“You play something, too?” Trace asks. He doesn't miss a beat. The rhythm against the house gets a little more complicated; I hear the time signature shift. It's harder to dance to now. Claudia turns down.
“Ha, no. I played shitty oboe in the third grade, but I just like to dance. They called me Carmen, back in –”
“Trace, where'd you learn how to do that?” I can't help it. I ease back towards the pair of them. He starts flipping a stick in the air in between beats, so it's like he's juggling as he plays. Claudia laughs, delighted as a schoolgirl.
“What, this old thing? Just something we po kids picked up around the orphanage.” He bangs harder and harder. It seems like any second the sticks will crack under pressure, but to my surprise they don't. “Just something we'd do, when we were busy not caring about our futures.” He pounds for another second. The sticks fly faster and faster. He's amping up for some kind of grand finale. Claudia stops dancing, and we both just watch him for a moment, utterly rapt.
After he punctuates his riff, Trace tosses both sticks up into the air and catches them neatly—one, two—again, like a juggler. He smirks at me, in that maddening Newman way. Claudia wrinkles her nose in my direction.
“Weren't you on your way somewhere?”
“Huh?”
“Here she goes again. Peeping Theresa.”
“I'm not staring! God!”
I hoist my backpack up onto my shoulder setting my chin. Maybe I'll sprint back to school. Maybe I'll go for a walk, before I make it to the art room. Claudia is still looking at me funny. I touch my cheeks, self-conscious—and realize they're burning hot.
“Listen, Trace. You're really good at that.”
“I know.” He smirks. He seems less jittery than I've ever seen him—his flinty resting expression has been replaced by something peaceful. It's like he's released something into the wall.
“Well. Look, I'll be –” sorry? Late? I have no way to finish this sentence. The two of them have everything they need. Maybe they deserve each other. They're both beautiful and cool and confident. And me? I'm just bitter and fussy and overworked. I'm mean to my parents, I pick impossible men, and I don't look like a Disney princess. What could I offer him, anyways?
“Anyways. Great. Bye.” I turn to go, finally. Not my smoothest exit, by any means. Eric, go my thoughts. Think about Eric.
I hear the pair of them laughing behind me, and for the first time, I really try to see myself through their eyes.
That's when I realize. I'm in trouble.
* * *
He twists a lock of my hair around and around his index finger. Outside, I can hear the marching band tuning up. I know it's totally mean and catty to rag on my fellow musicians, but I can't help laughing a little. The Douglass Marching Band is pure, concentrated awful, stuffed into embarrassing hats.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks me. I reach a hand up and root through the soft grey strands at his temples.
“How a tone-deaf flutist got to have so much power.” I nod in the direction of the football field. We're naked on the art room floor. The cold, gritty linoleum is pressing into the flesh of my ass and shoulders. Eric's placed a few of those telltale left-over cardigans over our spent bodies, so it's warm on top. It feels weirdly like we're camping.
“C'mon, Jo. Be serious.”
“I am being serious. She couldn't blow her way out of The Saints Go Marching In.”
“You know, I got a call about you the other day. From a little place called Dartmouth College.” He sits up then, so he can lean against the wood-paneled cabinets. Reaches up onto the counter above us and pulls down his glasses.
“Oh?”
“Seems like someone's alumni interview is coming up.”
I run my fingers through the curls along his chest. This is one thing I truly love about Eric: the coarse hair on his pecs. Something about this thatch of fuzz has always made me see him as distinguished.
“Jo? Say something! Isn't this so exciting?”
“Sure!” I tug at the corners of my mouth, so it feels like I'm grinning extra hard.
I don't know what it is, but I just can't seem to get excited about college—as a concept, I mean. For one thing, it sounds exactly like high-school: you take a bunch of dull, aimless courses to get a major in something “practical,” then you try to make the Dean's list, all in service of some vague aim. The horrible thing I'd said to Trace the other night keeps coming back to me in nausea-inducing waves, but more and more, I'm wondering if I even really am one of those people who “cares about her future.”
