“Like I said, she caught me at a bad time… If you get my drift.”
He nodded again, looking like one of those bobble heads that you get at a baseball game. He cleared his throat again and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before looking back at me. “Well, son. It made me realize we’ve never had the talk. I guess I was letting the school do it for me, but now that you’re experimenting and stuff, I figured we should have a talk. Man to man. You know. The birds and the bees stuff, even though I have no idea why it’s called that. Maybe because bees pollenate? But that makes no sense for the birds because they lay eggs. I mean, I guess, technically, a woman has eggs, but it’s a completely different type of reproductive system and process…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Where the hell does that damned saying come from?”
My face blanched. Birds and bees? What the hell? “I’m not experimenting, Dad. I swear it. I was just jacking off!” I protested.
The corner of his mouth twitched, curving into a half-smile as his eyes relaxed. “You’re not? I just… Well, I was hoping you were…” His crooked smile was quickly replaced a tight frown. “So you and Sierra aren’t…you know?” He started making hand gestures even I couldn’t interpret.
It was getting worse by the second.
I jumped off the bed and shook my head profusely. “No! Absolutely not. We’re just friends, Dad. Just friends,” I insisted.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.
Holy shit. Where did that thought come from?
“And you haven’t…?” He raised an eyebrow as well as his hands.
Imagine a circle and a lone finger and an old man miming what apparently is a sex act. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. For the second time, I was officially mortified. If I had to choose between that conversation and Sierra watching me come, I’d happily choose Sierra every freaking time.
“No! I’ve never even see a real, live boob before,” I admitted.
Almost instantly he exhaled a relieved sigh.
That was all I gave him. He didn’t need to know about Mandy. In fact, no one ever needed to know about her. I’d never even kissed a girl, let alone had a sexual experience outside of that, and I was more than happy to play the perfect innocent role. I mean, it was pretty much true.
That probably was weird for guys my age. In the locker room, I heard lots of talk of who had made out with whom, who’d given whom a blowjob, and there’d even been sex talk already. Crazy, I thought. Who the hell has sex at fourteen?
A lot of people, apparently.
I just wasn’t one of them. I guess I was what you could call a late bloomer, but it was more than that. Ever since the second grade, Sierra and I’d been inseparable. Where she went, I was right beside her. No girl had ever interested me enough to stray from her side. And, until just a few weeks ago, I’d never even considered kissing her. I was starting to realize, however, that I needed to do something. I needed to kiss someone, but there wasn’t a single girl I wanted to except for the one I couldn’t have.
Dad cleared his throat again, and I looked up to see him nodding happily. “Good. Good. You know, there’s plenty of time for all that. Boobs and sex, I mean. Both are great, beautiful things when you’re with someone you love. That’s the key to good sex, you know. You should wait until you love your partner enough to accept the responsibilities that can come along with sex.”
“Umm, yeah, Dad. I get what you’re saying.”
I was hoping that would get him to stop, but nope. He kept right on going.
“You see, son, what a lot of kids don’t realize is just how serious sex is. Boys your age think they’re invincible. But the truth is, you’re not, and even if you use a condom and birth control, there’s no guarantee to prevent pregnancy. Your sperm, you know, it can be potent.” He tapped his index finger on his chin as if pondering how he should continue this conversation.
The urge to groan was strong, and for once, I was wishing Jenna would break curfew and get in trouble. Awful, I know, but anything to get my dad out of my room. No such luck, however. His eyes lit up as if the lightbulb in his brain had just clicked on.
“Sperm. Think of it like a rich fertilizer. Fertilizer that doesn’t always have a success rate. This kind of fertilizer is special. It has to hit the egg just right to make a baby, but even still, you have to be careful. It’s like the lottery. The more you play, the more likely you can win, and you’ll never know when you’re going to hit the jackpot. But if you don’t play, you have no chances of winning.”
“So, to be winning, you have to have sex?” I joked, making him look even more uncomfortable. Probably not a good idea when I wanted this topic of conversation to be over, but it just came out without a second thought.
“No!” he protested as all the color drained from his face. He pulled on his collar as if that’d help him breathe better. “That is not what I meant.”
“I’m just kidding, Dad. I know all about sex and reproduction and where babies come from. You can spare me The Talk. The last thing I plan on being is a teen dad. Trust me. I’m not having sex, and I don’t plan on it any time soon, okay?”
The color started to return to his face. Thank goodness. It was time to end our conversation.
As I started to walk out of my room in hopes of him following, my dad called my name. I glanced back to see him eyeing me contemplatively.
“You know, Jeremy. Sometimes best friends make the best lovers.”
I nearly choked but kept my composure and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, Dad? Lovers?”
He barked out a laugh. “I don’t mean in just a physical sense. It’s just… I don’t know. I could see Sierra as my daughter one day.”
The memory of my eight-year-old self proclaiming he was going to marry Sierra flashed in my mind.
I gave Dad a small smile. “Like I said, we’re not like that.”
But, as I walked down the hall, I wondered who I was trying to convince.
My dad or myself.
I was pretty sure it was the latter, and I wasn’t doing that good of a job at it.
THE FALL OF FRESHMAN year came and went quickly and without much excitement. Kind of like Jeremy.
Not that I would really know. After “the incident”—as I’d dubbed it—I always made sure to knock before entering his room, and I’d yet to witness another not-so-unfortunate event. Unfortunately.
After I’d fallen into a routine of school, cheering, and homework, there wasn’t much time left over for Jeremy. That didn’t mean we didn’t steal every moment we could with each other. We absolutely did. We had our study dates. Our Dawson dates. And we still walked the beach every weekend, even when it was chilly outside.
It took no time for things between us to go back to normal after the whole strokin’ incident. Well, mostly. For Christmas, I received a stuffed mouse from Jeremy. And when I say stuffed mouse, I don’t mean the animal. He literally sewed me a stuffed computer mouse. I couldn’t even be mad because of all the time and hard work he’d put into it. I, however, did not get him any sort of stroking memorabilia. The last thing I wanted to think about was Jeremy’s penis. Hell, any penis for that matter. But the image from that day was burned in my mind, resurfacing at the most inopportune times.
Like right then as I walked towards the biology class I had with Jeremy. Naturally, we were lab partners, and this was the absolute wrong day for my hormones to get the best of me. I really needed to suck it up, but I’d been asked out by three boys since school started, and none of them gave me butterflies. Not the way my best friend was starting to. Sure, they were cute enough. The problem was I always found myself comparing them to him. Maybe I needed to just say yes to one of them. Maybe Jeremy and I were spending too much time together and I’d never be over him until I tried dating someone else.