by Leah Raeder
I knew which one I was.
The fearless one.
I squeezed his hand.
The silence between us rang. It made everything so clear. I saw my thoughts reflected in his face, the trepidation fighting with a very simple, very biological need. He looked at all of me, my fresh teenage skin, my adult certainty, my old soul. No one had ever looked at me so completely. No one had ever seen me as such a whole, rounded person.
Yes, I thought. This is the road I want.
He squeezed my hand back, then took the wheel.
#
It’s amazing how much you can communicate without words.
We drove onto the highway, through neat green rows of soybeans raking to the blue horizon. My window was down, hair lashing my face. The air smelled chemical with a tang of sickly-sweet fermentation. A blade of sunlight lay across my legs, making my skin glow.
I glanced at Mr. Wilke. His look made something deep in me ache. I held on to the feeling, letting it open inside of me, blossoming, filling me from toes to fingertips with a tension somewhere between hunger and pain. By habit I put my thumbnail between my front teeth. I hadn’t meant it seductively, but Mr. Wilke stared, a smile flitting around the edges of his mouth.
Great job, Lolita. Now you just need some heart-shaped sunglasses.
I felt his eyes on me, hot as the sunlight. I knew he was watching every move. I tilted my head back, eyes half-closing, the wind playing over my face. My heart beat a slow, bluesy rhythm. It felt like acting, like being on stage, every camera on me, bewitched.
The car slowed.
We both looked at the motel sign, then each other.
He turned.
Crunching gravel. Parking space. Engine off, ticking. Heat swarmed into the silence, becoming almost a sound, a high locust whine buzzing against my skin.
I heard him breathing. He wasn’t quite looking at me, his gaze landing somewhere on the dashboard.
We knew what we were doing, Your Honor.
He put his sunglasses back on and popped the glovebox, handing me a second pair. I laughed softly. Like this would hide anything.
Maybe it wasn’t for other people. Maybe it was for us.
It was a lot easier to face him without seeing his eyes. My reflection in his lenses: a girl without fear, her lips slightly upturned, knowing.
He got out and headed for the registration office.
Panic attack.
I flipped down the sun visor, clawed at my hopeless hair. What had I eaten since I brushed my teeth that morning? What planet had I been on? No memory of anything between waking and the moment I got into his car. I couldn’t sit comfortably in my own skin. Every tendon was a violin string stretched taut, dying to sing out at the faintest touch. What if it was different? What if I’d ruined it by lying, leaving? God, what the hell could he possibly see in a screwed-up eighteen-year-old? How screwed-up must he be to get tangled in my life?
Footsteps on gravel.
I slapped the visor up.
No more thinking.
I opened my door, slammed it shut loudly, defiantly. My senses focused on small things: the pumice scrape of his shoes, a splash of sun on a steel bumper. He opened 112 and went in first. I followed, closing the door behind me.
Dim inside, afternoon light straining through muslin curtains. There were heavy drapes to either side of the window that we didn’t touch. I had impressions of square silhouettes in the murk but all I really saw was him. Taking his sunglasses off, setting them on the bureau. Moving toward me. Taking my glasses off, too. I blinked at the dust suspended in a cloud of sunlight.
I didn’t realize I wasn’t going to step further into the room for a while.
Mr. Wilke put his hand under my jaw, raising my face. My body pressed against the cool metal of the door. I ached like I’d been asleep, or watching a long movie, and needed to be pulled, stretched, used. It made my face sullen, made his eyes narrow. We looked at each other with that resentment you feel when you want something so much it’s causing you pain, so much you start to hate it a little. There was a whiff of gasoline and the city on him and that smokiness I’d become addicted to. I put my hand on the knot of his tie. His mouth opened, as if I’d touched some live part of him.
Our lips met.
