Girls.
Sodding girls and their perky tits and midriff tops and luscious, bitable asses.
Wasn’t fair to surround a nineteen-year-old boy with their tempting bodies all the time.
Wasn’t fair to taunt and tease and flip their hair and put on lip gloss and cross their legs and smell so good when William Pratt was too much of a fucking pussy to ever get up the nerve to talk to them.
God, he really was a pussy. Nineteen, a virgin, and socially inept around women. He thought that perhaps once he was in college the girls would be so wasted and horny that they’d just fall into his lap by accident and he’d get lucky. Of course, ‘80s movies didn’t really portray college life realistically, but he could hope.
And if he was horny in high school, he didn’t have a word to describe what he was now. It was horny times a million, to the point that he’d been berating himself for jerking off seven times a day. Seven? Was that even humanly possible? Apparently so.
William needed to get laid. And more than that, he needed a girl to want to sleep with him. He’d never had that before. Never had a girlfriend. Never had someone hold his hand or kiss him or touch his penis or let him touch her tits or her vagina. God, he wanted to touch one. They were all different, according to this one book he’d read over and over again. Like snowflakes, a woman’s vagina. Oh, he had so many ideas, so many fantasies of what he would do if a girl ever gave him a chance.
First of all, and this would be essential for his success, but he would take her to a really nice restaurant. One of those places where they played violins and served fois gras or something French like that. He’d pull the chair out for her and she’d blush because no one had ever treated her like a lady before. And they’d talk about everything! He would compliment her dress, because she’d be wearing one, and she’d say how handsome he looked and how much she wanted to suck him off. They’d skip dinner because they’d both be too horny and ready to fuck and then he’d…
See, this was the part where things got foggy. Would he call a cab? Would she drive? William didn’t have a car. He had a bike. Jesus, fuck! No wonder he couldn’t get laid. What, would he hoist her up on the handlebars and fuck her? And if they somehow made it back to his place without her laughing at him, would he screw her on his trundle bed? The ugly, brass frame bed his mother gave him that was too short for him?
Would he fuck her on that, directly beneath the Millennium Falcon replica he had hanging from his ceiling? Perhaps she’d suck his cock against his shelves that were filled with books on poetry and vaginas and Wolverine. He was a real catch, all right.
And none of this would even happen to begin with because the second William opened his mouth to speak to a woman he would stutter like an invalid, blush like the virgin he was and apologize profusely for wasting their time. It’s how it had always been, since he first became a teenager.
“H-hello,” he’d managed to say to thirteen-year-old Debbie one day after school. She had nice hair and smelled like wedding cake and he knew, because he’d just been to a wedding the weekend before. Would never forget the wedding because his mother made him slick his hair back and put on a suit. But the cake was delicious and he’d had four slices.
“William,” she’d said courteously and turned to the side, trying to ignore him.
“Um…” He swallowed. “I-I-I,” he stuttered and swallowed again, feeling his cheeks grow hot. Debbie looked at him with a bored expression. “I-I-I…”
“Spit it out,” she said in irritation.
“I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone. I’m sorry.”
“Are you mental?” she’d asked seriously.
Mental? Was he…well, fuck. “N-n-n-n-no.” He cleared his throat.
She stared at him.
He blinked.
A car horn honked in the distance.
“Well, I’m off,” she’d said, right before she bounced away. William sighed in defeat.
He was a Casanova. Cary Grant. Made the ladies swoon, he did.
That’s always how it had always gone down. He’d stutter like he had a speech impediment and everyone thought he was an idiot as a result. Needless to say, it didn’t help his luck with the women.
Then his parents announced that they were moving from England to the States. William could start over if he wished. William could have another chance! Maybe American girls would be nicer to him! He was sixteen, British, a handsome little devil—his mother told him daily, so it had to be true—and he was sure to impress. With those positive thoughts in mind, he had walked up to the first girl he saw once he enrolled in school.
“H-hello.” He cleared his throat. “I-I’m W-w-w-w-w-”
Well, there was no question how that turned out. At least she didn’t call him mental. Americans had another word for that, one that didn’t sound very pretty. He’d learn that word later during gym class when he played dodge ball for the first time.
“Do you need help finding your classes?” the girl had asked him slowly, as if he needed her to enunciate each syllable so that he could understand her because he was such a fucking dumbass.
