It was finally Friday. I had managed to dodge everyone I needed to. Lynn had an insane chem quiz as well as relatives visiting from out of town. Reagan was taxed with Student Council and Honor Society, and we were all trying to get it handled before the party of the year. The Tomlin Twin party was finally happening this Saturday.
I hadn't seen Adrian since I led coach Bartlett to where he could see him that day. That is other than glances in the hallway which I made every effort to avoid. I didn't have to worry about lunch because fall golf had picked up. I had to do Bio 2 lab during lunch just to make it on time to practice all this week for tournament prep. Things would all settle down once debate started. Who was I kidding? They'd get a hell of a lot busier, but at least I wouldn't be alternating a bio lab with everything else on my plate.
Adrian worked at the Pure Pines Country Club attached to the golf course. He waited tables some summers at the Nineteenth Hole, an upscale bar and restaurant but still casual enough for golfers to lunch or have a highball in their golf cleats. Lynn had mentioned he was picking up a few shifts there since he dropped football. She said he'd probably be working up until debate and track started. I had steered clear of the golf course's only restaurant all week to keep from bumping into him. How do you go from never thinking of a person and not caring what you say to occupying your mind with avoiding having to speak to them again?
Suddenly, Adrian and I had nothing whatsoever to say to each other when there was a risk of walking past or being in the same room together. Yet, there was so much more to say than there ever had been. Even though I was grateful for being busy and not coming head-to-head with this, whatever this was, I still couldn't seem to shake it. The moral support-groping in the office that day, and me coming to his rescue with the coaches seemed to have all died down with no explanation. I didn't ask him for one after grabbing me that day, and he didn't ask me for one for involving Coach Bartlett.
I truly was glad it just went away, but I was not happy about the residue it left. The constant thinking about him or wondering where he was or what he was thinking. I felt like I was in junior high all over again. What was the matter with me? I was a junior in high school now and had never had a boyfriend. I laughed to myself. That's what this was. He stepped close to me, and I smelled him... it's human nature.
Had I been dating somebody, anyone, I would have thought nothing of it. This was nothing. However, not having a boyfriend just yet might have been a bigger problem than having Adrian on my mind more than I could understand. So? I was so unbelievably busy. I had never had time for a boyfriend. That was it, right?
I immediately thought of the girls at our popular table. Was it them that kept me from having one? Had I not gone out with anybody because they didn't assign anyone to me? Ridiculous. Or was it far worse... no one from my class or the surrounding student body had asked me. Yikes. That one hurt.
I wouldn't say I was naïve or a late bloomer, but in so many ways... I really was. I knew nothing about the mechanics of sex other than you shouldn't have it until you are married according to my grandparents and church. My mother's birds and the bees speech consisted of two sentences. "Sex is a wonderful, beautiful thing shared between two people who are married." Then, when I was fourteen or so, the movie Dirty Dancing, the original with Patrick Swayze and Jennier Grey, came on tv one night and as we neared the ending my mother turned to me and said, "See, she slept with him and now he's leaving."
That was the extent of my sex education, combined with Pure Pines abstinence campaign, which was if you do it, just don't get caught. Most of us knew each other's dating history and the extent of each other's carnal knowledge simply by who you had dated or if you hadn't dated at all yet. But by junior year and age seventeen, it started to get a little fuzzy for some.
We were all well versed in locker room talk. It was quite an education from the upper classmen. That, and you'd have to be blind not to catch someone making out in the parking lot at some point and understand that's not where it ended. Still, I don't know what I would have done on a date or alone in a room with a guy I liked. I was clueless. I don't even think I could say I'd had a proper kiss yet. Not one you could count anyway.
That Friday night was another home game. Lynn and Reagan and I were practically going through withdrawal from each other, so Lynn invited us over to get dressed at her place and talk party prep for Saturday. It was a big deal to figure out how to get to the most coveted underage drinking party that had been scheduled for months. It took true strategy. Luckily, we were Globe Scholars. Having a high IQ comes in handy in these situations. I digress.
Our new uniforms hadn't come in yet, so the slutty Smurfs would ride once again. I still hadn't asked Reagan or Lynn about the one girl on the sideline last week. I guess I would know today if it's something they were keeping from me. The Adrian and Coach Bartlett situation had become the first thing I never told them that year. And, the fact that Coach Dodge was a Peeping Tom, I was absolutely going to talk about, I just hadn't had time to see anyone.
My mom pulled up to Lynn's drive, replaying the weekend's events and wanting to know exactly where I was going to be. She was flying to Salt Lake that night for a convention for work. I was going to miss her this weekend, but it was also easier to pull off the party with her away. She had been told I was spending Saturday night at Reagan's so my grandparents were already debriefed. I couldn't lie to those two if you paid me. I was grateful it was already worked out.