Besides, all the brochures of Dartmouth have painted this picture of a stuffy old boy's club, all Polo shirts and frat parties and general small-town life. I know it sounds ungrateful and whiny to say, but I can't see myself hobnobbing with people like that. The idea that such a world could be a high-point in my life? It just...it doesn't sound great.
“You're going to be so surprised, Joanna,” Eric says to me. His voice is low, the exact same quality of soothing that endeared me to him all those months before, that fateful night in his office. It feels great to be so comfortable with someone. To have someone know you, so fully and totally. “College is such a great place for discovery. There are so many different kinds of people there, so many interesting things to study...”
The flutist on the football field flubs a major note, and the tuba sails downstream with her. I hear the band break out of their song. Everyone laughs, creating an oddly lovely harmony.
“You met your wife in college, right?” I ask. I don't know why. It slips out, and as could be expected, Eric's whole body seems to stiffen.
“Well, yeah. Sure. What makes you say that?”
“I dunno. I was just thinking about all these 'fascinating people' I'm supposed to meet.” The linoleum is suddenly too cold, too hard—and so grimy. I can't believe we've been lying on it for so long.
“You will. You will meet fascinating people.”
“But what if I already happen to know fascinating people?” I bat my eyes, the picture of coy. Outside, the band resumes their march. They already sound more in tune this time, which is a relief.
Eric hunches over me, so his hair falls over his forehead. His icy-blue eyes search my own.
“You are a fascinating person, Miss Prine.” He kisses me lightly on the mouth, so light it's like eating cotton candy—there's just the whisper of sensation crackling between us. “College is only going to make you more fascinating. You believe that, right?”
Instead of saying anything, I kiss him back hard. He slumps against the cabinets, places his hands on either side of my hips. I toss one leg out from under our little sweater nest, so I'm straddling him. I close my eyes, burrow my face into the crook of his neck. I buck my hips slightly, so slightly, on top of him. I send out a pulse.
Eric brings one hand up to my breast, and cups me gently. He begins to knead the little pearl of my raised nipple, making elegant, circular motions with his thumb. I breathe hot air onto his bare throat; I imagine I can sense all the little hairs striping the back of his neck standing on end. I nudge a little harder into him. Yes, counselor. Want me. We're already sticky and sweaty from our first session of the day, mere moments ago—but I have a want that hasn't been sated yet. I let myself rock so hard against him that his bones seem to clatter against the wood cabinet behind us. My knees hit linoleum as I lift my hips.
“Oh,” Eric moans. His breath is warm and moist on my ear. “Yes. Yes, baby.”
“You like that?” I try. Dirty talk is fairly fresh territory for us, but I feel the results already, beneath my fingertips. His cock is growing.
“Yes. I love that.” He presses himself toward me, and I take the head of his already exposed dick under my palm. I press down slightly, brushing my fingers against the sides of his shaft, moving my hand up and down, up and down, nice and slow... He arches his back, curving into my touch. I stretch my own spine, so my hair falls flush against the backs of my shoulders.
“We've never done it like this before,” I say—and instantly feel a little stupid, for saying.
Eric reaches down, meeting my hand with his own. He wordlessly slides one finger down the slope of my pubis, letting a pad land lightly on the tip of my clit. For a second, it's the cotton candy touch again—but then he presses into my raised mound. I widen my knees around him, come into a low crouch. He moves a few more fingers down, so they hover at my wet entrance.
He looks straight into my eyes, gaze serious, as I lower myself slowly down on top of him. The instant he's secure inside me, I realize how much I've been missing our little meet-ups. With him inside me, I feel...full. Complete, in some way.
Eric shifts his fingers so they now dig into the lowest part of my back. He kneads the flesh there, pulling me towards him, while I rock above. His cock shifts and expands inside me, pushing against the sweetest part of my insides. I lean all the way back. I let him hold me.
He presses his woolly head into my breasts, his mouth casting about for a nipple. The feel of his scruff against my naked chest tickles, but I relax my shoulders, I exhale long. I don't know what I've been so weird about. This feels good. This feels right. This feels—
“Oh, Miranda!” he cries out. I can feel his teeth, the wetness of his fervent mouth—the most important parts of him, buried deep in my heart's center.