“N-n-no. Thank you,” he’d said with a sigh and turned around. He wasn’t a dumbass. He wasn’t a special-needs kid. He was reading Gravity’s Rainbow for fuck’s sake. And grasping it! The book had over four hundred characters and won the Pulitzer Prize, had been debated that it might have been “too complex and overwritten and turgid”, spoke of quantum physics and the Illuminati and conspiracy theories and squares and sex and... Would a moron read that? No, but William was a complete git around girls, much to the detriment of his already dwindling reputation.
And so, high school came and went with several embarrassing scenarios resulting in William’s failure to ever touch a girl’s privates.
But he was a college man, now. Things were going to change! He was going to meet a girl and fuck her and then meet another girl and fuck her and then he’d walk down the campus hallways like a stallion, high-fiving and low-fiving other dudes as he strutted past them, wink at girls as they swooned and fell into one another because they wanted his penis so badly. It was going to happen.
It was.
As soon as he worked up the nerve to talk to this one girl he’d had his eyes on for three months now.
After listening to his friend Wesley and finally taking his advice, William signed up for Sociology. He had no interest in Sociology as a career, but Wes told him that hot chicks took that class because it was easy. The natural response was for William to take Sociology, too.
Planet Hoth was Wesley right! This was what dreams were made of, this classroom. Girls with large breasts and small breasts and perky breasts and round breasts. Girls with fantastic asses and legs for days and shining hair and sweet-smelling perfume. If he had the money, he’d buy them all tiny harps to hold against their breasts just to complete the visual. And Sociology wasn’t hard, not even sort of. He’d get an A without even blinking, it was so easy. It left him ample opportunity to fantasize about all the girls he’d probably never have.
But this one girl…this one girl stole his heart and his loins from the very first day of class. She was tiny and bright and blonde and tan and fuck, she was perfect. She wasn’t imposing with her beauty. It was the sort of beauty that you had to seek out, that subtle perfection that only someone like William would notice, since he had a nasty habit of staring and obsessing. This girl was modest. Her attire was innocently flirtatious, as if she was still unsure about her body but knew she at least had a nice ass. He adored every inch of her. Wished he knew her name.
She was wearing a cardigan today, he noticed. Green to match her eyes. It was new, or she’d never worn it before today. And no, that wasn’t creepy that he knew her wardrobe. He just paid attention. To everything about her. Which showed he cared, not that he was obsessed or infatuated or anything.
She had on those pointy boots though, the black ones that looked a bit worn on the heel. He liked those. Once, she wore them with a skirt and he saw how high they went up her legs and the image aided many a lonely night in his bedroom. William hadn’t said a word to her and she probably didn’t even know he was there. But one day he’d work up the nerve to at least say, “H-h-h-hello.”
Fuck, he was doomed.
Boys.
Stupid boys and their broad shoulders and muscles and musky colognes and twinkling eyes and chewable lips.
It wasn’t fair to be so deceptively handsome and then turn into a complete asshole like all the rest of the fraternity brothers.
It wasn’t fair to lead a girl like Buffy Summers on and say that you love her and then screw some skank over a beer keg and take pictures of it because you were drunk and then totally say that it never happened! Whatever! Everyone saw the pictures, so why did Adam insist on denying it?
God, Buffy was either a total pushover or she just had the worst luck with men. They were always screwing her over, usually right after they tried screwing her, and she was sick of it. High school was over and she could start anew with men, not boys. Men who were intellectual and cared about society and the economy and recycling. Men who wore messenger bags and drank lattes and didn’t shave every day because they were ruggedly handsome. Men who would talk about poetry and Plato and politics and maybe even in that order! Men who would challenge her to learn new things, to think outside the box she’d been living in for eighteen years.
She didn’t want to be the dumb cheerleader any more.
She didn’t want to be the popular girl with nothing to offer except lots of friends. Friends that magically disappeared the day after high school graduation.
She wanted to do something with her life. See the world. Try new things. Fall in love and go spelunking. She didn’t know what spelunking was, but it sounded fun and she wanted to do it.
And this new guy, Parker, said that one day they would go together.
God, he was dreamy. He was smart and said smart things and talked about his feelings and had incredible bone structure and skin and held her hand when he talked about his dad, who’d just died apparently, poor thing. He was so different from the guys she usually dated, guys like Adam.