"So, you'll come home to grandma and grandad's from the game tonight, you're at Reagan's on Saturday night... are you all going to work on debate?"
"Mom, can I please focus on one activity at a time. I've got a game tonight. Plus, I'm going to miss you. I wanted to hear more about your work trip plans on the way over here."
"Well, you know they are far less exciting than your stuff."
I meant it when I asked about her, but I couldn't help it, my eyes drifted over to Adrian's house as we pulled up to Lynn's drive. I wasn't worried about bumping into him. It was a Friday night. Minus football, he was probably working at the country club tonight. My mom noticed my distant stare.
"What's Adrian up to these days?"
"How should I know? Mom, I don't see him much. Debate hasn't even started yet."
"Well, you know what I always tell you girls... he is so good looking, far cuter than the riffraff each of you pine over. Speaking of riffraff, do I need to worry about anybody this weekend, no new boys? I say that as a question and a statement, July."
"Mom! Why do you make it so hard to wish you a nice time and mean it?"
"Come here." I grabbed my bags out of the back and my clarinet to play in the stands with the band, and hugged her back tightly. I always made a memory of the smell of her perfume every time she left. It's a game I played as a kid, and I would get so excited when I would smell her walk in the door on her return.
Lynn's parents were super successful. They had a big, warm house and it was always full of people. For the rest of my life, I would cherish the moments spent with her family. The overwhelming and delightful way the house was often full of relatives and strangers, and those rare moments when we got time with just her momma and daddy because her older sisters were out. Some people just feel like summer or Christmas, her family always felt like Christmas. It was just wonderful to be there.
Without grilling us or standing over our shoulders, her parents instinctively knew what was going on at school. We blamed her older sisters. After all, they'd been through it three times already, and although Lynn was quite unique, I doubt she had any different tricks up her sleeve than her sisters had pulled. Truthfully, I think it was her mother's silent intuition.
She was reserved, until she smiled. Her smile lit up three rooms at once and said it all the way Lynn's did. She never really scolded us or told us not to do anything per say, just asked one question or two about what our plans were, and nodded when she got the answer she already knew. It was as if she watched over us from a far with this resounding wisdom that made us think twice about pulling anything on her watch. She had a lot of grace that way. It was contagious.
Needless to say, we wouldn't be lying, leaving or sneaking away from her house the next night. Tonight was actually very rare as we had her house to ourselves for like the first time ever. Lynn's parents had gone out to dinner before our game with her dad's work friends, and all her older sisters, well the ones that still lived at home or came home nearly every night as if they still lived there, were out and about or at work. I don't blame them; I don't think I'd ever want to leave that house if it were my family.
It was wild being there by ourselves, for Lynn too I think. The three of us raced through the house like children and slid in our socks before time demanded we start to get dressed. Lynn was funny by nature and always full of surprises. Although her car stereo played obscure Southern and East Coast Rap from Master P to local artists the guys she dated had recommended to her, she had a vinyl record player in her house she would often use to catch us off guard.
While Reagan hogged the hot sticks and curling iron in the bathroom, I began to do my eyeliner in a mirror in Lynn's bedroom. Lynn had put a "Best of the Bee Gees" record on and was in the back room digging through her older sisters' closet for something to wear to the Twin's party the following night.
"Look, I know we are probably going to have to pick up Devin, Brooke, Hanna, and them, that's not quite all sorted yet, but let's just do our thing. They can come in with us, but we're not responsible for them, and July..." Reagan was yelling from the bathroom loud enough for Lynn to hear her in the back bedroom. "Don't get involved in Devin's bull shit. I know you two go way back, but she's a shit friend."
"If one could even call her that!" Lynn chimed from her sister's closet.
"Guy's, I've barely talked to Devin twice this semester. We're giving them a mercy ride as far as I'm concerned. There are way more upper classmen there with allegiance to us. The party is not Devin's homecoming court, it's our party more than theirs."
"Here, here! Nicely done. Just, we're not letting her fix any of us up or going for that crap when she says somebody's into one of us or tries to play match maker, deal?"
"Reagan! You're preaching to the choir on that one. I've learned my lesson with her. Besides, you're the one she hasn't tried to fix up in a while. Careful there, I think they've lost interest in me." I had finished my mascara at this point and was moving on to our signature red lipstick.
"They don't ever pull that crap with me or try to fix me up, cause I'm a black girl! They wouldn't know what to do with me." Lynn screamed from the back.
