I don’t start school at Miss Porter’s until the end of summer, and thankfully we’re only in the beginning.
I want to imprint on the boy as much as I can before I go. I can’t imagine a future without him. It’s impossible.
After I tell him I’m leaving, it turns into a push and pull. He’s sore at me for a while, disappointed and acting like I’ve betrayed him.
It takes time and gentle manoeuvring to get him back on track. “He is a fourteen year-old boy,” Miss Mary says, “you can’t expect the world from him.”
“But he is my world.” I mutter into my porridge. Miss Mary tells me that no man should ever be “my whole world.” She says that’s one of the most important lessons I need to learn in life.
I hear her, and make the most of my time. I play tennis almost daily with my country club friend, Mabel. We both improve immensely, and I fall back in love with the game.
I host afternoon teen parties in the garden and invite the boy and his friends. I make sure I have fun and try not to let his moods affect me, but it’s near impossible. I get moody and sullen when his attention isn’t on me, but when it is, I’m in heaven.
Bingham, a seventeen-year-old boy from the country club, who all the girls are in love with, starts courting me.
I think he’s far too old. Seventeen is basically ancient, even if I am about to turn fourteen.
The rejection only makes him more eager. He and his fancy friends start showing up at my parties, and then me and the boy, who’s discovered a jealous and possessive streak in himself, are suddenly tighter than ever.
We go back to watching films in the afternoons when it’s too hot outside.
He likes Westerns. I like pre-code and screwball comedies, where the women are free and sprightly.
He likes movies where the men are serious and heroic.
We leave room for both.
Bingham turns his attention to Mabel, who, according to him, is the second prettiest girl in town.
We’re alone again, me and the boy. I have the painful realisation that I will never be able to live without him.
As I turn fourteen in August something shifts, the boy gives me a ring. He calls it a promise ring, I have never heard of such a thing before. It has a horse inside a horseshoe on it.
“There,” he says, as he slips it onto my ring finger. “A horse for a girl who looks like one.” He laughs. I know what he is doing.
To break the intensity of the moment, I push him and we roll around laughing on the floor of my room.
“I’m gonna mount you, pony boy!” I shout, not realising there’s a sexual innuendo hiding beneath, I am far too dorky for that kind of thing, and I realise too late, after mounting him and wrestling him around for a bit, and the boy suddenly goes, “Ahh, whoops,” then he pushes me off, springs to his feet, and excuses himself to run to the washroom.
“What happened?” I’m outside, knocking on the door.
“Nothin’!” he calls out, voice panicky. I hear the tap turn on and water splashing.
“I’m very happy with the ring.” I say through the door, worried he might be upset with me over something.
“Cool,” he says. He doesn’t sound like he wants to talk. He sounds busy behind the door.
“What are you doing?” I ask, flopping myself down on the floor next to the bathroom. He doesn’t answer.
When he finally comes out, he’s wet all the way down his front, and he won’t tell me why.
All he says is, “I don’t really think you look like a horse, you look like a movie star.”
“The horse thing was just a joke.” He slinks over to me like he’s John Wayne.
He kisses me on the mouth. Maybe to shut me up, and keep me from asking questions.
Then he does it again.
And again.
And then I kiss him back.
I think I’m feeling all the love feelings at once. I feel fantastic.
Before I know what’s happening, it’s over, and the boy has wandered to the record player in my room. He puts on I’ve Got a Crush on You by Mr Sinatra smirking at me.
“Can we do that again sometime soon?” I ask.
“You betcha, baby,” he says, grabs me and leads me into an impromptu dance.
***
We’ve crossed over into full-on blossoming puppy love.
We’ve kissed before, but not like this. I don’t know how he knows how to do that.
This new way of kissing involves standing very close together and some slurping, which I weirdly enjoy.
“What are we gonna do?”
“And just before I’m going away,” the timing’s bad, we agree.
He tells me he’s never loved a girl the way he loves me.
I ask him how many girls he’s had time to love in fourteen and a half years.
“A lot,” he says, sounding manly and mysterious.
“I haven’t really had time to love anyone but you,” I tell him after thinking about it for a moment.
“Okay,” he says. “That’s good.”
I ask if he wants to go and lie on my bed and try the new stuff again. He does.
***
Miss Mary, who knows nothing about the new stuff, finds the promise ring hilarious.
We don’t.
We’re feeling a deep sense of foreboding, of loss, and the inevitable heartbreak drawing closer.
The boy and I take our budding romance very seriously.
He calls me his “one true love”, and I mirror the sentiment, feeling just as certain and deeply as he says he does.
“You’re the sun to my moon,” he says between kisses.
His eyes water and I go “ditto” and throw myself back into the action.
I’ve found there is a way to shut me up and stop talking.
***
We spend the rest of summer tangled up in a bubble of an intense longing for every moment to last forever.
We constantly touch, brief encounters, like brushing against each other as we walk down the road, or a light caress of a cheek, and we hold hands when we watch films downstairs. We try to emulate the grown-ups on the silver screen.
It’s new, and it’s thrilling, and I feel things I haven’t felt in my body before.
I ask if he can feel it too, and he tells me, “Hot damn, yes!”
“One day, y’all’ll look back at this and laugh,” Miss Mary says as we sit at the kitchen table, hands resting under moody cheeks, moaning about having to be apart.
“Just make the most of the time you have.”
Miss Mary still doesn’t know about the kissing.
She doesn’t even know about the holding hands.
If she did, I bet she wouldn’t be laughing.
My novel GREAT ARE THE MYTHS will be serialised (one chapter each day) over the summer of 2026. If you would rather listen to the audiobook, the full story is available for free on all the usual platforms. Info and links HERE
My World of Interiors 