The Goode Fight

by Seth King

  Kane was right. This is exactly the situation I am trying to avoid. I need to leave Taylor alone. I am bad and she is good and I am fucked up and she is normal and I am complicated and she is simple, and so I leave the locker room alone and clatter down the empty hallway accompanied by nothing but the ruinous knowledge that I am a monster from Alfred Hitchcock’s blackest nightmares and Taylor is softer than a July afternoon.

  †

  On the way home I hear my phone ring. Shit, I think as I retrieve it from my center console and see the name of the caller. This can’t be good.

  “Hi, Mom,” I answer. “It’s been awhile.”

  “Has it really?” Mary Ellen Goode asks vacantly. I look at the date on my watch.

  “Mom, the last time you called me was Valentine’s Day. It’s the end of September.”

  “Oh, well, things have just been so busy with my interior designing, you know,” she says without a hint of guilt. “I did get Rachel to send you a happy Easter message, though, don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, Mom, I got the e-card that you asked your personal assistant to email me. Thanks.”

  “Of course,” she says breezily. “How was your summer, darling?”

  I pause. Sometimes I wonder how we even got to this place, where my own mother has to call me and ask about my summer months after it ended.

  “It was good,” I say as I pull into traffic. “I volunteered as a counselor at that camp in Asheville for-”

  “For retarded children, yes I remember.”

  “Mom, they’re not ‘retarded,’” I correct her. “They’re mentally and physically challenged.”

  “Whatever, Son. I don’t know why you’re still doing all these good deeds to make up for a crime you didn’t even commit in the first place. Your father was so disappointed when you decided not to join us in Sea Island for the summer and do the camp thing instead, but oh well, what can you do. How is Durham?”

  “It’s cool, I guess. I just got asked to join the newspaper staff and-”

  “That’s great, honey,” she breaks in. I’d sort of been hoping to tell her about my offer to write for the Duke paper, and I was even wishing she’d be a little proud of me, but no such luck. “I’ve been busy, too, helping to prepare for the party and everything. That’s why I called, actually.”

  “Mom, you know I’m not coming. I don’t like coming home.”

  “I know you don’t,” she tells me. “That’s why I’m trying to fix things.”

  I sit up straighter. “Go on.”

  She takes a brief pause. “What if I told you I’ve worked out a compromise with Joseph about this financial mess?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “You’ve gotten Dad to rethink cutting me off?”

  “Well, not exactly. We all know the problems he has with your…new life. He doesn’t think it’s normal for a strapping young man like you to be so…inactive socially and romantically.”

  “You can say it, Mom,” I respond. “He thinks I’m messed up in the head because I don’t date, and he’s punishing me by taking away all my money and leaving me with nothing.”

  “Look at it from your father’s perspective, Son,” she counters. “At your age he was raising hell at Vanderbilt and had been for years, out with a different girl every night, and he doesn’t understand why you’re not doing the same. But…I may have gotten him to make a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  She takes a deep breath. “Okay. If you show up with a girlfriend to your father’s company’s anniversary festivities this weekend, he will reconsider his position about cutting off access to your trust fund.”

  What? Is she serious?

  “So…all I have to do to keep my money is get a girlfriend?” I ask after a moment.

  “That’s it. Hopefully. If it works out.”

  I stare down at my dashboard, my spirits falling. “Mom, you don’t get it. It’s not that easy. I still don’t trust myself. I’m worried that…history would repeat itself.”

  “Oh, I knew you would say this,” she snaps. “Stop being ridiculous, Son. You have got to move on, and stop blaming yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault, and it could’ve happened to anyone.”

  “I can’t, Mom. It’s not that easy.”

  “Okay, well answer me this: did you get convicted of a crime?”

  “No, but-”

  “No buts,” she says. “The case fell apart, and rightfully so. You did nothing wrong, and the justice system proved that. It’s time to find someone new and forget about her. It’s done, and the past can’t be reclaimed. I wish it could, so I could get back the six figures your father paid in legal bills taking care of that disaster. I could’ve bought a Mercedes S Class with all that money.”

  “You already have an S Class, Mom.”

  “Well that’s not the point. I could have two. Bottom line: it’s time to find a girl. And you were wrong, it would be easy. I know you are unaware of this for some strange reason, but any girl in the world would want to be with you. In fact, several of my friends’ daughters…”

  Suddenly I see a flashback of Taylor’s brown eyes staring at me in the mirror in her kitchen and get the craziest idea I have ever had in my life.

  “Mom, I already have someone,” I suddenly interrupt, making her practically gasp.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, I do. And I’ll bring her this weekend.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so happy!” she cries. “I can’t wait to meet her. I’m so excited!”

  “Me too, Mom. But I have a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s in this for you?”