"Date one of their guys and they would." Reagan's quip was unbeatable. I laughed so hard I almost choked. The needle moved on the music we'd been shouting over and "How Deep is Your Love" by the Bee Gees began playing on the record player. "I love this song!" I announced. "Can I turn it up?"
"YES." They both replied in unison. "Familiar eyes in the morning sun," I repeated the first words of the opening verse out loud to myself as I got up, barefoot in my flesh color tights and sporting my makeshift NFL nightmare of a dance uniform. "What a great lyric." I turned the corner from Lynn's hallway at high speed to slide on the carpet in my flesh-colored tights to the record player.
I was already running before I saw something tall blocking me at the end of the hallway. I couldn't stop until it stopped me. Before I could take a breath or scream anything to prevent it, I slid in my tights' feet smack into Adrian's chest. It was with such great force that I knocked him over onto his back. A slight growl of surprise gurgled out of his throat as we hit the floor together, and my head bounced onto his chest.
I don't know how many seconds went by or what exactly happened to my brain and body during the most humiliating fall of my life, but I felt arms tight around my waist, a hand bracing my back from the fall, and my legs were tangled in his. I looked up toward the record player to get my bearings and perhaps, I don't know, attempt to fly off him? He looked down at me and then at what I was looking at. "Yes, this is a great song," he said.
Oh. My. God. There was no telling how long he had been listening. "I... I am so sorry." I stammered, trying to get up from where my chin was literally resting on his chest, almost touching his neck.
"Up until this point I would have said you've been trying to avoid me."
I felt his voice vibrate through me and I could tell he noticed. His smile was dangerously effective as he looked down at me lying on his chest. I could smell him again. He smelled so good.
Since willing myself off him from that position had not proven to work. I decided to roll off him to the side before I literarily inhaled and visibly sniffed him the way a dog goes in for a whiff of bacon.
Get up! Oh. My. God. Get up before Lynn comes flying in here and sees this and it becomes another... thing! I was up. I think. I also could have jumped out of my skin. I wasn't sure what was happening. "I am truly sorry."
"Apology accepted. It's not often I'm greeted with that kind of gusto. Lynn's family usually just says hello. I stepped back from him and looked up at him. He was a little taller than I remembered from that day in the office, I guess because I was shoeless. And he was smiling wildly at me. I wasn't sure how to respond to him.
"How are you?" His face was more serious when he asked. His eyes were dazzling. I looked down at myself, partly to make sure the limited amount of Spandex was still covering something between vital organs and my dignity.
"Ah, blue, looks like very blue." I said with a smile re: the uniform. I looked up at his neck and to my horror he was covered in my red lipstick... not kiss or lip shapes. When I fell on him, my mouth must have grazed those spots on his neck and cheek. Oh. My. God. It just keeps getting better. "Yikes."
"What?"
"Umm... you are very red in a few—" I stepped a little closer on the tip of my toes to point and reference where. I touched my lips to make him understand. "I think I must have gotten you with my lipstick. Umm..."
He seemed to welcome me reaching out to show him, so I just continued to smudge them off. I stepped back surveying him and pointed to his face.
"Should I..."
"Of course, unless you think it looks good on me."
He bent his face toward mine a little so I could reach better as I used my thumb to smudge my dark red lipstick off his cheek. I was holding my breath as I was so uncomfortably close to his face, but the lipstick was not coming off as easily as it had on his neck.
I'm afraid when I finally had to exhale slowly releasing the breath I was holding, it gave off a different impression on his neck. My eyes and nose were by his cheek working away leaving my mouth to open slightly and breathe down his neck. I felt him jerk a little when that happened.
His jaw clinched in that sexy thing men do when they are thinking, with holding something or about to get serious. He cut his eyes down his cheek to meet mine as best they could, and I saw his chest rise and fall in a deep, heavy breath.
"July..." he whispered slowly, almost inaudible and I felt the side of his hand graze the hand that hung at my side. Warm tingles ran all over my body from the flip of my stomach. I physically felt drunk.
"My, my... Is this another showing of what we witnessed in the office?" Lynn was standing behind us. This time I did fly off him. I turned to explain, confident I had a perfect excuse.
"Are you crazy? I basically tackled him to the floor while running to slide across the living room to your record player." At my mention of the record player, I realized for the first time that the original song that started it all was already over, and I hadn't even noticed the next track was playing.
"Yeah, I quit football only to realize having July at your house was far more dangerous!"
Nice work, Adrian... that didn't sound loaded. We both tried to fake laugh. Reagan descended from the bathroom on cue. "What happened in the office other than Adrian dropping football?"
