Free Waiting for You by Shey Stahl Page A

really asked?
    Then again, I never
objected. I could have been just as much to blame as they were.
    Truth be told, I had
been so wrapped up in my life and the things that I thought were important, I
had lost touch with many things, myself included. I was if I didn’t know me.
    The guidance consoler
at the school, Mrs. Wheeler, once asked me what I wanted in my life and I gave
her the standard answer that seemed scripted by my parents, college and then of
course, a career. But did I want that?
    At the time, I thought
I wanted that. I also tend to believe that I could put my head in the sand
pretty far. I blame myself for that one. And then I would see people going to
parties and being teenagers and those thoughts of the perfectly planned life
seemed silly and I pulled my head out of the sand a little to check the tide.
    The thoughts were still
there. I felt that if I didn’t do as planned that I was being disrespectful. When
your father is the Jeff Gray, disrespectful is something that is not allowed.
    Part of the problem was
that soon those moments of wanting to be good became few and far between until I felt like all they saw was what they wanted. No one
saw me as a person.
    Even
Eric. He saw a girlfriend that by many standards was good to him. But
something was missing. After a while, I thought maybe that was how it was
supposed to be.
    In the four years we
were dating, we never got past that. Deep down, it wasn’t enough for me and I
knew that. I liked to think that I’m an optimistic person but I will say that
I’ve been let down a lot too. Eric had let me down.
    I thought about all
that for a good five minutes before I finally answered Dylan. “I want to make
mistakes. I want to get in trouble and feel alive. Like dancing in the rain and
being eighteen.”
    “And what do
eighteen-year-olds do?” he asked, his eyes drawn to a man standing near a
picnic table.
    “They get into trouble.
Lots of trouble―like starting a riot,”
    Dylan ignored my riot
comment.
    “This trouble you want
to get into,” he shifted in his seat to look at me—one hand was still on the
steering wheel and the other across the back of the seat, “will you regret it?”
    I had a feeling that
question went deeper than he intended.
    “No―I won’t.” I
told him honestly. “I want to let loose and do everything that I never had the
guts to do back home.” I swallowed preparing myself and said what I wanted.
“And I want to lose my virginity.”
    There. I said it.
    He shifted next to me
but surprisingly, kept his cool. When he didn’t say anything, I continued
fearing the silence. “I just need to find someone to do it with.” I began
chewing on my fingernails in an attempt to distract myself.
    Dylan blinked, his eyes
dropping to his hands and didn’t miss a beat when he replied with, “What if it
was me?”
    “I would like that.”
     
     
    With a bottle of whiskey and barely any
clothes, we made out the summer bucket list in the parking lot of Roger’s
Frosty of everything we intended to do to feel alive.
    “Stripping…put that one
there too.”
    “Stripping?” he
smirked, his eyebrow arched in question. “You’re actually going to strip? Oh
right, you already started.” The corners of his eyes crinkled in amused as he
looked at me.
    “Don’t judge me, just
write.”
    “I wasn’t judging you.”
Dylan grinned writing my summer bucket list on the brown paper bag from our
food. “Do I get to wa ―?”
    “I said write,” I
motioned with my hand for him to continue, my legs bouncing in the seat with
exhilaration at the possibility that right now, this summer, I could do and be
anything I wanted, “preferably with a pole.”
    “Come again?”
    “For stripping, a pole
for stripping,” I clarified. “Write that down.”
    “Writing.”
    “I want to smoke a
cigarette and get drunk and maybe steal a car.”
    “You’re already working
on the drunk part.” He pointed out handing the whiskey
back to me. “I’m