Metamorphosis (2 page)

As we grew up,
Evie
and I stayed close despite the fact that we had different school friends and
were involved in different activities. We were both very smart and were at the
top of our class from elementary school on. In high school
Evie
became very popular at her school and developed quite the social life. It was
really no wonder seeing how she was gorgeous, brilliant, and a sincerely nice
person.
Evie
and I talked on the phone every night
before we went to bed, filling each other in on the day’s events. The
conversations were usually heavily weighted on
Evie’s
contributions since I had no social life to speak of. I didn’t mind though, I
lived vicariously through her since it was the best I was going to get. We
still spent several nights a week at each other’s houses and still read at
least one book a week together. Because we had read so many books, and starting
about eighth grade most of them had been romance novels, we had felt we were
well prepared entering high school for immature boys that thought only with
their dicks and caddy teenage girls that were willing to cheat, lie and steal
to climb the social hierarchy. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to interact with too
many high school boys and never allowed myself to get caught up in the
estrogen possessed
drama that took place at my school.
Evie
, on the other hand, just couldn’t avoid it. She made
the mistake once of falling head over heels for a boy at her school during
sophomore year. He was the typical high school jock that everyone treated as a
deity.
Evie
soon found out that he lived up to that
rich athlete stereotype so precisely captured in all of our books ~ cocky,
self-centered, and a cheating scumbag. After that, she never allowed herself to
get emotionally attached to any one guy, but often dated and had her share of
sexual escapades with both high school and local college boys.

“Scarlett, you are doing it again!
I’ve never seen you so spacey,”
Evie
cut into my
stroll down memory lane once again. “Come on! Snap out of it! Aren’t you just
geeking
about tomorrow?”

“
Geeking
?
What is that?
Geeking
? I swear you must look these
words up online or something?”

“No, sourpuss, I don’t. I just
have an immensely elaborate vocabulary,” she smirked.

“Immensely elaborate vocabulary
and you come up with
geeking
and sourpuss? Wow, Rice
University has no idea what they said yes to when they accepted your
application,” I retorted.

“Just shut up and let’s talk about
tomorrow. Have you decided what you are going to do with your hair?”

“I’m not really sure…”

“Wait,” she interrupted. “Before
we continue this conversation, let’s open our celebratory bottle of wine.”

She was headed for the kitchen
before she even finished the sentence, grabbing two of our new wine glasses
from the cabinet that I had just put away less than an hour ago. Once she had
opened the bottle of Pinot
Grigio
she had stolen from
her
parents
bar and poured us each a glass, she
rejoined me in her bedroom.

“Okay, now we are ready. So
tomorrow?” she asked as she
eluded
to the day we had
planned for my external makeover.
Weeks
prior she had
scheduled for me to spend a day at a local spa for a massage, a manicure/
pedicure, waxing, and a new hairstyle. After that we were to go shopping so I
could start reinventing my wardrobe. Luckily, I had saved upwards of five
thousand dollars throughout high school babysitting, tutoring, and teaching
after school music lessons, so I would be able to purchase a good base.

“Look
Evie
,
I am extremely excited about tomorrow. I really am, I promise” I began. “But
I’m also very nervous and anxious about all of it. Finally being able to live
my own life, to make my own decisions about what I like and don’t like, getting
to choose my own clothes, styling my own hair, doing whatever I want, whenever
I want… all of it sounds amazing… it sounds so freeing… but I just feel
incredibly overwhelmed by all of it. I know most people don’t get to just start
over when they are eighteen, a chance to recreate their image,
who
they want to be… And I’m so thankful and relieved that
I’m finally here, away from them, but truth be told I’m just scared. I don’t
want to mess this up.
Ya
know?” I confessed.

“Oh sweetie,” she said as she
patted the bed next to where she was
laying
,
indicating for me to join her. I lifted my eyebrows in disapproval at her
“sweetie” remark, but she went on as if she didn’t notice. “You are going to do
just fine. You just need to give yourself more credit. You are so smart, and so
sweet, and you are beautiful inside and out. Plus you will always have me here
to tell you when you are fucking up, so there’s no way you can fail.”

“I know, I know. It’s just a lot
to deal with all of a sudden. I have thought about this day for so long, I
thought I was so prepared but the truth is I really don’t know who I am, I
don’t know who I want to be. And then when I even think about dating, I just
want to throw up,” I admitted as I drained the contents of my glass.

“Let’s move this conversation to
the kitchen so we can refill our glasses,”
Evie
interjected.

I followed behind her continuing
my whining, “First, I get around boys and it’s like I lose the ability to speak
intelligently. My mouth dries up like the Sahara desert, my brain freezes, and
my stomach twists and turns like it’s warming up for the uneven bars at the
Olympics.”

“You act like you’ve never been
around a boy before, Sam. Come on, you’ve kissed a couple of guys. Shit, you’ve
even kissed a girl! And you’ve read enough sex scenes in our books that you
know what’s supposed to happen. Hell, you probably know more about how it’s
supposed to go than most girls our age who just blindly and drunkenly stumble
through the act.”

“Yes, I’ve kissed a couple of guys
before,
Evie
, like two, and both times were at church
camp and were one time occurrences. And you kissing me so I wouldn’t be nervous
about my first kiss hardly counts for anything,” I argued. “To think I’m
experienced in any way sexually is truly laughable, most twelve and thirteen
year olds have done more than I have. Reading about something and actually
doing it is quite different, especially when you are talking about sex. Oh, and
I thought we were going to lose the nickname when we moved here

“I’m never dropping the nickname so get
that thought out of your pretty little head,” she smirked. “And I take great
offense that kissing me ‘hardly counts for anything.’ Do you know how many
people would love to have my tongue in their mouth?” I just rolled my eyes in
response.

