Erin
What the hell is this feeling?
That’s all I can think while I wait for the girls to get to my room.
My chest is prickly, like the air inside my lungs is electric, sending little waves of static through every breath.
I can’t stop smiling, and there’s almost a little…
dance? Skip? In every step I take. I know I’ve felt this feeling before, yet it’s foreign and confusing, like my body forgot how to feel it and thus is having a hard time computing.
Is this… excitement? Hope? Both?
I smile, shaking my head against my own giddiness.
Calm down, Erin.
But how can I?
Kip Jackson is at Palm South University.
Kip Jackson — my first love, perhaps the only boy I’ve ever loved. Kip Jackson — the one I’ve wanted to lean on ever since we broke up, the one who always rushes back to my mind when the emotions get to be too much.
I lost him, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it. He’s the best guy I’ve ever dated, and yet, I thought he was destined to be the one who got away.
But now, I finally have my second chance.
Because Kip Jackson is at Palm South University.
Ashlei and Cassie fly through my door first, Cassie hopping up on my bed as Ashlei tries as delicately as she can to sit in my bean bag chair.
“What’s going on, Ex?” she asks, but I just pull up my desk chair to form a semi-circle.
“Let’s wait until the other girls get here.”
As if on cue, Jess pounces through my door next, taking the spot on my bed next to Cassie. Skyler is the last to join us, and she shuts my door behind her, kicking off her wedges before plopping down on the floor to complete our circle.
In a dress.
“Ew, put your snatch away, Little,” I tease.
Jess throws a pillow at Skyler from where she sits on the bed, and my Little glances down at her exposed thong as a blush shades her cheeks.
“Did you just call my treasure box a snatch?”
“Did you just call it a treasure box?” Cassie counters.
“Would you prefer I say vagasaurus? That’s my personal favorite nickname,” Skyler says matter-of-factly, tucking the pillow Jess threw into her lap to shield her underwear from view.
The girls all chuckle, though Jess looks appalled.
“Do you really call it that?” she asks Skyler.
“Among many other things, yes.”
“Like what?” Jess pokes, her brows still pinched together in a mixture of curiosity and disgust.
“I don’t know… hoohah, muffin, pink canoe.”
“Juice box, kitty, hot pocket,” Cassie adds.
Ashlei sits up a little straighter, running her hands over her tight pencil skirt before chiming in. “Tampon tamer, magic bean, cubby hole. I heard someone call it a finger hut once. My personal favorite is vajayjay.”
“Oh! That’s another one I use frequently, Lei. Nice.”
Skyler practically air-high-fives Ashlei from across the room, and what started off as a fun joke suddenly starts to annoy me. The skin on my neck tingles, and my left leg bounces where it rests over my right one.
Don’t they realize we have more important things to discuss?
“I seriously have never used any of these,” Jess says. “I say vagina. Or occasionally I get a little Jersey Shore and say co-cah.”
“Or cho-cha like Missy Elliot?” Skyler asks.
“Yes!” Jess and Cassie say in unison, and then everyone explodes into another fit of laughter — me included.
“Can we stop talking about penis fly traps for like two seconds?” I finally say, but I can’t deny that it feels good to laugh.
When was the last time I did?
“This is serious!” I add for good measure, but my straight face cracks into another smile which just makes all the girls laugh harder. Snatching a handful of highlighters off my desk, I peg each one of them with a different color to a chorus of more laughter.
Finally, Jess wipes tears from her eyes, settling the room. “Okay, Ex, what’s going on?”
I exhale long and slow, folding my hands in my lap and sitting up straighter. Time to get down to business.
“Did I ever tell you guys about the summer before my senior year of high school?”
My Grand-Little stops digging around for snacks in my bedside table long enough to answer. “Isn’t that the summer you spent with your grandparents?”
“Yes. It was the summer I wanted to find myself, that I wanted to sort of break free from everything I thought I was.”
I close my eyes briefly, smiling a little at the memory of that summer — the Kansas wheat fields, the hot sun, the constant breeze that ruffled Kip’s blond hair.
I can still feel the way his calloused hands fit in mine after long days on harvest, can still smell the country air as we passed long nights on a blanket under the stars behind my grandparents’ house.
“I had just ended a two-year relationship,” I continue. “And I was in a strange place.” My voice fades as I realize how tough I thought that time in my life had been…
If only I would have known what was still to happen to me in the future.
I shake my head. “Well, I met a boy that summer…”
“Oh!” Ashlei says, snapping her fingers. “I remember the story! He was the Army brat, right?”
