The Bad Boys of Summer Anthology(321)

I spent a lot of time exchanging addresses with everyone, with promises to write whenever we could and call whenever we were going to be back in town. We knew it was the last official get-together, the last chance we’d all have to be assembled in the same room, the same town, at the same time. Such a previously casual occurrence, one which we’d taken for granted for the past four years. A pall hung over our evening, even though we all pretended to be having a great time. At least I knew I was pretending, anyway.

After a while, Coop announced he had an early morning and had to cut the evening short. Becca seemed sad, but I knew she wasn’t devastated. After all, her campus at Rutgers-Camden was only about a two hours’ drive from Coop’s university in Baltimore. She’d only have to wait a few weeks, once they were both settled in, to see him again.

Unlike the rest of us.

After he’d said his goodbyes to everyone, I walked with him out the front door, trying to carve out a private moment. I’d pretty much said my peace with everyone else, but Cooper actually walking out the door kind of made things official. I wasn’t ready to do it, to start the process of watching my friends leave me, one by one. And even worse, the chain of departures had to start with Cooper!

He’d been my rock for the better part of our school year, but that was nothing new.

I had a string of flashbacks from over the years starring Coop, realizing he’d been there in some way or another for practically my entire life. Cooper, who shared his Fruit Roll-Ups with me the day in first grade I fell off the slide at recess. Who talked his parents into buying me a new paintable ceramic Smurf kit when I was eight, because he’d overheard me crying to Lisa that I had just broken the one my father had given me for my birthday. Who came running out with Bactine the time when I was ten, and had wiped out on my bike in front of his house. Who suffered detention for an entire week when we were thirteen, after he’d punched Kevin Sullivan out right there in the gym for making a snide comment about my mother leaving.

And now it was his turn to leave me. Who was going to be the one to heal my heart once he was gone?

It seemed he was always my Superman, rushing in to patch me up whenever I’d gotten hurt. Now, he was the one causing my pain, and I knew there wasn’t a Band-Aid in the entire world big enough to treat that wound.

“Jesus, Coop. I guess this is really it.”

He met my eyes, the years of shared memories passing between us. “Shit,” he said, “I’m really going to miss you.”

I didn’t have anything big enough to say to him. Nothing to sum up how important he was to me, how my life wouldn’t have been the same without him.

“Keep in touch, okay? Don’t just say yes and then not do it.”

He wrapped his arms around me for a hug. “I will, I will. I promise.” He pulled back, smiled and added, “You are totally gonna own New York.”

It was so completely like him to recognize that while I was devastated about him leaving, the feeling was all wrapped up with fears about my own future as well.

I spent the ride home in complete silence, and to Trip’s credit, he didn’t try to get me to talk about it. By the time we’d pulled up in front of my house, I was drained.

I went to lean over and kiss him goodnight, but my body became possessed, moving on its own as my leg slid over his lap and straddled him in the driver’s seat. I caught Trip’s startled expression for a quick second before closing my eyes and opening my mouth on his.

I promptly rammed my tongue in his mouth, grinding my hips against his, feeling him harden in spite of his shock. I pressed against him with abandon, trying to make my mind go blank.

I unbuttoned my blouse but left it to hang off my shoulders as I knotted my hands in the back of his hair and pushed his head into my bra. He immediately slid his palms up to my breasts, grasping at the cups of pale blue lace as he lowered his mouth to the space in between. I slid my hands underneath his shirt, running my fingers along his bare chest as I felt his tongue tasting away at my cleavage, his erection pounding between my thighs.

I gripped his shirt in my hands and pulled it over his head before pressing myself to his bare chest and kissing him again.

We went to war with one another: I pulled his hair, he bit my lip. I raked my nails across his shoulder, he groped my breast. His hands slid up under my skirt, cupping a cheek in each palm and pulling me tighter against his rigid body. I rocked myself against him, causing him to growl and plunge his tongue deep into my mouth.