As we sat on the kitchen counter
we opted to forgo the glasses and passed the bottle of wine back and forth
between us drinking straight from the source, and I continued to ramble on
about my fears and worries when it came to entering the world of dating.

“I don’t even know what kind of
guy is my type. I don’t know who is out of my league and who isn’t. I don’t
know if I should let a guy approach
me or if I should
approach him… there
are just all these questions… I feel so silly.”

“Okay, let’s get one thing
straight ~ NO guy is out of your league!” she said sternly looking directly into
my eyes. “I never want to hear you say something like that again. You seriously
have no idea what a fucking amazing catch you are for any guy. I swear
,
your parents really did a number on your self-esteem. Guys
look at you all the time, you just never notice because you are too afraid your
parents will catch you making eye contact with one and then you’ll, I don’t
know, end up pregnant or something.” She continued, “As for what your type is,
surely you have some idea what you are looking for. I mean we have only read
hundreds, if not thousands, of books that pretty much cover every category of
guy that exists. Think about all of our favorite book boyfriends…”

“That’s just the thing, I love so
many of our book boyfriends, ALL of them actually,” I giggled as the wine was
definitely starting to have some effect on me. “Sometimes I think I’d like the
All-American, college frat boy image, maybe even one with a bit of a wild side.
But then I think about our beloved tattooed bad boy rockers and I think about tracing
their tattoos with my tongue… yummy indeed.”

“You really do have a kinky freak
living inside there, don’t you?”
Evie
joked. “I’m
kind of afraid of what’s going to happen once you get an actual taste of the
passion that you read about so often. If those books get your panties all wet,
what’s going to happen when an actual
hottie
get his
hands on you?”

“I’m not sure… I may spontaneously
combust or my panties may just disintegrate right off my body,” I laughed. “But
don’t act like I’m the only one that fantasizes about our book boyfriends. I
clearly remember just last week a certain someone texting me in the wee hours
of the morning because she had just had a wet dream about… who was it that
time… I can’t remember someone that you called ‘Daddy’ in bed or some shit.”

“Shut the fuck up.” She joked. “We
really are little book whores, aren’t we? Not just in the number of books that
we read, but in how many of the guys we are in love with, the things that we
dream about doing with them…”

“Yeah, how sad is that? If it
wasn’t for that vibrator you bought me last year, I would probably have carpal
tunnel by this point,” I admitted. I must be the most sexually frustrated
virgin on the planet because my virtue was still intact only because my parents
didn’t let me out of their sight long enough to even meet anyone, much less
like someone enough to want to have sex with them. I wasn’t interested in just
handing it out on a silver platter in a bathroom stall at one of my recitals or
better yet, at church camp. I was pretty sure the man upstairs wouldn’t approve
of the fact that I was using him as an excuse to escape my parents and whore
myself out. I felt bad enough that it was the only place I had ever kissed a
guy. I had felt so guilty then that
I had almost expected to be struck by lightning or something, but I made it
through the rest of the week unscathed.

“You’re telling me! It’s been over
three months since I stopped seeing Garrett. All the extra free time has
allowed me to read myself into sexual frustration as well,” she complained. “We
really need to get out and have some fun. I can’t wait to corrupt you… and it
all begins tomorrow.”

“I don’t think I’m going to need
your help in corrupting, I’ve been looking forward to this too much. I may need
help in controlling my hormones once they’re released from their cage.” I
waggled my eyebrows at her. “Now back to these different categories of book
boyfriends. We need to make sure we consider all potential candidates. We
forgot to mention the hot professors looking for reasons to tutor us in
private, or the famous musicians that are going to mysteriously pop into our
lives and beg us to go on tour with them because we are their muse. Ooh, better
yet, maybe we can snag us an ultimate,” I said in my faux serious voice.

“An ultimate?”
Evie
interrupted.

“Yeah, the
ultimates
…
you know, the devastatingly handsome, possessive billionaire moguls that can’t
live without us and are dying to shower us with wealth and satisfy our deep,
dark sexual desires,” I explained.

“Okay, I lied. Even though I said
there’s no guy out of your league, I’m not sure we are quite ready for ‘the
ultimates
.’ Jesus Christ, Scarlett, you go from telling me
you are scared to talk to a college boy to telling me you want to find an older
man that’s into bondage and whips. I think we may need to work our way there so
you feel a little more comfortable with yourself and your body before we head
down that road. Plus, I’m not sure if there’s a local Billionaire BDSM club
that we can just waltz in and make our selection,” she joked.

I started laughing uncontrollably
at her last comment as I envisioned the two of us walking up to an office
building trying to find our version of an ultimate. She was right, I needed to
take baby steps before I found myself blindfolded and restrained to a cross on
a wall trying to remember my safe word, while anticipating the crack of a whip
across my skin.

“But Ana was a virgin…” I tried to
argue, but couldn’t even get the thought out without cracking up all over
again. We both laughed until tears streamed down our faces. Finally after
several minutes, we regained our composure and
Evie
said she had a plan.

“This is what we are going to do.
Tomorrow we are going to recreate your image with a new hairstyle, a little bit
of makeup, and new clothes ~ going to get you all
sexified
.
Then tomorrow night we are going to go with my cousin to that party by her
school. But before we go, we are going to pick one of the categories of our
book boyfriends and our goal for the evening is to find our version of that BB.
Each subsequent night we go out together, we will choose a different category
until we find exactly what your type is. Shit, it might even help me because
I’m quickly finding out what I thought my type was, is actually quite similar
to the description of a douchebag,” she explained.