Page 53 of A Doctor for Daisy

His hand reached over. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve never thought that. Why would you think that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Yes, it does,” he said. “Tell me.”

“It goes back to my mother. She was in high school when she got pregnant. She was eighteen but graduating. It wasn’t a secret when I was growing up that she was young and my father was never around. I don’t think I’ve ever met him and my mother sure the hell didn’t talk about him. In school, I just didn’t have what others did. It doesn’t take much for one person to start a rumor. Then the next thing I know, I’m the class whore because I lost my virginity at sixteen to my boyfriend that I had for nine months.”

“Which a lot of girls do,” he said.

“I know. We dated for a year and broke up. Then I dated a handful of other boys for my last two years of high school. I slept with one of them. That is it. One. But one that I didn’t sleep with told people we did. Once you’re not a virgin everyone just assumes. No one asked, they just went with it. The next thing I know, every guy that is talking to me now has seen me naked.”

A tear escaped down her cheek. This was one of those times she’d needed a mother in her life and her mother had just told her to ignore it.

She never even told her mother everything that happened. Only that Todd had told people they’d slept together when they hadn’t. Her mother acted like it was no big deal. After that, she never bothered to tell her mother what everyone else was saying to her and why.

“Girls are mean,” he said. “I know.”

“I doubt you had the same experience I did,” she said.

“No. Something different, but how it made me feel is the same. Try being in college at sixteen. Girls were flirting with me to get things, but not put out. And I don’t mean I wanted them to put out.”

“No. I get it. They were leading you on and making you feel as if they cared when they didn’t. They probably wanted you to do their work or cheat off of you.”

“Pretty much,” he said. “I knew what was happening. I brushed it off, but it still hurt. When I was a senior, I was nineteen, had grown into my height and finally had facial hair. I fit in more with the twenty-two-year-old seniors now. It didn’t mean people didn’t still know who I was, but most didn’t. At least most girls, and I stayed away from parties anyway.”

“I’m sorry you had to live with that,” she said.

“I’m sorry you had to live with what you did too. But we learned and grew from it.”

“I suppose. It just seemed to follow me. Though I have to say I haven’t had it happen much since I’ve lived here and I think that is the reason Ryan’s behavior bothered me so much. It was that one night too. I hadn’t seen it before.”

“What did he do?” he asked.

“We went to a New Year’s Eve party at his friends’ place. His frat buddies. Most had wives or girlfriends. They all went to college together or grew up in the area. I was the odd one out, but I’ve got no problem talking to people. No one treated me badly there. Don’t think that. I’m an adult who would have gotten up and left if they had.”

Most were more into asking her a million questions about her job, but she was fine with that and loved talking about it.

“You still didn’t say what he did,” he said.

“He acted like he was twenty. I’m not into twenty-year-olds. They were telling crass jokes, saying mean things about women they’d dated and slept with. Talking about college stories and he was the type of guy I would have run from if I’d known he was like that. The women were no different. They were doing the same and saying things to make themselves feel better. As someone who was on the other end of that talk as a kid, it made me sick. But when we went to leave, Ryan tipped me back to kiss me in front of everyone after ignoring me half the night. Then he made some joke about us going back to his place even though I’d already told him I wasn’t staying the night or having sex with him. When we left he just drove me home and never said a word about what he’d done. It’s not like he was pressuring me, he just wanted everyone to think it.”

“Sounds like he fell to peer pressure a lot,” he said,

“I don’t like being played or being a pawn. So what he did tonight was, again, a show for his friends and he had no thought of my feelings.”

“I care about your feelings,” he said. “And the guy was a prick.”

“He was,” she said, tipping her head back and blotting her eyes. She didn’t want her makeup ruined.

“We can go back and cuddle under the blanket and watch a chick flick if you want.”

Daisy burst out laughing, then turned and noticed he was serious. “Oh my God. You want to watch a chick flick instead of having sex with me in red heels?”

“I just figured you weren’t in the mood and I wanted you to feel good before you left.”

“Good lord, Theo. You are one of a kind. And I’m going to feel just fine when I leave because we are going to do exactly what we planned before Ryan came over to the table being the prick we both said he was.”

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