The next day, Amber isn't answering my calls and I'm not answering Dex's. Sage stays with Amber to help her with her breakup and I try to figure out what my next step is. I just want to get back to normal, like how things were before I ever walked into Tyson's basement and like I never met Dex.
There's not really much that I can do, really. I guess that what I'm going to do now is to pretend like nothing happened and just let things pan out on their own. I'll give Amber some time before I go back to apologize. Sage told me that I should give her some space while she deals with everything.
Yesterday, I tried to apologize even more, but she mostly just yelled at Dex a lot and then left with Sage. Dex tried to yell at me and blame me for his ended relationship, but I wouldn't have it. I knew that it wasn't really my fault that Amber broke up with him. If he wasn't sleeping with somebody else, there would have never been a problem.
Then, Gabby eventually convinced Dex to leave as well, and I went into my house with Zero.
Today, I go through a normal daily routine. I walk Zero to the park, do some sketching, and I call Robby. I vent to my brother about what happened yesterday, but he doesn't give me very much helpful advice. His advice for any problem that I have is to punch somebody in the face. Although I would like to punch Dex right now, I don't think that's going to solve anything.
As I'm eating lunch at my dining room table, I get another call from Dex that I easily ignore. I don't want to talk to him right now and I think that everybody just needs their space after what happened last night. I'm not interested in what he has to say—mostly because I'm afraid that I'll just start drooling over his every word again if I hear his voice. I just got out from under his spell, I'm not sure how easy it is to get pulled back in.
My phone bings again with a text while I'm eating my sandwich. I'm expecting it to be Dex or maybe Sage to give me an Amber update, but I'm surprised when the name on my phone reads 'Javier'.
He had texted me yesterday too, but I ignored it because of everything that was happening. I almost ignore it again when I stop myself to think. I had a nice night with Javier two nights ago at the bar. I should be hesitant of him because of his choice of friends, but maybe it wouldn't kill me to just text him back. Or at least see what he wants.
I've been so caught up in my infatuation with Dex that I've almost completely overlooked Javier as a legitimate crush. I couldn't stop thinking about Dex long enough to realize that he isn't the only guy that exists in the universe. What happened yesterday though, was like getting a bucket if cold water dumped on my head. I suddenly realize how ridiculous I've been acting, and how ridiculous I've been in only seeing Javier when I've been drunk.
He really is a nice guy from what I can tell so far, maybe I should give him a chance. However, the lack of Dex does not solve the issue of my debilitating lack of self confidence. I don't need a boy in my life, I just need to let it all go.
The new text from Javier starts to bug me though, like an itch that I can't scratch until I finally unlock my phone and read what he sent me.
Busy today?
It's such a simple text that is so easy to respond to. And yet, I don't. I just lock my phone and finish my sandwich because I shouldn't lead him on if I don't have the emotional capacity to date somebody.
Then again, I had thought that it could be possible when I was thinking about Dex. How come I could overcome everything that I hate about myself just for some asshole who has pretty eyes, but I still can't think of being with Javier? He's never given me a reason to dislike him. Just because his eyes aren't so blue? Or that he doesn't have so many mysteries? Those are good things, they shouldn't make me not want to be with him.
Why can I only feel like I can give myself to somebody if they're uninterested and kind of awful?
I should give Javier a chance and just see where it goes. If I get uncomfortable, I'll leave and I don't think that he'll give me a hard time for that.
Feeling irritated at myself for making bad decisions, I get my phone again and respond to Javier's text.
Nope, not busy
I almost told him that I am busy, but I figure that I should give this a chance. If Sage, Amber, Dex, and everybody else can have a life then maybe I should try too. The closest thing that I've had to doing something interesting over this summer is pining over Dex, who was dating two girls at once and already in love. I've done nothing else. Not even just this summer, I never let myself do anything exciting because I'm always so afraid of what people will think.
Everybody is as fucked up as me though, and we're all in this together. I shouldn't be so hard on myself all of the time and just relax. I should go hang out with Javier if that's what I want to do, and it is. I shouldn't let people like Dex walk all over me just because he's charismatic and handsome.
