Show Me

by Carole Hart

  “You see?” Liam grinned. “You got the plum slot there, Val, ’cause you’ll be coming in after Emily and before the big orgy thing, so you got that, uh, sandwich position.”

  “I don’t know if Emily will really get the numbers anymore,” she said automatically. But she couldn’t deny that she was pleased. She reached over and gave Liam a shoulder hug, saying, “And you’ve got the plum slot, too, let’s not forget.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, they’ll tune in for you. This is a big deal, what you’re doing. I think you’re real brave.”

  With her arm still around his shoulders, she looked up into his eyes with naive trustfulness. “I’m glad my first time will be with you, Liam. I always had a . . . No, I can’t say it.” She turned her face away as if hiding a blush.

  “Oh, you can say anything to me, Val. You know I would have cut off my right leg to be there for you, and I’m so proud you picked me. I mean, anything you’ve got to say, I want to hear.”

  Valerie couldn’t help smiling. Her mind flitted back to Ralph and she felt a hot glow of triumph in her chest. It had to mean something that all the men she’d asked were crazy to sleep with her (All but Jared, a part of her mind objected, but she hushed that rebellious voice hastily). Some of them had been calling three times a day. Of course, when she had to disappoint them later, there would be some temporary upset. But in her experience, a woman never did herself any harm by turning men down, however arbitrarily. It never did any harm to be exposed in a lie—it only made men more desperate. It was gratifying to reflect that just by pursuing her own goals, completely naturally, she could create this atmosphere of (why avoid the word?) love.

  She took a deep breath and said, a little bashfully, “I guess I had a crush on you.”

  Liam reached to take her hand. “Had? You got over it?” His voice was choked with emotion.

  “If I’d gotten over it,” she said, turning to meet his eyes with a look of timid longing, “why would I have asked you to be my first?”

  His eyes were burning into hers in a way that made her feel—what was it she felt? It was something close to fear, a vulnerability that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. She said, “Would you kiss me?” playing it according to the script she’d prewritten for herself, though part of her longed to escape from him, from the feeling of being exposed and weak.

  He bent to kiss her, his lips tender on hers. As he took her in his arms, she realized she was trembling. Good—that would make the right impression. But she was trembling in earnest, her body longing for something from him that she knew he couldn’t give. Wouldn’t give. He would pretend to give it to her, but she knew it was fake. All he wanted was . . .

  “Valerie,” he said, his cheek pressed lightly against hers, his breath hot and soft on her ear. “I got such a crush on you I don’t know what to call it.”

  She was silent. Her hand moved nervously over his back; the muscles there seemed so hard, so forbidding.

  He said, “I could fall in love with you so easy.” He pulled back from her a little bit, searching in her eyes. “Hey, are you okay? I say something wrong?”

  “No,” she said, and laughed nervously. “No, I’m just . . . It’s what I wanted. And I just . . .”

  “Valerie, you don’t have to say anything.”

  Her mind was shouting at her, You have to say something. Tell him . . . But she didn’t know what to tell him. She felt unmoored, fragile, lost. It was unfair to expect so much from her. It was unfair to stare at her that way, seeing things she had to hide, inspecting her. Suddenly, she moaned and began to kiss him violently, her tongue slipping into his mouth. Anything to end that scrutiny.

  He responded, pressing her to him. She felt her breasts flattened to his chest and moaned again, her body burning with mingled terror and yearning. He was kissing her wildly, his hands stroking her back and down to her buttocks, which tingled in response. She squirmed, trying to rid herself of the feeling. Then he was moving one hand up her side, letting the backs of his fingernails graze her skin through the thin fabric of her dress. He released her slightly to make room for his hand to move in between them, to grasp her breast—and she pushed him away in a panic, a strangled cry escaping her lips.

  His eyes widened, and he was looking at her in confusion and hurt. Or was it anger? She crossed her arms tightly around herself, trying to still her fear. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I just . . .” A tear was forming in her eye and she blinked furiously, for some reason desperate that he shouldn’t see her cry.

  “God, I didn’t mean to frighten you, Val. I don’t want you to do anything you aren’t ready for.” A faint frown formed between his brows. He raised his hand as if to stroke her cheek reassuringly; but when she flinched, he pulled it back hastily and even shoved it behind his back, as if to shield her from his own desire. He said, “Listen, Val, if you’re not ready to . . . do this thing for the birthday show—”

  “Don’t,” she said faintly. “I think you’d better go. I’m sorry.”

  He got up slowly, looking at her with worry clouding his face. “It’s okay. Look, call me if you need anything. God, I didn’t want to hurt you, Val.” He moved toward the door slowly, clearly hoping she would call him back. Even opening the door, his movements were careful, as if he was frightened to make a loud noise. She watched him with her heart pounding. At last he closed the door behind him and she collapsed on the sofa, her face in her hands, sobbing. What was wrong with her? What the fuck was wrong with her?

  Her mind circled the blackness within her, straying from fear to anger to despair. All she knew was that whatever was wrong with her, it was Ralph Anderman’s fault.

