Innocence Read online

Watching my dad and mom pull away in the unmarked Chevy Blazer, amid all those other incoming freshman and their families on move-in day, I felt sad, sure. But underneath my nostalgia for the first seventeen-plus years of my life as a doted-on dependent was a buzzing energy. Part of me was ready to burst, even as I waved goodbye on the curb of East Halls. Behind the wheel, my dad’s jaw was set against another tide of emotion, and in the passenger seat, my mom’s fragile features were already dissembling again in a torrent of tears.

  I stood there like a good little girl until the last trace of the Blazer was gone -- out of the parking lot and down the road, past the towering football stadium and out toward the interstate for the long ride back to Pittsburgh.

  And then I was free. I was Monica Creed, college freshman. It happened just like that. A wave washed over me. I transformed on that very spot on the curb.

  I probably didn’t look any different, clad in my college-branded blue sweats, my sandy-brown hair tied back, little to no make-up on my face for moving day.

  But I sure as hell felt different. And as I registered these strange feelings, then turned back toward my new home in East Halls, I stepped toward an exciting, uncharted place called the future. A place known as adulthood. I place that had no rules, no limits. The only guidepost was experimentation. Trial and error. And there would be no more lectures but the ones in my college classrooms.

  From now on, I would grow as a person – as a woman – by feeling my way forward. Feeling my way into love or lust. Into seduction and sex, should I want it. Feeling my way into the life that beckoned. All of it, right before me. Wow! What a moment!

  Still, as much as I felt these things washing over me, I had no idea what was in store. All that was in store. I just knew it would be big. For better – and there would be a lot that would be better – and for worse – there would be bad stuff, some very bad stuff – all of it would be big. Game-changing big. And it would help shape who I was and the direction my life would take.

  From then on, my life would be my doing. And there is no better feeling in the world than that. For me, college was worth every penny, right then and there. Just for me having experienced that single, thrilling moment.

  One probably gets a similar transformative thrill the first time she steps into her own apartment, or gets a great job, or buys a house, or accepts a marriage proposal. But for me, on that day, there had been no bigger moment in my life.

  I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling. Heck, I didn’t even know if my fellow freshman all around me were taking a moment to feel the same thing, as they toted their boxes, hugged their parents and waved at departing vehicles as they vanished from sight. I hope they did. People say I’m too much in my own head. But I like it there. Because I take the time to process things like this. Things like my first, free steps on campus as a coed.

  And where did those steps take me? Probably the least glamorous place on earth. As I made my way back to our dorm floor, I ducked into the bathroom. All those tingling feelings of my newfound freedoms had worked their way down to my temperamental bladder.

  I had to pee.

  The bathroom was no-frills. Showers with plastic curtains to the right, and a line of about four stalls to the left. There was a wall with sinks and mirrors in between.

  I ducked into a stall with a half-open door. I slipped down my sweats, hovered over the seat and looked up at the ceiling as my flow began. My tinkle was like a little song in the toilet. Kinda cute and cuddly, actually. Then, from the stall next to me, came the shuddering thunder of flatulence, then the warm stench of a beer-fueled bowel movement.

  Gross, I thought, as I pawed for the toilet paper. But before I could make it out of this suddenly vile place, a sarcastic voice sang from the next stall.

  “Ohh, Dude,” the male voice intoned. “This is one hell of a download, if I do say so myself.”

  A guy, I thought, panicking. There was a guy in the next stall. A gross guy, taking a stinky shit – right there in the stall next to me!

  I couldn’t help but protest.

  “And you’re proud of this? Why?” I curtly asked.

  “Wonders of the human body,” the grunting guy said, then let loose with another trumpet call of flatulence.

  “Oh God,” I groaned, trying not to breathe as I wiped, then hiked up my sweatpants. “Why don’t you flush, instead of letting it marinate?”

  “I always check the color of my stool when I’m done,” the disembodied voice from the next stall answered. “It’s a good way to keep tabs on one’s health.”

  I was fighting with the lock on the stall door, trying to free myself from this god-awful gas chamber.

  “I’m sure it has something to do with whatever beer you consumed last night,” I squeaked, just as the door unlatched and released me from this colon-laced confinement. I sprinted to the sink, taking shallow breaths through my mouth.