  She pauses again. “I want to see you end up with someone, too, you know,” she says finally. “I get worried knowing that you’re alone all the time.”

  I don’t believe her, and I suspect that her motives have more to do with protecting her reputation and quieting whatever her country club friends have been whispering about me, but I keep quiet.

  “Oh, and Son?” she asks.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you met someone, but if you show up with a girl I disapprove of, I will make sure she has an absolutely miserable weekend. You know my standards, and I don’t want some harlot flouncing around my home. Don’t disappoint me, or you will both regret it.”

  “Okay, I won’t. Love you, Mom.”

  She hesitates into the receiver for a second before sighing, repeating the words “Don’t disappoint me,” and hanging up.

  Once I get home I toss my gym bag on the counter and call for Marisa.

  “Marisa, I’m home. Ven acá.”

  Silence. She’s probably out grocery shopping or something, I think as I grab a Gatorade from the fridge and head into my living room to turn on ESPN. When I find it’s just playing some repeat of an old hockey game, I reach for my iPad and go to Taylor’s Facebook for the billionth time. I smile and bring up that picture again, the one I love. She’s standing with a group of people on the shores of a lake somewhere in a black bikini, a shy grin on her tanned face and her eyes hidden behind big Ray-Bans. Everyone else in the photo is holding up beers in a bragging sort of way, but her hands are deliberately kept out of the shot, which tells me she’s smarter than the average college kid. And she hadn’t thrown that intelligence in my face, either, which was cool. She’s so damn sexy, with the gentle curve of her waist and her long, athletic legs that speak of either a tennis or a cross-country habit, I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Even her hair is sexy, all thick and wavy and shiny, chocolate-brown with golden highlights from the sun. My eyes travel down her flat stomach to her crotch and I get rock-hard as I imagine what it looks like under that fabric…

  I exhale and then put down the iPad before my fantasies get out of control again.

  Bringing Taylor as my date to my father’s business party this weekend…it’s appealing, I have to admit. Wildly dangerous, but appealing nonetheless. I had already given up on convincing my dad to change his mind abou
t cutting me off, but this could actually work. My mother is throwing me a last-second pass, and the ball’s in my court now. Taylor’s certainly classy enough to bring around my parents’ snobby Nashville friends; she’d fit into their world perfectly. I hope. I’d be killing two birds with one stone: I’d be fixing my situation with my dad, and getting a plausible excuse to hangout with Taylor for a few days. But am I really up for making Taylor deal with the nightmarish force of nature that is Mary Ellen Goode? My mother alone could make Taylor run for the nearest bus station as fast as she could. And could I control myself from wanting more of Taylor? Would I be content with her just being my date for the weekend, or would I fall in love and end up wanting her forever? It would be so easy.

  And most importantly: could I trust myself enough to even be around her?

  I could take all the precautions not to get intimate with her. I’ll exhaust myself so much, I won’t even have the energy to fuck her. I’ll do some kickboxing and then go running and then masturbate in the shower a thousand times if need be. As long as she doesn’t do the things that have triggered me in the past- like licking her lips, for example, that makes me lose my mind every time- I should be able to control the cravings. But one tongue flicked across her lips, one naughty word leaving her mouth could potentially make me snap in an instant. I’ll have to exercise self-control like never before.

  Would she even want to come, though? Is she even into me? Aside from her occasional blushes, she was impossible to read, with her bottomless brown eyes and blank-slate face. I probably scared her off with my intensity. I know I like her more than she could ever like me, and that sucks ass. Isn’t it strange that we can find cures for diseases and have verbal conversations with the computers inside our cell phones and put rovers on Mars, but we are still no closer to figuring out what goes on in the minds of the opposite sex?

  Fuck it, I tell myself as I sit up straighter. Whether she likes me or not, I’m still going to attempt it. Staying away from her would be best, but I am a selfish person above all, and I want her more than anything. I’m doing it. It’s worth a try.

  I toss all caution to the winds and reach for my phone. I’ll just have to trust that history won’t repeat itself, and that I can control myself now. I’m going to have to. Because at this point I am sure of only two things in this world. The first is that I am falling for Taylor Haney. That is undeniable now. She has hijacked my thoughts and taken over my fantasies. And the second is that there is a part me – and I don’t know how much longer I will be able to fight this part – that makes me afraid I might kill her.

  7

  Taylor Haney

  To my dismay, the next few days pass completely uneventfully. And by uneventfully, I mean Stellan-less. During my last class before fall break, my mom calls and leaves a rambling voicemail about the party she’s throwing the following weekend, her celebration of being three years sober and also her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with my dad, but I forget to call her back like the terrible daughter I am. Cara also texts me asking for updates on Stellan and wondering if I want to go out for dinner and a horror movie at the weekend, but I don’t bother responding to that¸ either. Because waiting for Stellan to contact me again is enough of a horror on its own.