  She had met him at an amusement park a few miles away from her hometown in Massachusetts. She had gone there intending to meet a friend from high school, Sondra, but Sondra never showed up. It was a time in Valerie’s life when this sort of thing regularly happened. Friends and dates stood her up. Plans were canceled at the last minute. Some mysterious social reconfiguration would happen, and her confi-dante of the week before would suddenly be part of a group of girls who whispered and laughed as she walked past. That night, as she wandered alone among the rides, she could easily imagine what Sondra would say about her, the hysterical giggling. “I guess I’m mean, but imagine meeting a guy and you’re with Valerie Berghof ? God, I’d be so-o-o embarrassed.”

  She was too embarrassed to actually get on a ride alone, so she just wandered around, trying to appear as if she was looking for someone. Since it was getting late, the groups of people were mainly teenagers a few years older than she—loud, laughing groups who seemed drunk even when they weren’t drunk. She tried to keep out of their way, afraid that their mocking attention would fasten on her. The only consolation was that she didn’t see anyone she knew, anyone who could report back, “Berghof looked so pathetic all alone. I think she’s in love with you, Sondra. She’s crying her eyes out over you.”

  Valerie decided she would buy an ice-cream cone and then call her mother for a ride home. The ice-cream cone seemed like a thing to do, a task to complete that would make it feel less like an experience of pure humiliation. She could tell Sondra, Oh, it was okay. I just got an ice cream and talked to these older guys. It was cool. She would say that a guy tried to kiss her but . . . but he had zits. That would work. He had these gross zits. He was pretty hot except for that, but I didn’t want to touch the—

  Then she saw him, in the line for ice cream. A tall, spare boy in jeans and a brown leather jacket, smoking a cigarette with an expression of boundless ease on his face. He was standing just far enough apart from the group of girls in front of him that it was clear that he wasn’t with them. Without really thinking why, Valerie looked around for the friends he must be with. But she couldn’t see anyone, just the cotton candy peddler and a few people waiting in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl. The boy—the man, she corrected herself—was alone. That fact gave her a flutter of anticipation, which quickly turned to self-loathing.
Don’t kid yourself, Valerie. He’s way, way too cool for you. She joined the line behind him, inspecting him surreptitiously, feeling ugly and small, as if she’d already approached him and he’d rejected her.

  Because she was still half in her fantasy of what she could tell Sondra, she was surprised to see that he didn’t have zits. He didn’t have anything wrong with him at all. In fact, he was gorgeous in the oblivious way boys had. Standing there with his perfect features raised to the last light of the setting sun, with a faint frown of thought on his face, he represented everything Valerie dreamed about. His careless posture hinted at strength and confidence; even though his jeans were a little loose, she could see the strength of his thighs in them, a full, powerful shape casually presented.

  He glanced at her and said, “They’re taking hours.”

  “Oh . . .” Her first thought was that he didn’t want her standing behind him. He was trying to tell her not to get ice cream, so that he didn’t have to stand with her. But no, his face was friendly, his air of ease was unchanged. She said, “Yeah, I’m not in any hurry.”

  “You’re here alone?” he said.

  “Um, yeah. My friend went home early. I don’t know, I just wanted to hang around. It’s such a nice night.” Then she felt stupid. It’s such a nice night was something her mother would say.

  But he just nodded. “Yeah, I like going on the rides alone. It kind of lets me think.”

  She smiled with an instant, helpless adoration. “Yeah, that’s cool. I like that, too.”

  “Only they make you sit with someone.”

  “Yeah,” she said, inventing quickly, “I got stuck with someone’s kid on the Ferris wheel, and the kid kept screaming. I mean, he wasn’t even scared; he just wanted to scream to his sister.”

  “That kind of thing.” He laughed, and looked at her with more interest. “I’d go on the Ferris wheel with you. We could just sit together and not say anything.”

  “That would be great,” she said, trying to make her voice casual. “Yeah, we could just be quiet and pretend to be alone.”

  The line moved forward in slow increments, and they talked about all the things they thought about while alone: fantasies about being interviewed on Letterman, about living in the woods alone with only a tent, about being rich and famous, about being a person who comes to the amusement park alone to escape from fans. He said, “And people are whispering to each other, ‘Is that Ralph Anderman?’ ‘No, it couldn’t be. What would he be doing alone in a place like this?’ ”

  “But you’re in disguise.” She found herself laughing, getting a little breathless.

  “Yeah. They don’t recognize me without my expensive suit. I’m just wearing this crap to blend in.”

  Again, she fell into nervous laughter, thinking that there wasn’t anything wrong with what he was wearing—or was there? Maybe she just didn’t know the difference. She said, apologetically, “It’s not that funny.”

  They got their ice creams and went to sit on a bench in front of the roller coaster. He told her that he was a freshman at Boston University, home for the summer. Next year he was going to get an apartment with some friends. While he described the friends, Valerie dreamed up an alternate history for herself, the history of a girl who was old enough, good enough, to be the girlfriend of a BU student, who could visit him on the weekends and look hot in front of his friends. She told him, “That’s cool. I’m going to UMass next year. I’m just going to stay in dorms, though.” She tried to look grown-up as she shrugged. “I guess that’s okay.” The lie felt harmless, though she had some qualms as she imagined actually visiting him in Boston and having to tell stories about her college life when she was actually still in high school. Of course, that would never happen, though. She would never see him after this night.

