by Naomi Niles
“We may never know what truly happened,” I replied and began humming a spooky tune.
“Maybe that’s for the best.”
“Maybe. But if these are memories and not dreams I was having, it seems like I ought to call her and follow up. She’s probably waiting to hear from me.”
Nick dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. “Did you follow up with the last girl you slept with?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go. You don’t even owe her a phone call.”
But of course, that had been different. That other girl had been nothing to me. And with only vague memories of the night before, it was hard to say how much we had bonded, but I could remember a distinct sensation of pleasure, and I felt, even now, a yearning for the warmth of her body.
“You know what would be weird?” said Nick. “If you called her tomorrow and asked her out. And you ended up falling in love and getting married and then, ten years down the road, you got to talking about how you first met, and it turned out she didn’t remember anything that happened last night. It was all just a dream that you had.”
“Shit, she might not remember it anyway. If I was drinking, she was probably drinking, too.”
“Maybe she drugged you with some potion to make you forget.”
“Yeah. Did it ever occur to you,” I asked, “that maybe your girl did that to you?”
Nick’s face paled, and he was silent for a minute.
“Anyway,” I added, “I’m not in a hurry to be getting back to Boulder. I almost wish we could chill here for the next week instead of going home, but I’m afraid the hotel bills would be prohibitively expensive.”
“More than we can afford,” said Nick. “And we’ve already got a flight booked for this afternoon.”
“I know, but I’ve fallen a little bit in love with this place: the tacky decorations, gaudy light fixtures, tourists in terrible clothing. It’s like Texas, but more.”
“Remind me never to visit Texas,” Nick muttered.
“It’s not so bad there. If I ever get married, we’ll have a big Texas wedding in Sulphur Springs, and I’ll invite you down.”
“Please do. I’m eager to meet your brothers.”
“As they are to meet you. Every so often Mom will call me and ask if I’ve found a girl yet. I always tell her, ‘No, but I’ve got Nick.’”
“I’m not sure whether I should be flattered.”
“You definitely should be. I’ve been with several girls, but I’ve only got one Nick.”
“I’m sure if I combed through your memories I would find someone else named Nick who was close to you at one point.”
“If you could do that then maybe you could tell me what went down last night.”
Nick shook his head. “No, I think I would just leave that one a mystery. Every life has to have a few mysteries. I think it was Tolkien who said that.”
“Or did he?” I waited a beat before adding, “I wish there was a button on my phone that could play the X-Files music whenever I needed it. That would improve my life greatly.”
“I’m sure there’s a way to make that happen.”
Feeling full, I folded up the last of my tortilla and laid it down on my plate. It was a pleasure just to sit there luxuriating in the warm sunlight.
“I’ve fought with just about everyone in my life at one time or another,” I said. “How is it that I’ve never fought with you?”
Nick seemed taken aback by the question. “I guess you never wanted to. Or maybe I never had anything that you wanted.”
“I guess not. Girlfriends come and go, but it’s nice to know that there’s one stable relationship in my life.”
“I love you too, Braxton.” It was hard to tell, from the tone of his voice, how seriously he meant it.
Chapter Eighteen
Jaimie
I could remember everything.
I left Vegas in disgrace, feeling like Eve being driven out of the Garden. I sat staring out the window on the flight back resisting Randy’s attempts to make small talk, replaying every moment of that night in my head until it became irretrievably fixed in my memory.
Now that it was over, and now that the haze of drunkenness had lifted, I could see more clearly what I couldn’t before. How lonely I’d been that night; how I had assumed I was embarking on a mutually fulfilling sexual encounter only to find that he had other plans. What he did to me was gross. He hadn’t wanted to pleasure me; he just wanted to jizz on me.
And, having accomplished that, he had had no more use for me.
I should have listened to the nagging voice in my head warning me that he was no different from any other boy. I should have learned from my past mistakes. But I hadn’t, and I had to wonder whether I was going to keep doing this for the rest of my life, playing out the same tawdry scenes in the same tawdry ways.
Some part of me was convinced that if I never talked about it, it would be like it had never happened. So I resolved to keep it secret and try not to think about it. Maybe eventually I would even forget about it.
But of course, that didn’t last longer than my first conversation with Ren after I came home.
“‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ is a lie,” she said. “What happens in Vegas is to be shared between you and your best friend.”
“I’d really rather not talk about it.”
“You know I’m going to be disappointed if you didn’t have at least one sleazy encounter in Vegas. Tell me now or prepare to suffer my perpetual disappointment.”
Ren had come over at one pm to find me still asleep and in my jammies. We had agreed to go jogging, but at some point, the jog had turned into a walk. Now we were walking along the perimeter of a city park on a sidewalk shaded with elms and littered with wet leaves. It was a relief to be back in Boulder after all the gaudy excess of Vegas, here among the pubs and thrift stores and old, musty-smelling shops.
“God, this is all so beautiful,” said Ren, exultant. “No matter how long I live here I can never get over it.”
“Sometimes I wish I could see what you see.”
