I roll my eyes at him.
"Freshman year?" one of the guys named Chase asks. "You started early, huh? Wild child?"
"Uh, no," Danny says, "freshman year of c o l l e g e."
"Oh, wow. Did you used to be fat or something?" Marcus says. This from a man who is three times my size.
Danny saves me. "Nope, she's always looked pretty much like this."
"Then what happened?" Chase's wife asks.
Okay, so now I'm forced to make a statement about the young people of today. Shouldn't they have been applauding my ability to wait so long? Do they think I wanted to wait that long for what I hoped was love?
"I thought we were all supposed to wait for love, didn't any of you?" I'm hoping this will steer the conversation toward their experiences and away from mine.
But apparently, I'm the freak at the table they all want to look at under the microscope because Marcus is like, "Well sure, but we wanna hear about you."
I roll my eyes, but I don't want to be a bitch and tell them to all mind their own freaking business, so I say, "I was ready to my junior year. I was dating this guy, Jake......"
"DOUCHE," Phillip and Danny both pretend cough.
"Oh, shut up, you two. The only guys you wanted me to date were you, so of course, you never liked my boyfriends. You were both just jealous."
"He was still a douche," Danny says, "and you know it."
"Ignore them," Marcus tells me.
So I keep going. "Anyway, we'd be going out for like a month, and I would think I was ready, and then something would happen...."
"CHEATER," both Phillip and Danny fake cough again.
"...... and we would break up. And they're right, he was a douche, but he was so hot."
This gets the wive's attention.
"What'd he look like?" Chase's wife asks.
"Oh, he had that hot bad boy thing going on. Longer dark hair, his bangs were always in his dark eyes, and you never knew what to expect from him. He didn't give a shit what people thought of him, got into a lot of trouble at school, mostly cuz he was mouthy. He was kind of a slacker, true, but he was also the quarterback after Danny left, and he had great arm muscles, and he could be super sweet, and he was the first boy that told me he loved me."
Like besides Phillip.
Phillip catches my eye and points to his chest. He's letting me know that he was really the first boy to tell me that. I smile dreamily at him.
"Ah...first love. He sounds adorable even if he was a jerk," Marcus's wife comments. "I mean, what high school boy wasn't a jerk?"
Danny, Lori, and I look at Phillip at the same time and say, "Phillip."
The whole table laughs. Phillip blows me a kiss, and Marcus is like, "Go on."
"We would break up and get back together, but usually when we broke up, it was cuz he was a jerk. We'd get back together, but I'd make him wait awhile. I was trying to see if he was serious, but then he'd be a douche again. That went on my most of my senior year. When I was finally ready to do it with just about anyone, I couldn't get anyone to do it with me."
"No way," Chase says.
I nod yes and tell them the sad truth. "Yeah, way. I was gonna do it with Jake, the night he broke up with me. Had on the sexy underwear and everything. It was a fail." I raise my eyebrows at them. "But that was the night Danny kissed me, and I thought maybe I would do it with him instead."
"You did?" Danny says with a shocked look all over his face.
"You really didn't hear Lisa screaming in the cornfield, You should do it with Danny? She always had a huge crush on you."
"So Danny turned you down?" Marcus asks.
A wave of sadness suddenly washes over me. Phillip can see it on my face, so he says, "No, he didn't. He got in a fight with Jake, so I took Jadyn home."
Danny looks at me with concern, but probably figures the night my parents died is not something I wanna talk about with acquaintances at the bar. He says with a grin, "But then there was Prom night."
I smile at him, and he knows I'm thanking him for getting us back into easier territory. "THAT was the night he turned me down, Marcus."
Marcus and this Alex guy say, "You were dumb, dude."
"Jay, you know it wasn't like that."
"Oh, that's right, big stud Danny got scared, drunk, and passed out instead."
All the guys laugh hysterically at that.
"So you're right, Matt was the first, and after that, it really depends on who you wanna count."
Alex says, "What do you mean, who you wanna count?"
"Yeah, we want to know how many," Danny says.
"Well, it doesn't really work like that, does it, Lori?"
She's been awfully quiet through all of this, little bus driver there. She also happens to be the Queen of He Didn't Really Count.
She smirks at me, but keeps her mouth shut. The other wives agree, "Right."
The guys are looking at the women all confused.
"I know for you guys, it's all black and white. I slept with her, or I didn't. But I think girls tend to look at that question and see lots of shades of grey."
"Like some guys you did it with don't count," Marcus's wife, Madison, says bluntly.
"Exactly," Lori and I agree.
"Wait," Danny says. "So who wouldn't count?"
Madison says, "I know one. The guy you meet at the bar and thought was hot. But when you sobered up, you realized he wasn't. Like not at all. I don't think you'd count him."
Marcus is like, "Why wouldn't you count him?"
To which I replied, "Because if you would've been in your right mind, you never would have."
Duh.
Madison tells us, "I had a friend call me me one shameful morning and ask me if it counts when you wake up naked in a guy's bed, but you don't remember doing anything."
"What'd you tell her?" Chase asks.
"I told her not to worry, that it didn't count. If you don't remember it, you didn't do it, right?"
"That's how Lori kept her numbers down," I tease.
"Okay, I can kinda understand that," Alex says. "So does that mean girls don't count ANY one night stands or drunken sex?"
"I think if he was hot, you'd count him," Madison says.
"Oh, yes. If he was hot, you'd definitely count him."
Lori finally decides to pipe in on the conversation. "Jade, remember that hotass bartender you did? You count him, don't you?"
"What bartender?" Phillip asks.
I'm running boys through my mind, praying that I slept with another bartender somewhere along the way, and that's the one she's remembering.
But, no.
She looks at Phillip and Danny like they're idiots. "You KNOW, the one from Keggers that always let Jade drink even though he knew she was underage. He had that adorable spiky blonde hair, those big green eyes, and the longest eyelashes we'd ever seen. What was his name?"
"Bradley?!" Phillip says. "You slept with Bradley?"
"Uh....maybe." I put on my sweetest face, complete with adorable grin.
I hope.
Danny's like, "So that's why we always got free drinks? And here I always thought it was cuz I was the hot shit Husker quarterback. Although, come to think of it, I only got free rounds when I was with you."
"We got free rounds A LOT," Phillip states adamantly.
"Uh, well, it may have been more than one, one night stand," Lori says. "Did you really not know that, Phillip?"
"No, I did not," Phillip says, his eyes boring into mine.
I give Danny my I'm panicked here, please do something look, but he thinks it's funny and is laughing at me.