Once I'm in my room, I decide to jump in the shower before I leave the house. I clean up, make sure that my legs and pits are shaved, but I don't wash my hair. I washed it yesterday and it looks good.
When I get out of the shower, I notice that Javier has texted me back. Dex has also called again. I ignore that, and the voicemail that he left, and read Javier's new text.
You should come over
And then under that, he adds his address. I don't have the car because my dad took it to work, but the street that he lives on is only about a mile away and not a terrible walk.
I go over to my dresser to get dressed but I stop when I realize that I have absolutely no idea what to wear. Or what I'm doing at all. I'm in way over my head right now, and I can't call Sage for help because she's with Amber right now trying to help her through her breakup.
It'd be really awful of me to call Sage away from Amber, who I've already hurt and is going through this terrible breakup. I'll have to figure this out on my own.
I'm not sure what our relationship is, or what we're going to do when I go over there. Is he going to try to kiss me? Am I going to let him kiss me? Or are we just going to hang out as friends? We might not even be friends—he might have only said that I should come over so that he could yell at me for pissing off Dex.
I plan for the situation that we're hanging out as more than friends, and decide to dress nicely. I'm not sure how far I'd be willing to take things once I get there, so I wear my nicest underwear. Just in case.
Once I've got my underwear on, I look in the mirror and I take a deep breath. I'm obviously not perfect, but my flaws don't seem so bad anymore. Not now that I realize that everybody has their flaws. Even if they might not be physical flaws, nobody else is better than me just because I've got thick thighs. If Dex can parade around like a perfect mystery man, then I can get over my flaws and have some faith in myself.
As the great Hannah Montana once said: Nobody's perfect.
I put on my blue maxi skirt with some sandals and the white blouse that I'd bought for the carnival, because it has some nice cleavage. Especially with this bra, my boobs look pretty great.
I have no idea what I'm doing, but I feel like whatever it is, it sure as hell beats staying here in my house all day avoiding calls from Dex.
I walk all the way to Javier's house, but it takes me a bit longer than it should have because every two minutes, I second guess myself and turn around to walk back home. I eventually convince myself enough times to get all the way to his front door. My heart is pounding because I'm so nervous. Even if we're just going to hang out as friends, that makes me nervous. Especially if he isn't the only one in his house. What if there's a group of us hanging out? What if Tyson and Dex are here?
When I was at home and this was just hypothetical, I thought that it was a good idea, but now that I'm here... I feel like I've just swallowed my heart and it's stuck in my throat.
Even with all of my nerves, I get myself to walk up to his front door and I knock a few times. Waiting for him to answer the door is excruciating, but when he finally does, I'm relieved.
"Hey," He greets me with a smile. "You look nice. Come on in."
"Is anybody else here?" I ask hesitantly before going inside. I'm still wary that this might be a ploy by Dex to get me to talk to him after what happened last night.
"Nope. Are you worried about Dex? I heard about what happened yesterday," He wonders. Since nobody else is here, I comfortably step into the house and he shuts the door behind me.
"He's been calling me nonstop all morning," I mumble. "Did you know what he was doing?"
"No, not until he stopped by earlier today and filled me in," He explains. "It's pretty awful, but not surprising. He's just... you know, he's Dex."
"Yeah, it's awful. It was awful of me to cover for him for so long too," I sigh.
"No, it wasn't," He assures me. "You were just trying to be a good friend."
"To the wrong person."
"The important thing is that you did the right thing. Even if it took you some time, you did it. I think that it was really brave of you, because you probably knew that Amber would be pissed at you. But you still did the right thing, you shouldn't feel bad," Javier tells me. "Anyway, are you hungry?"
"No, I already ate," I remain standing near the entrance of the nice house because I don't know where I should go. I'm not sure what he has planned. I know how to just hang out with a person. I've been hanging out with Sage since kindergarten, we can just sit down and talk to each other or watch movies and it's totally comfortable.
I don't know if this is weird for me because I don't know him very well or because I've hit on him twice now in my drunken hazes. Either way, I'm feeling awkward and I'm not sure what to do.
