Ignorance is a kiss

Here we go.  Since Starr is bugging me about it and I can deny her nothing...Back Then...

School started and I started off tenth grade with a boyfriend.  A boyfriend I didn't really lke.  He did surprise me that night at the party.  He acted kind of normal.  He didn't ask me to meet Fred or really show off in front of his friends.  He just acted like a guy that was genuinely interested in me and like he was trying to make a good impression.  I will admit, I did start to doubt my first assumptions of him.

At school, I stopped hanging out with LG so much but we still hung around each other after school.  I guess you can say that I just tollerated her.  She wasn't an individual, she was what she thought everyone around her would think was cool.  I didn't like that.  I always thought that if your friends didn't like you for who you were then they weren't real friends anyway.  (Hypocrite pops into my head here and later you will see why.)

I started hanging out with BM instead.  She wasn't much into school and we ended up skipping more than a few days together.  Once, we skipped school on my mothers birthday.  I had completely forgotten that my mom would take half a day off on her birthday and go shopping.  We went down to the Broward Mall which was real close to where my mom worked and as we were walking through, we came face to face with my mom.  To this day, I have no idea how she didn't see me.  Anyway, BM was cool because she was always herself and I really liked that about her. She had a twin brother too.  A very hot twin brother I might add.  Back then, I always thought it was strange how that fact didn't really have an effect on me.

Rich worked during the day, sometimes.  But when he wasn't working and I didn't feel like staying in school, he'd come pick me up and we'd go to Tradewinds Park or out to lunch or whatever.  He was becoming nicer and nicer and I actually started to like him...a little.  Not in a "I wanna jump your bones" way but more like "we could be friends" way.  I should have took that as a sign.

On the weekends, we would all - and I mean all, like the entire party crew - hang out up at the 99 cent movie theater.  We became friends with the manager and would pretty much stay there the entire day watching movies (they only showed four) and playing video games (they only had two and Galaga was my fave). 

"Earth Girls are Easy" was playing and I will tell you that I've seen that movie so many times that I can recite the dialogue.  Rich and I were sitting in the back row of the pretty much empty theater.  I hadn't kissed him since he the last party of the summer.  I just didn't feel interested in him that way.  Another sign I ignored.  But Rich was a little fidgety and he was starting to annoy me.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked.  I figured he was high on coke because that was his drug of choice but this was a different kind of fidget.

He started acting shy but he put his arm around me.  "Nothing really."

His leg was jumping and finally, I draped my leg over it to stop it.  It was driving me nuts.  "Liar.  What is it?"

I guess by this time, we had been dating for a little over two weeks.  I still wasn't thinking of it as dating though.

"I, uh," he looked over at me with a nervous grin, "was wondering if I could kiss you?"

Rich knew me better than I thought.  I didn't realize this until much, much later.  He knew that the way to get to me was to show me respect.  And he was playing the game well.  And since he asked, I started to feel nervous. 

I smiled and stared at him for a moment.  He had asked instead of just doing it.  Not like him.  And he hadn't tried anything since that second to last party.  He was being nice and not being his usual man-whore self.  Then I thought, there might be something here.  I kissed him and I think we made out for the rest of the movie until our friends started showing up and throwing popcorn at us.  We were a bunch of silly asses back then.

You would have thought I would have put it together.  He asked to kiss me because I was sober.  I guess he figured I was easier when I was fucked up.  Like I said, I didn't figure any of this out until much later.

Another thing...the reason I hadn't broke up with hm that night was because Sam asked me not to.  LG didn't want me to either.  LG was using me for reasons that I knew...to be able to spend time with RM.  I couldn't figure out any reason for Sam to be using me, so I went along with it.  Her lips made me blind.  But in those two weeks or so, I only saw Sam once and we never got a chance to be alone.  It looked like our plan wasn't working.

It would have been the best time for me to walk away...but I didn't.