life part III

By this time I was completely over, well almost completely over Ms. Brooks. I still found her insanely attractive, but my thoughts were now focused on Jem.

Jem came with a shit load of emotional baggage. She had been in love with a guy, engaged actually, and that blew over badly. But she was still in love with him, thought he only gave two fucks about her. She believed that it was okay to date a guy and girl at the same time. Stupid as I was, and being new at the whole experience, I clench my jaws and accepted it as best I could.

Our following dates were her behind the wheel in some remote parking lot, and me attempting to teach her how to drive. She didn't like to drive and was afraid of it. Fast was not in her vocabulary and parking was nonexistent. Curbs however, were a regular occurrence and were going over bumps a bit roughly and ripping my fuel tank.

We grew close and I was falling in love. We had a rough spots, or at least I did. It hurt me when she was also going out with a guy. That, and we weren't really, completely official anyway, and that was lovely to deal with.

Winter break came along and I was in a play. My dad went out of town with his wife and offered up his house if I wanted to stay there so I wouldn't have to drive so far to get to the show. I had the notion so I acted on it. I asked Jem if she wanted to come over. After the show that night, we went back to my dad's house. I told her that nothing had to happen in case she didn't want to, or wasn't thinking along those lines. Frankly I don't know what I was getting at either. I didn't know how to go about where each of us would sleep, but somehow, we ended up in the same bed. Nothing major happened. I rubbed her back, became thoroughly embarrassed when she told me that I had to acquire the skill of doing the sexy scratch thing.

The next morning was awkward. I cried after I dropped her off because I felt like something wasn't right. Later on we had a conversation where she said that it shouldn't have happened but it was her damned curiosity that took her there. I felt like shit. I thought it was my fault.

We got passed that and went without mentioning it again. It hit the time of year when I was going to audition for colleges. I had to go to Florida State University for an audition and I asked her if she wanted to go with me. She said yes. So, I picked her up the Friday before we were going to leave and brought her to my house so she could sleep there and we could get an early start the next day. My mother didn't really know what was going on at the time, so that's how I got away with it. Never again will she ever let me do that again. Nothing happened that night either, but we were more open to the idea.

We drove up to FSU the next day and got a hotel room. My stomach was a bucket of worms because of the audition the next day, and because I was sick was a bad cold and my voice was two octaves lower than it usually is. That night in the hotel room, we both showered and then fooled around a bit, but there was no touching of the areas, if you know what I mean…then Nathan called. Everything went to shit from then on. But she did kiss me, twice actually. That was my first kiss, and I will never forget it, but nothing progressed from there because her mind was preoccupied with the fact that Nathan had called. She wasn't flying back into his arms, but she couldn't get over the shock that he actually called her after three months. Needless to say, my soul was wounded and that was not what I needed to prepare myself for the audition.

The audition hardly occurred because I couldn't get a note out for singing. I did my monologue and the dancing part and the director said I could send in a tape. I was shattered. WE drove home that night, and she talked to Nathan again. I kept slipping further and further into a depression. To make things better, that night I found out she had had sex with a guy and hadn't told me. I backed off after that, especially since she didn't call me on Valentines Day's yet she asked me to be her Valentine.