What happened felt more like chemistry than a kiss. Pure liquid heat on my lips, dissolving into me, trailing a hot line down my chest and pooling in my stomach. My heels rose off the floor. All of me rose, unanchored, held down only by his weight pressing me to the chilly slab of the door. We kissed as we could not have done until now—like lovers. He tilted my head, slid his tongue into my mouth, not urgent or hurried but in a way that made me feel the inevitability of this. The hand on my jaw moved over my chest, my belly, to the button of my shorts.
I’d had some practice unknotting ties.
When I tugged it free he pulled back, those full red lips slanting in a half-smile. This made it easier to unbutton his shirt. He watched me, letting me have my way with him. Raised his arms obediently when I rolled up his undershirt. I wanted to press it to my face, smother myself with it like ether. But he took my wrists and pinned them above my head and something trembled in me, somewhere between blood cells and neurons, a liminal space where I wasn’t quite mind or body. God, he was going to fuck me right here, against the door.
His hands let go and mine stayed raised, obedient. He unbuttoned my shorts, knelt to take them off. Warm breath sighed between my thighs, making me feel my own wetness. Large, careful fingers slid beneath my underwear, pulling, fingertips running down my legs. I bit my lip so hard I tasted sweet copper. He kissed my hip, moving along the soft crease of my thigh, moving lower as his hands spread my legs open. I couldn’t. I couldn’t anymore. I thrust my fingers into his hair and pulled his head back, making him look up at me. My face said it all.
He stood, unzipping himself, taking the condom from his back pocket as I pulled him out of his jeans. His dick felt huge and burning hot in my hand. I slid my palm around the base and he froze, the muscles of his chest chiseled against his skin, unmoving. My fingers stroked the fine silk over that hardness, pumping slightly in my hand. Just touching it made me curl up, everything in me going super tight. He put the condom on himself. Lifted me suddenly under the knees, making me grab him for balance. Then it was only my spine against the door and his dick thrusting inside of me, and I lost all breath, all function, all everything. For an endless moment all I felt was penetration. Slow and hard. Slow and deep. He made sure I felt every single thrust. I was hard inside, too, my body coiled and tense, and the first few moments were so poignant it was almost painful. Then the rhythm took over, and the world began to fade back in. My bare thighs rubbing against his jeans. The way his abs flexed, the muscle rolling, the little trail of bronze hair he pressed against my navel. The viperous motion of his body as he fucked me. He held me a few inches above him and raised his face, watching mine without kissing me. The way we looked at each other was more intimate than a kiss could have been. I saw his pupils dilating like a pulsing black heart. I saw every tremor of strain and pleasure that went through him. I watched what I did to him, how vulnerable he became as he gave himself to me, fucking me but also being fucked himself, that slightly lost, boyish look coming into his face as he got closer and closer. A fire built in me, leaping from cell to cell, setting my body slowly alight, but I made myself keep my eyes open and watch him. His eyes closed, his eyebrows rising helplessly. His fingers dug into the backs of my legs. His dick was so hard and thick inside me that all I felt was a sweet fullness in my core. Every time he sank in completely and compressed my clit, a bolt of pure electricity shot up through my belly. My eyes were open wide when the tension in me changed from resistance to surrender, and I started to gasp uncontrollably, and didn’t tell him I was coming, but he knew. The fingers clenching my legs tightened like claws. I came so fast and hard it was like a flash of sheet lightning, a blinding white bliss, there one second and gone the next, and I g
aped at the shadowy room, dazed. He kept going for a few more seconds, groaning, thrusting hard one last time and then rocking through the aftershock, settling against me, our weight easing limply against the door.
His head rested in the crook of my shoulder. I ran a hand over his back, light, unsure of myself yet, of this closeness. It was like an awful pounding clock had finally stopped ticking. The silence in the room was peaceful, melancholy. I breathed in the smell of him. Of us. My sweat on his body, my wetness on his jeans. I wanted to pause this moment and linger in it, looking around, memorizing.
He pulled out gingerly, but didn’t let me down. His arms tightened. He carried me to the bed.
