Attracted to Trouble

Chapter 1: Tempted Into Trouble

“Are you still attracted to guys?” asked Albany. Her large brown eyes peered over at me under her full, voluminous eyelashes. I looked over at her 5”5 foot thin frame and smooth coppery skin as we walked to the store during our lunch period with my eyebrow raised.

“Clarification, please?” I responded to her very blatant question that came out of absolutely nowhere.

“Since you have a boyfriend, are you still attracted to guys?” She restated, looking at me with her signature “Do you understand what I’m saying now?” expression.

            I rolled my eyes at her and refrained from giving her a nice smack across the face. Instead I responded, “Of course I’m still attracted to guys. It’s not an on and off switch where it just turns off when I’m in a relationship. I still look at guys and think, that is one extremely hot specimen, I’m sure -actually I’m positive- Andrew does the same thing.” I thought about Andrew, his caramel colored skin (which he liked to refer to as “gold skin”), his abnormally humongous brown eyes (which he refused to admit were actually brown and not black), his small pink lips (which he liked to say were always swallowed by my full heart shaped lips whenever we kissed), and his lean yet slightly muscled body (which was always in some way wrapped around mine). He was very handsome and made me feel things I’ve only ever read in stories or seen portrayed through movies.

            Then I thought of myself, my light yellow-ish skin complexion (which was white to the people at my school yet dark to the people of my family), my average sized brown eyes (which I have recently learned to make appear larger by the illusion of makeup), my plump cheeks (which are so big that they make ridges and produce the illusion of dimples whenever I smile), my full light pink heart shaped lips (which were hardly ever their true color with all the lipstick I put on), and my thin 5”6 frame (which has been referred to as “has curves yet has no curves”). People called me beautiful all the time and random guys ranging from 12-40 have tried to get my attention on the street, but I never truly believed I was “cute”, “pretty”, or “beautiful”. To me, I was just a seventeen year old girl who puts a lot of effort into trying to look at least halfway decent when she steps out of the house.

            Then I thought of how many times I’ve had the urge to want to flirt with a guy with the intention of becoming something more with him just because he was so cute and I wanted to do something like just kiss him but have had to stop myself from doing anything ridiculous because I had a boyfriend. I had Andrew. But I can’t count how many times I’ve caught Andrew checking out other girls (Even if I wasn’t there to actually see him do it), or how many times I’ve been jealous because Andrew was the type of guy that every single girl wanted to be friend with. So is it really bad if I want to just know how it feels like to kiss another guy? To be touched in a certain way by another guy? Am I mentally cheating on my boyfriend?

            “Avery! Earth to Avery! Hello?!” I snapped out of my foolish thoughts and came back to reality with Albany waving her head in front of my face with one hand and snapping her fingers with the other.

            “Uh, what? What’s going on?” I stammered out, unsure of how the heck I had arrived to the store.

            “My God, you are so absent-minded. What do you want to order for lunch?” Albany asked me, clearly annoyed at my ADHD.

            “Sorry about that, “ I apologized to her then faced the lady behind the counter, “Bagel with cream cheese and jelly toasted, please.”

            Later on, I was on the bus heading back home, completely indulged in reading Roots by Alex Haley. I still wondered how on Earth I had gotten so attached to a 900 page book which I was supposed to only read half of for my History class but decided to finish on my own.  I looked up for a second, after laughing in my head and thinking how brave it was how every woman in the book seemed to make it a life goal to get pregnant every single year by their husbands once they got married, resulting in at least six children. Lord knows I can’t even survive my monthly torture of cramps, let alone being in labor with a child squeezing its way out of me. The mere thought made me shiver. I realized the bus was coming up to my stop so I put the book away and stood up, waiting for the bus to come to a stop. I got off the bus once the doors opened and started walking the block towards my house.