Good Luck, Fatty

over the food. “This is good.”
    Good? I was hoping for awesome, or astounding, or out-of-this-world. But as long as I’ve known Tom, he’s been a pretty cool customer, reacting to everything (except people who dare to insult me, apparently) with calm control and reserve.
    Which makes me want to rile him. “You know,” I say, putting on my best flirtatious lilt, “I’ve got something delicious for dessert.”
    He twirls a nest of linguine around his fork. “What is it?” he asks, not picking up on my sexy meaning.
    Maybe I should pop a button on my blouse. “Cream puffs,” I tell him honestly. “From the Food Lion.”
    “Mmm,” he gives me, “sounds good.”
    Suddenly I hear Gramp’s voice chastising, Bobbi-Jo, you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached, because just now I realize I’ve neglected to set the ambience in motion.
    “Excuse me,” I blurt, hopping up and dashing for the junk drawer, where Orv stores a disposable cigarette lighter. I flick the lighter’s little metal spinny wheel four or five times before I get it to spark. “There we go,” I say, dangling my curves in Tom’s face as I lean in and set the candles ablaze.
    I kill the overhead light, leaving only the tiny bulb above the sink going. “Be right back,” I promise as I slip down the hall toward my bedroom, where I snatch my MP3 player and speakers and do an about-face.
    I don’t bother asking Tom if he’d enjoy some dinner music (I’ve got two hours worth of songs I’ve hijacked from Orv’s CD collection, by way of Harvey’s computer at The Pit) before I set the MP3 player on the microwave cart and let the tunes rip.
    When I steal a glance at Tom’s plate, I see that it’s half-empty (as opposed to mine, which is totally full).
    But there’s still one more thing…
    Jammed into the refrigerator sideways is a two-liter bottle of black cherry-flavored ginger ale that resembles pink champagne. I shimmy the bottle out and swaddle it in a hand towel as if it’s a pricey burgundy at a French café. “You’re going to love this,” I predict as I slosh the bubbly into those sapphire glasses (which sort of defeats the idea of the ginger ale being pink, but c’est la vie ).
    I resume my place opposite Tom and raise my glass in salute. “To best friends,” I say, feeling drunk on something (love?) even though I’m as pharmacologically chaste as your average newborn, “and more.”
    “Definitely more,” he agrees as our glasses clink together and the glow of candlelight dances over the walls.
    It’s the first time in a while I’ve had the urge to screw (because, honestly, the trouble Justin, Malcolm, Evan, Corey, and even twerpy Sydney Vale have been putting me through lately has been quite the sexual buzz kill).
    And unless I’m mistaken (which I’m pretty sure I’m not by the musky cologne Tom has splashed on a little too liberally and the twitchy way his eyes keep darting about, as if we’re on the verge of being caught in the act), he’s in the mood too.
    We finish dinner by seven thirty-ish, which leaves us scads of time for dessert (and even a little time for “dessert,” should the evening meander down that road), since Denise and Orv are at the drive-in for a double feature that doesn’t wrap up until nearly one a.m.
    “Wanna watch some TV,” I offer, “before we, uh, have the cream puffs?”
     Since Tom’s a virgin, he probably doesn’t know it’s not ideal to screw on a full stomach.
    His shoulders kick up. “Yeah. Sure.”
    I don’t bother clearing the plates or turning on any lights in the living room, an appropriate choice since Tom and I don’t get three minutes into watching Hoarders before his shirt is completely unbuttoned and poised to slip off, revealing the cutest patch of fine black chest hair. The base of my neck is tender with blossoming hickeys I’m already panicking over how to conceal.
    Oh, and Tom is rather—how should I put this?—rigid, the zipper of his Levi’s starting to creep down all on its own from the pressure.
    I make a move for his jeans, but he sidetracks me with an epic tongue battle, my slippery butter knife no match for the sabre he’s unsheathed. (This can’t be true—it just can’t—but I read somewhere that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body. Personally, I think weirdo factoids like that are invented in dungeon-labs by sleep-deprived, crackpot research assistants with inferiority complexes.)
    Tom pries his lips