I not only agreed with her, but swore to her that I would be a better man than my father and would wait until I met someone special. Not that it had been easy. Although I’d never met anyone who I had a serious interest in until Jen, there had been a few girls who’d made it more than clear we could have some fun.
Sometimes I wondered if I wasn’t being an idiot waiting, passing up on some chances for a good time. But my mother was thrilled with my promise to make my first time meaningful and that had pretty much trapped me into keeping my word. There were times I thought I could just fool around and she would never know, but that would make me a lying dog no better than my father.
How many women you screwed didn’t make you a man; keeping your word to someone you loved did. And I swore to keep my vow and not be a dog in heat. I did, however, know enough not to tell anyone. That didn’t mean I had to advertise the fact I was a virgin, though. Any girl who had been interested in just a good time, I made up the excuse I was dating someone. And I was way too smart to tell any of the guys.
Sam knew because Sam pretty much knew everything about me, just as I knew more about her than her own brother and sister. We’d met in fifth grade when we’d been put together as lab partners and had immediately become good friends. We both enjoyed the same books, movies, and video games, and had the same laid-back personalities. Where we were different was when it came to what people thought about us.
Sam pretty much marched to the beat of her own drummer dressing like a tomboy and watching football and bad horror movies while spending more time around me and my friends than the other girls.
I, on the other hand, wore brand name clothes and took a lot of care with my appearance. Enough for Sam, along with my mother, to teasingly refer to me as a ‘pretty boy’ who generally tried to put myself out there as cool.
I looked down at Sam’s legs stretched out in front of me. Her feet were bare, and my eyes lingered on the butterfly tattoo on the top of her left foot. I let my gaze wander up her long legs, which I had to assume were under the baggy jeans. While she looked to her left watching the kids who were running around the small playground, I focused on her chest.
There was nothing visible in the loose shirt. Not for the first time, I wondered what she had under there. I wasn’t interested in the sense that I wanted her, but in the years I’d known her I’d never seen Sam wear anything tight or even slightly revealing.
She never attended any school dances and even when we went swimming a few times she wore shorts and a T-shirt. That was pretty much the only time I’d seen her legs, which although on the slender side, looked pretty good.
I went back to looking at the tattoo. It was colorful and in what I considered a sexy spot, yet she rarely even wore sandals to show it off. Her toenails were painted black, and I noticed a silver ring around her middle toe.
Sam had once commented she had a boyfriend who liked her feet. I idly wondered if that was why she had gotten the tattoo and wore the ring. Not wanting to look like I was staring, I glanced up.