“He wasn’t a brat, you brat,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her as I fight back a smile.
“But yes, he did live on the base by my grandparents’ house.
He was amazing — everything I needed that summer.
We spent practically every night together and as cliché as it sounds, I fell in love with him.
” I smile. “Well, as in love as I could be at that age. It was the perfect summer romance.”
I’m still kind of lost in my memory when Skyler’s voice breaks through the fog.
“Not that this isn’t romantic and touching, but is there a reason you’re telling us this?”
Standing, I let the warm light within me beam through. “You are not going to believe this,” I say. “The boy I met that summer? He’s here… like here, as in he’s a student at Palm South!”
“What?” Ashlei pops up. “Isn’t that impossible? We know pretty much everyone on this campus.”
“Not the new students,” I point out, waiting for them to catch on. When they don’t, I sigh. “He’s a transfer!”
My chest prickles with those damn bolts of electricity again, and I press a hand to the center of it, smiling.
“He just moved here. I heard Adam talking about his new pledges this morning outside of the Greek library and I just kind of casually asked about him — where he was from, what he was like — it’s definitely him, girls!”
Ashlei’s face lights up, but the room is quiet for me having just dropped such exciting news.
Provided, I was possibly being a little dramatic about the whole thing, but it’s been so long since I’ve been excited about — well, anything — that I kind of expected a little more gusto in the reaction to my news.
For some reason, Jess and Cassie are watching Skyler, who looks like she’s about to throw up.
“What?” Ashlei asks before I can. “Why are you guys acting so weird?”
“Nothing,” Skyler says quickly. “We know him. Well, we met him. Last night.”
“At rush?!” I ask excitedly. My stomach flips at the thought of seeing him again, of just casually running into him with the girls.
“Oh my God, Kip? Is that you? How’s it going? Oh, have you met our president, Erin Xanders? Oh, you HAVE?”
Skyler nods. “Yep. He was nice.”
“That’s one way to put it, Sky,” Jess adds, snickering. She nudges Cassie, like there’s some sort of inside joke under those words, but Cassie just coughs uncomfortably.
What the hell?
“Okay, what the hell happened, Little?” I ask, turning on Skyler.
She groans, face flopping into the pillow in her lap. Her next words are muffled through it. “Nothing. We played foosball.”
“And he lost, so she made him take a shot of tequila…” Jess says.
My anxiety eases a little. So they met, and maybe they flirted a bit. Doesn’t surprise me that my Little had the new kid taking a shot of tequila to welcome him to PSU.
But then Jess continues, and my stomach sinks with her words.
“…Off her body.”
The first thought through my head is school your features.
If I learned anything from my mother over last summer, it was that ninety-five percent of a woman’s power comes from how well she responds to potentially emotional situations.
Think like a man, she’d put it — though I like to think it’s more thinking like a woman — a strong, logical woman not ruled by her emotions.
So, even though the thought of Kip running his tongue over my Little’s stomach makes me want to punch her in the nose and then run off crying, I simply take a breath, and start thinking.
“Oh,” I say first, as calmly as I can. I need something to do with my hands, so I walk toward my closet, running my fingers over the different Lily Pulitzer dresses inside. “Well, that’s okay. I mean, you didn’t know. How could you?”
And though those words shake as they leave my lips, they’re true. Skyler wouldn’t hurt me, and she definitely wouldn’t have a guy I’m still obsessed over take a body shot off her.
Still, jealousy is an evil bitch, and she’s got her claws in me deep now.
All I can think about is him touching her, and her touching him, and both of them smiling and laughing and… God, what if he liked it?
What if he likes her?
“I swear I didn’t, Big,” Skyler says. “You know I wouldn’t have done it if I had known.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I say deftly, because now my wheels are turning over that last thought.
What if he likes her?
What if he likes her?
And just like that, an idea snaps into place like the last piece of a puzzle.
What. If. He. Likes. Her.
“Actually,” I say, turning to face them all again as hope finds me. “No — this is good. This is perfect.”
“Um, how is this even remotely in the same category as good?” Cassie asks.
I dart to the planner on my desk, flipping it open as I try my best to explain. The idea is a little crazy, but crazy just might work.
“Well, Kip and I didn’t exactly have the best ending that summer. I may have acted a little immature, at best,” I admit, thinking of how I would look through his phone, letting my jealousy get the better of me until I blew up on him.
I was young, emotional, na?ve — I didn’t know what I had until I lost it.