"WHOA! Whoa, Corrine!" Nick says as he squirms up against the back of his seat.
"Sorry!" I say, and jump back.
"Aren't we moving too fast?" Nick asks with a laugh. He runs his fingers through his curly locks of blond hair. He's blushing now. I'm pretty sure this is not how it's supposed to go. I feel like a complete skank for making a move on him. Maybe he's one of those nice, traditional boys who believe in waiting until after marriage to do things like kiss and hold hands.
"It just sort of happened," I explain and immediately move as far away from him. "I think I might have drunk of some Chucky's booze."
This statement is a lie. The only thing I did was drink diet coke all night. If anything, I didn't even have a sugar high to fall back on as an excuse. Sitting there with Nick in awkward silence, I wish I had drunk some of Chucky's mysterious cocktail. Then I could forget this ever happened.
We drove back to Nick's house in East Hampton without saying another word to each other. We get out of the car in awkward silence. I can't even look him in the eye. As we enter the four-bedroom house, Nick catches my hand right as I try to escape up the stairs.
"Hey, Corrine," Nick begins and stares down at his converse sneakers. "I like you a lot. . ."
"But?" I offer helpfully. At this point, I just want Nick to tell me that he's not into me so we can get this embarrassing conversation over with. His actions in the car made it very clear that he didn't enjoy having my mouth all over his.
"But, I'm not ready. I might be eventually, but not yet," Nick says. "I thought we could be friends for a while first."
"Okay, friends," I say and offer him my other hand to shake. He still refuses to meet my eyes like he's ashamed about what he had said. Maybe he is more ashamed about what he didn't say.
As I study his body language, I'm not sure if Nick really wants to be friends or if an offer of friendship is a nice way of letting me down.
Why would Nick invite me to stay at his house if he wasn't trying to get into my pants? I am so confused. I wish I had a girlfriend to discuss this with. Maybe I could post this on Reddit and ask everyone's options as to whether Nick is the asshole or I am the asshole — for thinking this weekend alone meant we were going to bump uglies together.
Oh, I can't post any of this online, not while Jake watched my every move. I can just imagine Jake's smug face right now if he knew Nick turned down my sexual advances. He'll say, "I told you so. Nick would never date a girl like you. I've seen you partially naked! You're flabby!"
"I don't want to shake your hand," Nick says with a chuckle as I continue to offer a friendly handshake. "I mean, I do want to kiss you but let's get to know each other better. Like, can we go hang out and talk about our hobbies first? I barely know anything about you."
"There's not much to know," I blurt out, barely hiding the anger in my voice. I feel like Nick is accusing me of keeping secrets from him.
Oh, let's see, there are so many secrets! There is the fact that I had sex on the beach with Jake Villin only a couple of weeks ago. Then there's the fact that I'm being stalked by either one or dozens of internet strangers. I don't know who they are or what their names are, or what they are capable of doing. Oh wait, how about the biggest secret of all? I have a whole separate identity online, one that he and his friends would laugh themselves sick at if they only knew.
"Don't say that," Nick says as he notices the tears collecting in my eyes. "I like you, Corrine, I really, really do. Let's just take it slow, okay?"
I nod because now I'm embarrassed, and I just want him to leave me alone.
"Fine. Sure. No problem."
"Are you sure it's okay?"
"Yeah, it's weird, that's all. Not like the other boys."
"What kind of boys have you been hanging out with?"
"The bad kind," I reply with a laugh. "The kind that says 'hey, nice to meet you, let's fuck.' What I mean is — you're a good guy, Nick."
Nick laughs at my joke. His dimples show, and they make me want to forgive him for squirming away from me like I had the cooties.
"You deserve a good guy, Corinne. Okay, let's call it a night for now. See you in the morning for biking into town and getting ice cream?"
"Okay," I say and pound my way upstairs. I head into the spare bedroom where I had dropped my backpack of spare clothes and textbooks. As I shut the door behind me, I lean against the door and clutch my cellphone. I consider calling Natalie to tell her that Nick is a limp-dick weirdo, but I decide to count to ten before making any rash decisions.
Maybe Nick isn't blowing me off. Maybe he just wants to get to know me first. Why is that so weird?
Is it weird because Jake humped me under the boardwalk in Coney Island just because I ate a bite of his ice cream? Maybe not all boys were like Jake Villin. I'm a sexual newbie; I don't have anyone else to compare Nick to other than Jake.
I finally turn my cell phone back on with plans to call up Natalie. I decide to tell her about all the fun I had with Ruth and the others. I'll leave out any curse words I had for Nick.
As I look down, I curse.
Oh, crap.
I have a couple of missed calls. Yeah, even though it had been only four hours since I had turned my phone off by the pool — I expected the missed prank calls and weird trolly messages from my new internet stalker.
As I had learned in the last couple of weeks, Saturday night is a big night for my stalkers. That's when they are the most bored, I guess.
The one missed call I didn't expect was from my OBGYN's office.
They even sent me a text after three missed calls.
Call us back immediately when you get this.
Oh, my God. My breath catches in my throat. I can't breathe. Am I pregnant? I can't be. Jake said that the condom didn't slip!
I immediately call the office back, and I count the seconds until they pick up. It is a Saturday night. It's 8:30 in the evening. Maybe they went home for the day. The suspense is killing me. I can't spend the rest of the weekend, not knowing if I was going to have a baby or not.
The receptionist picks up and breathes a sigh of relief that I finally called back. I can't believe she makes me confirmed my name and date of birth with her before telling me the news. I hear her pause before answering as though she's not sure how to break the bad news to me.
"Am I going to have a baby?" I demand.
"No, no, you're not," she replies, laughing.
"Then what?"
"You have HPV."
"Holy crap! How long do I have to live?"
"What?"
"Am I going to die?"
"No. No, you're not. It's prevalent in the sexually active. We'll just keep an eye on it until our next appointment. Do you have any idea where you got it from?"
"No," I lie.
Damn it, Jake Villin! I knew he was banging every girl in school. I can't believe I thought he wanted to be my boyfriend. I always thought that sleeping with the bad boy just meant he might knock you up. I never imagined there were far more gross and mundane things that you could get.
"Just be careful, especially with any new sexual partners for the time being. There's no treatment for it, but it usually goes away on its own. You don't want to spread it to anyone else through any sexual contact."
"Yeah, there's no risk of that. Thanks, though."
That's another lie. I would jump into bed with Nick at this very second if he had let me.
As I hang up, I realize that I now have a darker secret that I need to share with Nick. I have HPV. How the heck am I going to tell him about that? I need time to think. Nick was smart to make me wait. If Nick thought I was gross before, this sure as heck isn't going to help things.
It dawns on me right at that second that with one little accident with Jake — the bad boy — I had become one of the bad girls.