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She scanned the walls – cluttered with posters of Madonna, Patrick Swayze and INXS – in the hope that she’d stuck the note on one of them. She wouldn’t have lost it, it had to be safe somewhere. She sighed when she saw it stuck to her wardrobe. Then she lay back on her bed and smiled as last night unfolded in her mind.
    She’d met him before. He was friend of Geoff’s, an ex she’d gone out with for about a month. Geoff had won her affection with his cool demeanour and thoughtfulness, and at first had seemed almost disinterested in sex, but it wasn’t long before he turned out to be just as sex-obsessed as the rest. Once that became obvious, Jenny let him go.
    Geoff was smooth and flattering, but it was his excessive praise that drew her suspicion.
    ‘You look fantastic,’ was his reaction to absolutely everything she wore. And when she tried anything on in a shop he’d say, ‘It’s made for you, baby’. She’d talk about things on the news, on-going things like abductions or murder cases, and he’d listen intently, ask lots of questions and say how upset it made him, and how much he wanted this and that to happen. But he never watched the news or read the paper himself. And he’d laugh at things she said that really weren’t funny. Sometimes he’d laugh so loud that she’d watch him perform, aware that a genuine smile fades gradually. She wasn’t particularly funny. She didn’t know one joke and wasn’t known for her comebacks either.
    His playful touching gradually turned more intrusive, as did his sex-talk; at first he’d graze her arm, stroke her hair, or pinch her side, but then he’d chance touching her legs, her bum and let his hand linger there for seconds. And he’d start to talk about her breasts, his body and his penis. She told him to stop, and he would for a day or two, but then he’d test the waters again. It was clear what he really wanted. If he meant the nice things he said, then he wouldn’t have tried to push the sex issue so soon. He wasn’t the one.
    But maybe Ben was. She’d met him once when Geoff took her to The White Swan, and found him confident, attractive, and – something else…How could she put it? He had a presence, a powerful presence about him. When she spoke to him, he listened in such a way that she felt valued. A lot of boys seemed distant when she talked to them, looking intently at her, but mistiming their responses, as if they were just fooling her into thinking she had their attention; as if it was a huge effort to stay engaged, but they did it because it might get them sex. Ben exuded none of this thinly veiled desperation. He was listening to what she was saying, absorbing her words, and enjoying a conversation. And when he spoke she found herself transfixed, focused, compelled. At the time she ignored any negative emotions, since she was in a relationship with Geoff. But now that they were over, and she was single, she acknowledged that she’d fancied Ben from that first meeting.
    Before she went out last night, she was in a bad place. Her friends had boyfriends and she was feeling left out. When they didn’t ignore her, they tended to condescend her, and she sensed it was because they considered her childish and prudish. The awareness that she was being sidelined was agonizing.
    Bitter Tears by INXS played on the radio.
    And some boys typecast her as a tease or a waste of time, who deserved to be screwed senseless. In a world where sex was readily available and meaningless, she was an outcast. Word had spread that dating her was a waste of time, as she wouldn’t put out. Although this eliminated the type of person she wanted to avoid, it seemed that all boys were in it for one thing and she would never be approached. Many times she’d been told how attractive she was, but at nightclubs boys seemed to shun her. She was starting to get paranoid, but couldn’t shake the impression that every boy knew about her and had no time for her. Watching