Page 27 of Up In Flames

“It’s not a curse. I’m talking about the action, the verb. Different thing, and don’t change the subject. You didn’t fuck them?”

Her smile drops. “No. Plus, they may have been dirtbags, but they weren’t rapists. No one tried to hold me there against my will.”

And just like that, the images my mind has conjured of her sleeping with the two burly football players pops. I tortured myself for years imagining how it went down. To find out that nothing happened leaves me feeling woozy.

“In fact,” she adds, “I was so turned off, I didn’t lose my virginity until my second year of college, and then to a very nice, very boring guy named Miles. The rest is none of your fucking business.”

“Language.” I utter the rebuke without thinking, because the unbearable lightness I feel is so overwhelming, I can’t quite get my head around it. She didn’t fuck them. I stopped her from making a mistake by walking in on them.

“Not really relevant, don’t you think?”

“Foul language? Always relevant. Do you believe in fate, Nina?”

“Mostly. Why?”

I try to find the words to explain what I’m feeling, and why it matters. “Because my entire life, I’ve always seen interweave and… patterns. Synchronicity of events that lead to one perfect outcome. Like this one. Do you know why I was even in the locker room that day? At that time?”

She shakes her head. Of course she doesn’t.

“Because I was looking for Bruce. The math teacher gave me his test back by mistake. I was halfway home before I realized that the essay answers I was reviewing weren’t mine, so I retraced my steps, intending to switch papers with him. He was known to hang out with his… teammates… in the locker room.”

“Meaning?” Of course, she picks up on my hesitation.

I don’t know whether giving her the truth will pour gasoline on a fire, but truth is always important. For us, at this middling point of what has been a terrible relationship, I think she deserves honesty. Plus, I have the feeling she’s going to be important to me. I hope I’m not wrong.

At least she can hit me again if she doesn’t like what I have to say. “Meaning, Chris and Bruce were known to share girls, and not just with each other. Once they got bored with a girl, the whole team got a crack at her. Perk of being on the football squad.”

“What?” She blinks at me, her eyes rounded.

“I don’t know if the girls at school knew what was going on, but all the guys sure did. Plus, those two meatheads always went for virgins. They liked to initiate them.” I shuffle back a bit, while I wait for my words to settle.

It doesn’t take long. “Seriously? Fuuucccckkkk.” She draws the word out like it’s unfurling taffy.

I wait for it to snap before I continue. “I guess I thought…”

“What? That I did the whole team?”

It’s my turn to shrug. “I didn’t know if it was your first time with the guys, or your fiftieth. I tried not to think about it at all, though I couldn’t help realizing that you’d fuck everyone except me.” My voice drips with acid edges. I have to swallow hard to rinse away the poison taste. “But let’s get one thing very clear.”

“Just one?”

And there it is, that strand of light inside her that used to make me crazy. She was always like that, turning dismal to joyful. I used to watch her, my eyes drawn her way whenever we happened to be in the same vicinity. She had a way of making tragedy seem humorous, like her father’s affairs, and her mother’s responses. She didn’t talk to me about them, but she would joke to her friends.

“Yeah, just one, but an important one. I never looked at you and thought you were trash. Not really.”

Her expression twists. “Sampson, I saw you.”

“You saw me, yeah. And the moment you did, you started cursing me out, yelling at me to get the fuck out of the locker room and leave you to the real men. What you saw was me… feeling like I was about an inch tall. What you saw was me reacting to you telling me that I wasn’t good enough to touch you, and I guess I did glare at you funny after that, and think terrible thoughts about you whenever our paths would cross, but only because I was… hurt. Devastated. Wounded like a wild animal, you might say.”

“Wait.” She sits up straighter and turns to face me more directly. “Let me get this straight. You’ve hated me all these years because you thought that I thought you weren’t good enough to fuck, and I hated you all these years because I thought that you thought I wasn’t? But really, we just… we hated ourselves for feeling inadequate?”

I shrug. “That seems to be the gist of it, yeah. More or less.”

For a few moments, we just stare at each other, then she laughs. “That’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Nope. Not the most, though close.” I take a deep breath before admitting the hardest part. And I think I’m no coward? Please. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do—but there’s no part of me that wants to stay silent. “And,” I add softly, “the reason that I took your rejection so seriously was because I’d had a crush on you ever since I saw you wearing that light pink swimsuit at the pool. The one with all the ruffles? You sat at the edge of the water, your feet kicking swirls, totally oblivious to the world around you. You were so pretty in the sunlight, you looked just like a real angel. And I fell. Hard.”

I watch her trying to process my words. Odd, how emotions from teenage years seem so hard to deal with even as an adult. I could admit feelings for anyone now, but feelings from then come harder.