Summer After Summer

“Holy cow! I’ve got boobs.” Did I ever! They were falling out of the top of the dress for God and everyone to see. As short as the skirt was, it looked like my legs went on forever.

The problem was that Bunny’s little dress barely covered the essentials. I didn’t know whether to pull it up or pull it down. As for the rest of it, Bunny was right. I was gorgeous. Could I possibly be a swan?

“Your parents would have a cow if they could see you. You are one bitchin’ chick!” Bunny exclaimed.

She was right. Mama and Daddy would stroke out if they set eyes on me. I loved them dearly, really I did, but being a good girl was tiresome sometimes. I sympathized wholeheartedly with all the preachers’ kids I knew. Living in a fishbowl was hell.

“It shouldn’t take long for your transformation to hit the grapevine.” Bunny giggled, then went into her Captain Bligh impersonation. “Don’t touch a hair on your head. I’ll get dressed and we’ll get rolling.”

When Bunny was right, she was right. Being a foxy mama was quite a high. What was Charlie going to say? And why did I care? Could it be because I was obsessed with someone I couldn’t have?

Conversation ceased when we walked into the party. Guys I’d known since kindergarten stared at me, their mouths hanging open. Pretty cool, huh?

I was reveling in my new state of glamour when Charlie showed up.

“Hey, Sunshine. You’re looking mighty good,” he said, putting his arm around Bunny’s waist. It wasn’t a bad reaction, but it wasn’t especially good, either. What did I think he was going to do, ditch Bunny and declare his undying love for me?

Get real.

I’d driven to the party with Bunny, so I hoped I wouldn’t have to hitch a ride home. That was getting old. And seeing her with Charlie was even more depressing.

“Jazzy, I’m glad you came. I’ve been waiting for you.” Petey grabbed my hand and pulled me across the room. He was the only guy who was immune to my new attractions. The whole sexy thing was fun, but normalcy was good, too.

“I’ve got someone I want you to meet. My cousin is here from Dallas. I told you about him, remember?” Petey kept tugging on my hand. I could have easily pulled him to a halt, but everyone was staring. So I went into docile mode and followed him.

Petey halted in front of the most gorgeous guy I’d ever clapped eyes on. This person was related to Petey— band-geek Petey?

The hunk had dark hair and ice-blue eyes. Oh, wow, was that a deadly combo.

“Jazzy, this is my cousin Clint Whitworth. Clint’s going to be a sophomore at Southern Methodist.”

Only Petey would call SMU Southern Methodist.

“Clint, this is my friend Jazzy.” Petey was grinning as if he’d just won a jackpot. “Her name is really Jasmine but we all call her Jazzy,” he explained, and continued to stare at us as if he was expecting something exciting to happen.

“Miss Jasmine, you are beautiful,” the Adonis said, taking my hand and kissing my palm.

I was almost afraid I’d faint dead away. I didn’t know whether the dizziness came from lust or the waist-cincher that was restricting my blood flow.

“Let’s find a quiet place to get to know each other.” Clint guided me through the crowd to the pool, where we sat in lounge chairs and talked. We interrupted our conversation only to raid the buffet and dangle our feet in the water. It seemed we had everything in common. We enjoyed the same music, books, school subjects, and we even saw eye to eye on politics.

Clint told me he’d just finished his freshman year and that he planned to go to law school. When I explained I wanted to be an architect, he didn’t laugh. I even confided that I’d been drawing houses since I was in elementary school. Very few people were privy to the information that I got off on the idea of designing homes.

Although it was the 1970s, male chauvinism was alive and well in Meadow Lake, and women were not encouraged to step outside the few professions deemed acceptable. Even the school counselors said I should reconsider my choice. What did they know?

Clint, however, said he thought it was a great idea. And that alone sent him to the top of my favorite-people list.

This newfound comradeship was very cool. It felt like I’d known him forever. Petey grinned like a kid in a candy store every time he looked at us. Discretion wasn’t exactly his middle name.

“Cousin Petey is a matchmaker,” Clint said. “He’s been trying to introduce us for over a year. He claims we’re made for each other.”

“Really?” Sounds lame, I know, but what else could I say to his comment?

“Yeah, imagine that.”

What did that mean?

I glanced around and didn’t see either Charlie or Bunny. Darn it! “This has been great, it really has, but it looks like Bunny went off with Charlie so I need to hit up someone for a ride home.” I wasn’t hinting for him to take me home, honestly I wasn’t. Uh-uh.

“I’ll take you whenever you’re ready to go.”

I hated to admit my social shortcomings to a college guy, especially one with Paul Newman eyes. “Midnight is my curfew,” I finally admitted, although it took a few false starts for me to get it out.

“Oh.” Although he looked a bit nonplussed, he recovered quickly. “I’ll tell Petey we’re going.”

And that’s how we ended up parked out by the river in his new Datsun 240Z.

“Petey showed me this place. I thought since we had half an hour to kill, we could talk.”

If that was his euphemism for necking, it seemed like a great idea to me. I couldn’t think of anything I’d like better than to get into a good lip-lock with him. Obviously Charlie would be my first preference, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now, not ever.

“Sure,” I said.

So there we were, sitting in the moonlight with the cicadas creating their own brand of soft music. It was romance at its best—if you discounted the damned stick shift between us. I leaned my head back against the soft leather seat and fantasized about what would happen next.

Guess what? Nothing happened, because Clint kept yakking on and on about freshman English.

Freshmen English! I was about to melt into a puddle of hormonal angst and he was analyzing Hemingway?

Enough was enough. If he wasn’t going to make the first move I’d have to take matters into my own hands.

Ignoring everything ladylike that Mama had tried to drill into my head, I launched myself at him.

It took about half a second to realize I’d made a terrible mistake.

As a virgin I wasn’t familiar with erotic sounds; however, even I knew that a yelp wasn’t a harbinger of lust.

After he disentangled our body parts, he planted a kiss on my forehead. Nope, that definitely wasn’t lust.

“Um, Jaz, um, there’s something I need to tell you.”

If it was possible to die from embarrassment, I was about to expire on the spot. By that time I had managed to wiggle back into my seat. Something was drastically wrong.

“What?”

He sighed as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner.”

Oh, my God, he thought I was too skinny, or maybe he thought I was butt-ugly. Or worse, I had a stray piece of spinach in my teeth.