This, That, and the Other

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

W is for Wendy C.

Do you remember a few days ago when I was telling you about Stopwatch Sally? Well, I met Wendy through Sally. Shortly before that incident where Sally slammed down the receiver on her telephone so hard that I was sure she must have broken the base unit of her phone, I was over at Sally’s house to pick her up for a date. When I came to the door of her house where she lived with her parents, Sally invited me in and asked me if I minded if her cousin, Wendy, could tag along.

Sally explained that Wendy’s parents were moving into a new house in the area because her father had just accepted a position as the editor of a well-known business magazine. Her parents asked Sally’s parents if Wendy could stay with them while Wendy’s parents were getting things settled in their new house.

Anyway, after I agreed to let Wendy come with us, Sally called out to Wendy, who was upstairs in Sally’s bedroom and Wendy came walking down the stairs from the second floor. She took my breath away, that’s how beautiful she was. Like Sally, she was a junior in high school, but not at the same school Sally was going to.

I know that Sally was getting pissed because I was paying so much attention to Wendy that night. Of course, I didn’t know that less than a week later Sally and I would have a big blow-up. When Sally excused herself to go to the restroom, I asked Wendy for her phone number, but she didn’t have it because the landline at her new home hadn’t been installed yet — and cell phones were still nearly half a century away from becoming ubiquitous. Wendy asked me for my phone number and promised to call me when her phone was installed.

Wendy did call me a few days after the Sally incident. “My cousin told me she dumped you,” Wendy said. I admitted to doing something I regretted and Wendy said, “If you ever were to talk about me the way you talked about Sally, I’d dump you too, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you learned your lesson.”

So Wendy and I started dating, but she was nothing like her cousin. I was only a freshman in college, but I was truly smitten and thought Wendy could be “the one.” Sure, we would make out and go at it pretty hot and heavy, but we never got past third base, even after dating her for the better part of a year.

During the summer before my sophomore year at college and her senior year in high school, her parents rented a place on the ocean at Fenwick Island in Delaware. I was invited by Wendy to spend a week there with her, her sister, and her mother. Her father had to stay behind in DC for his job at the magazine. I was sure that I was going to “consummate” our relationship during that week.

So when we had an opportunity to go all the way, we did. And it was everything I’d hoped it would be. Except, I sensed that this wasn’t her first rodeo. I asked her about that and she admitted that she’d had sex once before. She also admitted that there was a guy at her high school that she was also seeing. He was a jock, the captain of the football team and shit like that. His name was Derek.

Right after Wendy and I had sex, I told her that I loved her. She said she loved me too. Then she said, “But there is someone else I love more than you.”

“Derek?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s Derek. I’m so sorry.”

It took me a long time to get over Wendy.

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