Indecent

by Corinne Sullivan

  He let his towel drop first, and as he turned on the shower tap I studied his body in the light: his burly chest and slightly paunchy tummy, the muscular curve of his glutes, the dark hair sprouting from his toes, his still-erect penis—how gratifying it was, to know that erection was for me. I let my towel drop, too, and stepped into the hot spray behind him. Standing in the dirty ceramic tub where dozens of naked feet had stood before us, he pulled me into the clump of matted hair that was his chest. I closed my eyes as he ran his hands over my back, his fingertips soft and curious.

  After the shower, we stood side-by-side before the bathroom mirror, still dripping and wrapped in our towels. My mascara ran in tracks down my face, and our hair was plastered to our faces in wet strands. It was one of the rare days when my skin was blemish-free, and I felt invulnerable. He smiled, and I began to laugh, and for the first time we felt like friends.

  “I should take a picture of this,” he said.

  I knew he was joking, but I wish he had. I wanted some way to preserve that moment, to preserve us, so that it still felt real in the morning, when I woke up alone with my hair dried funny from sleeping on it wet. So that we felt like something I hadn’t just made up in my head.

  * * *

  The weekend after my evaluation, I barely left my room. I read ahead in the textbooks and worked on lesson plans for Dale’s Honors History class. I watched lacrosse videos online and devised new practice drills for the team. I graded the Honors History midterm papers and wrote a page of critiques on the back of each essay, my handwriting tiny and illegible and frantic. Though it was one of the last warm weekends of the fall, when ReeAnn knocked on my door on Saturday to ask if I wanted to join her and the others on a trip into town, I said I had too much work to do. An afternoon of lunch and shopping felt so idle, wasteful. Those were activities for someone who had accomplished something; I’d done nothing yet to deserve idle time.

  I decided, too, to start taking my morning runs more seriously. I ordered an expensive new pair of running sneakers online. I created running music playlists. When I pumped down the trails, I pushed myself harder than I’d ever pushed myself before. I sweat. I ached. With each step, I imagined my muscles tightening, my soft limbs becoming hard and firm and strong. I imagined a crowd cheering me on, my fellow Running Club members watching in awe as I ran faster and farther each day. Sometimes I imagined I was running to something, sometimes from something; that something always changed.

  I tried not to think about Kip. Or, rather, I actively tried to think about other things—lesson plans, making more of an effort with the other apprentices, the feel of my arms swinging and feet thumping on the path—so that there would be no room for thinking about Kip, so that he was squeezed out of my mind like a passenger from an overcrowded subway, forced to wait until later, until there might be space for him.

  * * *

  When I went downstairs to make a sandwich Sunday night, Chapin sat at the kitchen table, a rarity. She was painting her nails cotton candy blue, and as I hadn’t emerged from my room or reapplied my makeup since my morning run, the sight of another person startled me.

  “Imogene,” she said without looking up. “Hi.”

  I thought about turning around and returning up the stairs, such was my aversion to interaction right then, but my hunger and my fear of looking strange kept me from leaving. I pulled a loaf of bread and a jar of Nutella from the cabinet.

  “Nutella sandwich?” She scrunched her nose in a way that seemed to imply weird or maybe even gross.

  I nodded. I hated when people noted my quirks (“Why are you always biting the insides of your cheeks?”), my purchases (“New shirt? What’s the occasion?”), and especially my diet. Food choices felt so personal, so embarrassing. If a guy were to ever ask me to dinner, I’d have to whisper my order into the waiter’s ear and eat my dinner in the kitchen. Better yet, we’d avoid eating, skipping the stomach-gurgling, breath-morphing, stuck-in-teeth grotesqueness of food altogether. I worked hard enough to keep my appearance in check without having to worry about my anxieties and ulterior motives and guilty pleasures becoming a public display.

  I spread Nutella on both pieces of bread, stuck them together, and cut the sandwich diagonally down the middle. Chapin watched carefully. I fought the urge to shield the sandwich with my body.