"I guess Lynn thought I was attacking him the way Coach Craig did." I tried to cover.
Lynn rolled her eyes and moved through to the kitchen to grab something to drink. I knew it really didn't bother her because there was nothing going on to bother anybody. It's just that it looked like there was. Murphey's Law, I guess. It bothered her that she thought there was something I wasn't telling her. That would frustrate me too if I were in her shoes.
I truly did want to talk to Lynn, but what would I have said? I would look like a fool or look the way I felt, like a kid with a crush. I couldn't like Adrian that way, it wouldn't make any sense. And Lynn was his best friend too. It wouldn't have been a fair conversation.
"Hey, grab me a coke if you have one?" Adrian picked up on his friend's response to the situation and resumed as normal behavior as he could.
"Are done plugging your items into every available outlet? You think I could get in there?" I turned my attention to Reagan not knowing what else to do. Thank God she picked up on the tension and didn't force the issue or quip back. She did have her eyes watching Adrian's every move as she followed my lead.
"It's all yours. Just use my purple ones in the roller bin. They're already hot." I headed straight to the bathroom to finish getting ready, hoping that was the end of the random visit and additional awkward notch to add to the Adrian belt I seemed to have buckled around me lately.
Nothing got past Reagan and Lynn. It was wonderful to have intelligent friends, but even on an off occasion when they were being selfish, petty, or making something all about them... you could still bet they wouldn't miss a beat.
I went to work to finish getting ready.
Avoiding him, huh? Last I checked, Adrian had made no effort whatsoever to track me down. That was an odd thing for him to say. He was suddenly kind, and jovial? I wish I could have shot back with the truth.
The only thing I had been avoiding was getting chewed out if I had made a mistake with bringing Coach Bartlett in, and once I felt in the clear for that, it was dodging his distant stare before my eyes met his and he cut away from me. I'd say that was business as usual since the sixth grade.
I put the voices in the other room out of my head. I couldn't help but overhear something muffled about plans for Saturday night and who's car was taking who. Then I heard footsteps heading out the front, and there was no longer a distinguishable male's voice.
The beginning of the game flew by, and half time came and went. I looked for the chunky little freshman on the sideline, but did not see her. She wasn't in the kick line either. I guess she wasn't at the game at all that night.
When we got back in the stands, now fully dressed in our team dance pants, and zip up jackets, our high from just coming off the field from a great performance was lowered by the numbers on the score board. By the fourth quarter we had lost all hope of winning. I couldn't help but secretly hope we might win for Adrian's sake, if only to get the world off his back. Again... not sure why I cared.
Out of the blue some strange commotion erupted from the top bleachers of our band section in the stands. We heard a tuba and maybe our base trombone start a down beat. It was a total surprise, as the entire band looked behind them to see what was going on. A lone trumpet stood up from the back of our band and started playing the melody of You've Lost That Loving Feeling. The cheerleaders even turned from the sidelines where they stood facing the field calling out chants.
It was Jessie Hines on his trumpet. The hot, alternative, part grunge, part musician, truly too cool for school without trying to be, bad boy with a heart of gold, and an exceptionally skilled trumpet player. He was one of the most sought-after seniors in our school, and the one that saved us by making band cool just by being in it. He was also the one who got under senior varsity cheerleader Savanna Baker's skin, and rumor has it a whole lot more than that.
Savanna was with Drew Bishop her entire high school career. He had just graduated the previous year and in true Pure Pines fashion, they continued to date long distance while Drew was away at college. If you were a Scott, a Childress, or a Bishop in our town, you had it made. Savanna had it made by dating him to all salivating over the power couple. Maybe there was more to her than we thought. Certainly, the unthinkable happened when she fell for Jessie.
I'm not sure what surprised the student body more, the fact that she was tempted by the polar opposite of Drew and found something in Jessie, the fact that he fell for her, or the fact that they acted on it while she was supposedly still in her long-distance relationship with Drew.
Savanna and Drew were preppy and absolutely everything Pure Pines represented. People used to say someone should have painted them on the water tower. Jessie was a very good-bad boy and he had every student and teacher charmed without even trying.
No one knows exactly how long their little fling lasted, but it ended extremely quickly once word got out. Drew's mother worked at the school in the administrative office... she was our Mrs. Bishop. Savanna did what any red blooded American caught cheating does... deny, deny, deny. To Jessie's shock and dismay, she cut things off immediately and completely once they were found out. I guess she could do the crime but wasn't willing to face the time.
