Читать книгу A Kiss To Remember - Miranda Lee - Страница 6

ANGIE looked over at the sulky-faced girl sitting on the other side of her desk and shook her head sadly. What was the world coming to when girls thought they were freaks just because they were still virgins at seventeen?

‘Debbie, dear,’ Angie said, with as much patience as she could muster at five to four on a Friday afternoon. ‘It is not a crime not to be sexually active at your age. In fact, in view of the health hazards these days, I would say it was very sensible. Can’t you at least wait till you leave school? This year is almost over, after all. You have less than twelve months to go before you graduate.’

Which could be part of the problem, Angie suspected. Next year—Debbie’s final year—would be a very stressful one. A lot of Year Eleven students let their hair down at this time of the year. This year’s exams were over, summer had arrived, and the end-of-year party scene had well and truly begun—with all the accompanying hazards of alcohol and drugs. A lot of girls lost their virginity at such times, but mostly this was an unpremeditated event. Debbie’s decision to sleep with her boyfriend was hardly that.

‘Look, I know you probably think you’re madly in love with this boy,’ Angie went on. ‘But love rarely lasts long at your age. Next year—or even next term—it will probably be another boy, then another. If you sleep with all of them, then…’

‘I’m not at all in love with Warren,’ Debbie denied, her defiant eyes shocking Angie. ‘I just want to know what it’s like, that’s all. You read so much about it and everyone else is doing it.’

‘Everyone else is not doing it!’ Angie argued, her cheeks pinkening with what she hoped looked like indignation.

‘That’s all very well for you to say, Miss. I’ll bet you know what it’s like. I’ll bet you’ve had loads of boyfriends!’

Angie could feel her face beginning to burn. ‘Now, you look here, young lady,’ she began firmly. ‘My boyfriends are my business. What we are here to discuss is your sex-life, not mine! Besides, I happen to be twenty-four years old—not seventeen. Believe me when I tell you that when I was your age I definitely was a virgin.’

And you still are, a small dark voice pointed out drily in her head.

Angie scowled, both at the voice and at Debbie.

‘As your school counsellor,’ she continued, in her best lecturing tone, ‘my advice to you is to wait till you are at least in a steady relationship before you take this step. Making love should not be an experiment—especially the first time. It should be a very special experience between two people who truly care about one another. It should be an experience to remember and look back on with good feelings, not regret.’

Even as she was saying the words Angie could see she was not getting through to the girl. Debbie confirmed this opinion by pouting and not meeting her eyes. ‘Rebecca said you’d understand,’ the girl grumbled. ‘She said you’d help me like you did her.’

‘Rebecca was an entirely different case,’ Angie muttered, even as she knew she was defeated. Privately, she might be a romantic and an idealist. Professionally, she was a realist.

As Debbie’s counsellor she had a responsibility to look after the girl’s physical as well as her mental health. For they were intrinsically linked. Unhappily, she opened the bottom drawer and drew out a couple of condoms from the supply of samples she kept there, ready to be given out with discretion to any girl over the age of consent who came to her with a similar attitude to Debbie’s.

‘I am giving you these most reluctantly, Debbie, and only because you seem determined to do this. They are not my way of condoning your decision, or giving you permission, but I can’t in all conscience see you without protection. Some young men aren’t too caring about young women who give themselves to them without love,’ she finished pointedly.

At last, Debbie had the good grace to blush. ‘I didn’t realise you were so old-fashioned,’ she muttered. ‘Rebecca said you were real cool.’

‘You think it’s cool to be promiscuous?’ Angie asked sharply.

‘No. But I think it’s stupid to be ignorant about sex,’ she flung back.

Angie stiffened.

Debbie stood up and went to leave, then stopped, glancing anxiously over her shoulder at Angie. ‘You…you won’t tell my parents, will you?’

‘No. You’re over the legal age of consent.’

The girl suddenly smiled at her. ‘Thanks, Miss. And I promise to think about everything you said. See you next Monday!’ And she fairly skipped out of the door.

Angie stayed sitting at her desk for a few minutes, gnawing away at her bottom lip and wondering if Debbie was right. Maybe she was impossibly old-fashioned. And impossibly romantic. And impossibly cautious.

Was it silly of her to wait for Mr Right to come along before she made love? Naive of her to want to see stars when a man kissed her before she let him go further? Stupid of her to hope that it wouldn’t end up a matter of making a conscious choice to go to bed with a man—to believe she would be so madly, blindly and irrevocably in love that it would just happen quite naturally!

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ her flatmate answered to all three questions, when Angie posed them to her as they drove home together that afternoon.

Angie remained unconvinced. Vanessa was thirty years old and a terrible cynic about men and love. A maths and science teacher at the same girls’ school where Angie was the school counsellor, she was a striking-looking though brittle brunette, who frightened most men off with her superior intelligence and incisive wit. Which was a shame because, basically, Vanessa liked men a lot.

They’d been colleagues at the same private girls’ school for nearly a year, but had only been flatting together for a couple of months, Angie’s previous flatmate having left to go overseas. This was the first time Angie had really opened up to the older woman about her personal life. And, to give Vanessa credit, she accepted the news of her inexperience without too much shock, though she was typically cutting in her advice.

‘For pity’s sake, go out and get yourself laid before it’s too late. How can you possibly counsel all those randy little teenagers who come to you for advice if you don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the subject? Good Lord, Angie, if you wait for Mr Right these days, you might go to your grave a virgin! Frankly, I can’t understand how a girl who looks like you do made it through her teenage years without scores of horny boys jumping on your bones every five minutes!’

‘I didn’t say they didn’t try…’

‘And there wasn’t one you fancied back?’ Vanessa’s tone was sheer scepticism.

An image swept into Angie’s mind. Of brilliant blue eyes and flashing white teeth, of windswept fair hair and golden-bronze skin, of a face like a Greek God and a body to match.

‘There was one,’ she admitted.

‘Only one?’ Vanessa squawked.

Angie smiled ruefully to herself. ‘Believe me, after Lance, no other male has ever measured up.’

Which had always been the problem, hadn’t it? Angie realised with sudden insight. Once you’d tasted ambrosia it was hard to settle for plain bread. She’d always told herself that her shrinking from casual sex had been because of that AIDS chap, who’d come to her high school and lectured them upon the dangers of such activities.

But it hadn’t been that at all, Angie finally conceded. It was because subconsciously she’d compared every boy and then every man she met to Lance Sterling. And they’d all come up wanting.

‘He sounds awfully intriguing,’ Vanessa said.

‘Intriguing,’ Angie repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yes, one could say that about him. Among other things.’

‘Do tell. I’m dying of curiosity already.’

Angie frowned, aware that thoughts of Lance had been teasing her mind a lot this past week. Mostly because tonight was her brother’s thirtieth birthday party, which she would be obliged to attend.

Anything to do with Bud always reminded her of Lance.

Not that her brother had anything much to do with Lance these days. Their once close friendship had waned after Lance married four years ago and moved to Melbourne to live. It had now come down to exchanging Christmas cards once a year.

Not that they’d ever had much in common, except for doing the same business degree at the same university in Sydney. Angie had never been able to work out exactly what Lance had seen in Bud—and vice versa. They had come from two entirely different worlds. They’d had two entirely different personalities.

Perhaps it had been the old case of an attraction of opposites. Or perhaps it had just amused Lance to have a simple country boy as a friend, whom he could impress with his sophistication and wealth. As it had amused him to impress his friend’s simple country sister that fateful summer nine years ago…