Falling in Love by Stephen Bradlee Read Free Book Online

didn’t pursue this and asked me about my love of poetry. So I dazzled him with my wealth of worthless information on the subject. “I bet you don’t even know how many words in the English language have no rhymes?”
    Mystified, Paul acknowledged, “I really don’t.”
    “Seven,” I said, proudly. “Orange, angst, gulf, month, sixth, pizza and purple.”
    “That’s it? That’s all of them?”
    “Well, there are probably more,” I conceded, “but that is all I can think of at the moment.” I went on, “And I also bet that you didn’t know that almost all of Emily Dickinson’s poems can be sung to the theme song of Gilligan’s Island.”
    “That, too, had escaped me,” he admitted, duly chastened by his extreme lack of knowledge in this area.
    He began singing, “ Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me .”
    I joined in, “ The carriage held but just ourselves. And immortality. And immortality .”
    I complemented Paul on his nice voice. “Will you sing for me, rock ‘n’ roll star?”
    “No way.”
    “Come on. Go for it.”
    Paul downed his glass. “You’re on.”
    He found an acoustic guitar buried in some closet and we sat on the living room sofa as he strummed and tuned it. “You understand,” he said, “that my amps and electrics are in the attic, so you won’t get the full effect.”
    “I’ll imagine the rhythm section,” I promised.
    He strummed the guitar again, satisfied.
    “I’ll play you the first song I ever learned on a guitar.”
    He began singing Buddy Holly’s “That’ll be the Day.”
     
    Well, that’ll be the day when you say goodbye
    Yes, that’ll be the day when you make me cry
    You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie
    ‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die.
     
    He sang the chorus and on the next verse he played with more rhythm. We got up began dancing as I sang harmony on the verses and joined him on the chorus. Afterward, we laughed and applauded ourselves. Paul offered, “We make great music together.”
    He sat down his guitar and kissed me. For the next two hours, we kept on singing, dancing and kissing. If Paul had tried to do more than kiss, I don’t think I could have stopped him. I was so in love with him. But Paul remained a perfect gentleman, only kissing and hugging me endlessly before finally taking me back to his aunt’s.
    Inside, I went straight up to bed without even bothering to talk to Arlene. I managed to keep myself from going out by constantly masturbating until I was sore. I didn’t care. I never wanted to do anything again that might hurt Paul or our relationship.
    Paul told me that the band’s best singer was his best friend. “You should get to know him.” Paul smiled. “He’s going to be the best man at my wedding.”
    That Friday night, Paul and I headed into Sparta to meet his friend at a karaoke bar. “We might have to coax him into singing,” Paul explained. “He was too shy to sing lead in the band so he ended up be the world’s best backup singer.”
    The karaoke bar was softly lit with several tables facing a small stage. We were early and the singing hadn’t started yet but Paul spotted his friend sitting at the bar.
    “Hey, Guy,” Paul said, slapping him on the back.
    The friend turned around with a big smile until he saw me and then it quickly vanished. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t remember where I might have seen him. My stomach tightened in fear.
    Paul introduced us. “Brian, this is Sherry. Sherry, Brian.”
    Brian just stared coldly at me and then it hit me. He was the guy who had been looking for his jacket at that party the night I had decided to do all those guys to humiliate myself and stop doing it forever. I couldn’t believe my terrible luck. Of all the guys in the world, he had to be Paul’s best friend.
    Brian continued to silently stare at me. I wasn’t even sure that I could speak. My insides felt twisted up to my throat. I finally managed to