  “So are you going to tell me who was in your room the other day?”

  My stomach clenched. Usually I licked the knife after I was through, but instead I stuck it in the sink to avoid grossing Chapin out further. I lingered at the sink, clenching the counter, unable to look at her. She’d heard us, I realized. She’d heard Kip and me. Just when I’d begun to relax, to feel safe again, the foolishness of what I’d done hit me in a sickening wave.

  “Well?”

  I could feel her eyes on me, and I turned. “It was no one.”

  She smirked. “Was it your secret admirer? El Músculo?”

  Clarence. I tried to imagine kissing him; it felt like as much of a perversion as kissing the Power Ranger–obsessed neighbor kid I used to babysit. My little brother. “No. No, definitely not.”

  “But it was someone.”

  Her gaze undressed me, less sexual than inquisitorial, and it left me feeling both vulnerable and flattered. Chapin honestly wanted to know. My lips curved into a stupid grin against my will. Because even as I was reminded how careless I’d been, it occurred to me, too, that I wasn’t sorry I’d done it.

  “C’mon, Imogene. You can tell me.”

  And for a moment, I thought I could. We could keep this secret together, Chapin and I. That’s why we share things, right? To share the burden. To legitimatize excitement. “There was someone in my room the other day,” I started. If I told her, then maybe we could really become friends.

  She raised a thick brow, urging me on.

  But the lie took over before my desire to divulge could stop it. “It was Raj.”

  Chapin frowned. “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?”

  I shrugged. Was I to plead ignorance? Act the role of the callous vixen? I hadn’t planned this out. My regret was immediate and painful.

  “Interesting.” Her probing gaze went dead, suggesting she found the information anything but. She returned to her nails, and as I turned to leave she added, “You really shouldn’t fuck with your skin so much. You’re going to get scars.”

  I returned to my bedroom with my Nutella sandwich, but I no longer had an appetite. It unnerved me to know that I’d been watched so clearly—my worst fear confirmed—and that the things I thought I’d successfully concealed were actually right on the surface, exposed, like graying underpants hung from a clotheslines for all the world to see.

  * * *

  I’d been working on a lesson plan about the rise of the great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and India, but after talking to Chapin I couldn’t concentrate. I ripped my sandwich into bits and ate it piece by piece, no longer even hungry. The nagging feeling I’d had after my meeting with Dale and Ms. McNally-Barnes returned, only this time I recognized that feeling as disappointment. Was it because I desperately wanted to be able to tell Chapin—to tell anyone—this exciting new development in my life, the thrill of which fueled my morning runs and motivated my new work ethic and—though I’d never admit it—compelled me into vigilance all day so that I might get a glimpse, just one, of the boy who had chosen me?

  Or was it because my phone had been silent for the past few days, with no word from the guy who had perhaps not chosen me after all?

  I stood from my desk and overturned my wastebasket, where I’d deposited the shredded remains of the note with his number a few days before. Post-Its and index cards and balled-up tissues scattered the rug, and I dug through the pile with my hands. Anytime I found a ripped-up shred of paper I put it aside, but the task wasn’t an easy one; my wastebasket was filled with dozens of ripped shreds, the result of a not-altogether-irrational fear of someone (Chapin, most likely) snooping through my
trash—even though, up until a week ago, I’d never had anything important to hide. After attempting to piece together several different shreds, I finally admitted defeat and returned all the contents to the wastebasket. It was entirely up to Adam Kipling as to whether this … whatever it was would continue—but then again, hadn’t it always been entirely up to him?

  I remained on the floor for another few minutes before I finally grabbed my coat and headed for the door, pausing only for a moment at the bathroom mirror to make sure my makeup hadn’t been sweated off or rubbed away since the last time I checked.

  Chapin still sat at the kitchen table. “I’ll be back,” I told her.

  “O-kay,” she sang back, skeptical or uninterested or perhaps not even listening.

