“Bullies?” Chad asked sympathetically.
“No, just normal kids picking on each other. Imagine this lush body”—I slid my hands down my ample frame—“on a thirteen-year-old. Now add braces, a healthy sprinkling of acne, and this smart-ass mouth.”
“Recipe for junior high disaster,” Logan said.
“Yes, one that extended all through high school. Though I had friends, I certainly didn’t have any boyfriends.”
“Me, neither,” they said in tandem, making me smile.
Then my smile faded. “I’d never kissed a boy until I met Thomas.” I closed my eyes, thinking back to the first time I saw him, how beautiful he was. I was waiting outside St. Francis, the private school I attended up on Seventy-fourth. My parents had hired a driver to pick me up after school, even though by my senior year I was tugging at that leash, wanting more freedom, like all teenagers do. I’d grown up in the city and knew the subway system like the back of my hand, but families like mine didn’t let their kids travel around unattended—so I sat in the back of a town car like everyone else in my class, to and from school.
But traffic that day had slowed everything to an almost standstill, and as I waited around the corner, I saw him across the street, coming out of the park.
Tall, and a little bit on the gangly side, he was dressed in that simple carefree way that guys can get away with sometimes, open button-down, white undershirt, jeans that sat low on his hips, scuffed sneakers. It was the hipster beanie that got me. I had a soft spot for guys in those knit caps, their hair all messy and casual and sticking out from under like they’d just come from a warm bed.
He stood on one corner, and I on the other, and just like in the movies, our eyes met. And I couldn’t pull away, even though everything about me at that time in my life was looking down, or looking away, or pulling my hair lower across my face. I rarely made eye contact with anyone for long, unless I knew them well, and even then I tended to duck and cover. But there was something about this guy; I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
And then, wonder of all wonders, he actually crossed the street. Toward me! One foot in front of the other, eyes still locked with mine, and all I was aware of was that face and my heart, which was pounding in my ears. Sometime between him crossing the street at arriving at my figurative doorstep, a furtive grin crept across his face, as though he could hardly believe it himself, that this was happening, that this was occurring, that this moment was real.
“Hi,” he said.
I gulped. He grinned and made it okay, made it seem perfectly natural that someone that looked like him would be talking to someone who looked like me. I tugged at my shirt, pulling at it in that way I was always forever tugging at it, to cover, to hide, to somehow trick myself into thinking that if I had an extra half inch of cotton Lycra blend pulled down lower on my hips I’d magically be pretty, instantly be thinner, finally be less than. Because I was always more than enough, and not in the good way.
He started to walk with me, not away from me, and I started to walk with him, somehow sensing that I was supposed to do that, that this beautiful guy actually wanted to walk with me.
We walked a block. Another block. By the third block, I’d said hello. By the fourth block, I knew his name. Thomas. By the sixth block, I knew he was a student at NYU, had just come from meeting some friends in the park, and did I want a Frappuccino? He knew my name, that I was a senior, that I didn’t live in the neighborhood but lived downtown, and that yes, I’d love a Frappuccino.
By the time my driver called my phone for the fourth time, in a panic over what my father would do to him if he didn’t pick me up immediately, I was over the moon.
As I climbed into my town car, he’d caught the edge of my shirt, tugging me back slightly. “I’d really love to call you sometime. Would that be okay? Natalie?”
He’d said my name like he was happy to know it. And as I nodded, still not quite believing this was happening, he slipped my phone out of my back pocket and quickly dialed his own number.
“Save that number, okay? That way, you’ll know it’s me calling.” And he pushed my phone back into my pocket, slowly and deliberately, as though it was his hand caressing my too-big behind. Too big for pretty clothes, too big for the old wooden desks in the oldest part of the school, too big for anything other than ridicule and shame . . . Never a part of my body that was beautiful, or desirable.