Except for the brief and confusing passages I’d found in forbidden books, it was all baffling. I’d never been kissed, never been touched, and although my body was fully, almost embarrassingly, developed, I wondered if I ever would be. Though hearing the boys crudely jest about blow jobs and bras tickled something inside of me, I also held them in them contempt. So limited, so puerile. They were the majority, the sort who had no motivation to ever leave Cross Point Village. They would marry a local girl and pop out a bunch of brats in their own likeness and rarely think about anything more rousing than where their next beer was hiding. As I stared at the ceiling and listened to the ribald talk of Tony and his half drunk pals I grew restless, finally hopping off the bed and padding down the hall to the kitchen. My mother and I had baked chocolate chip cookies earlier in the evening and I figured a nice sugar rush might settle me down. Running into him was like colliding with a rock wall. “Whoa,”
