FIRSTS Stories: The Boys Tell All

Tommy Hudson

I was ten years old when I first fell in love. A stupid kid with scabbed-up knees and a sun-bleached Red Sox hat that my dad made me wear because of course, any son of his would love the team he used to play for. But I didn't love the Red Sox. I loved her. The girl on the monkey bars, the one who could hang upside down longer than anyone else. The only girl who could outrun the guys.

That first day, when I saw her hanging from the bars with her ponytail dragging on the ground, I did something stupid instead, because I was a dumb kid with dumb friends who dared him to do a dumb thing. I pulled her shirt down and everyone laughed. She told me she hated me and hoped I died.

Two weeks later, I told my dumb friends to go to hell and asked her to be my girlfriend.

She told me she hated me and hoped I died.

But I kept asking and kept begging her to forgive me, and eventually, bit by bit, she stopped hating me so much. By the end of sixth grade, we were "official." Which meant we sat together at lunch and held hands on the bus to school and our moms drove us to the movies on weekends.

When I started grade nine, my older brother Bart basically told me to dump her. "Dude," he said. "You need to branch out and see what else is out there. Jill's hot and all, but high school girls are a whole other species."

I guess Bart would know. He had a new girlfriend every week, and he didn't care who knew it. There was Bart, making out with a girl in the parking lot. There he was with his arm around a different girl in the cafeteria. There he was outside the gym, squeezing yet another girl's ass. And never once did he bring one home to meet Mom and Dad.

But I didn't listen to Bart. I kept dating Jillian, and he kept dating everyone else. When he came home from college this summer, he was full of stories. Except it wasn't stories about secret make-outs in the library and the girl who let him touch her boob during homecoming.

It was much worse.

"College girls," he said, plopping down on the end of my bed. "Man, they'll do anything."

I didn't ask for details. I never did. But Bart shared them anyway. Tricia Somebody in the dorm room shower. Bendy Mackenzie in the bathroom at the campus bar. Big-Boobed Brenda at the frat house kegger. Naked Rebecca at the pool after hours.

Maybe he thinks I like hearing about his conquests, but the truth is, I don't get the appeal. Bart doesn't know anything about those girls. Their last names. Their majors. Their hometowns. Or even whether they have boyfriends. He doesn't know, and he doesn't care. He probably thinks his stories have made me excited for college next year. But really, they've only made me shit-scared at the thought of being away from Jillian.

I never talk about Jillian around Bart. I don't talk about her to any of my guy friends. When the subject of girls comes up (which is basically all the time), I keep quiet. Not because I'm ashamed of Jillian, but because I love her so damned much. Other guys talk about some girl's hot ass or giant rack, and I can't think up words good enough for the way Jillian's body feels when it's pressed against my chest. Other guys high-five over getting to third base, but I couldn't tell them how choked up I got, how I kept thinking this is mine, she's mine, and I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

"A six-letter word for destiny," Jillian says now, stretching across my bed on her back, a crossword puzzle book on her lap.

"I don't know," I say, turning away to face my headboard. The truth is, destiny's on my mind a lot lately. As in, what the hell happens after high school and what if we end up at different schools? I can't stand the idea of Jillian not being mine, of Jillian being a stupid nickname to some guy like Bart. And normally I can tell her anything, but I don't want to tell her that. She'll smile and roll her eyes and tell me not to worry about it, that everything will work out.