We stop rocking.
Eric keeps his hands clamped around my middle, but the pads of his fingers relax. He pants into my breasts, but I make no sound. Inside me, I feel him shrinking.
“I mean, Joanna!” he whispers, half-heartedly. Outside, the marching band is in full thrust. I would laugh at their choice in repertoire, if the moment wasn't already so wrecked: it's Prince's “Kiss” that they're butchering now.
“Hey, kid. I'm sorry. You know that doesn't mean anything, though. It's just a—reflex.”
Reflex.
I slowly lift myself, placing a hand around his base so I can ease him out of me. The art room looks even more undignified to me now. I catch my gaze in the mirror above the little slop sink.
I suddenly look so...undignified.
“Joanna. Come on!” He rolls back toward me, begins to nibble once more at my neck. He brings a hand up to cup my breast, though in his touch all I can read now is apology.
“I should go.”
“Please don't make this into a thing.”
“Excuse me? You just called out your wife's name while making love to me. You thought I was a different woman while you were actually inside of me.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. You're acting like a child.” And just like that, his words are cold. He pulls away from me, abruptly, leaving me to feel as naked and dumb as I've ever felt. He tosses some of my cardigans aside. Roots through the pile-up for his boxers and jeans.
“Look. Don't be naïve. I've been sleeping with one woman for twelve years, and her name happens to be Miranda. You are the only other one.”
“And weirdly enough, I have my own name. It's Joanna.”
“I didn't mean to! Obviously!”
“Are you still sleeping with her?” The world outside seems to grow quiet; the “Kiss” is finished. I seek out his icy-blues. I remember how he took me on the floor of his office all those months ago. How he held me, snug and warm as a baby, on the soiled rug. It could have been hours we laid there.
“I don't know what to tell you, kid.” Eric secures a final button of his dumb plaid flannel. “This is—this is something adults do. I thought you understood.”
Miranda, with her lovely blonde hair and legs for days. Miranda, in her wedding dress. Miranda, in his bed. Miranda—the mother of his future children. I think maybe, finally, I do understand: I am not that woman. I am not anyone's woman.
“Gonna shake. I have a bunch of aptitude tests to grade, anyways.” He smiles a half-assed smile, and I look away. “We can talk about this some more later. Once you've cleared your head. Okay?”
Claudia has said this before: “It's the amazing thing about men. Give them enough rope and they will tie you up, smiling.” I figured this was something she lifted from the back of one of her mother's old harlequin novels, but in this cold, cold room, the message is all too clear. I am the idiot. I have bound myself.
“Now, seriously, though: think about Dartmouth. They'll want a date for that interview soon.” He brushes invisible paint flecks—evidence—from his pants. He stands tall.
“Bye,” I whisper. But Eric's already turned. Relief buoys his shoulders. By the time he's out in the hallway, all counselored up, I would never be able to sense that 'sex haze' Trace has mentioned, anywhere in his vicinity. Eric Mahoney doesn't walk like a person in love.
* * *
When I get back home, there's no sign of Trace or Claudia—so I play my violin. My Dad, in a rare cool moment, once told me that one of his favorite musicians from back in the day (George someone, I wanna say?) once told his studio band to “play like their mothers had just died.” I know full well I'm being dramatic, but I decide it's time I try to follow this advice. I'll take my totally predictable teen angst out on the instrument. For one thing, what else am I gonna do? Curl up in my canopy bed and cry, like some fussy cheerleader in a movie? I can do better than that.
I have to keep reminding myself—in between the bursts of fervent Beethoven and Chopin—I started the whole thing with Eric because I am mature. I'm no dummy; I'm practically the valedictorian, actually. I knew he had a wife. I guess a part of me must always have known that Miranda was first and foremost in his thoughts, but it really did seem for a while like we could figure out some future in the long run. I'd go to Dartmouth, say, and he'd get some important teaching post at a New England college nearby. We'd spend our evenings hunched over books, or having intelligent conversation over the wine I'd soon be old enough to legally imbibe...