Rumor has it, Jessie was a bit torn up about it, although you'd never know it by his actions. He had rocked her stuck-up little world, and she had been the un-gettable get. For the past month, the situation had become a Stalemate and simply was what it was, until this moment. The bass line supplied by our senior tubas and trombones was light, and the first verse of the song almost undetectable. However, by the second verse, Jessie had the base line plus some others on their feet behind him and his trumpet filled the stands with the undeniably recognizable melody.
I couldn't see for certain, but I'm pretty sure it was it was my buddy Sarah Weems that pushed Savanna forward toward the band section. All the cheerleaders surrounded her facing the serenade, and by the time Jessie's trumpet got to what would have been the "Your trying Hard not to show it..." lyric, the drum section, including a triangle, and every upperclassman that knew how to play by ear had stood playing the song for Jessie.
The home crowd in the stands even sang it for him when he ran down to kiss her on the chorus. All that resistance and she didn't even make it through the chorus before allowing his lips on her in public, at a game, where Mrs. Bishop was most likely in the stands with Drew's dad and siblings.
It was probably the greatest thing we'd ever witnessed at a Pure Pines football game. This was Texas, we'd seen a lot... a heart attack in the stands, and the game played on as the ambulance rolled the dying man out. A fight with a rival team that resulted in them turning all of the electricity out in the entire stadium. Literally, the whole place went black, and all our guys could hear was the sound of the other team coming toward them to kick their asses. We had seen it all, but not that. It wasn't the movie-like moment that surprised everyone.
It was the front row seat to the unabashed truth of the roomer. The truth that even Savanna couldn't deny the charms of the underdog any longer. Someone else had prevailed over a polo shirt and a name, and it felt exhilarating. It was also unique to see true love like that. Two people with an itch they couldn't stand not to scratch, and before it's ignored for too long, one of the hottest guys on the planet demands she acknowledges it... Brilliant.
It didn't even matter that we lost the game. Everyone left the stands and walked out of that place on a high, everyone except Drew's parents, I'm sure. Public humiliation is not well received in Pure Pines... well, not by those who can do something about it.
"Ready to rethink being set up?" Lynn turned to Reagan and nudged her as we watched the two forbidden lovers walk off together. Savanna waited outside the band hall for Jessie that night. It was strange for all of us to see her there, but it was also nice, and felt right.
"Please. I doubt they'd set us up with someone like that. You know the rules, if they don't have the guts to ask someone interesting out, you're not allowed to. No way do I want to see who they'd have in store for me."
As Reagan drove me home from the game I kept thinking about the fact that she'd never really had a boyfriend either. Oh, she had dated around when a decent upper classman had asked her out, or done her due diligence when the in-crowd had suggested she and whomever would make a great couple.
She really hadn't said much about who she liked or what she wanted. Reagan was a shit and a rebel just to be one. She made straight A's, held the perfect attendance record, and looked like some angel cherub in a painting had come to life. I never knew if she simply hated what her parents had created and designed her to be, or if it simply wasn't enough for her and she needed more attention.
The perfectionist in her never faltered, but her behavior got more and more acratic as we got older. She'd lay it all out on the table to prove a point, push the envelope, but she was also very good about not showing all her cards. I had never known anyone with such control and restraint who was also so impulsive and self-destructive. I don't know why she felt so restricted and on display, when the reality was, she probably could have gotten by with anything.
"You okay?" I had to check. She had barely said anything since popping off about the serenade moment.
"Yeah. Just tired."
I knew she was tired of Pure Pines. It was a lot of pressure. So much that even an incredibly fantastical moment like the one we were just privy to was just a sweet reminder that it wasn't the norm. That feeling when Jessie stood up in the stands and defied the system to get the girl... that was an anomaly.
Three hours sleep a night if you're lucky after cramming, being told who you can date, can't date or even ride to the party with if you're invited, that was the norm. Sliding across Lynn's carpet in our tights like we didn't have a care in the world, that was rare. We all had our own family dramas on top of that pressure. Yeah, I totally got it. It was fun to witness, just not our reality.
I grabbed my stuff to say goodbye.
"Hey..." Reagan called after me. She turned the music down and smiled with her head tilted in curiosity. I knew she was going to ask me about Adrian. There was a halt instead.
"Never mind. I'll catch your act tomorrow." She smiled, turned the music up and sped off down my residential neighborhood. I think she withdrew the question on her mind to give me the opportunity to keep my secret.
I did not know the art of restraint. I used to tell EVERYTHING I knew. I think it was an only child thing... Craving communication with others. For the first time, I believe she sensed I hadn't said anything about something going on with me, and I think that was her way of letting me keep it. It was encouraging, and I felt like we were all growing up a little.