“Well, I grew up in Delaware, in the armpit of Satan. I’m grateful every day to have escaped to a place where there are trees and trellises and community gardens.”
We crossed through the park and over a wooden footbridge that lay over a stream. Sensing my reticence, Ren added, “You always do this: agree to hang out with me and then barely talk.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I talk about myself entirely too much.”
“No, just enough.” It was a relief not to have to talk about myself on a day like today.
“Anyway, you couldn’t have enjoyed Vegas very much, or you wouldn’t be so gloomy. I’ve always wondered what it said about our country that people flock there instead of someplace nicer.”
“Probably nothing good,” I replied. “I’d just as soon visit the Grand Canyon or my local library. Less chance of losing all my money or getting my heart broken.”
Somehow, Ren could sense I was only half-kidding. “What happened down there? You haven’t been the same since you got back.”
Realizing that she wasn’t going to give up until she had pried the truth out of me, I said quietly, “I, umm, hooked up with one of the guys. One of the MMA guys.”
Ren nodded as if she suddenly understood everything. “And… you’re engaged now? You went to the Chapel of Love and got married on a whim? Did you know you can actually get a drive-thru wedding?”
“What? Eww, no!” Now that she put it in those terms, the night could have gone much worse.
We were walking past a playground where a couple children stood in the shadow of a jungle gym fighting over a toy gun. I waited until we had passed before telling her what had happened that night: how I had met Braxton in the bar; how he had talked me into going and sitting out by the swimming pool, where we talked for an hour; how I had knocked on his door and attacked him with kisse
s, and how he had undressed me and made love to me and everything that happened after…if you could call that making love.
“Yikes,” said Ren, when I had finished. “Not exactly the behavior of a gentleman.”
“No, and I feel like it was stupid of me to expect anything different. Boys, in general, aren’t known for their selflessness and generosity, and MMA boys are the worst of the lot. I have no one to blame but myself.”
But if I had expected Ren to commiserate, I was disappointed. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think Braxton was entirely in the wrong here.”
I was so taken aback that I paused for a moment mid-stride. “Why not?”
“He could have treated you better, for sure. But he wasn’t being malicious: just thoughtless.”
“I can’t believe you’re defending him.” I could feel a vein pulsing on the side of my neck, and for a moment the ground swayed alarmingly.
Ren raised her hands in surrender. “If you want to know what I really think, I’ll tell you. I don’t think you’re upset, or not primarily upset, over the way Braxton used you. For as long as we’ve been friends you’ve told me you thought sex was crude and gross, and I think you’re embarrassed because you allowed yourself to participate in things that you consider nasty.”
There was undoubtedly some truth to this, though I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it. “It was just so gross, though. I guess I should give him some credit for asking permission before he made out with me, and I do remember suggesting that it would be fine if we went all the way. But when it started to happen, I realized I didn’t want it as much as I thought. It would’ve been fine if we had stopped at just making out. But when it comes to doing actual sexual things with our body parts, just—eww! Eww! Eww! I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
“See,” said Ren, “and I think that’s what’s upsetting you, more than anything else.”
“You really think so?”
She nodded. “I do. I think you’ve always seen yourself as sort of being above the rest of us mortals with our sexual urges, and now you’ve fallen to earth with the rest of us. You can’t go on any longer pretending you’re different from us.” She couldn’t entirely conceal the triumphant note in her voice.
“I guess not.” I had always been so proud of myself for resisting temptation. I had only ever slept with one boy, and he had been my soulmate. He had loved me with a love that was purer than all other loves, or so I had thought at the time.
By now, we had come to the edge of the park. Turning back onto the sidewalk, we began descending a hill with a perfect view of a shopping center beneath us. In the distance, I could see a terracotta outlet mall and a row of shining silver warehouses. Daniel and I used to walk this neighborhood sometimes at twilight, hand in hand, charmed by the low hum of crickets and the pale glow of the street lamps.
“Listen,” I said to Ren. “The summer before my sophomore year of high school, my parents shipped me off to church camp. It was one of those camps with a row of cedar cabins in the woods and a broad pavilion where a praise band would play at dusk.”
“Yeah, I remember those,” said Ren.
“I didn’t mind going so much because Daniel was going to be there. We had met my freshman year, and by now we were pretty hopelessly in love. I think the camp counselors knew there was something going on between us, but they didn’t make any effort to separate us. One morning, I skipped out on Bible study by telling our pastor I was having woman troubles. He told me I could take the rest of the day off. When I thought it was safe to come out, I crept out into the woods and met up with Daniel.”
“I hear that’s pretty common at summer camps.”
“As far as I know, we were the only ones who got away with it. We walked around holding hands for a while, and then we kissed, and then he felt up under my shirt. I was fourteen, and he was fifteen, and we didn’t really know what we were doing, but it was goofy and weird and kind of sweet. I loved him.
“Anyway, on the very last night of the trip, Pastor Mike got up and talked about going back home and being lights at our school and in our family. And then he talked about virginity and saving yourself, and—I’ll never forget this—he had one of the ushers give a rose petal to someone in the audience. And that person handed it down to the next person until the rose had been handled by everyone there.
