Page 17 of Making It Up

“A lot of what?” she asks. “Come on.”

“I just did a lot of stupid stuff and got a lot of people in trouble with me. I think that’s what frustrated your dad the most. The way I influenced other people.”

I hear her move on the couch. The springs creak and her clothes rustle against the fabric of the cushions. “Come on. What were you going to say? You got a lot of…”

Fine. Maybe if I’m just blunt she’ll stop poking. “Girls naked for the first time.”

“Oh,” she responds.

I bark out a short laugh. “You sound disappointed.”

“Well, I just assumed that. I was expecting you to say you got people arrested for the first time or taught them to pick locks or hotwire cars or something.”

“No. I didn’t teach people to do illegal things.”

“You just did the illegal things.”

“Right.”

“Interesting.”

Is it? “You just assumed I got a lot of girls naked?” I ask, not quite ready to move past that for some reason.

“Of course.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You’re exactly the guy most girls would want to lose their virginity to in high school,” she says as if it’s obvious. “The good-looking hometown bad boy. You had that dangerous edge, but you were from here, from a great family, so the girls knew you weren’t going to hurt them or anything. You were just really hot and experienced and fun and sexy. I’m sure they all talked about you. Probably said you were really good at it and treated them well. Then, of course, other girls were willing to take their clothes off for you.”

I’m staring at her despite the dark. The sweet, good girl librarian is so matter-of-fact about the fact that I was a man-whore in high school. And okay, a few years after high school. “You seem to know a lot about this.”

“I read a lot.”

“You read a lot,” I repeat.

She laughs. “Yes. Bad boys have always been appealing. Not to every woman but to a big majority.”

“I was a criminal,” I say. “Please tell me you were smarter than to go for a guy like me.”

Wait, am I trying to convince her that all of those girls were wrong? That I was a bad choice?

Yes.

I had been trouble. Not fun trouble. Not ‘oh, he drinks beer and swears and my daddy hates him so I’m going to rebel and sleep with him’. No, I had been actual trouble. I had more or less dared Scott Hansen to put me in jail. For real. I had wanted him to intervene, to stop me, to keep me from getting worse.

He hadn’t.

He’d kept giving me second chances. And third chances. And fourth.

I’d spent the night in the jail cell downtown four times. One night each. That was it. I’d never been officially arrested, despite stealing and mouthing off and putting other people in danger.

The asshole had kept saying he knew I could do better. That I had potential. That I was going to figure my shit out.

“No, I lost my virginity to Ryan Wilkins.”

I blink. Again, she’s so matter-of-fact, I have to shake my head. “Doesn’t he work at the bank?”

“Yes, he’s a loan officer. Funny thing, I actually tutored him in math,” she says.