“Scarlett, you are doing it again! I’ve never seen you so spacey,” Evie cut into my stroll down memory lane once again. “Come on! Snap out of it! Aren’t you just geeking about tomorrow?”

“Geeking? What is that? Geeking? I swear you must look these words up online or something?”

“No, sourpuss, I don’t. I just have an immensely elaborate vocabulary,” she smirked.

“Immensely elaborate vocabulary and you come up with geeking and sourpuss? Wow, Rice University has no idea what they said yes to when they accepted your application,” I retorted.

“Just shut up and let’s talk about tomorrow. Have you decided what you are going to do with your hair?”

“I’m not really sure…”

“Wait,” she interrupted. “Before we continue this conversation, let’s open our celebratory bottle of wine.”

She was headed for the kitchen before she even finished the sentence, grabbing two of our new wine glasses from the cabinet that I had just put away less than an hour ago. Once she had opened the bottle of Pinot Grigio she had stolen from her parents bar and poured us each a glass, she rejoined me in her bedroom.

“Okay, now we are ready. So tomorrow?” she asked as she eluded to the day we had planned for my external makeover. Weeks prior she had scheduled for me to spend a day at a local spa for a massage, a manicure/ pedicure, waxing, and a new hairstyle. After that we were to go shopping so I could start reinventing my wardrobe. Luckily, I had saved upwards of five thousand dollars throughout high school babysitting, tutoring, and teaching after school music lessons, so I would be able to purchase a good base.

“Look Evie, I am extremely excited about tomorrow. I really am, I promise” I began. “But I’m also very nervous and anxious about all of it. Finally being able to live my own life, to make my own decisions about what I like and don’t like, getting to choose my own clothes, styling my own hair, doing whatever I want, whenever I want… all of it sounds amazing… it sounds so freeing… but I just feel incredibly overwhelmed by all of it. I know most people don’t get to just start over when they are eighteen, a chance to recreate their image, who they want to be… And I’m so thankful and relieved that I’m finally here, away from them, but truth be told I’m just scared. I don’t want to mess this up. Ya know?” I confessed.

“Oh sweetie,” she said as she patted the bed next to where she was laying, indicating for me to join her. I lifted my eyebrows in disapproval at her “sweetie” remark, but she went on as if she didn’t notice. “You are going to do just fine. You just need to give yourself more credit. You are so smart, and so sweet, and you are beautiful inside and out. Plus you will always have me here to tell you when you are fucking up, so there’s no way you can fail.”

“I know, I know. It’s just a lot to deal with all of a sudden. I have thought about this day for so long, I thought I was so prepared but the truth is I really don’t know who I am, I don’t know who I want to be. And then when I even think about dating, I just want to throw up,” I admitted as I drained the contents of my glass.

“Let’s move this conversation to the kitchen so we can refill our glasses,” Evie interjected.

I followed behind her continuing my whining, “First, I get around boys and it’s like I lose the ability to speak intelligently. My mouth dries up like the Sahara desert, my brain freezes, and my stomach twists and turns like it’s warming up for the uneven bars at the Olympics.”

“You act like you’ve never been around a boy before, Sam. Come on, you’ve kissed a couple of guys. Shit, you’ve even kissed a girl! And you’ve read enough sex scenes in our books that you know what’s supposed to happen. Hell, you probably know more about how it’s supposed to go than most girls our age who just blindly and drunkenly stumble through the act.”

“Yes, I’ve kissed a couple of guys before, Evie, like two, and both times were at church camp and were one time occurrences. And you kissing me so I wouldn’t be nervous about my first kiss hardly counts for anything,” I argued. “To think I’m experienced in any way sexually is truly laughable, most twelve and thirteen year olds have done more than I have. Reading about something and actually doing it is quite different, especially when you are talking about sex. Oh, and I thought we were going to lose the nickname when we moved here

“I’m never dropping the nickname so get that thought out of your pretty little head,” she smirked. “And I take great offense that kissing me ‘hardly counts for anything.’ Do you know how many people would love to have my tongue in their mouth?” I just rolled my eyes in response.

As we sat on the kitchen counter we opted to forgo the glasses and passed the bottle of wine back and forth between us drinking straight from the source, and I continued to ramble on about my fears and worries when it came to entering the world of dating.

“I don’t even know what kind of guy is my type. I don’t know who is out of my league and who isn’t. I don’t know if I should let a guy approach me or if I should approach him… there are just all these questions… I feel so silly.”

