Boyfriend #3
Rudy Tiev, age fifteen
Rudy was hi-lar-i-ous and so fine. Wherever he went in school, crowds scooped back, forming into spontaneous audiences, waiting with ready smiles for his wit. Or maybe, Jane considered later, drawing back out of fear?
After four months of school dances, mall movies, and after-homework calls with Jane, Rudy’s repertoire began to suffer for lack of a fresh subject. Without warning, the heat of his humor veered toward her.
“We were making out, and suddenly she licks my mouth like a cat!” he told a group lunching on the lawn. “Lapped me up like milk. Meow, little pussycat.”
Rudy’s friends were suddenly no longer Jane’s friends. Strangers would meow at her as she walked the school halls. In the dizzying weeks that followed, she read Pride and Prejudice over and over again.
At her ten-year high school reunion, three people remembered Jane as “tiger tongue.” Good old Rudy was there, looking thirty years older and spouting jokes that just couldn’t bring in the laughs.