  * * *

  It was too cold for Kip and his friends to spend their nights outside between the trees anymore, but I looked there anyway. I thought about the first night we spoke, his infectious smile, the feel of my smaller hand in his larger one.

  I went inside Perkins Hall and knocked on the first door to the left, which I knew from ReeAnn was Raj’s.

  He answered the door shirtless, wearing only a pair of slouchy gray sweatpants. I stared at the dark tuft of hair that led from his belly button to down under the elastic waistband of his pants, feeling as though I’d walked in on him naked. He stared at me. “Imogene. What are you doing here?”

  I forced my eyes away from his navel and up to his face. “Hi. Sorry. It’s late.” The initiative that led me to Raj’s door was now decomposing, silly seeming. Like sobering up, all that was left was embarrassment, heavy and pungent as a wet towel.

  Raj scratched his head. “Are you on rounds duty?”

  “No, I…” I hesitated, biting the insides of my cheeks. “Do you have a list of all the residents in the hall and their room numbers?”

  “Yeah, yeah I should have one somewhere. Why?”

  “One of my students. I need to give him something.”

  “Don’t you teach first years?”

  I clasped my hands together to keep them from visibly shaking. “I mean, one of my lacrosse students. From the lacrosse team.”

  He continued to stare. “You can’t email it to him? Or give it to him at practice tomorrow?”

  I shook my head. “He really needs it tonight, I think.”

  “I don’t know, Imogene. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  He reminded me then of my high school guidance counselor, looking disapprovingly over my list of prospective colleges. Was there anything quite as demoralizing as having one’s dreams dashed by a trusted consultant? Perhaps this is why it was better not to share things at all; we expect others to support us, to reinforce us, to tell us we are deserving and good and right, when really we’re just giving others the power to expose our rose-tinted fantasies to the harsh light of reality. I opened my mouth to apologize or excuse myself, but instead I squeaked out a single word: “Please.”

  Raj stared at me searchingly for a moment longer and then sighed. “Okay. Just … be quick, alright?”

  I nodded, and I waited in the doorway as he retrieved the list from his desk drawer. I scanned it quickly and handed it back to him.

  “Got it?”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  As soon as he closed his door, I turned to the stairwell.

  * * *

  This is what I’d imagined: he’d be alone, working on a paper at his desk, when I knocked. He’d answer the door and smile, unsurprised by my appearance. He’d take my hand and pull me in, right over to his bed, where our mouths would meet and his body would wrap around mine and I’d know for certain that the Sunday before was more than just an already fleeting memory.

  What I didn’t imagine was that his redheaded friend Skeat would answer the door instead. He only opened it a crack, poking his pink face out. “Hey?” he said, more question than greeting.

  “Who is it?” I heard Kip ask behind the mostly-closed door.

  Skeat ignored him, his eyes still on me. Finally recognition slid over his face. “You’re that girl.”

  “I—”

  The door opened fully, revealing Kip with his hand on the knob and his friend Park sitting on the bed behind him. The three of them stared at me.

  “Is the music too loud?” Skeat finally asked.

  “What?” It was only then that I noticed the tiny hum of classic rock coming from a set of speakers on Kip’s desk. “Oh, no. It’s fine.” I tried to meet Kip’s eyes, but he looked away. He hadn’t told his friends about me. I was that girl, as in that girl who spied on them weeks ago, not Kip’s girl. I felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment. Mostly disappointment, it took me a minute to decide.

  Skeat tapped his fingers on the door. “So…”

  Kip’s eyes were still focused on the floor.

  “I think I have the wrong room,” I said. I stepped back and looked up at the number beside the door. “Yeah, wrong room. Sorry.”

  I hurried away before Skeat had even closed the door, but didn’t get far enough away not to hear him mutter, “Fucking weird.”

