by Kaylee, Katy
“I think, I’ve proven why you should see another doctor.” Ted gave me a warm, lopsided smile. It made him look young again, boyish, adorable. “You drive me crazy, Roni, I can’t help myself around you. And if I can’t keep it professional then you should see someone else and we could… keep seeing each other, personally.”
My breath caught in my throat and I froze at the mention of my nickname. Roni. He’d been the only one to ever call me that, the only one who thought to call me that, and the only one who could’ve ever gotten away with it. I had loved that he had given me that nickname. It had been a little thing just for the two of us.
I hadn’t had any nickname for him. You couldn’t really get a nickname out of an already short name like Ted, but he had never minded. And oh, God, the rush that I got when he said my nickname, the rush that I was getting right now…
He wanted me to have another doctor so that we could see each other personally. So that we could keep at this. He probably wanted to date, properly, and I… I just…
I practically leapt up off the exam table. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I’m sorry, I have to… I need to go, I… I’m sorry…”
Jesus, I sounded like such a mess, snatching up my clothes and shoving them on, not caring what I looked like or if my shirt was even on the right way. Ted stumbled back in surprise. “Roni, hey…”
“I’m sorry,” I said one last time, feeling miserable, knowing I was making him miserable too, and then I rushed out, my shoes not even on, just clutched in my hand because fuck if I was dealing with high heels at the moment.
I got out to my car and fumbled with my keys, realizing that my hands were shaking. After three tries, I finally got my car started, and I took a few deep breaths, trying futilely to calm my rushing heart.
It would be so easy to fall for him again. I could already feel myself starting to. And that thought terrified me. It was the tsunami bearing down. And more than that, I kind of wanted to fall for him. It felt right, it felt like the way things should have been, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
Was it just nostalgia? Was I just longing for what had been, and what might have been? I put my car into drive and got out of the parking lot, hoping that a bit of driving would clear my head.
My plans were so carefully laid. What would happen to me if I started dating Ted? He couldn’t take on the responsibility of dating a woman with a child, I couldn’t do that to him. And I had to devote all of my time to that child, I couldn’t split my attention by starting a new relationship. Would this affect my alimony? I mean, technically no, but Chad sure would be pissed and would find a way to mess with me, I was sure of that. It was bad enough to him that I’d gotten away from him. The idea of me being with another man would’ve sent him off the rails. That thought terrified me.
Once, I might have thought about what everyone else would say. She’s barely out of the divorce and she’s dating someone new! She’s back with her ex from high school, clearly trying to relive her glory days. All of those rumors would’ve cut me like a knife.
But now, I didn’t care about that. I just cared about my own plans. My own little world that I was trying to build. The better future that I was trying to maintain.
I drove home, trying to think of all the reasons why dating Ted would be a bad idea. But all of the things that I usually brought up when a man tried to flirt with me weren’t there.
The truth was, Ted had never been the one to hurt me. I had been the one to hurt him. If either of us had a right to be scared going into this relationship, it was Ted, not me. Ted had been considerate and sweet, something that had taken me by surprise given his attitude and his reputation. He wasn’t exactly known as a cuddly teddy bear at school.
But for me, he had been. From the very start.
We’d made out constantly, like the horny teenagers we were, but Ted had never pushed for more. He had wined and dined me as best he could with his small budget, getting money from whatever odd jobs he could find. I had always been telling him that he didn’t need to get me anything. My parents would give me a generous allowance every month and I was more than happy to pay for whatever we did. I didn’t see it as a failing on Ted’s part. He would’ve taken care of me better if he could’ve.
But Ted was a believer in taking care of the people that he cared about. I think, whether he wanted to admit it or not, it was because he didn’t get any love at home, and couldn’t give any love in return. I was the only person he had, the only person to whom he could show affection.
He ate up my affection in return, and it was adorable. I would have his head in my lap and be petting through his hair, and he would be so relaxed, this look of bliss on his face, the car radio playing soft tunes.
Ted had this beat up old Buick. It was technically his father’s but his father was rarely in a condition to drive it, being half-drunk all the time. I don’t think that bastard ever totally sobered up. There was always a bit of alcohol fizzing around in his brain.
I rarely interacted with Ted’s father. Ted took care to keep me away from him. “You don’t want to see that,” he would say.
Of course I would protest. I wanted to see every part of Ted’s life. I had loved him. I hadn’t cared if there were ugly parts, I needed to see them. I wanted to understand. Ted’s life and mine had been so different, and I had wanted to know why someone who was so kind and loving to me could have come from a place that was so dark and awful. I had thought it a miracle - I still did - that Ted hadn’t turned out like his father when that was the only example he had in front of him growing up.
Not that Ted didn’t have issues. He was always getting into fights at school, always in detention for sassing back to teachers, always lazy about his homework. I hadn’t cared, although my parents had persuaded me that I should care and made me break up with him over that. But in a world where everyone I had known was ambitious and striving to be the next president, the next astrophysicist, everyone had to be someone… it was radical to have someone who didn’t care about anything other than making me happy, and giving us a fun time, giving us some laughs and an escape from the world.