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight ~ NO guy is out of your league!” she said sternly looking directly into my eyes. “I never want to hear you say something like that again. You seriously have no idea what a fucking amazing catch you are for any guy. I swear, your parents really did a number on your self-esteem. Guys look at you all the time, you just never notice because you are too afraid your parents will catch you making eye contact with one and then you’ll, I don’t know, end up pregnant or something.” She continued, “As for what your type is, surely you have some idea what you are looking for. I mean we have only read hundreds, if not thousands, of books that pretty much cover every category of guy that exists. Think about all of our favorite book boyfriends…”

“That’s just the thing, I love so many of our book boyfriends, ALL of them actually,” I giggled as the wine was definitely starting to have some effect on me. “Sometimes I think I’d like the All-American, college frat boy image, maybe even one with a bit of a wild side. But then I think about our beloved tattooed bad boy rockers and I think about tracing their tattoos with my tongue… yummy indeed.”

“You really do have a kinky freak living inside there, don’t you?” Evie joked. “I’m kind of afraid of what’s going to happen once you get an actual taste of the passion that you read about so often. If those books get your panties all wet, what’s going to happen when an actual hottie get his hands on you?”

“I’m not sure… I may spontaneously combust or my panties may just disintegrate right off my body,” I laughed. “But don’t act like I’m the only one that fantasizes about our book boyfriends. I clearly remember just last week a certain someone texting me in the wee hours of the morning because she had just had a wet dream about… who was it that time… I can’t remember someone that you called ‘Daddy’ in bed or some shit.”

“Shut the fuck up.” She joked. “We really are little book whores, aren’t we? Not just in the number of books that we read, but in how many of the guys we are in love with, the things that we dream about doing with them…”

“Yeah, how sad is that? If it wasn’t for that vibrator you bought me last year, I would probably have carpal tunnel by this point,” I admitted. I must be the most sexually frustrated virgin on the planet because my virtue was still intact only because my parents didn’t let me out of their sight long enough to even meet anyone, much less like someone enough to want to have sex with them. I wasn’t interested in just handing it out on a silver platter in a bathroom stall at one of my recitals or better yet, at church camp. I was pretty sure the man upstairs wouldn’t approve of the fact that I was using him as an excuse to escape my parents and whore myself out. I felt bad enough that it was the only place I had ever kissed a guy. I had felt so guilty then that I had almost expected to be struck by lightning or something, but I made it through the rest of the week unscathed.

“You’re telling me! It’s been over three months since I stopped seeing Garrett. All the extra free time has allowed me to read myself into sexual frustration as well,” she complained. “We really need to get out and have some fun. I can’t wait to corrupt you… and it all begins tomorrow.”

“I don’t think I’m going to need your help in corrupting, I’ve been looking forward to this too much. I may need help in controlling my hormones once they’re released from their cage.” I waggled my eyebrows at her. “Now back to these different categories of book boyfriends. We need to make sure we consider all potential candidates. We forgot to mention the hot professors looking for reasons to tutor us in private, or the famous musicians that are going to mysteriously pop into our lives and beg us to go on tour with them because we are their muse. Ooh, better yet, maybe we can snag us an ultimate,” I said in my faux serious voice.

“An ultimate?” Evie interrupted.

“Yeah, the ultimates… you know, the devastatingly handsome, possessive billionaire moguls that can’t live without us and are dying to shower us with wealth and satisfy our deep, dark sexual desires,” I explained.

“Okay, I lied. Even though I said there’s no guy out of your league, I’m not sure we are quite ready for ‘the ultimates.’ Jesus Christ, Scarlett, you go from telling me you are scared to talk to a college boy to telling me you want to find an older man that’s into bondage and whips. I think we may need to work our way there so you feel a little more comfortable with yourself and your body before we head down that road. Plus, I’m not sure if there’s a local Billionaire BDSM club that we can just waltz in and make our selection,” she joked.

I started laughing uncontrollably at her last comment as I envisioned the two of us walking up to an office building trying to find our version of an ultimate. She was right, I needed to take baby steps before I found myself blindfolded and restrained to a cross on a wall trying to remember my safe word, while anticipating the crack of a whip across my skin.

“But Ana was a virgin…” I tried to argue, but couldn’t even get the thought out without cracking up all over again. We both laughed until tears streamed down our faces. Finally after several minutes, we regained our composure and Evie said she had a plan.

“This is what we are going to do. Tomorrow we are going to recreate your image with a new hairstyle, a little bit of makeup, and new clothes ~ going to get you all sexified. Then tomorrow night we are going to go with my cousin to that party by her school. But before we go, we are going to pick one of the categories of our book boyfriends and our goal for the evening is to find our version of that BB. Each subsequent night we go out together, we will choose a different category until we find exactly what your type is. Shit, it might even help me because I’m quickly finding out what I thought my type was, is actually quite similar to the description of a douchebag,” she explained.