They Called It Guppy Love

“So, what’s the catch?”  

“Pun intended?” I snorted, as Billy launched his line back into the still lake. There had not been a single fish in our direction the entire morning, and to be honest, I was relieved. I didn’t know what I would do if either of us caught something; I despise fish. I had only agreed to come with Billy because it seemed like the only way, I was going to ever get a date with him was if he was unaware that a date was taking place. I preferred to keep his knowledge that we were on a date with the fish; far away and without a chance of biting.  

Billy smirked a little at my joke but did not draw in any breath at a faster rate than normal, so I knew he didn’t find the joke to be extremely funny. Billy had a beautiful laugh, but it was something you heard when it came out. His face, normally taut and slightly rugged, but with a boyish charm still lingering just beneath the surface thanks to his bright green eyes, would erupt into a gigantic grin if he found something truly funny. When he laughed, the grin would spread his jaw open and gape his mouth just enough to allow the cackle to emit from the furthest depths of his stomach.  

He pushed some of his jet-black hair out of his eyes. It was so straight that it moved easily, unlike my hair, which became so frazzled with frizz in the summertime, it was impossible to avoid looking like I had accidentally licked a frayed extension cord. When I was little, my mom tried every remedy to get me to allow her to work on the nest-sized knots that formed in the back of my head. She covered my entire head with mayonnaise one afternoon, and peanut butter another, after hearing they were quick tricks for tangles. After unsuccessful results, she realized the one way to get me to let her do them. She took me to a hair salon, which must have impacted the mortgage payment for that month, and had a stranger work on them. I was so afraid to cause a scene and speak up in front of a stranger that I let him work his magic on my hair. At the end of the appointment, he advised, “Jenny, the best way to avoid having knots in your hair is to allow mom to brush it in the first place. After you wash your hair, you must let her comb through it so that they stop forming.” I made a promise to allow her to do it and kept it. 

“The catch is that Donna’s mother doesn’t know about the field trip,” I continued, surprised at Billy’s interest in the story and that it was enough to warrant a question. “Her mom is really strict. Like she used to be home-schooled and she begged her mom for three years to let her go to public school. Now any little hiccup brings a huge amount of fear that she will put her back into homeschooling and she’ll never see any of us again.”  

I watched as Billy launched the line into the water again. He had a few freckles that had already formed from the sun, even though it was just barely the edge of summer. The field trip was the biggest of the year, and I was surprised Donna had been able to keep her mother in the dark about the trip this long. All the freshmen went to New York City at the end of the final semester. The trip was two days long and included a very early bus ride out of the Hudson Falls High School parking lot. The ride itself would take more than four hours, and that was plenty of time for Donna’s mother to create a hundred different scenarios of the worst things that could happen to a teen girl during that time.  

In defense of Donna’s mother, most of the trip was unsupervised. The students were always parted into groups with a chaperone, but the trip came with several blocks of time where the students were allowed, and expected, to explore specific parts of the city on their own. This did seem like it gave a heavy amount of responsibility to young people, especially because most of them had never been to New York. Then, everyone stayed in a hotel overnight, and we were to be separated into groups of four per room. Again, the chaperones were going to be on the same floor as the students in the hotel, which garnered out room blocks every year for the high school as a means of ensuring both the profit from the room sales and quiet segregation for any other guests who were unlucky enough to book the same weekend. Most of the time, the chaperones either went to the hotel bar, or another spot nearby, or they went to bed with earplugs. Despite warnings and issued quiet hours, it was well-known that the students didn’t have to stay in their groups of four for most of the night.  

“It’s probably going to be worse for Donna if her mom finds out after the fact, won’t it?” Billy continued to seem generally interested in the dilemma, and I started to wonder if his interest was due to an interest in Donna as a whole, instead of just an interest in her drama with her overbearing mother.  

“Probably,” I responded, as I tried to keep the tone of my voice one that a normal person would use, instead of someone worried about the emotion behind the innocent question. “That’s why that’s the issue. If she tells her mother about it before the trip and tries to get her permission, there’s no way she is going to let her go. She will forbid it, to the point where she might tell Donna she wants to pull her from the school because she ‘doesn’t want her baby to be in a place where these things are an option,’” I fumbled with my fishing line after dropping it while I made air quotes. I tried to tell myself that Billy’s exhale hadn’t been a little louder this time and that he seemed to find my mishap funnier than my earlier joke.  

“But if she goes on the trip without telling her, and then she finds out about it, she would have already gotten away with going and it would be too late. But then she will be in trouble, which means she will be banned from going to the concert with me over the summer. It took us two months to convince her mom that she should be allowed to go.”  

Billy pondered the dilemma, or seemed to, as he stared at the lake. He looked as though he were deep in thought. His eyes glanced and met mine, and the reflection from the lake glittered through them. I felt my stomach drop into my ankles, and I uncontrollably smiled just before he looked away again.  

“I think it's always better to be honest and face the consequences,” he finally remarked. He slid back from the edge of the dock on his left side and scooted his knee toward the back, which turned most of his body in my direction and brought him closer to me. He kept his right leg dangled off the side of the dock above the water. He exhaled and licked his lips.  

“Take this fishing expedition, for example,” he continued. I could feel his eyes locked on mine, but I couldn’t bring my gaze from the lake just yet. “You hate fish. In Miss Cooley’s class in sixth grade, we all had to share our biggest fears and you talked about fish for almost five full minutes. You gave so much detail on it, I think you scared a couple of the others who originally didn’t have an answer. Three years doesn’t change someone enough that they’d now want to go fishing. So, what gives, Jen?”  

I don't think I had given quite the monologue he was remembering in Ms. Cooley’s class, but I was stunned that he remembered that event. “There were twenty-five kids in our class in sixth grade Billy,” I joked. “Do you remember what everyone’s fear was? Are you planning to use it against all of us?”  

Billy sighed, as he smiled with his lips closed. “No,” he said, his gaze still locked on my face. I blinked hard and turned to look at him, expecting a joke as a response. “I only remember yours,” he said, as he moved his gaze from my right eye to my left, and then softly kissed me.  

My fishing pole shook in my hand, and I felt the line tighten as a fish enveloped the smushed worm on the other end.