That Buick had been our escape. It was nice and roomy in the back, so we would curl up there for hours, watching the stars, listening to music, reading. I would sing songs. Ted would read aloud to me, usually from the fantasy books that my parents labeled ‘a waste’ and ‘not real literature’. I had loved Ursula K. LeGuin.
Usually I would smuggle food out from our kitchen, or buy food ahead of time and bring it with me, and we would eat that. I had known that it grated on Ted a bit, that he couldn’t provide, because he was that kind of person. He wanted to take care of me.
But this one time, I remember - he had gotten twenty dollars painting addresses on curbs for a new neighborhood, and he’d taken me out for pizza. It was this cheap, greasy place, the kind with squeaky plastic chairs and linoleum tables and harsh, florescent lighting.
I hadn’t cared. It had been nothing like the kind of place my parents would take me to, they were always dragging me to nice restaurant after nice restaurant, to see and be seen. My mother liked to think of herself as this kind of food and wine expert.
My parents would’ve had heart attacks if they’d seen me in that kind of place, a cheap pizza joint with gooey cheese, but I had loved it. I could remember hoping that nobody from our school would see me, because back then I had still cared about appearances, and it was my forever shame that I was thinking that. But I had still mostly focused on the company.
The pizza had been delicious, and all the tastier for coming from a place that my parents would’ve hated, but it was Ted who’d made that night so great for me. We’d curled up together, Ted’s arm around my shoulders, and laughed so hard that my sides had ached.
I could still remember the way that he’d made me feel…the classic butterflies in the stomach and racing heart kind of feeling. I had felt that way before, when I had daydreamed about celebrities growing up, but I ha
d never met anyone in person who had made me feel like that. And once I had gotten it with Ted, I had realized what a mere shadow of the thing my daydreams were. When I was with Ted, I had felt like nobody else in the world even existed.
All that I had wanted from the moment I’d met him was to be near him.
Afterwards we’d gone out in the Buick again, up to this one point in the woods, away from everything else. There was a popular make out point where everyone else went to ‘stargaze’, but we hadn’t wanted to go where everyone else was. We’d just wanted to be on our own. To pretend that nobody else in the world existed besides us.
We’d been dating for… I tried to remember. Six months at that point. I had felt bad at times that we had done little more than make out. We had kissed over what felt like every inch of each other. There had been one time where Ted had taken my breasts in his mouth and I had writhed on his lap, grinding down on his thigh until I’d come with a gasping sob. And I had - tentatively at first, and then more boldly - begun to stroke him, give him hand jobs. I had loved to see the glazed look in his eyes as he’d gasped my name and bucked up into my touch, coming all over my stomach and chest.
But I had asked him early on if we could go slow, and Ted had respected that. I had known that pretty much everyone had expected us to be sleeping together, and that some of his friends had given Ted a hard time about it one way or another. Ted had never kissed and told, never told his friends what we had gotten up to, but I’d known that he’d wanted to sleep with me and I had confessed a couple of times, crying, how bad I felt.
Ted had always reassured me. “You can go as slow as you want, Roni, I don’t care. I really don’t. I mean, hell, this is all new to me too, okay? We’re just gonna do what you’re comfortable with, okay?”
That night, somehow… I still wasn’t sure what it was, all these years later. I didn’t know what it was that had made me finally shed my fear and say, all right, I want to do this. Of course I’d wanted to do it before, but more in an abstract kind of way. A ‘not yet but someday’ kind of way.
That night, it had changed. I had wanted him to fuck me.
We’d been making out in the back of the car, and I had been trying to find a way to tell him. Ted’s hands were sliding up underneath my dress, and his finger dragged along my panties where I was getting wet. I’d whimpered, shaking with desire, feeling like my body was burning white-hot, and then… then Ted had pulled back.
I had been surprised, and a bit dismayed, wondering what was wrong, about to ask… and he had taken my face in his hands.
“Hey, Roni,” he’d whispered, and then, he’d just stared at me for a moment. His thumbs had been stroking my face and I remember thinking that he looked like a man at confession, a man about to reveal a great secret, but was unsure how to begin.
And then he had blurted out, in a whisper I could barely hear, “I love you.”
It had been the best moment of my life.
I had loved him, loved him with everything in me, and I had known it for at least a month. I couldn’t remember when I realized it. It had just felt like something that had always been there. A part of me that had been inside since perhaps my birth, I just hadn’t known about it until a few months into knowing him.
But I had never dared to think that he had loved me in return. I don’t remember why I thought that. I just remember that I’d thought it was stupid of me, arrogant, even, to assume that I could hold someone’s heart like that. I didn’t have a very high opinion of myself back in high school. In fact I don’t think I ever had a very high opinion of myself, until recently.
Until recently, all I ever felt like was a vessel for other people to put their opinions in. My parents first, and society, and my so-called friends, and finally Chad. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t even sure who that woman was. I just had to behave certain ways, and do certain things, to be seen as respectable and proper. It had left me with no sense of self. Who I actually was inside - my feelings and my thoughts, my interests - wasn’t as important as how I behaved, how I presented myself to everyone around me.
