When Life Turned Purple Read Online Free PDF

time?”
    “Well…fifteen. It was the summer between ninth and tenth grade. But fourteen-year-old girls—a lot of them look real little. I mean, when I was eighteen, I wouldn’t have—”
    “I looked older. People who didn’t know me usually thought I was sixteen.”
    “Huh.” He pursed his lips.
    “But anyway, you were also really young.”
    “Not really. I had a huge growth spurt that year and I was working out tons. She was seventeen and it was when we were spending summer vacation in Eastern Washington.” He gave a chuckle. “I learned to drive a tractor before I learned to drive a car.”
    Lia smiled. “Were you her first?”
    “Nah. She was a total—well, she was a lot of fun. Especially when she was drunk. She did this kind of thing every summer—I found that out later from the guy who’d been with her summer before.”
    “But you liked it.”
    He laughed. “Sure! I mean, who wouldn’t?”
    The smile disappeared from Lia’s face.
    “Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s different for guys,” he said. “I know that. It’s not always like that for girls.”
    She nodded.
    “So….it wasn’t so great for you, yeah?”
    She shook her head.
    “Well, you know, the first time for girls is always—”
    “I didn’t do it just once, but I still never liked it.”
    Russ’s eyebrows went up and he chewed his bottom lip as he contemplated her. “Why not?” he said.
    “Well….” Lia shifted in her seat, “I mean, with that first guy—my first boyfriend—I kind of wanted to do it because everyone was always talking doing it and on TV and novels and stuff, it sounded so great. And I wanted to get into all that. But he was just using me. He wasn’t actually so into me at all. I didn’t realize that then. I mean, even just fooling around wasn’t so enjoyable. Like, he was a good kisser, but he just didn’t know how to touch me. Like, he’d grab at me a bit and then ask me if I was ready. It was like he was just fulfilling some kind of prerequisite to get to the good part—well, the good part for him, anyway.”
    Russ frowned. That didn’t sound normal.
    “I found out later that he was gay,” she continued. “I mean, a couple of years after he graduated, I heard about it from other people. Like his sister.”
    Russ’s frown deepened.
    Lia squirmed as she spoke, her eyes cast downward. “I feel bad for him,” she said. “I mean, I feel bad for gay guys because until they come out and learn to accept themselves, they have all this pressure to ‘be normal’ and ‘act normal’ and they feel like they have to make themselves hook up with girls when they don’t really want to. But they can’t really tell the girls, either. And they’ve got a lot of fear—what?”
    Russ was staring at her with wide eyes.
    Lia’s shoulders hunched as she squeezed her hands together. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said, squirming. “I mean, it’s not like being with me was so bad that he had to turn to guys—”
    Russ held up his palm as if to halt her words. “Oh, no, baby,” he said, shaking his head. “No, no, no, no, no.” His shoulders and chest tightened like before a fight again and he turned his head away from her and blew out some of the tension through pursed lips. Then before he could stop himself, he jerked back toward her, thrusting his finger in her face. “You do not need to feel sorry for any guy because he screwed you, okay? You got that?”
    Lia sat back as if pasted to her chair, staring at him round-eyed and open-mouthed.
    Russ wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. “Do not freakin’ feel sorry for him. Okay?” He slammed his fists down on his thighs. “I mean, for crying out loud—”
    “No,” said Lia. “But he wasn’t really attracted to me. He was just forcing himself—”
    Russ thrust himself forward and again, he saw his finger in her face. “NO,” he said. “You listen to me , baby.” He lowered his voice and spoke through a clenched