The Love Bug

Jeremy didn't get home until after dinner -- he'd called to tell Mom and Dad he had a "study date" and would grab some McD's on the way home. As soon as he walked through the door, I ran over to him and we both said "We have to talk."

His hair looked a little wet; had it been raining?

I led him up to my room and I said "I have two things, so I should go first."

"Fair enough," he said with a little laugh.

I told him to sit on the bed. Then I locked the bedroom door, stripped off every bit of clothing, and sat down right next to him. "Well?"

"Not if you were the last girl on earth,

and

not my sister. Nothing personal."

"I feel the same way, also nothing personal." I was still naked, because it just didn't seem to matter.

"It's not as if I'm not objectively aware that you're hot."

"Likewise, even if you are a nerd."

"It's like we burned it out last night. And you were right, there's definitely something fucking weird going on."

"What was your thing?" I asked.

"I'm going to Hell."

"Come again?"

"I fucked Jill Edwards."

"That's a good thing, isn't it? She's your wet dream, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but I knew she might catch this whatever-thing from me. I wasn't there half an hour before she became... well, you know."

"Believe me, I know."

"And afterward I was thinking, is this any different from slipping something in her Coke? It's not as if she would have fucked me last week."

"You don't know that."

"I know that."

"Well, it's not as if you did it on purpose.

Or

that you could have walked away if you'd wanted to, right?"

"I guess." He seemed unconvinced that he hadn't done anything wrong, and to be honest I wasn't 100% sure either. This was new territory.

"So what's your other thing?"

"Well," I said, "Gregory Pauson and I got off the bus together after school, and we got to talking, and... well, we ended up right here fucking for over an hour."

"Eww," Jeremy said, jumping up. "I hope you cleaned the sheets afterward."

I laughed and told him he was an asshole. "Seriously, though," I said, "should we be telling somebody about this?"

"Tell them what? It sounds insane, and we'd have to lead with you and me fucking. How would

that

look?"

"I guess you're right," I said.

"Okay," Jeremy said, "what

do

we know? You seem to be able to catch it, this urge, in fifteen or twenty minutes."

"And you can get it from somebody of your own sex, like me from Naomi."

"But that didn't affect you the same way. You didn't jump each other's bones. Unless there's a really hot part of the story you forgot to tell me."

I called him an asshole again.

"So you catch it, or whatever, but the atavistic behavior doesn't kick in until you're alone with somebody of the opposite sex."

"Say that in English, not in nerd."

"You turn into a sex animal."

"I think I like the 'nerd' version better."

"And oh," he said, "you don't seem to be able to catch it in crowds. Jill and I didn't go nuts during the school day, and nobody else did that I noticed. Not until it was the two of us together. Same as you and Gregory: nobody was fucking on the school bus, right?"

"I'd have noticed."

"And nobody has any desire to repeat it with the same person?"

I made a show of rubbing my left breast, in what I really thought was a provocative manner, and he didn't show the slightest interest. "Apparently not."

"And that's all we know?"

"That's all we know," I agreed.

Though I didn't mention that this afternoon with Gregory, the same as last night with him, I'd lied about not having any condoms because for some reason I couldn't stand the thought of using one.