Perception was everything.
The only person I had never felt that pressure from was Ted. So of course I had loved him. He’d been the first person to see me just for myself. I had learned so many things about myself when I had been with him. I had learned that I liked rock music. I had learned that I had a dirty sense of humor. I had learned that I preferred someone reading to me out loud, or listening to an audio book, to reading the book from the page on my own.
Being with Ted had been the only time I’d had any kind of self-respect, and of course I had thrown that all away for my parents, bending to their will once again, like the coward that I had been. But with so little self-value, how could I have ever thought that Ted would love me as I had loved him?
Hearing him say those words had been like a revelation. It had been a benediction.
And so I’d found a way to say what I had been trying to say to him all night long:
“Then make love to me.”
15
Ted
It was the most vivid dream I’d had in years.
I was in the back of my dad’s crappy old car, right after that time I had taken Roni to get pizza. No place would hire a kid who’d looked like me with my punk get-up and my dyed green hair, but I’d hit the pavement hard to try and find odd jobs so that I had money to take Roni places.
She’d been happy to pay for things, of course she had been. Roni hadn’t been perfect in high school. But she’d never been a miser about her money. She’d understood about my dad and she’d always say I’m not using this allowance anyway.
But I liked taking care of the people that I loved. I wanted to be able to provide for them. My therapist always said that it was because my dad never provided for me, and my mom abandoned me, and so now to show others love I took care of them the way that I wished I had been taken care of.
It made sense to me.
That night, though, the night of my dream, I’d been painting addresses on the curbs for a new neighborhood. The Homeowner’s Association that I’d done some odd jobs for had called me in and I’d gotten $20 from it, enough to take Roni out for pizza at this one cheap place that I knew and enjoyed. We’d had the time of our lives, scarfing half a large pizza each, laughing so hard that at one point I almost choked.
Then we’d been in the back of my dad’s car. And the music was playing low… and Roni was perfect under me, my hands sliding up her body… and I’d just, I’d just known.
I loved her.
And I’d had to say it. I couldn’t just keep it to myself, now that I felt it hitting me. It was like I’d always known it, really, for some reason the truth had just been waiting to fully strike me in that moment and I kept having the thought say it now, say it now.
“I love you,” I’d told her.
I’d never expected her to say it back. And I definitely hadn’t expected what happened next - the way that she grabbed my wrists and whispered, her body arching against mine,
“Then make love to me.”
I dared any man to be able to resist when the woman they loved asked that of them. Especially when you’re a teenager and this was the first person you’d ever really been in love with.
I had hurried to obey her, trying to make it good for her. I pushed her skirt up and stroked her soft folds, marveling at her body. She’d been like a wonder to me, a goddess, and I’d wanted the moment to last forever. “Tell me,” I’d whispered, feeling unexpectedly anxious. “Tell me how it feels, what you like.”
Roni had whispered instructions as I’d scissored my fingers inside of her. “There, there, yes, like that, harder, deeper, yes,” she’d moaned. I had never heard her sound so undone, so wanton. Even now, over a decade later, the sound of her moans echoed in my ears.
All of my keeping my ears open in the locker rooms and listening in as others had talked about their times with their girlfriends had paid off. Contrary to popul
ar belief, boys didn’t just talk about sex to brag. We’d had some serious discussions, asking how it had gone, what had worked and what hadn’t, trying to figure out sex and pleasure the same as anyone else.
I hadn’t stopped touching her until she’d come. She’d been so sweet and responsive, blushing all over, her face and down her chest, her breasts perky and soft as she’d embarrassingly admitted she’d orgasmed. As if I might have somehow found that a bad thing.
“I’m glad,” I’d told her. “It’s good.”
I had kissed her all over, gotten my mouth on her breasts - no real finesse to it. If I got the chance now, I would have a lot more skills to show her and I’d have a hell of a time making her beg for me. But back then, all I’d known was that I wanted to get my mouth everywhere I could, and I’d gone to town.
Fortunately, Veronica hadn’t seemed to mind at all. Quite the opposite.
She’d gotten bold as well, grabbing my cock, stroking it clumsily. She hadn’t yet gotten down the rhythm, how to do it, but she would later.
In the dream, everything felt less sharp, but almost more immersive. Like we weren’t just reliving things but were swimming in endorphins, in the pleasure, melding together. The memory of sliding into her felt so real, the memory of her clenching around my cock and how I’d had to go slow to make sure I didn’t hurt her. I would never have hurt her, not my Roni, not my beautiful girl.
I had to work her carefully, even after touching her with my fingers for a long time. Time itself in the dream was… strange, like a kaleidoscope, expanding and contracting, telescoping. I could remember going slow and deep, though. I could remember that it had felt like nobody else in the world existed. Like nothing else mattered.
Just her.
I woke up panting, my cock desperately hard against my thigh. My chest heaved, and I couldn’t even think about it… I rolled over in bed and grabbed my cock, stroking myself hard and fast. I’d clearly been rutting against the sheets in my sleep, and I was so close that I knew it wasn’t going to take long for me to come.