Tom, Cheryl, Kim -- Coffeeshop Therapy 8

Pat and I despised him, which, I guess, is a hint that everyone I was to become friends with was first to be a nemesis. Lanky, Italian-curly-haired, with his arm always in the air so that he could be first to answer Mrs. Trocano’s questions in English class,Tom was sociable and appalling.
I didn’t talk to him for the longest time, until he mentioned that he played guitar. I assumed he didn’t play very well, but I asked him about it. He said he was just learning to play some jazz; his Dad was a jazz drummer. This latter bit won him some points with me. And by the time school broke for the summer, I was intrigued with Tom.
High school began in the fall for us. Brush, with its graduating classes of 500+, was imposing but thrilling.
Of course, I began to hang out with Tom. We would get together and play jazz standards out of his father’s “fake books”. Tom was quite good with jazz chords; I knew a lot, but not as much as Tom. Neither of us could solo worth shit, but he was way ahead of me in this respect.
We recorded ourselves on my 8-track cassette player, played at my house on the patio and played a little for our parents. We were a regular little jazz duo. The thing I liked most about Tom was his emotional depth. He, like Stan, was a brother to me.
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It’s odd that the girl with whom I went on my first date, with whom I had my first kiss, I did not ask out again. Cheryl was in my Spanish class, and I was infatuated with her, her full mouth and the moist, dark circles under her eyes which led me to empathize with her (she was one of the few kids in 10th grade who had a job, and she must not have gotten enough sleep). I guess I feared she wasn’t interested in me, although she showed no sign that she was not. After that date, she was as friendly to me as before. But my first assumption and fear was abandonment, so I did the job for her and let her be.
Kim was a different story. Although I wasn’t as attracted to her as to Cheryl, once we went out, I continued dating this tall, quiet girl.
Kim was friends with Tom. Our relationship was fraught with intimations of the two being interested in each other, with her displeasure with my being much shorter than her, but most of all with my clingy attachment to her and my jealousy.
Our dating ended with me in tears when she broke up with me while we were studying for a Spanish final at the end of the freshman school year.