think he was wrong to just walk away and leave you at the door like that, but you know, you did give him a nosebleed. You know how guys are—they hate to look weak in front of us. So I think you should forgive him and see how he behaves at school. If he's cold to you, then screw him (not literally, of course). If he apologizes like he should, you can gracefully accept his apology and then you've got him by the short and curlies. It works with Vance!
Well, I ended up talking to Bess. You know how she's always yammering on about empowering my inner self and not letting boys treat me like a doormat and all that feminist stuff, which is OK, but this wasn't about that. At least I didn't think it was. Anyway, it was her or Mom, and Mom is so old she just doesn't have a clue about what it's like to be our age. At least Bess was sixteen a couple of years ago. So anyway, Bess came in to borrow my red shawl, the one everyone loves, and she noticed me lying on my bed crying my eyes out.
“What's the matter, pipsqueak?” she asked as she rooted around in my wardrobe for my shawl. “Got dumped by your hottie date last night?'
I looked up from where I was sobbing into my Liam Hemsworth Fehr pillowcase (yes, I brought them, the whole set of six). “How did you know? Who told you? Does Brother know that Aidan was too drunk to drive me home, and French kissed me, and wanted me to do other things, but I didn't want to, and Fang walked me home and gave me a Pity Kiss?”
She blinked a couple of times, turned around really slowly, then closed the door to the hall and dragged a chair over to the bed. “Whoa, there. I was just teasing you, Em. No one told me anything, although if all that happened to you, I don't blame you for turning on the waterworks. You want to start at the top? Aidan got drunk? I thought he was only sixteen?”
“No, he's seventeen.” I sniffled, and wiped my nose on Liam Hemsworth (I'll wash him later). “This club didn't seem to be too particular about who they sold beer to.”
“Hmm. Did he try to drive home?”
“No, I told him I'd have Brother pick me up, so he said, 'Suit yourself,' and left me there.”
“Was that before or after he slipped you the tongue?”
I sat up. “Geez, Bess, I'm not a hooker. It wasn't like that.”
She raised both her eyebrows. If she doesn't watch out, she's going to have a Unibrow, too. “What was it like, then?”
I thought back to the cold hallway with Aidan kissing me with wet lips. “Well, he had this pouty look on his face like he thought he was being hot, only he wasn’t because his lips were wet and slicky, and...and...” I started to snicker. “It was pretty funny, actually.”
“Yeah, guys can be that way sometimes when they're trying to look sexy.”
We looked at each other and started laughing. I laughed so hard I fell off the bed, which made Bess laugh even harder.
“See, you're feeling better already. OK, so what happened then? I take it you didn't let him do anything?”
“No. You don't think I should have, do you? He seemed awful mad at me afterward, but I just didn't think it was right then. Mom always said it should be with the right person at the right time, and I don't think standing in a freezing hallway is right.”
“No, I think you did the right thing. First of all, no guy who really respects you is going to ask you to do anything on a first date. Second, he wasn't thinking about you at all. He probably just wanted to get his rocks off.”
“Geez, Bess!” I said again, kind of embarrassed with her talking like that. I mean, my family aren't prudes, but here she was talking to me about sex and stuff like it was nothing! “I didn't say anything about having sex!”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about the rest of the evening. Who's this Fang when he's at home?”
I filled her in on the whole sorry night. “Hmm,” she said again when I was through, then she stood up and went back to the wardrobe to pull