“When we had all touched it, Pastor Mike took it and held it up. It had been completely destroyed just by being passed around. And he looked down at us with his big solemn eyes and said, ‘That’s what happens when you give yourself away over and over and over. You get handled by too many people, and you become soiled. Ruined.’ That was the word he used.”
“Oh, Jaimie…” said Ren.
“And I just—we hadn’t even done anything together, really. I was still a virgin. But when he said that, I thought about what we had done in the woods the day before, and I was so crushed because I had allowed him to use my body. I was pretending to be this holy person when we both knew I was soiled and filthy.
“And of course when the sermon ended, he had an altar call inviting us to come forward if we wanted to rededicate our lives. My friends were all up there crying, their hands raised in the air, begging forgiveness. And I took Daniel aside and told him we couldn’t go out anymore. We would have to break up because our relationship was impure. That was what I said, but I think what I meant was that I was impure. He deserved someone better than me, someone who wasn’t damaged.”
“But it wasn’t just you,” Ren pointed out. “It wasn’t like you seduced him. You were both willing participants.”
“I know. It’s hard to explain, but it didn’t feel like that at the time. I think Daniel felt, and I felt, that I had led him astray by inviting him to meet me in the woods and allowing him to see me with my shirt off.” I paused outside a golf course enclosed with a wrought-iron fence, feeling weak and out of breath. “Somehow I don’t think Daniel suffered any guilt over what we did. But I made the mistake of telling a school counselor, who made the decision to tell my parents because she thought we posed a danger to each other. After that, we were forbidden from seeing each other.”
“See, if they had betrayed my trust like that, I don’t think I would ever have spoken to them again. I don’t care how old I was; I would’ve moved out.”
“I know, but I was fourteen. I didn’t know that adults were just ordinary people who could be petty and stupid and foolish. If they did something, there was probably a good reason for doing it. And my parents and everyone else had hammered into me that I couldn’t trust my own judgment because it was corrupt and deceitful. There was no way I could ever be right and they wrong about something.”
“Your school sounds a lot like the fine arts academy I attended between the ages of fourteen and seventeen,” said Ren. “Everyone was encouraged to tattle on everyone else, and I eventually realized I couldn’t trust anyone.”
“Is that why you’ve never slept with anyone?”
Ren shook her head. “That may be part of it, but I had reasons of my own. In school, everyone I knew was involved in a sexual relationship of one kind or another, and they all seemed desperately unhappy. And my parents were unhappy, and I knew the only reason they hadn’t divorced was because they were waiting for us to grow up and move out of the house. I didn’t want that. I wanted to spend my life writing, and if that meant I had to be poor and single for the rest of my life, then at least I would be free.”
By now we had reached the shopping center and were slowly making our way across the crowded parking lot to the mall. I stepped over discarded water bottles and piles of wet paper, occasionally having to pause so that a car could pull out.
“Anyway,” said Ren, “if I’d gone through half the things you’ve been through, I wouldn’t want to hook up with a boy ever again. I’d probably sell all my worldly goods and become a nun.”
“It’s tempting sometimes, I’ll admit. Especially after what happened in Vegas.”
“You ha
d a fling, and it didn’t go well. It makes sense that you would feel ashamed and embarrassed. But you should know that just about everyone has a story like that, a night they regret, a moment they would do anything to take back. It’s the reason we wear masks and keep secrets and build walls to shut out the world.”
“You don’t have any secrets, though,” I pointed out. “You’re perfect.”
“If only that were true,” said Ren with a slow shake of her head.
But by now we had reached the doors of the mall. She held open the door and followed me inside, where all hope of conversation was lost amid the noise of the crowd.
Chapter Nineteen
Braxton
It had happened again.
I had been in the octagon with Nick practicing for my upcoming fight. He was almost my equal as a boxer and had stung me twice already with a couple of quick jabs to the eye. That was annoying, but not nearly as annoying as the volley of trash talk that spewed from his mouth.
“Those are some of the slowest reflexes I’ve ever seen. Did you forget to drink your coffee this morning? Hey, brainless, pay attention! We’re having a fight here, or did you forget?”
“Shut the hell up, Nick,” I muttered, feeling increasingly irritated.
But Nick’s confidence was beyond all reproach. “No lie, I once fought a dead man who was faster than you. Handsomer, too. Did you ever watch that show The B---- in Apartment 23? It’s sweet that they made a show about your mom…”
I don’t think I saw it coming any more than he did. One second, we were on opposite ends of the octagon coldly glaring at each other; the next, I was raining down on him like fury in a shower of kicks and blows, beating every square inch of him I could get my hands on.
“Don’t you EVER say a word about my mom!” I yelled, grabbing him by the hair and speaking directly into his ear.
Bruce, who had been refereeing, came running up sweating in cold terror. “Hey, hey!” He blew his whistle repeatedly, struggling to pull me away. “Braxton, what the hell is wrong with you?”