My breath fluttered in my lungs.
He laid me down and lowered himself beside me, looking up at the ceiling. We reached for each other at the same moment, our hands linking in the small gulf between us.
Oh my god, I thought. Just that. A pleasant daze. My body was full of sunlight. No blood, just liquid blue sky.
I didn’t know how much time had passed when his head turned to me. I looked over, feeling lazily magnanimous. Everything was golden and graceful.
I’d thought his eyes were blue, but in the September light they had a silvery, metallic look, like brushed aluminum.
“Hi,” he said, soft and low.
Something lit up in me like a candle. I propped myself on an elbow, swung my leg across him, and crouched over his body. “Hi,” I said.
It was the first time we’d spoken since Friday.
#
For a long time he held me atop him, looking at me. I kissed him but he broke it after a second. When I tried to get up, he pulled me back.
“Let me look at you,” he said. “Before your guard comes up.”
So I let him look. At first I was nervous, my eyes flickering away, suddenly aware that I wore nothing below the waist. I tucked my hair behind my ear and it immediately tumbled back into my face.
Then I eyed him askance. There was nothing in his expression but curiosity, so innocent it seemed almost childish. My anxiety melted. A slow, small smile took over me. Cocky, not shy. The way I’d smiled at the carnival. I owned every part of me, the nudity, the just-had-sex hair, every mistake I’d ever made, and wrapped myself in it.
Evan touched my cheek and pulled me closer against him. My hair fell around us, enclosing us in a dark veil. I ran my palm over his chest, the smooth-carved muscle, the patch of coarse gold hair across his pecs, the dense, solid bones. Let my hand move lower to the silky down on his belly. God, I thought. You are such a fucking man. His hands moved over me, outlining the slimness of my arms, my hips, stopping on my bare ass, his fingernails pressing into my skin. The innocent look was gone.
“Did you see her?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“The real me.”
“She’s right here,” he said, and kissed me.
The afternoon became a blur of this: of kissing him, and being held, and not leaving that bed. He stepped into the bathroom to clean himself up and brought me my underwear. I put it on but took my shirt off, and we spooned, his hands all over me. We talked as much as we kissed.
“Tell me everything about you,” he said. “What’s your favorite movie?”
“Oh my god. You can not ask me that.”
“Why?”
I sat up, giving him a horrified look. “First of all, because I want to impress you. Second, because it changes on a daily basis.”
“You have one, you just don’t want to tell me. I’ll tell you mine.”
My lip curled with hostility.
He laughed. “Say it together, on three. Ready?”
“No,” I shrieked.
“One. Two. Three. Casablanca.”
“Jurassic Park.”
He broke into a huge grin.
I flopped face-first onto the bed. “I’m going to die.”
“A modern classic,” he said, tickling my heel. “I remember seeing it in the theater and thinking, ‘Someday CG will be as real as real life.’ My favorite scene was when the girl—”
“If you start quoting,” I said into the mattress, “I will actually kill myself.”
He laughed again. His laugh was nice. Not mocking like Wesley’s, but giddy, conspiratorial. I glanced at him over my shoulder.
“Tell me everything about you.”
His laughter faded, but the smile stayed. He lay beside me, his fingertips tracing the curves of my back. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
So I wasn’t far off. He was fourteen when I was born. Maybe Wesley wasn’t far off with his theory, either. And so what? I’d fucked guys older than thirty-two.
“Where did you go to college?”
“Northwestern.”
I peered over my shoulder again. “You from upstate?”
“Just outside Chicago.”
“Snob. Everyone says they’re from ‘just outside Chicago,’ like towns don’t have names up there.”
“It’s true. They don’t. Very confusing for mail carriers.”
He slid a finger under my bra strap and followed it up over my wing bone, cresting my shoulder.
“Why—” I started.
“My turn.” His finger moved slowly toward my breast. “Why did you talk your way into my class?”
Fate, I wanted to say. Kismet. It was in the script.