A harsh twang fills the bedroom; I've popped a string. Shit. I fight the urge to fling my usually faithful instrument across the floor. Instead, I breathe deep, and start kicking around for one of the thirty thousand string packets hidden in the many crannies of my bedroom.
“HEY! OPEN UP!” I freeze. Someone's been knocking, I guess. I don't even know for how long. I cast a surly look up at the wall clock, where I promptly learn that I've been sawing away in here for three hours. The fresh blisters on my fingers are bright red, hovering just on the edge of bursting.
“I'm sorry, I'll keep it down!”
“I don't give a—I mean, I don't care about the noise. Listen, Jo. You got a sec?”
The demon.
I open the door. Just a bit.
“Look, I'm actually really busy. What do you want?”
Trace has apparently taken a shower post-basketball practice; he looks all fresh-faced, and he smells again of that posh cologne. Downstairs, I can hear Janice and Earl tutting in the kitchen, dreaming up some fresh healthy hell to serve us tonight.
“I want you to chill out a bit! Damn!”
“If it's too loud, put your headphones in. I'm so not in the mood for a lecture.” A part of me hates this bitchy sheen I'm giving off, but it's like I can't even check the words before they float up out of some abyss in my stomach. Because every man in my path could be Eric: careless, manipulative, cruel...
“Got you some Mean Reds, huh?”
“I don't even know what that is. Trace, seriously. I need you to piss off.”
But before I can slam the door, he puts a firm, protective hand on the knob.
“Look. I get it, alright? Everybody gets low.” He cranes his head a little, peering into my room. I shift, in an attempt to block his probing gaze. There's crap all over the floor.
“It's none of your business, actually.”
We just breathe for a moment. He looks at me with a scrunched brow, not unlike Claudia's funny little pout from earlier today. I'm not sure what to say, exactly.
“I thought you and C would be necking by now.”
“Hey! I'm a gentleman.”
“Sure. I'm positive that you –”
Trace leans forward and places two finger to my lips. He stoops down toward me, so we're nearly eye-level. I try not to flinch. Should I flinch? Should I close my eyes and lean in? Should I—
“I think you say a lot of shit you don't mean when I'm around, Jo.” I like how he whispers my name: Jo. “So maybe think before you say it, just this one time. Just trying ta’ save you a week's worth of moping, staring at me from corners and being weird as shit.”
“I'm not the one who's been weird! You're the one who's weird around me!” I hear my voice crack, on the second, shrill 'weird.' Goddammit, Jo—be a normal human. “I tried to be nice to you, and you're the one who always gets in my face about staring at you or saying this or that thing. Look, I don't know how to act, okay? I know you had a rough upbringing. I'm trying to be supportive and...stuff. But you make it hard.”
“You make it hard, too. So hard.”
“Make what hard?” But as soon as the words are out, I catch the silly Newman glint in his green eyes. Trace smirks, impishly, and I punch him on the shoulder.
“That is so immature.”
“What? It's your mind in the gutter. I didn't even say anything.” He leans against the doorframe, a soldier at ease. I can't help thinking, this is how the jocks and their ladies talk to one another, up against the lockers like this. Any second now, he's going to ask me to prom. I'll have to toss my hair.
“You know, that old viola shit you got is no way to get over the Mean Reds.”
“It's a violin, genius.”
“There you go again! Saying cantankerous shit!”
“You're right. I'm an asshole. I'm sorry.” Downstairs, my parents laugh at something together—big, hiccupy, dorky guffaws. Trace smiles in the direction of the kitchen.
“So what are these Mean Reds?”
“Kinda like the blues, but...worse.”
“And you know how to make them go away, huh?” I sneak a backward glance into my bedroom, where I spy the many textbooks, demanding to be studied. The to-do lists and piles, all the places extra strings could be hiding...guh. Deciding something, I step out into the hallway and shut the door gently behind me. The hallway is narrow, so for a second, before Trace readjusts, we're pressed close together. I'm engulfed in his smell.
A Family Affair: My Bad Boy Foster Brother Page 6