Sore Must Be the Storm
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Derek isn't the kind of guy to find The One when he's fifteen. He's a player, and he's always figured that he will stay like that until he's thirty and lonely and being pressured into giving the 'rents grandbabies. It will take another ten years and some heartbreak (not his) to settle down with a woman (who used to be hot) he may love but will probably divorce within the next decade, and he'll be a player again—old and rich like Hugh Hefner—for a few years before he finally kicks the bucket from a heart attack because he loves potato chips.
But when he meets her for the first time, when he's fifteen, he thinks she's gorgeous and he starts to think that if commitment-type girls can really be that beautiful he might not wait until he's thirty to try a serious relationship. Maybe he'll be twenty-nine, and this is a big deal because there's a huge difference (more than just one year) between twenty-nine and thirty.
By the time he's sixteen, he's trying really hard not to think that twenty-five will be a suitable age to be serious. There's a huge difference between twenty-five and twenty-six, too, and while it's not as big as the difference between twenty-nine and thirty, it's scarier. Twenty-five is nine years away (that's one finger missing) and it means that he will spend half his twenties breaking hearts (maybe his own), and it's a concession to the stubborn little bird with a small, reedy voice that thankfully can't be heard when he blasts angry music really loud.
Before he's seventeen, he's given up on ages and Hefner and he figures he'll just wing it because that's what he does best. But when he sees her like this for the first time, sobbing on his pillow because he couldn't leave her bawling to the bathroom mirror staring at the face that her boyfriend apparently didn't find attractive enough, he wonders if maybe he is the kind of guy to find The One when he's fifteen but he's also the kind of guy who doesn't realize it until it's too late and their parents are married so he'll be the poor bastard who's had too many wives and maybe a teenage kid who looks a bit like him but hates him for abandoning the family for a younger woman.
But because all four wives and the home-wrecker in his imagination look like the girl on his bed right now, he thinks that maybe he'll just be a bitter part-time alcoholic who hires brown-haired prostitutes and calls them Casey.
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Hugh Hefner: editor-in-chief of Playboy, Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises, and infamous player.
Allusions to Emily Dickinson's " 'Hope' is the thing with feathers--"