  * * *

  It was over. It was nothing. I rammed my hands deep in my pockets and quickened my pace, distancing myself from that room, from that humiliation, from that person. I was a conquest too embarrassing to even tell his friends about. The cold night air snapped at my face when I pushed open the door, and I let out an involuntary gasp. I would not cry. I was a teacher, for Christ’s sake, an adult. I was too old to still believe that people wouldn’t disappoint me.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I quickly retrieved it, my hand having already been curled around it in the pathetic hope that such a thing would happen. The blue square of my phone’s screen lit up the dark.

  Give me 5.

  I stared at it, uncomprehending, before shoving the phone back in my pocket. How powerful it felt to ignore him, even while my head flooded with dizzying warmth, rendering me wobble-kneed and disoriented as a drunk.

  The phone buzzed again. Wait for me.

  I slowed my pace, tried to breathe. I was caught in the undertow, simultaneously pulled back and pushed forward, unsure what was up or down, what was the surface and what was further darkness. I hated my excitement.

  I had nearly reached the Hovel when I heard the heavy footsteps behind me. He was running. His loafers galloped and crunched through the fallen leaves, and when I turned, I saw him, hair flying off his forehead, cheeks red, tie loose and flapping over his shoulder like a scarf. He slowed when he saw me, and by the time he approached me he was walking, barely panting, as though he’d ambled the whole way over.

  “Hello,” he said, as casual as his walk.

  “Hi,” I said, matching his coolness.

  He took my hand and pulled me through the back door and together, in unspoken agreement, we flew up the stairs to my bedroom.

  NINE

  Kip’s hands were cold when he slid them underneath my sweater. His hands explored my stomach and squeezed my hips and massaged the tiny indentations in my lower back, like I was clay beneath him. Anytime his face pulled away, I pushed mine forward, insistent, my mouth drawing his back in. I kissed him until my eyes crossed beneath closed lids. I kissed him until the pressure of his body on mine seemed to push me through the sheets and the mattress onto the floor and further still. I kissed him until I felt weary and sad and almost thankful to be done so that I could start reimaging it all in privacy. Chapin wasn’t home, had deserted her spot at the kitchen table and left her bedroom closed and dark before we returned, but I don’t think I would have cared if she weren’t. I wanted her to hear, I think. I wanted her to listen, as I had listened to her, for her to know that she wasn’t the only one who could coax a boy into her bedroom.

  “You really like kissing,” he noted.

  “Yes,” I said, an apology.

  He lifted the hem of my sweater and stuck his head beneath. I jumped in surprise.

  “Adam?”

  Hi
s breath was hot on my chest and the rough hair on his chin tickled my skin. I felt the soft poke of his nose in my armpit, first snuffling and then inhaling deeply.

  “What are you doing?” I laughed, too perplexed to even be embarrassed about the proximity of his face to my underarm. He snuffled with a dog’s insistence, his head bulging from underneath the cotton fabric like an alien baby. I didn’t care that the sweater would be ruined.

  He finally emerged, face flushed and grinning. “Pheromones,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s like an animal attraction.”

  “I know that, but—”

  Kip rolled off of me and propped his head on his hand, stretched out like a centerfold. He could feel comfortable in a soup kitchen, on a red carpet, naked under a spotlight, the kind of comfortable that made me wonder if I had ever felt comfortable before. I wanted to crawl inside his skin like he had crawled under my sweater, just to see what that kind of ease felt like.

  “You know you’re into a girl if you’re into the smell of her pits.”

  His comfortableness, as always, was infectious. He emboldened me. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Well, are you into mine?”

  He laughed, his mouth a glorious chasm. “I’m into you,” he said.

  “You didn’t text me all week.” I don’t know who spoke those words, whiny and shameless, but it couldn’t have been me.

  He stared at me. “Yeah…?”

  “Why not?”

  He blinked. “You didn’t text me.”

  I hadn’t realized I could. I was his choice; it had never occurred to me that he could be mine. I tried on flirtation. “Is that permission?”