This is the rest of chapter 1, "Summer Detox" Read part one here.
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It seemed to me that most guys looked at Nicole like cartoon characters—you know, the ones whose eyes would pop out of their head and tongues would hang to the floor? But I really couldn’t look at her that way. I didn’t know her all that well, but my feelings for her had always been strangely warm and caring. Thinking of her in terms of her body parts, as so many of my friends did, made me feel wrong, even dirty.
I came to this realization that morning in the shower. Even during the summer, she would still enter my mind when at that groggy, vulnerable time most mornings. I congratulated myself on my emotional depth and sophistication as I got out of the shower. If only she knew I was better than those walking hormones who surround her all the time, I thought.
I wrapped my towel and my waist and wiped a hole in the condensation on the mirror. I opened the door to let the water vapor escape into the hallway while I put on my contact lenses. Even after a couple of months with them, it was still an arduous task to pry my eyelids open and jam those foreign objects against my cornea, but once I got them in, they really didn’t bother me anymore.
With the contacts in place, I could see my face clearly. It was still sort of a new face to me, without the heavy goggles that had hidden my face for so long. Now that the oppressive coke bottles were gone, what remained was not so bad. Some girls had even noticed that revelation. I wasn’t sure of what to make of it, but I started to get a few more friendly glances and second looks than usual as the school year ran down.
“I don’t look so bad,” I mumbled to myself as I fixed my hair. I turned my face to admire my strong jaw line, beginning to be defined by the hint of a facial-hair shadow. I smiled to look at the straight, white teeth that God (and milk with dinner every night) had blessed me with. Yup, I looked good… except my lips were too big. And my arms weren’t big enough. And then there was that zit…
I leaned forward toward the mirror and brought both index fingers to the side of my right nostril. A shooting moment of pain, a pop, and a squirt, and there was a small white object sticking to the mirror.
“You had nice velocity on that one, Jay.” Your uncle Roger’s voice startled me. He loved to do that to me. “Are you going to stand there naked all day or are we going to go?”
“Just a minute.” I grabbed a Kleenex and went to my room to get dressed.
A normal summer afternoon would consist of myself and eight or nine other guys in a steamy gym playing basketball. But today Roger and I had to go find a present for our dad’s birthday.
But since we hated to shop and we loved to eat, we used the occasion as an excuse to go out to lunch first—always Mexican, of course. There weren’t any decent Mexican restaurants in Missouri where Roger when to college.
“Hey,” Roger garbled through a cheek full of burrito, “I hear that a bunch of girls go to your summer league games.”
I hardly glanced up from my plate. “Not really. Just people’s girlfriends.”
“What about Amanda? She likes basketball.”
“Yeah. I guess she’s there sometimes.”
Roger grinned. “Didn’t you say that she was acting pretty friendly toward you toward the end of the year?”
“I guess so.”
He handed his glass over his shoulder to the waitress. “And now she shows up at your summer league basketball games. She likes you. You ought to go for that, Jay.”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
Roger dropped his fork and shook his head. “Now what’s wrong with her?”
I shrugged. “She’s a little tall.”
Roger rolled his eyes. “OK. Amanda’s too tall. Amy Wilson has ‘kind of a weird nose.’ And Donna DiPoto is a little ‘hairy’ for you. Oh – and Tammy! What was wrong with her?”
“She’s kind of annoying.”
“You’re just making excuses.” Roger paused and glared and me in frustration. “I know what it is. You’re still stuck on that Nicole Ellis trip, aren’t you? It’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” I replied, as I stared at my plate and turned my rice over with my fork.
“Move on! All these girls like you. Granted, one of them has a mustache, but the rest look pretty good.”
“I know… but if I still like Nicole, it’s not fair to me or to any other girl I would date.”
“Whatever.” Roger scraped the last bit of queso off his plate, sipped his coke, and called for the check.
We didn’t talk as much during the unpleasant chore of shopping. After not finding anything at the mall bookstore, we tried Montgomery Ward. Roger found an Old Spice display and started sorting through some gift packs. I wandered over to the clearance rack to look at shirts.
I picked up one of the shirts and held it up in front of my face, trying to picture my dad in this blue and orange plaid pattern with his one pair of casual slacks. When I lowered my hands, my eyes closed in on a blonde head across the store, about forty yards away. My pulse instantly doubled.
I could recognize Nicole Ellis from any angle or distance. From her perfectly toned and muscular cheerleader legs, to her perfectly proportioned five-foot, three-inch frame, to her gorgeous shoulder-length wavy blonde hair, I knew her. Her eyes, nose, and lips may not have been perfect cover-model material, but when she smiled, they came together to form the most radiant, mesmerizing sight I had ever seen.
“Are you going to get that?” Roger’s voice ripped me from my lovesick trance.
I looked down at my shirt, now crumpled up near my waist. “Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s her over there, isn’t it?” (I guess I was being pretty obvious). He bumped me slightly in that direction.
I turned abruptly. “Let’s go.”
Roger paid for his bottle of Old Spice, and I paid for my orange and blue plaid. We left the store without looking back. But the detox had been interrupted.
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