"Okay, well we can stay down here and watch TV. Or we can go upstairs and watch TV. Or whatever you want to do, I'm okay with," He promises me. He's talking really fast, which makes me believe that maybe he's nervous too. I feel a bit relieved to know that he's nervous too.
"You like video games, don't you?" I get an idea when I remember that the first time I met him, he was in Tyson's basement playing video games. "I can play Destiny, but that's it."
"Sure, I have Destiny," He confirms, motioning toward the stairs. "My Xbox is upstairs in my room though."
"That's okay," I decide, appreciating how hesitant he is to get me up into his room. I assume that's because he knows how nervous I am around him, and anybody else. And he doesn't want to make me feel like he's pressuring me into a situation. He's a really sweet guy. "Robby and Sage taught me how to play, but it's been a while. I think that I can still kick your ass."
"I can appreciate your confidence, Yaz, but you're completely wrong," Javier jokes as he leads me up the carpeted stairs. When we get into his room, I'm surprised at how clean it looks. All of his laundry is stuffed into a white hamper in the corner, his bed is made with a gray comforter, and his dresser is clean except for a smoking bowl and some weed on the corner of the dresser. I wonder if the room is so clean all of the time, or if he cleaned when he asked me to come over.
"Go ahead and have a seat, I'll have to dig out the game," He instructs me. There aren't any chairs or anything, so I sit down on the edge of his bed while he looks through his shelf of video games that stands right beside his TV.
As he's searching for the game, my phone starts ringing again. The caller ID says that it's Dex calling again, so I just push the 'ignore' button and sit my phone down again.
"What do you think Dex wants to talk to you about?" Javier asks me curiously.
"I have no idea. I don't think that it's to apologize, I just think that he wants to yell at me for telling Amber about this other girl that he's been hooking up with. I don't think that he has a remorseful bone in his stupid body," I mutter bitterly.
"That's probably true. That's Dex for you," He says with a shrug.
"That's not an excuse," I tell Javier. "Excusing all of his ridiculous behavior by just saying 'well, that's just Dex' is like saying 'sure, he killed millions of people but that's just Hitler so whatcha gonna do?' He still should be held accountable for his harmful bullshit."
"Okay, yeah, you're right," He agrees with me. "He's kind of self absorbed, and he can be an asshole."
"Why are you friends with him then?"
Javier shrugs again, continuing to search for the one video game that I know how to play. "I don't know, there's not much else to do around here. Hanging out with him is always an adventure. He just does whatever he wants, and if we follow him, it basically gives us an excuse to do whatever we want. Not that I want to do everything that he does. I would never do what he did to Amber, or anything like that."
He's so freaking cute.
"Here it is," He finds the video game on his shelf and then opens the case to put it in the Xbox console that sits beside his TV. "Are you ready to get absolutely destroyed?"
"That's irrelevant, because I will not be getting destroyed," I inform him calmly. He grabs the two controllers from beside the TV and hands me one of them before sitting down beside me on the bed. "But you might want to prepare yourself for your humiliating fate."
He laughs and starts the game, looking confident that he'll be able to take me down. I don't know how good he is at this game, but I'm not as confident as I may seem. When I played with Robby and sometimes Sage, I was mediocre at best. I enjoyed playing it though, so I played a lot and I know all of the controls.
I'm just hoping that maybe Javier isn't that familiar with the game and isn't great at it either. Or maybe he'll let me win just to be nice. No matter what happens during the game though, I'm glad that I came over. With everything that happened yesterday, I definitely need something to just distract me from it all.
"How adorable," He teases me as the game starts up and we go through the opening sequences before the game actually begins.
"Yes, I am adorable, thank you for noticing," I joke right back, trying to get myself to relax by just pretending like I'm talking to Sage. Javier is really nice, so it's easy to relax around him, but it's going to take me at least ten or fifteen more minutes around him before I can fully relax and stop worrying about what to say or do. I just have to fake it until I make it.
When the game starts, I focus on kicking Javier's ass and less on the trash talk because I need to stay focused. I mess up a lot because it really has been a long time since I've played this game, but Javier seems to be doing really well with it. Maybe Robby let me win when we played because I thought that I was better at it than I really am.
