By three o’clock, I’m such a stress case that I call Cameron, my boy bestie, and beg him to meet me on the beach for a walk.
I plan to pick his brain about boy psychology and the chances of Derrick keeping his lips zipped, but when I see him standing by the sign warning that swimming is stupid this time of year, I realize I can’t spill the beans. I can’t burden Cam with this secret. I’ll have to carry it alone.
For some reason, that makes me teary all over again, an occurrence unusual enough that Cam pulls me in for a hug and asks, “What’s up, Lo? Why so sad? Did something happen at the party last night? Pete said it was pretty wild.”
“Nothing happened, I just…” I bite the inside of my lip, but I can’t stop a sliver of the truth from slipping out. “I just saw Derrick there, and he was a huge asshole. He made me feel like a sloppy pile of idiot shit.”
“How? And why? What did he say?” Cam asks, but I’m crying too hard to answer.
I don’t know why I’m falling apart, and I try to stop, I really do, but I can’t. Cam tries to tempt me with pizza and ice cream and finally—after driving us back to his house so I can snot all over myself in private—a shot of his mother’s vodka that he stole from the liquor cabinet. She’s at work until nine and he swears she won’t notice, but I shake my head again.
Alcohol is part of what got me into that mess last night. I plan on avoiding it—and parties where Derrick might be in attendance—for the foreseeable future.
I finally calm down and Cam and I watch old Saturday Night Live episodes until I’m smiling again, but that weird night lingers between us for weeks to come. Eventually, he must say something to Jess and Evie about it, because they ambush me after a Future Business Leaders’ meeting, Evie’s eyes wide with anxiety as she begs me to tell her what Derrick did to me and if she needs to kick him in the balls for it.
I promise her it was just his usual bossy big brother shit, but that it really hit me the wrong way all of a sudden. The lie soothes Evie’s fears while giving me a free pass to make my Derrick hatred a public matter. I start to call him Satan in front of everyone and eventually, use the name again to his face, when I bump into him after graduation in May.
I smirk at him and drone, “What’s up, Satan? Oops, kidding, don’t care,” in a bored monotone and breeze past him to find my family in the throng of well-wishers.
Years pass, and I do my best to play the field, but somehow, I can’t seem to ditch my V-Card. Not in my four years at Duke or when I move to New York to start my master’s at NYU.
I tell myself it’s bad timing or high standards or maybe a mixture of both. It’s certainly not because no man’s kiss has ever made me feel the way Derrick’s did or because some psychotic part of me is holding out hope that we might find our way back to each other someday.
I don’t want anything to do with Derrick.
I hate him like cystic acne and would rather eat a lettuce wrap covered in dog hair than kiss him again, let alone offer him my V-Card on a platter a second time. Turn me down once, shame on you. Turn me down twice, shame on me. Big shame. Huge. Like…the biggest shame ever.
Bottom line—Derrick is Satan and I have no urge to get naked with The Dark Lord of Smug and Bossy evil.
A part of me actually believes that’s true, right up until the moment, six years later, when he pins me against a wall in my New York City apartment and kisses me like he’s been fantasizing about me every bit as much as I’ve been fantasizing about him…
* * *