Lover Boy

Laura’s mom never called me by name, she always called me lover boy. She would sing it out when she wanted me to come over. I was in love with her daughter and she knew it.

From second grade to eighth grade I was Laura’s best friend but she would never be my girlfriend. I asked her a hundred times or more. I was always her best friend and that is the answer I received.

Our families were the opposite of each others. Her family was Jewish, mine was Catholic. Her mom stayed at home, my mom worked. Her dad was into sports, my dad hate all sports except boxing.

In elementary school I dreamed of saving her and being Laura’s hero. The Acorn fight we had in the neighborhood ruined all of that. In the competitive moment of battle I hit her with an egg on the arm not realizing I should have missed on purpose. I was playing the game fair but when it comes to love playing a game fair has nothing to do with it.

To become Lover Boy like her mom called me in one moment vanished. Laura was an angel for me and I was a little too wild for her. If it wasn’t for Laura I would have completed less than half my homework.

Just about every night I would meet her on her roof, after dinner when the lights in the house were on and the sky dark. I climbed the fence, onto the chimney and sat down next to her window. We would talk for hours and some nights she would climb onto the roof with me. We sat with our arms wrapped around our legs never touching each other gazing at the night sky. She always helped with my homework.

Laura taught me how to be good I taught her how to break the rules. I made her laugh, her smile made me want to do it more.

I lit a candle at her Bat Mitzvah.

In ninth grade a girl named Lisa in a tight pair of Guess Jeans walked up to get her safety glasses for science lab. I fell in love again. I was an ass man and didn’t even know it.

Lisa had the body of a woman, the face of a model and an ass shaped like a heart. She was smart with a smile that melted the male teachers. Out of my league but well within my ninth grade fantasies.

Tenth grade I was sent to a different High school. I was separated from the trouble making group I ran with. Laura and I no longer in the same school grew apart. She moved after High School to another town and went away to college to become a lawyer like her father. I worked at the gas station. I came across her a few years after college. She had on funny pointed shoes and she barely grew almost elf like in appearance. I wondered if she was as pretty as we all believed when she moved on the block in second grade or was it because she was new and kind. When she started to talk and she smiled at me her eyes sparkled and I could hear the call of Lover Boy. I could see her through the window and she was still an angel to me. When she walked away I thought about asking her out one last time but I didn’t.

The sound of Lover Boy fading as she walked into the fog of childhood dreams.

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