Maria didn’t say a word. She looked concerned, but receptive. I remember feeling so relieved. I suppose, in retrospect, that I should have opened up to her more that day, and more often in general. Maybe had I done that, Maria and I would’ve stayed together. Maybe, Mom, you and I would’ve become friends…
…maybe I wouldn’t be writing this letter.
“Who installed those mirrors?” I asked sharply, still angry at my stupid mother.
“Me and my mother did, just last month.”
“Holy cow,” I said, “I didn’t think a girl could do that.” I didn’t mean to offend her, but I think it came out that way. “I mean—”
She cut me off. “Well, me and my mom fix everything that breaks around here, and we install all the stuff. Like that table over there,” she said, pointing to a handsome oak dining room set. “Me and my mother put that together. Mostly me, actually.”
I was impressed. What a louse her father was. I decided right then and there to show her what a real man was—gentle and strong, hard-working and industrious. Maria is a tough little girl, I thought. Stronger than me.
We continued to watch TV, occasionally chatting. As usual, the conversation was great. Maria was unlike most girls because she actually paid attention to what I said, and then responded intelligently, continuing the conversation. A good conversation can last a lifetime.
A recruitment commercial for the U. S. Air Force came on TV. It showed a quintet of F-14’s dashing through the sky. “That’s amazing,” Maria said. “How do those things fly?”
I wasn’t sure if she was asking rhetorically, and was too nervous to ask. “It’s very simple, really, it all has to do with Newton’s third law of motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The way a jet rocket works is simple: the engine creates a high velocity blast of air and blows it out the tail end of the plane in an appropriately sized nozzle. This is what thrusts the plane and the rocket forward.”
Maria was listening intently, so I just continued.
“Man had never flown until December 17, 1903, when the Wright brothers took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But modern flight didn’t begin until Goddard helped perfect the rocket, which had been worked on for centuries beforehand unsuccessfully. Most people don’t know that the first rocket-propelled ‘jet’ took off from Germany in 1928, twenty-five years after the Wright brothers’ first flight.
As I explained all of this to her, she seemed truly interested. That’s what I loved about her.
“You’re so freakin’ smart!” she exclaimed. And then the funniest thing happened: we both started to giggle uncontrollably.
Five minutes later, calming down, panting and smiling, we embraced. Maria started sliding down me, as if she wanted to lie down. But I encouraged her to stay up, because I was planning to kiss her soon. It had been a while since I’d last kissed her. I gazed at her lovable face and sweet lips and could almost taste her flesh in my mouth. She wore a snug white scoop-neck top with small oval collars. It was the same shirt every other Megan Louis girl was wearing, but only Maria looked like an angel in it.
Although we were barely touching, I could smell her body; I could smell her hormones aching for mine. She was so beautiful—and I was so in love—that I could have broken down right then and there. About to keel over from the intensity of my desires, I finally gave in and leaned over and kissed her. It was the most passionate kiss we’d had, the most enthusiastic I’d ever experienced. I drank her saliva as our tongues wrestle; I clutched her face on either side. She was getting wet, I knew it.
Slowly, I moved my fingertips down her neck and past her shoulder. Grasping her skirt’s waistband, I inserted my fingers and pulled the front tail of her blouse out. For the first time ever, I felt her tummy. And I can’t call it a stomach, because that’s too harsh. It was a tummy. And a sexy one at that. Covering her belly-button with my thumb, I fanned my fingers across her tummy, slowly moving upward. She didn’t seem to mind; I was thrilled that she didn’t balk.
I couldn’t say she was chubby, but she wasn’t a stick. Whatever it was, I loved it. And what I loved more was less than an inch away. That inch disappeared, and soon I was poking my index finger underneath the hard wire that supported her large bosom. All at once my right hand was cupped over her left breast, engulfing her large, soft nipples. I couldn’t have been holding her breasts for more than five seconds when, suddenly, she grabbed my wrist and yanked it out from under her blouse.
“I’m not ready yet,” she said, shaking her head apologetically. “I’m sorry.”
“Not ready? But what about what you said last night on the phone?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t feel comfortable.”
“Oh, come on, what a tease you are—saying one thing and then doing another!”
“Listen, A.J., I’m just not ready!” She started to cry. A perfect day ruined right before my eyes! I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, her dog started to bark. For a second I thought Maria was going to sic it on me.
“Let me go and check on Maxie,” she said.
She practically ran away from the sofa; I heard her sniffling and then blowing her nose in the kitchen. ‘Maxie’ stopped yelping as Maria cooed at it and called it ‘baby.’ I was so angry and, yes, jealous of her dog. She treats the dog better than she treats me, I thought.
To this day, I’ve never experienced a more uneasy feeling than I did that afternoon. I was angry, but also sad that Maria had become so upset. I couldn’t help but imagine losing her over this whole disagreement. I’m just the kind of guy that likes his friends to keep their word. I hate liars. I really do. And I despise two-faced girls, especially.
I started thinking of what my friend Kyle would do in the same situation. When I’d told him about Lynn and what happened in the mall, and then about how I broke up with her, he didn’t react as I’d hoped. I really thought that, of all people, Kyle was the one who’d slap me five and say, “Way to go, Gahdfaddah.”
But when I told him about what happened with Lynn, he just looked at me grimly and responded: “Hey, boss—better judgment.” He’d never said that to me before, but it wouldn’t be the last time. It would’ve been a slap in the face had he said that in front of Paul or Mike. But, as usual, Kyle was a cool consigliere, and he advised discreetly. I didn’t really know what the hell he meant when he said it. But I guess what he was trying to say was that using Lynn and then dumping her was wrong.
Well, I wanted to use good judgment with Maria. As a matter of fact, I wanted to end the spat as swiftly as possible. When she returned from the kitchen, and sat on the other side of the sofa from me, I reached over and rubbed her thigh gently.
“Is it okay to rub your thigh?” I asked.
“Don’t be a fucking dick,” she said, angrily. I don’t know why, but it was always sexy to hear her use profanity.
“Oh, come on, Maria. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you weren’t ready. But you shouldn’t go around telling me that you’re prepared to do something you’re not.”
“Go around? Huh? Are you saying it’s my fault?” I didn’t say a word. “Because I thought I could trust you enough to tell you what I was thinking. And just because I was thinking about something, that doesn’t mean I’ll do it.”
“I really thought you meant you wanted to do it. Maybe I misunderstood—or you didn’t explain it well enough.”