The guys who liked her in high school were football players and jocks; big guys with even bigger egos and not one of them lasted more than a week. She’d fallen for a few of them, but they were only after one thing and one thing only: screwing the head cheerleader.
So, ok…she might have fucked two of them. And they might have been the worst sexual experiences she’d ever had, but she wanted to know what the fuss was about. And…she was in love with them.
But of course, after they got what they wanted from her, the relationship ended. She was left to watch them high-five one another in the hallways because they’d Bagged Buffy and she would run to the bathroom to cry.
But Parker was different.
They’d been together a whole two weeks and they’d only kissed a few times. That was it! He didn’t try to do anything more. He wanted to talk about her classes and her interests. He looked at her with those smoldering eyes and long lashes of his and made her heart pitter-patter and maybe college was going to kick serious ass!
They’d first met at a coffee shop, one she’d started visiting more often in the hopes of meeting one of the good guys. Parker strolled over to her table, took a bite of her biscotti and sat down across from her without asking and her mouth dropped open.
“You’re the girl of my dreams,” he’d said with twinkling eyes.
“I am?”
“I feel it.” And he touched his chest. “I feel it.”
God, she’d died and gone to hottie heaven because this boy, no, this man was rewriting the mental list of wants and needs in her head. Parker was smart and introspective and said words like posthumously and existentialism and had a fantastic ass. He wrote poems, so he said, but he’d yet to show her any. It only made him more mysterious!
She oftentimes felt as if she wasn’t smart enough for him, though. He seemed irritated that she wasn’t able to offer anything of use to their conversations, or that he had something else he’d rather be doing. So she made note of things he mentioned so that she could study them later. So that maybe she wouldn’t seem like an idiot. So that maybe he’d like her more.
But that was silly to even think about because of course he liked her! He said she was the girl of his dreams and really, she was being selfish because he was dealing with the death of his father. Maybe he was just really deep and she couldn’t grasp the types of thoughts in his head.
He was intimidating.
And it wasn’t like she was stupid…she just…y’know…had a sort of magazine knowledge of things. If it was in People, she knew about it. Buffy was trying, though. She’d been given a copy of Chicken Soup for the Sou for her last birthday and she was already halfway through with it!
And she really liked poetry. Sometimes it was hard to grasp the symbolism of certain words, but luckily, her creative writing class was teaching her how to analyze poems and understand that sometimes less is more and all that stuff.
But Parker knew all kinds of things that she wished he’d go into more detail about. Maybe he didn’t think she’d get it. But she was a sponge! If she paid attention, she could be very insightful and say very clever things.
However, that was another curious thing about Parker. He didn’t get her jokes. At all. He’d just sort of smile at her and change the subject to something about his life. She let it slide, though. Dead dad and all that.
She just wished he had a bit more confidence in her ability to learn and contribute and engage in conversation. He’d pat her on the hand and tell her how pretty she was and kiss her on the cheek. It was starting to piss her off.
But Parker was perfect and going through life changes and she should cut him some more slack.
It was just hard to focus on her relationship with Parker when there was this guy in her Sociology class that she was dying to talk to. He wasn’t like, totally hot or anything, but he was cute. Kinda. Ok, so she hadn’t looked at his face long enough to tell but he was so smart! He always knew the answers to questions when the professor called on him in class and he’d interject and say really smart things without even having to look at his notes or anything! It’s like he just opened his mouth and smartness poured out of it.
And he had this Hugh Grant voice that made her shiver.
But he was so quiet and the few times she turned to look at him, he’d be in the middle of doing something. Writing or reading or sleeping. When he was sleeping though, she could actually look at him. She really wished he’d cut those floppy blond curls of his, though. They were always hanging in his face, shielding his eyes and features to the point that she really had no idea what he looked like. He had a nice chin. And a nice mouth. That much she knew. And it was clear that he got haircuts because the back and sides of his hair were neatly trimmed. It was as if he left the curly bangs on purpose! Just to spite her! To keep her from seeing!
But it’s not like she’d talk to him anyway, because she had Parker. And mystery guy from Sociology wore Dockers and tucked in his shirts and was probably too smart to be interested in her.
Maybe she’d talk to him, though. Where was the harm in that? If he was a jerk then she could let it go. But what if he wasn’t? What if mystery guy was the one to take her spelunking?
What if she hated spelunking? Why didn’t anyone tell her that college would be so hard?