Christina
I'd known Tyler Weaver for years, ever since he and his wife Rebecca had moved in a couple streets down from us. They'd seemed like nice enough people for the neighborhood, even if they didn't have any kids for the rest of us to play with. Still though, they were younger than most of our parents, and Mr. Weaver had been in a pretty well known touring rock band when he was younger; I mean how fucking cool was that? They’d had some success and a few hits, he’d met Rebecca, and they’d settled down probably around the same time our family had moved in to the neighborhood. He'd always seemed so cool to me, with his shaggy hair and causal jeans and t-shirt look, and his totally hot tattoos.
They also had a glassed-in indoor pool, which was amazing - especially in a place with weather like New England - and they’d made it clear that any of the neighborhood kids could use it provided they had a chaperone with them. To my and my best friend Anna? That pretty much made them the coolest people we knew back then.
It was later, after training wheels had long since turned into training bras, and awkward phases had turned into awkwardly giggles about boys on the phone with our friends, when I'd first ended up working for them. Tyler was retired from the road and they had plenty of money, but he ran a cool indie record label out of their guest house, complete with a small recording studio. Rebecca did something with real estate, I guess just to keep busy since they were apparently set with the royalties Tyler’s old hits brought in. But between them, I guess they finally decided they need some assistance around the house, and since I lived right around the corner and they knew my parents, I was hired. I mostly did light chores, and some online social media stuff for Mr. Weaver’s label, and all-in-all, it was a pretty sweet first paying job.
I mean it was a great job. The Weaver's did well and paid well, and while most of my other friends started their first jobs in soul-sucking retail jobs, or scooping ice-cream, or waiting tables, I pretty much got paid to hang out by the pool all summer. They had to change things up during the school year of course, but I still worked for them on weekends here and there. I did the same thing the next summer, and as I finished my senior year the next summer, it seemed working for the Weavers was going to be the only job I needed before I went off to college. And the perks really were awesome. They always had a stocked fridge, an incredible music collection, and again, they paid great. And between Tyler hanging around the guest house studio or working on his motorcycle in the garage, and Rebecca being off on open houses all the time, I basically had the place to myself.
It was that last summer though, when things started to change; big time.
We lived in a fairly small, close-knit neighborhood, so it’s not like it was a secret that Tyler and Rebecca were “having problems”, as my mother put it. There were small things at first, like the fact that he came alone to a neighborhood barbecue, or rumors that she wasn’t even sleeping in their house anymore. But it was that last summer when the news finally broke that they were splitting up.
“She cheated on him, apparently,” Anna said, take a swig of lemonade and arching her eyebrows at me over the island counter in her kitchen. “Can you even imagine cheating on a guy like Tyler Weaver?” Anna made a fanning motion against her face as she panted dramatically, making me crack up.
Anna was the sister I never had - my co-conspirator, my confident, my other half, and my best friend for life. We’d done everything together since the day I’d moved into the neighborhood as a kid. We’d grown up together, doing everything from homework to first sleepovers, going to our first concerts to trying our first and only cigarette which we’d stolen out of her dad’s pack. We’d also resigned ourselves to the fate of going off to college as virgins.
Okay, “resigned” is a dramatic word. It's not like either of us had managed to get all the way through high school without giving it up for lack of offers; we were popular enough, we’d been on the soccer team together, and we were social enough. But the reality was just that neither of us had ever felt like having our first time be a fumbled back-seat awkwardness with some sweaty-handed high-school guy.
Okay, it might have been fantasy, but we'd been raised on thousands - literally thousands - of romance movies, books and TV shows. And the hero who the girl eventually let herself be swept away by was never inexperienced, or pimply, or most likely so excited that the whole thing would last thirty seconds. No, both Anna and I just wanted a real man for that first time; a guy who'd sweep us off our feet and show us how it was done, not someone who'd apologize afterwords.
So, we decided college it was. College is where we'd find older, more experienced guys, and so until then, we'd just stay the two virgins with the unfortunate rep of being “cock-teases”.
Yeah, can you blame us for wanting to wait?
Anna and I were so ridiculously close, in fact, that not only had we both applied to and gotten accepted to the same school in Boston, but we’d also decided to be roommates. I know, nauseating, right? Yeah, everyone told us we’d hate each other, or that we needed to meet other people, but we respectfully disagreed. After all, college was a big deal, and who wouldn’t want their best friend there with them as their safety net?
But as I was saying, it was that last summer when it all happened.
You see, it wasn't that I'd never noticed Mr. Weaver like I did that last summer before college, but I guess it had always just been that I'd been distracted by other things going on. Looking back of course, I have no idea how anything could have ever distracted me from how crazy hot my much older employer and neighbor was. I mean sure, we'd seen him plenty of times before at his pool, or when he jogged around the block shirtless and sweaty - I'm sure causing quite a fluster with some of the housewives in the neighborhood. He kept himself in amazing shape, and I know he also probably drew the jealousy of more than a few husbands of those housewives.
I suppose I always had a little crush on him, in an awkwardly flirtatious schoolgirl way. But I'd grown up since I'd first starting working for the Weavers, and I'd started to look at men - especially men who looked like Tyler Weaver - in a whole new, wholly adult way. And when I accidentally saw him like that, on THAT fateful day, I knew then how things were going to play out. Seeing him that day set something in motion and put a fire inside of me like nothing else ever had. And it was that day when I knew
, despite every rational thought that said otherwise, or how crazy it was, that the much older and entirely inappropriate Tyler Weaver would be my first.
Of course, that came later, so let me explain.
Chapter 2
Tyler
When the moving truck full of roughly half the furniture in my house pulled away, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Relief.
Yeah, that sounds shitty to say, but that’s exactly the feeling that was going through my head knowing the final chapter of this particular book was almost finished. And now here I was, forty years old, and a divorcé.
About damn time.
Because really, whatever I’d thought I’d found with Rebecca back when we were younger never really was there. I’d given up life on the road happily, and on my own accord, to be with her. Yeah, the touring life was fun, and playing music like that was one of the best things I’d ever experienced in my life. And sure, settling down with Rebecca meant stopping that, but I was okay with that decision.
The music was fun, the women were a lot of fun, but the constant nomad shit had gotten old for me. I just wanted a fucking home base; some place to come home to at night and just put my feet up instead of trying to catch sleep on a fucking tour bus. And if that meant getting married and settling into suburbia? Bring it on.
Except it was pretty clear from the get-go that whatever Rebecca and I thought we had wasn’t actually there. We just weren’t the people we’d thought each other were. For instance, I always thought she’d wanted kids, but turns out she had no intention of that happening. Example number two might be that I thought she’d stay faithful.
Yeah, whoops.
Really though, when that shit came out, I wasn’t even mad anymore. I was just ready to move on and get back to being me. So, when she wanted to leave me for that guy? No problem; it was the move we both needed. So I waved the prenup in her face, signed the papers, and here I was cracking a beer and settling down into my half-empty living room, watching the moving truck drive away.