"You have three seconds," Javier informs me as I'm hanging on my last leg. "Any last words?"
"You suck," I answer him just before my character dies and the game is over.
"At least you tried your best," He offers me with a short laugh in a teasingly condescending tone. "Want a rematch?"
"Yeah, I'm sure that I'll win eventually," I decide with a short sigh as Javier restarts the game. Just before we start playing though, his phone starts ringing.
"Sorry, I'm going to get this really quick," Javier apologizes and then answers his phone. He answers in Spanish, so the only word that I recognize is 'hola' but then everything else is gibberish to me.
I just sit there and awkwardly wait for him to finish his conversation but thankfully, it doesn't take too long. He hangs up his cell phone and then tells me, "That was my mom, she's bringing home dinner. You should stay, she always orders too much."
"Right now? It's two o'clock," I look at my phone to see what time it is.
"No, she'll be home around eight. She's a nurse and she's working a double, so it'll be kind of late. If you have other plans, that's fine. I know that you probably don't want to spend all day here," He explains to me.
"I don't have other plans," I say quickly. "I would love to stay. Thanks."
"Okay, good. And she speaks English, so you don't have to worry about us speaking Spanish through dinner," He adds. That's a huge relief because I would be so lost in a conversation that I don't understand.
"Does she know that I'm here?" I ask him slowly.
"Yeah, I told her," He confirms. "And she's okay with it. I've got a brother, but he just moved out for college last year, so she's still used to ordering enough food for three people anyway."
I would love to know what he told his mother about me. Did he just say that he had a friend over? I didn't hear him say my name or anything, so what exactly did he tell his mother about me?
Note to self: learn Spanish.
"Alright," I turn back toward the TV to restart the video game. "Let's get back to it before I lose my mojo."
"I don't think that you ever had mojo, Yaz," Javier tells me with a light laugh.
"I was getting there," I explain to him sheepishly. He starts a new game and I really try to focus this time so that I can at least phase him a little bit before dying. Sage is really good at video games, maybe I'll have her train me some more so that I can beat him at these games. I know that Sage is better than Javier at one of the shooting games because I saw her beat him at one before.
I then realize that I'm planning ahead, like this is going to happen a lot. I'm having a good time just sitting here and hanging out with Javier, avoiding all of my problems that wait for me outside of this house. I hope that it does happen again. And if it does, I want to be able to beat him.
I know that he's going to win again almost immediately after the game starts, because I quickly start getting attacked but I'm terrible at aiming, so I can't respond with an attack.
"Are you even trying?" Javier teases me.
I don't dignify his question with an answer, and I just keep playing. Until my health is almost gone, and I'm going to die again. In a last attempt to not lose this round, I reach over and try to grab Javier's controller.
"Okay, that's definitely cheating," He accurses me, but he doesn't let go of the controller in his hand.
"No, it's not," I deny with a short laugh. "It's not my fault that you can't play without distractions."
I tug on the controller again, but he still doesn't let go. And he's still winning. After I try to pull one more time at the controller to get it away from him, we end up tumbling back onto the bed. In an attempt save his controller, he pulls it away from me but because I don't let go, it effectively causes me to fall on top of him.
I sit up to get off of him but before I move, I notice that his eyes are fixated on my chest. I feel proud, knowing that I wore my best bra and my best cleavage shirt. I'm glad that it has paid off. I don't know what happened to me in the past 24 hours that has made me not care so much about my body, but I feel completely calm. And a little bit turned on.
Realizing that even the perfect people of the world have their flaws, maybe that really has made me okay with my body. I guess I'm about to find out.
"Um," Javier clears his throat, still looking at my cleavage. Because I'm basically straddling him, my boobs are kind of right in front of his face. "Okay. You win."
He drops his controller.
Thinking fast, I grab his controller and then sit back up to finish him. Using my controller, I am able to target him on the screen and shoot him dead. Since he doesn't have his controller, he can't shoot me back at all, so I quickly win the game.
"That was easy," I say in a gloating manner. Even though I know that it doesn't actually count, it feels good. Looking over at Javier, I see that he's still laying on his back, looking up at the ceiling now as if my boobs have broken him. It makes me laugh a little bit.