  But by the time they got to the Ferris wheel, there seemed to be some kind of understanding between them. It was something unspoken, something in the way he walked closer to her than a friend would, something about the way he finished her sentences and she laughed too hard at his jokes. She started believing that he might actually like her. Might actually want her—if only she could keep him from finding out what a freak she was. As long as he never met Sondra and all those people, and saw the disgusted, jeering way they treated her. As long as he never saw her house, heaped with the junk from four years without cleaning, or met her drunken mother, or any of the series of “stepfathers” who ran the gamut from maudlin drunk to violent drunk.

  If only he never found out who she was.

  He got into the Ferris wheel car first and put out his hand to help her in. Taking it, she was flying on an impression of its warmth, its comforting strength. When she sat down beside him, he left his hand in hers for a second before retracting it with a smile. The ride’s attendant put down the safety bar on top of them and the car jolted forward, swinging them free of the ground, free of reality. They coasted up a long delicious step, and stopped.

  “Now we’re not supposed to talk,” said Ralph.

  They both laughed; she realized with a giddy thrill that he wanted to talk to her now. She said, “Yeah, we have to remain completely silent.”

  “So what are we going to do?” he said lightly.

  She looked at him, confused. Then he bent down and kissed her on the lips.

  Immediately she felt as if the world was spinning around her. He had taken her in his arms; the leather jacket felt cold and masculine on her bare skin. There was an immediate, plummeting feeling of desire that was like being drunk without the sickness, an ecstasy so intense that Valerie knew she would do anything for him, do anything to be kissed by him. He passed his tongue over her lips and her lips burned and sang. She had shut her eyes and when the Ferris wheel moved again, she felt as if she was falling through herself, only being held clear by his arms and the magnetic pull of that kiss. As he slipped his tongue into her mouth, she thought, This is it. This is what I always wanted.

  Their ride on the Ferris wheel was a long flight of shut eyes, their tongues meeting and playing over each other, his hands caressing her back in gentle circles. Every sensation coursed through her whole body. Magically, the tiniest pressure of his finger on her shoulder blade made her blood sing all through her thighs and sent waves of elation through her heart. She never opened her eyes to see the lights, and when the ride stopped and he pulled away from her, she was painfully shocked. She wanted to make him promise that he would kiss her again. But the attendant was there, grinning knowingly at them. She stumbled out of the car and walked off through the crowds, forcing herself not to look back.

  “Hey,” his laughing voice pursued her. “Are you running away?”

  She stopped and took a deep breath. Just as she’d needed him to, he came up and hugged her from behind. He said into her ear, his breath hot on her cheek, “Will you go for a walk with me?”

  She nodded, feeling her hair moving deliciously against his face.

  The amusement park was fenced off from the surrounding woods. But there was one section where the woods were contained within the high chain-link fence. Valerie had heard stories about girls who went in there with boys, about condoms found there, and blow jobs interrupted by guards. Those girls were sluts, of course. They were easy, the kind of girls boys laughed at behind their backs. But this had to be different. It felt different, and, anyway, Ralph was in college. She had said she was about to start college—and college girls weren’t necessarily sluts if they had sex. It was different when you were older.

  Still, she was silent, afraid of herself as she crept through the bushes with him, her legs weak from the desire that was now frankly pulsing between her legs. She could even feel the wetness in her panties, a mushy feeling as if her cunt was deliciously molten. I’ll let him, she told herself. I’m going to let him touch me there. As she thought it, a bright shock of anticipation shot through her pussy, making her stagger a little. He put out his hand to steady her, and then they were walking hand in hand, the pressure of hi
s fingers over hers a delirious luxury.

  Under the trees, it was darker than she’d expected. It was hard to see where she was putting her feet. When she put her foot down on a blanket, she flinched back from it at first, as if she’d stepped on flesh. He laughed and said, “That’s it. We can sit down here. It’s a little dirty, but . . .”

  She tried to see his face in the dark, but he was a shadow. His dark form was silhouetted against a weaker dark. The boughs above were making a shushing sound, as if they were telling her to relax, relax. When he sat, her first impression was that he’d vanished; the dark shape was simply gone. But then she heard him breathing at knee level, and stopped to feel the blanket with her hands, settling on it with her sandaled feet out among the twigs and pine needles.

  He said, “Did you mind me kissing you?”

  She felt a sharp relief that was followed by an even sharper disappointment. He wasn’t going to make her kiss him again. They would talk and walk back together. “I liked it a lot,” she said. Then she remembered the role she was playing and said in a false, bold voice, “I like that stuff. I mean, sex.”

  She could hear his sharp intake of breath. Before she could think about what it meant, he was kissing her again and bearing her onto her back with his body on top of hers. She could feel the sharp twigs underneath the blanket, digging into her back, and the pleasure of kissing was now made keener by impulses of panic. Her heart was racing, and she was going to tell him to stop. She was going to.