  I fiddled with the water knobs, then pounded the liquid soap dispenser. I heard some rustling from behind the closed stall door, then the watery whisk of a long-overdue flush.

  I was scrubbing my hands as the stall door swung open. My face was crimson with embarrassment. I don’t know why I should have been embarrassed, but I was.

  I glanced up in the mirror and glimpsed the tall, lanky guy buttoning his jeans. When he looked up, I was struck by how handsome he was. His hair was long and unkempt in that surfer-dude kind of way. He sauntered toward the sink.

  I had enough soap on my hands to prep for surgery. He studied me in the mirror as I averted my eyes.

  “Sorry about that,” he muttered, taking his place at the sink next to me.

  “I’m Josh,” he said, turning to me and holding out his hand – his unwashed hand.

  I glanced over and looked at his hand, which I wouldn’t have touched if he paid me. Then my eyes found his very handsome face.

  “Maybe after you wash it,” I said, pulling my own well-scrubbed hands from the hot water and reaching for the paper towels.

  “So, were you sick or something back there?” I jerked my head toward the stall he’d emerged from.

  “Huh?” he grunted, as he leaned down to wash his hands. “Oh, that? No. That’s par for the course for me. Especially after a night of drinking. I got up here yesterday and spent the evening at an upper-classman friend’s place in town. Had one too many, I guess. Either that, or PBR gives me the shits.”

  My face screwed into a look of discomfort. “Okay. How about we drop the subject?”

  “Fine with me,” Josh said, straightening from the sink and shaking the water from his hands. “I just dropped one hell of a loaf, so I’m feeling ten pounds lighter. Wanna get something to eat?”

  He held out his damp hand to me. His blue eyes sparkled like the ocean. Well, at least the eye that I could see peering through his tousled, long hair that hung down into his angular face did. He cracked a sly grin.

  I took his hand and gave it a light shake. It was still wet, and immediately afterward, I grabbed for another towel.

  “Ah, maybe another time,” I said. “I kinda lost my appetite just now. I wonder why?”

  “I’m guessing you don’t have brothers,” Josh said.

  I shook my head.

  “My advice,” Josh said in a superior tone. “Best get up early to use the facilities, cause there are at least ten other dudes on this floor with bathroom habits worse than mine.”

  “Worse?” I said, shocked.

  Josh nodded knowingly.

  “Trust me,” he assured. “What you witnessed just now?” He jerked his head toward the stall, which I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. “Sweetness and light compared to the mustard gas some of these guys spew around here. Consider yourself warned.”

  I looked him up and down. My eyes liked what they saw, the thin but muscled chest and his long, lean legs clad in faded and ripped designer-label jeans. The packaging just didn’t match the unappetizing experience of the stall. And here he was, the best of the toil
et bowl-challenged boys on our floor?

  I dipped my head. “I will,” I said. “I guess I should say thanks.”

  “No need,” Josh grinned. “Welcome to coed college dorm life.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, my thrilling flush of freedom now replaced with the more repellent realities of dorm life. “Whoo-hoo,” I sang, twirling my index finger in feigned excitement. “Can’t wait until we shower together.”

  It was just an offhand bathroom remark. But Josh made me pay for it.

  “Now that can be arranged,” Josh said in a sultry voice. “And that could be some fun.”

  My face fired with embarrassment – and perhaps, desire. Was he reading me, this seductive sophomore (he was no freshman, I was sure) with bad bathroom manners and beer-induced bowel troubles?

  “I was joking,” I insisted.

  Josh’s sly grinned widened into a smart-alecky smirk.

  “Sure you were,” he teased.

  I didn’t know what else to say. In fact, I could hardly speak. He had flustered me.

  I inhaled air, turned on a heel and made for the door.

  “Hey,” he called. “You never told me your name.”

  “Monica,” I said without turning. “It’s Monica Creed.”

  “Pleasure was all mine, Monica Creed,” he sang as I pulled open the door.

  “You got that right,” I replied smartly, as I barreled through the door, escaping that coed bathroom from hell.

  So much for my wonderful life as a newly-free freshman, I thought.