“I reserved it last year, actually. They messed up the registration.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going to film school.”
His hand stopped. He sat up a little. “Really? Where?”
“I don’t know yet. I mean, I have my top choices, obviously, but I’m trying to be realistic. Hopefully somewhere like USC, or UCLA. I’m kind of torn whether to focus on indie or commercial film. Commercial is safer, I think, because I’ll get a broad view of how the whole process works. But focusing on commercial shit can turn you into a philistine who just churns out garbage, so maybe I should focus on indie stuff. On storytelling, and art. But then maybe I’ll be really naive when it comes to actually doing the work. I don’t know.”
I was rambling. I glanced back at him. He had a slightly dazed look on his face.
“You’re serious about this,” he said.
I gave a half-shrug. “Well, yeah.”
“What do you want to do? Job-wise.”
“I’ll take what I can get. I’d love to be a PA, get a general sense of how it all fits together. Because someday, I’m going to direct.”
It was as if I’d said something enchanting, romantic. His eyes sparkled. “You’re a creator.”
I thought about that. It seemed too lofty for me. All I did was watch a lot of movies and daydream. But he’d given me an opportunity, one I hadn’t even really acknowledged because I’d been so obsessed with him: our semester project. I could actually make something. If it turned out halfway decent, maybe I could include it on my college app.
“I don’t know what I am yet,” I said.
An electric moment between us, balanced between honesty and fear. Because I was young. Maybe I had more drive than most kids my age, but I was still a “kid my age.” And you know that, Mr. Wilke, I thought. That’s part of what this is between us—the thrill of the taboo. Teacher and student.
“If you’re going to film school,” he said, “there’s something I need to give you.”
My heart skipped. “What?”
“An education.”
#
The first thing he taught me was how to make love.
Before you laugh, know that I’d always hated that phrase. It sounded so corny, so old. Hippies made love. People my mom’s age, though I preferred to believe I was an immaculate conception.
People my age hooked up, fucked, had sex. We didn’t attach frilly ideas of oneness and eternity to a basic biological act. Most of us were from single-parent homes. Those who weren’t wished they were when their parents screamed and beat the
shit out of each other. We grew up sexualized, from toddler beauty pageants to the constant reminder that adults were waiting to lure us into vans with candy. The invention of MMS gave us a platform for the distribution of amateur porn.
That’s a lot of conditioning to break through.
#
The afternoon light got that long slant to it, slowly folding into dusk. Half a day had passed since I’d eaten and I barely felt hungry. I didn’t want to stop this thing, lying on a motel bed with this beautiful man, our hot skin always in contact, never breaking apart. He sat up and I sat in his lap, facing him, my legs wrapped around the long lean muscle of his back. I rubbed my palm against the bristle on his cheek. He wore a sleepy, smoldering look, his lower lip jutting out, and it completely worked on me. If he’d asked me to do anything right then, I would have. I kissed that sulky lip. I couldn’t tell the taste of his mouth from mine anymore. Only warmth, softness, pressure.
“I want to see you,” he said quietly. “All of you.”
I breathed quicker. Disentangled myself from him, my eyes locked on his, and stood. I felt like I was in a trance. I’d undressed for other men, and I wasn’t wearing much right now to begin with, but this felt different. He wasn’t just going to see my body. He was going to see me. In the way I undressed, the way I stood there under his gaze, the way I wore my skin.
He moved to the edge of the bed.
I unhooked my bra, slipped it off one shoulder. Let it fall to the floor with cool disregard.
That was the easy part.
I was breathing hard now.
His eyes moved over me, but hovered mostly on my face. That was almost worse. Who am I without this? I thought. Without the seduction I wear like armor, without my bravado and cocksure confidence? Am I really just a little girl under it all?
I tucked my thumbs into my underwear.
And I thought of myself getting into the front of that deathtrap rollercoaster all alone. Of swinging out from the water tower. Of getting into my teacher’s car.