Girl Meets Boy Read Free

feels.”
    Whoa. She was so right I didn’t even nod.
    She put up her hands, palms out. “Don’t answer,” she said. “I know the answer to that one. And you try to make her life better. You tell her how cool she is and how good of a mom.”
    I wanted to ask her how the hell she knew that, but to tell the truth, I didn’t want to know. I have always listened to my mother’s woes for hours on end. The more she curses herself, the more I tell her how cool she is.
    “Okay, then,” she said cheerily. “I’m off for your therapy session. Wish me luck.” She stopped at the door, turned back, and shook her head slowly. “God, but you are good-looking.”
    And that was the way it went. Wanda Wickham would sit with me in the Frosty Freeze and listen to the stories of my slow parade of girlfriends since age thirteen—none of whom liked me anymore—and take them back to Rita whatever-her-name-was. I don’t remember much of her return advice, other than at one point she told me Rita said I was a very conscientious boy and it was good that I took care of my mother’s emotional pain. Had I really known anything about therapy, that line alone would have told me trouble was brewing.
    The problem was, as you might have already guessed, that I was paying less and less attention to what Wanda said to me and more and more attention to how she was dressed and what it felt like when she accidentally brushed my leg or pressed something soft against my elbow.
    She was waiting for me at the Frosty Freeze when I got there after her— our —fourth or fifth session. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” she said. “I think we’re going to have to stop this.”
    “How come?”
    “Well, I mean, what’s in it for me? What do I get out of it? Look at you. You’re going to figure out how to have a good relationship with a girl and go off and find one. Where does that leave me?” She stood up. Tears rimmed her eyes. God, I hadn’t even thought this might be hard for her. Wanda Wickham traditionally went out with guys at least four years older. Guys in the army. Guys with kids. And wives. From a heat standpoint, she was so far out of my league we were playing a different sport.
    I said, “Wait—”
    “No,” she said back. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. I didn’t think I’d … Fall in love.”
    WHAM!
    In a court of law on trial for my life, I couldn’t tell you what sequence of events took place in the following few minutes, but the next thing I remember we were kicking the windows out of my father’s 1979 Chevy pickup from the inside and I had passed up double-A ball and triple-A ball and landed in the majors.
    Wanda pulled her blouse back on and looked at me. Tears welled up. “Oh,” she said. “What have I done now?”
    “What do you mean? I think—”
    “I don’t give myself to a man unless I love him,” she said. “But I promised myself that next time I wouldn’t do it until he loved me back.”
    “Well, uh—”
    “Don’t,” she said, putting two fingers to my lips. “I know you don’t want to lie, and I don’t want to hear any more lies. This wasn’t your fault. I’ll deal with it.”
    “But—”
    “Shhh.”
    She was out of the pickup and gone.
    I didn’t see Wanda other than to pass her in the hall for almost a week. She would glance at me with a sad smile and turn away, and it scooped out my insides. The only thing I wanted more than a return engagement in the pickup was to make her feel better. Okay, maybe the pickup antics took over first place once in a while, but still, I had such a powerful urge to make her life better. Look what she had done for me. She’d befriended me, talked with me about my problems, even taken them to a professional. And she’d gone away feeling bad.
    The only things I know that increased geometrically faster than my lies in an ill-fated relationship were my late-night and early-morning small-motor calisthenics before I was able to get close to Wanda again. I have