a small bladder too.) I’m serious about what I said about you running track. You were really booking it. Btw, that lady was strange! After you left she said she was the quarterback’s mom and started going on about his knee injury, so to get away I pretended I needed to go to the bathroom myself.

  My buddy Paul from track (also the wide receiver in the game today) is throwing a New Year’s shindig Monday. He just sent the e-vite, so I’ll forward it on. Braff’s already on the list. Hope to see you there, Dom. With any luck I’ll have my college crapplications finished by then. They are such a pain.

  —Wes

  I lean back in my chair and smile giddily. His e-mail doesn’t come right out and say “I like you,” but it definitely hints at “more than just-friends” potential.

  Or does it?

  I log on to AOL Instant Messenger and luckily Amy’s still awake. We know each other so well I could have predicted her response.

  EFMBabe:Wait. Let me get this straight. Gersh wrote, “It’s okay. I have a small bladder too.”?!?!

  Bladder, Dominique, bladder !!! Clearly, he was subconsciously thinking about his dick when he wrote you.

  DominiqueBaylor:LOL. I think that may be a little far-fetched. The truth is he didn’t ask me out.

  Nothing he said was really flirty. He didn’t even give me his cell number or IM screen name.

  EFMBabe:No, but he invited you to a party, and he called you by your nickname, Dom, which shows he’s already comfortable with you. And he explicitly wrote he “wondered” who you were and “hopes” to see you at the party. Trust me, he wants on.

  DominiqueBaylor:You know, I’m going to have a lot of free time this semester since I’ll be taking only four classes. It might be fun to pursue one little classic high school sweetheart experience before graduation.

  EFMBabe:“Sweetheart experience?” Just promise you’ll never call yourselves Wominique or Desley.

  DominiqueBaylor:Shut up! You know what I mean. But now that you mention it, Wesley is a nice name, isn’t it? Sounds like Westley from The Princess Bride. Very heroic.

  EFMBabe:Well, Buttercup, sounds like this semester’s gonna be a lot more interesting than I thought!

  It takes me forty minutes, three spell checks, two Diet Cokes, and a mental debate over whether writing an e-mail in the middle of the night makes me seem like an overeager loser, to come up with what I think could be a final draft.

  Good early morning, Wes—

  Yes, I did root for Amy at many of her meets last spring, so it’s very likely I’m the red-haired girl you remember seeing. And no, I’ve never thought about running track, but that’s mainly because Shorr doesn’t have a team.

  Good luck finishing your “crapplications”! Where’d you end up applying? My dream school is Stanford, Tulane’s my second choice, and University of Florida’s my safety. They all have good premed programs, so I’ll be happy at any of them. I can’t believe we have to wait until April for our acceptances, though.

  Anyway, thanks for the New Year’s invite. Amy and I will be there. Off to bed now, Dom P.S. FYI, my AIM name is DominiqueBaylor.

  Sometime during my fifteenth proofread it hits me that I’m acting ridiculous. I should know better than to waste precious time dissecting some guy’s two-kilobyte e-mail for hidden romantic meaning, not to mention staying up until half past one to craft a response. At any rate, in the unlikely event he is interested in me, there’s no point in starting anything now since we’re probably heading to different colleges in different cities.

  As I place the mouse over theDELETE button, I remind myself how in the grand scheme of things he’s just a boy, nothing to lose my head over.

  So why can’t my heart stop racing?

  And why do I like how that feels?

  I drag the mouse left, breathe deeply, and clickSEND .

  Wes is the first thing that pops into my head when I wake up the next day. I don’t remember ever thinking about Matt first thing in the morning, and I’ve liked him for seven years. Usually all that’s on my mind when I wake up is how I need to pee and get ready for Science Quiz practice at Shorr.

  This morning, though, I don’t need to pee, and I don’t have Science Quiz practice until winter break ends next week. I turn to my clock. :. It’s so good to sleep in, especially on a Thursday.

  I lie in bed for a while, half-asleep, remembering the way Wes looked when he rescued me from the mud. Those blue eyes. The gold sun streaming behind him. The silhouette of his strong, steady arm reaching down just for me.

  “Mmmm, Wes,” I say under my breath, kind of jokingly. But it does turn me on a little.

  Without really thinking about it, I start lightly stroking my breasts with my fingertips until I feel my nipples harden. Then I move my hand down my torso and slowly tickle the area below my belly button. It’s so relaxing, but energizing too. I can even feel my undies start to get wet.

  I wonder how it would feel if today I go even lower. Sure, I’ve been curious and touched myself there before, but nothing ever happened. Amy’s appalled I’ve never had a “Big O,” as she calls it, but, I don’t know…I guess I’ve always been too preoccupied preparing for the next four years of my academic life to have time to care about four seconds of physical pleasure. Suddenly, though, I really want to know what having one is like. In my human anatomy class we learned the clitoris has eight thousand nerve fibers, at least twice as many as a penis. That deserves a little experimentation, and it would be so easy just to walk my fingers a little lower—

  Bang bang bang!

  I jump, yanking my hand out from under the covers. “Dad?” I blurt out, my heart pounding in my ears.

  “Don’t come in!”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” he asks fr
om the other side of my unlocked bedroom door. “You have a guy in there with you?”

  “Oh yeah, Dad, and I’m hiding him in the closet. One sec.”

  I tear out of bed, throw on my white terry cloth robe, and study myself in my full-length mirror. I decide I don’t look like I’ve just tried to masturbate, and I open the door.

  After we hug good morning, Dad takes a seat on the foot of my bed and says there’s been a change in plans.

  “I have to go in to the station this weekend for New Year’s prep crap, which means we won’t be able to visit Grandma on Sunday. So I’m taking off work so we can go today.”

  “Dad,” I moan, “can’t we just skip it this week?”

  “You know it’s important to your mother that we see Grandma regularly.” He playfully punches my shoulder and stands up to leave. “Meet us downstairs when you’re ready, and don’t forget your sunblock. We’re going fishing afterward.”

  I try to push all thoughts of clitorises, penises, and Wes out of my head as I throw on my clothes and arrange my tackle box, but my heart is still racing when I meet my parents in the garage ten minutes later.

  I used to be really close to my mom’s parents, and I’d always look forward to our Sunday brunches at their Sanibel bungalow. My grandpa’s death when I was eleven hit my grandma really hard, however, and she turned into one of those cantankerous, nagging old ladies I thought existed only on sitcoms. I kept hoping it was just a phase, especially since I had no other grandparents left, but she just keeps getting crankier. Today I’m not even finished pouring Grandma her decaf before she starts laying into me.

  “Dominique, stand up straight!”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  “Oh, your eyebrows are so bushy! They detract from the green in your eyes.” Then she turns to Mom.

  “Why don’t you buy her tweezers?”

  Mom answers calmly, “Dommie’s eyebrows suit her face well.”