Things had heated up quickly, and I was all but lost in the incredible sensations taking over my body. I snapped out of the daze, however, when Trip suddenly stopped us.

“Hey, hey, whoa. Layla, wait, wait, wait.”

He dropped his head and shook it, trying to rid himself of the spell that had consumed us. I tried to pull his face to mine again, but he put his hands at my wrists and held them still. “Layla, stop! What the hell’s going on?”

I knew I’d been overly aggressive with him lately, and I guess I never stopped to consider the effect it was having on him. The poor guy was constantly put in the position of having to get his body under control whenever I assaulted him.

In any case, the moment was gone. I climbed off of him and back to the passenger seat, buttoning up my blouse and smoothing my hair back into place.

I looked at him then, watched as he put his shirt back on hurriedly. “Jesus, Layla. We’re out in the street for godsakes!”

It was actually pretty funny, watching him try to regain control, chastising me for making him lose it. What he didn’t realize, however, is that I never asked him to. I never asked him to be the overseer of our fate, ensuring that we didn’t go too far whenever there was a chance of getting caught. When you’re a teenager, there aren’t too many opportunities for real alone time. We hadn’t really been left on our own since grad week at the beach house, and since then, it had been tough to find a private moment. I guessed it was good that at least one of us was able to keep their head about it once we did.

I almost started to laugh. “Sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

His eyes kept darting toward my house, probably expecting my father to come storming out at any minute wielding a baseball bat. Once he finally realized the coast was clear, he gave me a quick kiss and then said goodnight.



The next day, I went for a long swim before calling Lisa to see if she wanted to go microwave shopping. It was the last thing I needed to buy for my dorm room, and I didn’t feel like being alone. After the toll on my emotions the night before- mopey to heartbroken to sexual deviant- I could have used a good dose of my best friend right about then.

She answered, sounding cheerier than I’d heard her in a long time. She’d been such a mess the past weeks, Pick’s impending cross-country move never far from her mind, and it was nice to hear a bit of the old Lisa in her voice.

“What’s with you today, Snow White? You sound like you’re ready to shit rainbows over there.”

She actually laughed, and I didn’t realize how long it had been since I heard her do that. “Just having a good day, I guess.”

“Well, that’s good. Glad to hear it!” If she’d found something that day to finally be happy about, I wasn’t about to start asking a million questions why. So, I just launched into one of our favorite topics. “Hey listen, I don’t know if I should get the white or the stainless microwave. Did we decide on our kitchen design yet? Because I know I’m pushing on this, but I’d still really love to do a fifties look. Black and white floor tiles, teal walls. Ooh, hey. Maybe we can find one of those awesome formica tables, you know, with the steel chairs and vinyl seats? Wouldn’t that look so cool?”

Lisa didn’t respond right away and I thought the phone had disconnected during my ramble.

“Hellooo. You still there?”

She took a deep breath and then dropped the bomb. “I’m going with him to California, Layla.”

Before the words could even form some sense in my brain, she launched into a sprawling diatribe. “I know it seems crazy, Layla. Believe me, I know it’s like, ridiculous, right? I just... I just think that it can be like an adventure, you know? Like I can go start over in some brand new place and be whoever I want to be. And I’ll be there with Pick! We won’t have to say goodbye.”

I blurted out without thinking, “But we will!”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She was moving to California with Pickford Redy? Did she just actually say that? She was leaving me? Lisa, the one person I could always count on to be by my side. The one person who needed me just as much as I needed her. I guessed she decided she needed Pick more.

The reality of what she was trying to tell me started to sink in, liquid fire boiling through my veins.

My voice got infinitely louder at that point as I dove right in, trying to find some sense in what was happening. “What about New York, Lisa? What about our plans?”

“Layla, I know and I’m sorry. I knew this was going to be hard for you.”

Hard for me? Try impossible. Was she serious?

“You’re barely eighteen! You’re going to be one of those trashy girls that shacks up with her pimply boyfriend in some trailer somewhere and has twelve kids before the age of twenty! What are you thinking?”