“Fuck him, baby girl,” Brooklyn said the next morning as we sat at a small café where we’d decided to get breakfast. Students paid $3 for a full breakfast, a cup of coffee and a glass of juice, so we often went there when we wanted pancakes or biscuits and gravy. “He’s just a stupid boy that doesn’t know what he’s passed up.”

She poured blueberry syrup all over her pancakes and dismissed Kenny from her mind.

She’d come into our room around 9 am, ten minutes after I woke up and she’d swept me into her arms. She’d seen the tide of emotions I couldn’t hold back anymore the instant she came in the door and she’d comforted me. She’d allowed me to blubber as I got the story out, and then she’d sat up to push me away.

She’d marched me into a pair of jeans, one of my school hoodies, and a pair of granny boots that had seen better days, but I loved. We were now in the sunshine outside the café, eating our breakfast. I pushed my egg onto the pile of biscuits and gravy on my plate and started to eat.

After I’d finished about half of my breakfast, I took a sip of my coffee and looked out at the street. There was a bistro next to the café, a florist, and a bookshop frequented by students. There were more stores, but my breakfast lured me back to eating.

I wasn’t quite awake yet, and the crying jag made me want to go back to sleep but I couldn’t. I swallowed the last bite of my food and looked at Brooklyn.

“I guess it’s on to the next one on the list,” I groused and wiped my mouth with a napkin.

“What about him?” Brooklyn smirked and pointed at the waiter behind me with her butter knife.

I turned to follow her focus and felt my left eyebrow rise in surprise. “Oh my…”

“Yeah, mouth-watering, isn’t he?” Brooklyn’s own eyebrows lifted and wiggled over her eyes. It made me giggle as I turned back to our table.

“Too bad he’s not our waiter,” I mumbled before I smothered another giggle.

“I’m sorry,” Brooklyn called out. “Could you bring me more coffee?”

I gasped and glared at her, but she just smiled at me.

Our own waiter had just left our table, but she ignored that as the young man came over to our table.

“Of course, do you need more cream?” His voice was deep and hinted with an accent I didn’t quite understand.

His name tag told me his name was Gerard but that was all. He was very tall with a broad, muscular chest, but it wasn’t the muscular frame that caught my attention. It was the piercing blue eyes, tilted up at the corners, that seemed to pierce into my very soul. I think my mouth must have fallen open but didn’t care.

“Would you like more? It’s on the house.” His dark eyebrows rose as he continued to stare down at me like he knew every secret I hid away.

“Um, sure. Yeah,” I smiled at him and held my cup out.

“Are you two students here?” he asked as he poured coffee out when he came back.

“Yeah/ Seniors, you?”

“I’m a transfer student, junior year,” he admitted with a wink in my direction. I thought he’d devote his attention to Brooklyn, but he didn’t. He seemed to only have eyes for me. “I left LSU to take a biology program that’s not available down there.”

“I see,” I whispered loudly, lost in his eyes again. “It’s a shame we’re leaving.”

“Isn’t it?” he said his eyes perusing me slowly as if every flick of his eyes removed an article of clothing. “I tell you what. I could take you to dinner tonight and we could get to know each other better.”

“I’d love to, but…” I was about to decline but Brooklyn kicked me under the table. “I’d love to.”

We exchanged numbers and then he went back to wait on his own tables. I waved with a smile of delight as we left the café, my woes of the night before forgotten now. I’d met a guy on my own and I hadn’t had to go begging a guy to go out with me.

For a moment, my heart thudded to a halt. Amanda was leaving the café, but she hadn’t seen me. I hoped. I had a feeling she’d ruined last night’s festivities. I didn’t want her to fuck this up too. She walked off in the direction of her apartment and didn’t even glance back at me. I felt the muscles in my chest relax and breathed life back into my lungs.

We paid our bill and left the cafe, a smile in place of the sad frown I’d worn earlier.

“See? He knows you’re totally fuckable, my love.” Brooklyn linked her right arm with my left one and we walked back to our dorm with much lighter steps. “Not all men are children. It’s just too bad Kenny was.”

“I hope you’re right.” I wondered if I could go out in the same dress. It was the only thing I had that was really worth wearing.

Brooklyn would let me borrow something of hers, but she had really wide hips. She had to buy clothes that fit that part of her, and she’d alter the rest to fit her whether it was a dress or a long shirt. None of her stuff would fit me properly.

I didn’t have a lot of money. Just what I earned from my job at the library and that made new clothes impossible to buy. Sometimes I’d find something on sale or at a consignment shop and I’d get it, but that was mainly jeans and shirts for everyday wear. I decided that I needed a date night wardrobe.

“How can I make extra money for clothes?” I wondered out loud as we made it back to the room.

“You don’t need more clothes, just accessorize. That dress is just knit material, so you can put another shirt over the top of it, add a belt to it. You can change your look in all sorts of ways. It’ll be fine, don’t worry.” Brooklyn had learned how to sew from her mother and she often turned old things into brand new items of clothing. “I’ll make you something if we need to.”

“Good. I hope we do. Need to that is.” I blushed as I stumbled over the words and felt my excitement rise. I had a date tonight. With one really hot guy.

