Read Online Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Emily Giffin
Tags: Fiction, General, Psychological, Romance, Contemporary, Juvenile Nonfiction, People & Places, Contemporary Women, Single Women, Female friendship, Triangles (Interpersonal relations), Risk-Taking (Psychology)
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some real collegiate
experience. Annalise had already met her now-husband Greg (and
lost her virginity to him), and Darcy had hooked up with four guys
by my latest count.
The next morning I regretted kissing Joey. Even more so when I
spotted Hunter hunkered down in the library stacks, his head bent
over a textbook. But not enough to keep me from kissing Joey
again that weekend, this time in the laundry room as we waited
for our clothes to dry. And so it continued until everybody in our
dorm, including Hunter, knew that Joey and I were an item. Pam
was psyched for me said that Joey blew Hunter away and had the
cutest butt in the dorm. I wrote to Darcy and Annalise, telling
them about my new boyfriend and how I was over Hunter (only
partly true) and how happy I was (happy enough).
They both had
one question: was I going to go all the way with Joey?
I was ambivalent on the subject of sex. Part of me wanted to wait
until I was deeply in love, maybe even married. But I was also
intensely curious to find out what all the fuss was about, and
desperately wanted to be sophisticated and worldly. So after Joey
and I had been together a respectable six weeks, I marched over to
the school health clinic and returned to my dorm with a prescription for Lo/Ovral, the birth-control pill that Darcy
guaranteed would not cause weight gain. A month later, with the
added protection of a condom, Joey and I did the great deed. It
was his first time too. The earth didn't move during those two and
a half minutes, as Darcy claimed it did during her first time with
Carlos. But it also didn't hurt as much as Annalise had warned me
it would. I was relieved to have it out of the way and happy to join
my hometown friends in all their womanly glory. Joey and I
embraced in my bottom bunk and said that we loved each other.
Ours was a better first time than most.
But that spring, there were two red flags indicating that Joey
wasn't the man of my dreams. First, he joined a fraternity and
took the whole thing way too seriously. One night when I teased
him about the frat's secret handshake, he told me that if I
disrespected his brotherhood, I was disrespecting him.
Please.
Second, Joey became obsessed with Duke basketball, sleeping out
in tents for tickets to big games and painting his face blue,
jumping up and down courtside with the other
"Cameron
Crazies."
The whole scene was a bit much, but I guess I would have been
fine with his enthusiasm if he had been from New Hampshire or
another state with no huge basketball ties. But he was from
Indiana. Big Ten country. His father played for the Hoosiers, for
God's sake. And there he was, this sudden die-hard
"I've liked
Duke since the dawn of time and I'm all tight with Bobby Hurley
because he once drank at my frat house" kind of a fan.
But I
looked beyond these imperfections, and we forged ahead to
sophomore and then junior year.
Then one night, after Wake Forest beat Duke in hoops, Joey
showed up at my place in a foul mood. We began to argue about
nothing and everything. First it was petty matters: he said that I
snored and hogged the bed (how can you not hog a twin bed?); I
complained that he consistently mixed up our toothbrushes (who
makes that mistake?). The arguing escalated to more significant
issues. And there was no turning back when he called me a boring
intellectual and I called him a shameless bandwagoner who
actually believed that his painted blue face contributed to Duke's
championships. He told me to lighten up and get some school
pride, before storming off.
He returned the next day with a solemn face and his scripted "we
need to have a talk" introduction followed by the "we'll always be
close" conclusion. I was more stunned than sad, but I agreed that
maybe we should be having a more diverse college experience,
which really meant dating other people. We said we would always
be friends, even though I knew we didn't have enough in
experience. Annalise had already met her now-husband Greg (and
lost her virginity to him), and Darcy had hooked up with four guys
by my latest count.
The next morning I regretted kissing Joey. Even more so when I
spotted Hunter hunkered down in the library stacks, his head bent
over a textbook. But not enough to keep me from kissing Joey
again that weekend, this time in the laundry room as we waited
for our clothes to dry. And so it continued until everybody in our
dorm, including Hunter, knew that Joey and I were an item. Pam
was psyched for me said that Joey blew Hunter away and had the
cutest butt in the dorm. I wrote to Darcy and Annalise, telling
them about my new boyfriend and how I was over Hunter (only
partly true) and how happy I was (happy enough).
They both had
one question: was I going to go all the way with Joey?
I was ambivalent on the subject of sex. Part of me wanted to wait
until I was deeply in love, maybe even married. But I was also
intensely curious to find out what all the fuss was about, and
desperately wanted to be sophisticated and worldly. So after Joey
and I had been together a respectable six weeks, I marched over to
the school health clinic and returned to my dorm with a prescription for Lo/Ovral, the birth-control pill that Darcy
guaranteed would not cause weight gain. A month later, with the
added protection of a condom, Joey and I did the great deed. It
was his first time too. The earth didn't move during those two and
a half minutes, as Darcy claimed it did during her first time with
Carlos. But it also didn't hurt as much as Annalise had warned me
it would. I was relieved to have it out of the way and happy to join
my hometown friends in all their womanly glory. Joey and I
embraced in my bottom bunk and said that we loved each other.
Ours was a better first time than most.
But that spring, there were two red flags indicating that Joey
wasn't the man of my dreams. First, he joined a fraternity and
took the whole thing way too seriously. One night when I teased
him about the frat's secret handshake, he told me that if I
disrespected his brotherhood, I was disrespecting him.
Please.
Second, Joey became obsessed with Duke basketball, sleeping out
in tents for tickets to big games and painting his face blue,
jumping up and down courtside with the other
"Cameron
Crazies."
The whole scene was a bit much, but I guess I would have been
fine with his enthusiasm if he had been from New Hampshire or
another state with no huge basketball ties. But he was from
Indiana. Big Ten country. His father played for the Hoosiers, for
God's sake. And there he was, this sudden die-hard
"I've liked
Duke since the dawn of time and I'm all tight with Bobby Hurley
because he once drank at my frat house" kind of a fan.
But I
looked beyond these imperfections, and we forged ahead to
sophomore and then junior year.
Then one night, after Wake Forest beat Duke in hoops, Joey
showed up at my place in a foul mood. We began to argue about
nothing and everything. First it was petty matters: he said that I
snored and hogged the bed (how can you not hog a twin bed?); I
complained that he consistently mixed up our toothbrushes (who
makes that mistake?). The arguing escalated to more significant
issues. And there was no turning back when he called me a boring
intellectual and I called him a shameless bandwagoner who
actually believed that his painted blue face contributed to Duke's
championships. He told me to lighten up and get some school
pride, before storming off.
He returned the next day with a solemn face and his scripted "we
need to have a talk" introduction followed by the "we'll always be
close" conclusion. I was more stunned than sad, but I agreed that
maybe we should be having a more diverse college experience,
which really meant dating other people. We said we would always
be friends, even though I knew we didn't have enough in
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