Boyfriend #4
Dave Atters, age sixteen
She really liked this one, the power forward on the high school varsity team and the beginning of her infatuation with basketball.
She giggled and sighed and dreamed. He said jump, and she leaped.
But when he parked his spoiled-boy convertible in front of her house after a date and thrust his hand up her skirt, she pushed him away.
When she wouldn’t relent, he ordered her out of the car.
At school, he acted as though they’d never met.
Years later, she wondered if Dave “Fancy Hands” Atters was one of the reasons she felt so pathologically stuck, or if the blame lay completely with Fitzwilliam “I love you against my better judgment” Darcy.
At least there’d been one bright spot with Dave.
On the night of Homecoming, she and Molly had spray-painted depraved weasel on the side of his convertible, and that had felt pretty therapeutic.