I'll Never Be the Same

I felt a kind of satisfaction in school on Monday when I saw Ben. He had a black eye and when he saw me, he quickly looked away before turning and heading in the opposite direction. I was happy to know he would be leaving me alone…and I had Darren to thank for that.

I was glad that Darren didn’t approach me at any point throughout the day. I still wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted, but I was hoping that I could have time to come up with some portion of an idea that I could give Darren during English.

The only problem I had to deal with during the day was Becca. I loved her, but she wouldn’t listen to a thing I said when it came to Darren. It didn’t help that she knew that I had stayed at his house this weekend.

“Did you have sex with Darren?” she questioned the moment I sat down at our table.

“No,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “He’s fantastic.”

I rolled my eyes as I started to eat. I was kind of shocked at how easy it seemed Becca could accept the idea of me sleeping with Darren. She had been head over heels for him at the beginning of the year… and now, well she just talked about him like he was an accomplishment.

Now that I thought about it, I hardly ever heard of any girls fighting over Darren. This just brought be back to previous thoughts that I had that Darren didn’t really hurt any of the girls he was with. I had always just seen what he did as a bad thing, but if anything it seemed that he was probably the nicest guy a girl could hook up with. But then I had to wonder why he had never had a long term relationship.

Darren was already in English when I got there, and I was glad and nervous at the same time. This gave us time to talk briefly.

“Hey,” he said, as I took my seat beside me. I gave him a small smile. “Made any decisions yet?”

I nodded my head, trying to think how to word what I wanted to say. Mrs. Shepard entered the room, which meant I didn’t have much longer.

“I’d like to continue helping you with English class,” I said, my eyes meeting Darren’s. He smiled.

“Great,” he said. “Because I could really use some help.”

Class started so our conversation was done for now.

“I’m going to pick you up at 4,” I said when class ended.

“Well, this is new,” he said, grinning at me. “See you then.”

---

Darren was waiting for me on his porch when I pulled into his driveway. He walked quickly to my car and got in.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“We are going to get pizza and we’re going to talk,” I said.

“Is this a date?” I looked over at him and sure enough he was smiling.

“No,” I said. We were silent during the right into town, which was fine because it gave me a few minutes to figure out what we were going to talk about once we got to the pizza place.

I parked on the street when we got there and we went inside and sat down. After our pizza was ordered and I had taken a few sips of my soda, I looked at Darren. He was watching carefully, as if I were about to strike. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Am I that scary?” I questioned. Darren looked surprised for a moment.

“What are you talking about?”

“You look like I’m about to attack you at any moment?” I laughed.

“Well, you kind of are going to attack me,” he said. “I have no idea what you want to talk about.”

“I’ll let you know, I only have one question I really want to ask,” I started. I hesitated for a moment before deciding to just dive into this conversation. It had to happen. “Why have you never had a long term relationship with a girl?”

“To put it simply: I’ve never found the right girl,” he answered instantly.

“Really?” I asked in disbelief. “You’ve gone through an awful lot of them.”

“Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to be completely honest and straight forward.”

“That would be preferred,” I said as the waitress returned with our pizza.

“I’m going to sound completely typical,” Darren started. “But my dad divorced my mom and left us the summer before high school started. We had been really close too, so it wasn’t easy. And then you’ve seen how my mom is. I guess I’m just your typical hormonal male who just saw an opportunity to use those hormones to piss her off and just kind of feel more wanted.”

“You do realize that in your plan to do all of this, and hook up with girls, you’ve probably hurt a lot of people,” I said, taking a bite of my pizza.

“I know,” he said. “I try not to. I try to be as nice as possible. And just so you know, I haven’t slept with every girl that I’ve gone after.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Darren said, picking at his own pizza. “Our relationships, if you want to even call them that, don’t last long because honestly it’s the girls trying to sleep with me. Its horrible how many girls are actually willing to just sleep with me so that they can brag about it. So I end things with them.”

“What about Becca?” I asked. I was hoping she wasn’t like those girls that Darren had just mentioned.

“Ok, I did sleep with her,” he said, running a hand through his hair, avoiding eye contact. “The only reason things didn’t get serious with her and the other girls that, yes, I did sleep with is that I didn’t have a connection with them.”

“But you slept with them…” I said.

“I don’t know what to say,” Darren said, looking at me now. “I’m a guy. But honestly, I’ve never felt a connection with anyone like I feel like you. I keep saying I want you, and I don’t just want you in a sexual way. I mean, I did at first, but now that I’ve actually gotten to know you, I just want you to be mine so that I can talk to you and kiss you and just be there for you.”

“I still have to think about this,” I said. “I’m not sure what I want or how I feel about you.”

“I’ll take that,” he said smiling at me. “It’s better than you ignoring me.”

I smiled at him as the waitress brought our check. Darren started to reach for it but I snatched it up before he could.

“I’m paying,” I said as Darren just shook his head.

“If we’re not splitting it, does this mean that it was a date?” he asked.

“I told you this isn’t a date,” I said. “I’m just paying because you paid the last time we were here.”

“Whatever you say,” he said smirking at me. “But I still think this was a date.”