I put the controllers on the ground by the bed and then lay back beside him, so that we're both staring up at the ceiling.
"When I was sixteen, I was really good at that game," I promise him. "I demand a rematch in a week so that I can hone my skills again. I think that I can really beat you without using boob warfare if I get some time to practice."
"I actually prefer it with the boob warfare," Javier tells me, looking over at me with a charming little smile on his face.
He makes me blush a little bit. "It's too easy."
"I'm okay with that," He promises me.
I just laugh a little bit and feel my breaths getting shallower because of how close together our faces are on the bed right now. I can hear his breaths. I'm waiting for him to kiss me, but he never does.
Instead, he says, "At the bar, I told you how I felt. You said that you'd let me know when you figured out how you felt too. It's your move."
"I just put my boobs in your face, was that not a move?" I ask him even though I'm just joking because I didn't really do that on purpose.
He laughs just to amuse me, but he doesn't respond because he's waiting for a serious answer. I wasn't sure if I liked him or not back at the bar, but I'm having a really great time today with him, and I really want to kiss him right now. I'm not sure how long this surge of self confidence will last, so if I'm ever going to do this, I need to do it now.
I know that I have to do something, and I have to do it now. So without thinking about it any longer, I lean toward Javier, and I kiss him. I'm not sure exactly how to kiss somebody other than just a peck on the lips, which makes me nervous. Luckily, once our lips are touching, Javier takes control and slowly opens my mouth with his own.
I'm paranoid that I'll be terrible at kissing and my hands are clenched because I'm so nervous. He knows that I'm completely inexperienced because of all of my drunken rambling, so he shouldn't be expecting much, but it still makes me nervous.
Javier pulls away from me after a moment and asks, "Are you okay?" So he can obviously tell how anxious I've become.
"Just nervous is all," I admit to him slowly. "I've never done this."
He props himself up on one elbow so that he's resting on his side and can hover over me to look into my eyes. With his other hand, he reaches over to move some hair out of my face. "Don't worry about that. I won't push you to do anything that you don't want to do."
"It's not that I don't want to do it," I say before swallowing the lump in my throat and continuing. "I just think that I'm going to be bad at it."
My entire face goes red and I'm moments away from just getting up and leaving because I'm so embarrassed at what I just said. There's a reason that I've never been with anybody before other than my lack of self-confidence—I can't talk to people without just feeling embarrassed.
"Don't worry about that either," Havier assures me quickly before I can talk myself out of staying. "It's not about being good or bad, it's about fitting together. Do you think that we fit together?"
I'd been nervously chewing on my lip, so I release it from between my teeth and answer him with a quiet, "Yes."
"Good. So just relax."
"Okay."
He leans over me and starts kissing me again.
I'm still feeling anxious, but I try harder to relax into the kiss and eventually, I really am relaxed. My fists unclench and wrap around Javier's thin body, and I start really kissing him back.
After some time just laying on his bed kissing, Javier puts his hand on my thigh and slowly starts bunching up my maxi skirt so that the hem rises up my leg. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't start to feel self-conscious again when he starts doing that, but I don't stop kissing him because my body feels like it's on fire.
I'm too preoccupied with how I'm feeling in this moment to worry about what Javier is thinking, if he's thinking about my chunky thighs or stretch marks. I don't care because I'm too busy thinking about his tongue, and my beating heart.
I wasn't expecting things to go this far today, and I wonder how far that they will end up going. According to Javier, we have the house to ourselves all day, so this can go as far as we want to take it.
Even in my hazy mind, I decide that I'm just going to go with it and if my anxiety starts to act up, I'll stop things and he'll be okay with that. Right now though, I feel comfortable and I'm okay with the fact that his hand is now up my skirt. I'm actually getting so worked up that I want his hand to go further up my skirt.
And if that continues, and I want to go further, I'm okay with that. I'm only a virgin still because I've always hated my body and didn't want anybody else to see it. I don't think that it's precious and needs to be protected, so as long as he has condoms, I think that it'd be okay to do that.
I can't imagine my anxiety being okay with going that far, but we'll see.