Did I mention how hot he was? Even in the white, button-up shirt and black slacks that the waitstaff wore at the café, his muscular, tanned body couldn’t be hidden. I was going to love climbing all over him.

A new kind of excitement began to fill me as the hours passed and I started to get ready. I might be a virgin, but I knew what desire felt like and how it could make your body turn into this machine you didn’t quite recognize. I’d felt aroused before, especially before my period. I’d have these wickedly arousing dreams and let’s just say, I wasn’t a stranger to arousal.

I just hadn’t been that aroused when the prospect for my virginity-taker was Kenny. Gerard though? Now, he made my pulse race and my insides go warm and liquid. By the time Brooklyn finished curling my hair and applied a coat of mascara to my eyelashes, I could barely breathe. Only this time, it wasn’t nervousness at all. I was ready for whatever Gerard had in mind.

“I think a little perfume and you’re done, my little sex-bomb.” Brooklyn narrowed her eyes, moved a lock of hair to the other side of my head, and then shook her head in satisfaction. “You are ready.”

“Good. He’s supposed to pick me up at 7:30.” I glanced at the alarm clock between our beds and took a deep breath. “It’s almost time.”

“Well, you wait up here with me. No need to look completely desperate.” She looked me over, her face deathly serious right before it turned into an excited grin. “Even if you are!”

“He’s so gorgeous!” I cried as I stood up, only to sag against the door. “Those eyes, that body…”

My hands closed on empty air as I imagined him in front of me. “I can’t stand it! I hope he’s not too hungry.”

“And has an empty bedroom, at least?” Brooklyn sat on her bed and winked at me in a knowing way. The smirk she wore only made me laugh with delight.

“Of course! How else am I going to give him my most… precious gift?” I sputtered with laughter as she fell over and laughed with me. It really wasn’t that big of a deal to me, other than I really, really wanted rid of it.

“You are bestowing on him your flower of maidenhood, your virtuous garden of delight.” Brooklyn paused, clearly thinking hard as she struggled for more euphemisms. “Your womanly secret. He should be honored.”

“One hundred years ago matronly aunts and protective mothers would be dying of shame over us,” I mused out loud, my thoughts on how silly it all was. “As if men weren’t bringing home STDs and who knows what else to their perfectly moral wives.”

“I’m so glad we aren’t a part of that generation. I have a feeling we’d have been on the fringes, even back then. I don’t want to get married, ever,” Brooklyn revealed that to me as if it was nothing.

I stared at her, a little shocked. “But I thought you wanted to marry Stuart?”

“That’s something he wants.” She waved me off but looked kind of upset. “I don’t want to be some man’s wife. His partner, sure, but his wife? I’m not wifey material, at all.”

I cast a doubtful look in her direction but didn’t say anything. She’d change her mind eventually. She was so far up Stuart’s ass; she could barely see daylight. She just didn’t know it yet.

I glanced at the clock and sat down on the bed. It was 7:35. I glanced at my phone, a silent brick on my bed. Hm.

“It’s past time,” I said out loud but didn’t look at her.

“Maybe his clock is slow,” she offered, but I saw how she glanced at the clock like it had better start running backward or she’d melt it into a lump of plastic.

“I’m not sure how I’d take it if this one stands me up too,” I whispered, but my phone buzzed, and I jumped for it.

“Oh, he had to stop at the gas station and got in a line. He’ll be here soon.” I breathed a sigh of relief and felt my lips lift in delight.

Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting there. I sent a text.

No reply.

After twenty more minutes, I changed out of my clothes, put on my pajamas, and waited for Brooklyn to get back from the store with another pint of ice cream. I didn’t know what had happened, but obviously, I’d been stood up again.

My confidence was now completely shattered and I was numb inside. I couldn’t believe it had happened again, but it had. That left me… cold.

I curled up under my comforter and waited for Brooklyn to come back. She climbed in behind me, handed me my ice cream, and I hit play on the movie I’d picked. I started to cry halfway through the comedy, and she slid down to curl around me. It was a sisterly hug, something that only she had ever given me, and I turned to sob into my pillow just beneath her chin.

“It’ll be okay, Nic,” she whispered soothingly, but I didn’t know if it would. A man that had been on his way to pick me up had just disappeared; went poof before he got to me. I knew there was probably a good explanation, something totally logical, but my brain couldn’t think of what it might be.

I fell asleep but woke up when I heard Brooklyn talking to someone. I realized she was on the phone with Stuart and settled back down to go back to sleep.

“We have to do something about this, Stu. She’s so fucking beautiful, but nobody seems to see it. I’d almost offer her you if I didn’t love you so much.” She paused and waited, so I guess he was responding. She laughed softly, then told him goodnight.

At least she loved me, I thought, as I drifted back to that place where I didn’t have to think. She’d even said she’d offer me Stuart if she didn’t love him. That might be the kindest thing anyone’s ever said about me. For me. Whatever. It didn’t matter. The guys at school didn’t want me, so I was just going to work, finish my studies, and sleep. Right now, it was time to sleep, so that’s what I did.