Free From Butt to Booty by Amber Kizer Page B

so sorry, Gertie. Swear I had no idea his mother was Moany Joany from Channel Six.”
    Apparently Joan Hudson is a local celebrity. I guess I would have known that if my boyfriend had told me, or I ever watched the evening news. She’s an investigative reporter whose delivery is the stuff of
Penthouse
breathiness.
    “Was it as bad as I think it was?” I ask. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Perhaps if I squint really hard at a lightbulb, the memory will get fuzzy and warm.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Yeah, what was I thinking?” Of course it was that bad. And then it just got worse.
    “He dragged you up to his bedroom?”
    “Yes.” I don’t even really remember the décor because I was so focused on evading the tongue of death. “And he tasted like cheap Chinese takeout and kept shoving his tongue into my mouth like he was some tentacle-man from outer space.” Let’s not even talk about the hello erection rubbing on my thigh.
    “What’d you do?” Adam gulps air. I can hear it.
    “I kept asking him about the model airplanes hanging from his ceiling like I cared.” Stephen’s taller than me, so about all I could see while his tongue was in my mouth was the ceiling. The angle was brutal.
    “Uh-huh. And you weren’t into kissing him back?” Adam asks like he’s afraid of my answer.
    “That was not kissing. That was carpet cleaning.”
    “Huh?”
    “It was uncomfortable and boring. For buttocks’ sake, I was having juicy conversations about P-3s.”
    “What are P-3s?”
    “Planes. Very old planes,” I snap.
    “Oh. How’d you get home?”
    “I made a big deal about my neck hurting, which was actually true, but I pretty much lost it when he started to pull me toward the bed. No way was I leaving my feet.” Visions of having appendages or breasts sucked into the Hoover mouth are going to haunt me for years.
    “So, you were into him,” Adam says.
    Do I sound into him? I want to be into him
. “Not then.”
    “Then he brought you home?”
    “Yes, and he wanted to make out in the driveway like we hadn’t been doing that for an hour. And it’s a good thing I didn’t eat anyfood, I would have thrown up all over him when his tongue got my gag reflex. Still, I was hungry.”
    “You have a bowl of ice cream?”
    I clink my spoon into Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. “Yes, comfort food.”
    “Are you going to break up with him?”
    The sixty-four-million-dollar question: Am I going to dump him? “Maybe he’s special.”
    “Special?”
    “Like I wouldn’t dump a guy in a wheelchair if he popped a wheelie, so why would I dump Stephen for popping a boner?”
    “We’re not talking about his dick here. His dick wasn’t in your throat, was it?”
    I shiver. I can’t even imagine the alternate reality where that might have happened. “No.”
    “Let’s recap. He tells you his grandmother is nuts but leaves out the part about his mother being on television and, oh, by the way, anorexic from the sound of it. He doesn’t talk to you at all during dinner. Doesn’t let you finish eating before pulling you up to his bedroom so he can shove his unwanted tongue down your throat—”
    “Wait, I don’t know that it was unwanted.” I have to be fair. I like the idea of French-kissing. I just hope it’s not all like this.
    “Okay, but he doesn’t check in to make sure you’re having a good time, right?”
    “Well, no.”
    “Then he gets huffy when you say your neck hurts and you need to go home and you won’t make out with him in front of the prying eyes of your parents. Right?”
    “That’s close, yes.”
    “And you think there’s something wrong with you, right?” Adam hits the nail on the doorjamb.
    “Is there?” I have this terrible sinking feeling that this is the best my dating life will ever be. It will all be downhill from here, until I have fifty cats and wear Lycra on my massive butt.
    “There’s nothing wrong with you. Really.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. If I put it to a vote right