  On Thursday night I dreamt about him for the first time. I was walking along a tropical beach, thirsty out of my mind, but every time I reached for one of the many bottles of water lying in the sand, they disappeared. Then I’d walk to the next one only to see it disappear, too. Finally I collapsed, ready to give into my thirst and die, but suddenly I saw a hazy image of Stellan holding a water bottle in front of me. Even in my dream, his face gave me that fluttery feeling deep in my stomach, and I felt my whole body come alive as I reached up to take the water. But just before I touched the bottle, a high, cruel laughter pierced the air, he snatched his hand away, and I jolted awake in a pool of sweat.

  I’d never felt like this before. I was nervous, twitchy, and even more absentminded than usual. Every time my phone vibrated I whipped it out, wide-eyed, expecting to see his number looking up at me. What was be doing? Was he thinking about me? I hoped so. Wouldn’t it be nice for a creep like me if there was some app that notified you whenever you came into someone else’s mind? Like a Facebook feature that tells you who looks at your profile, but in real life?

  When Saturday comes and I still haven’t heard anything, I steel myself and just accept the fact that he’s not going to text me. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to figure out something else. To get my mind off everything I decide to fold my laundry, which is now hopelessly wrinkled from being left in the basket for so long. I set my iPad to the Summer Hits of the ‘90s Pandora station and get to work, humming along as I fold my clothes on the dining room table. Once I finish I decide to check my phone one last time for shits and giggles- and I am shocked when I see that it is displaying a new text.

  I look away before I can see the name, my heart pounding. I take a second to calm myself before I take a breath, squint my eyes, and turn back to the phone…

  And see that it’s from Cara.

  Ugh. Go Figure. I push down my disappointment and unlock my screen, but when I open my message folder I see another text that I didn’t notice because it arrived just before Cara’s.

  It was from him.

  Hi. It’s Stellan. I’d like to meet up.

  I sink down on the couch as my pulse races and my stomach twists and then drops. I see a mental image of his eyes in the mirror, his hands settling over mine, leading me to do things I never imagined…

  So my fantasy isn’t over yet. He wants to meet; he’s interested in me. I actually do have a chance to get into his pants after all. How did he even get my number? I guess he had to seek it out from someone, which makes my face feel all hot and bothered for some reason. I know I should demand an apology for the way he stormed out the other night, or at least just acknowledge it in some way, but I can’t. I’m too excited about the prospect of seeing him again. What took him so long, though? Is he just being a standard guy, or is something more going on? I wait a minute or two so my response won’t come too quickly, and then tap out a message:

  Hey. Sounds good. What did you have in mind?

  He takes two or three minutes to write back, and the whole time I am literally sitting on the edge of my couch.

  Meet me at that little restaurant on university at seven. The Italian one, near the movie theater.

  Well this is a welcome change, I think after I read the text. When it comes to dating, most guys ask me where I want to eat, and then I pretend I don’t care even when I really do, and then we go back and forth for ten minutes before settling on some random place neither of us like because we were both too afraid to speak up. Actually, come to think of it, off the top of my head I can’t even remember Stellan asking me one question during the entire night we spent together- he just spoke in concrete statements, as if he was constantly stating absolute fact. Here’s the deal, and nothing else is a possibility.

  Sure, I type. Make it seven thirty and I’m there.

  I feel like a diva pushing the time back, but I know I’m going to need as much time as possible to transform myself from the sloppy mess I currently resemble to someone who could confidently sit with Stellan Goode in public and not feel embarrassed by the extreme gap between our hotness levels.

  Okay, great, he writes. See you then.

  I toss my phone onto the couch and just barely overcome the urge to jump for joy in the middle of my living room. So I’m seeing him tonight. It’s happening. As butterflies flutter into my stomach and stay there, I immediately forget about all of my responsibilities and set about the vitally important business of resuming my quest to get into Stellan’s pants. So the gist of the issue here is that Stellan won’t have sex with me, but I want him to have sex with me, as slutty as that sounds, so all I have to do is make him want to have sex with me. But how?

  I think of the response in the article the other day: “Al
l men are sexual and can be seduced.” For some reason this makes me picture Cara, with all her easy confidence and the way she throws her head back and laughs without abandon. Guys love it, and they flock to her like a seedy sports bar during a big football game. If I’m going to convince someone to change their entire belief system, I’ll have to become more like her.

  I’m just going to have to turn myself into a skank.

  I grab my keys and head out the door as my plan takes shape in my head. I stop by the gym first, where I do the Stairmaster just long enough to realize that I am officially way too out of shape to do the Stairmaster. All I do these days is jog, and this is definitely harder than jogging. I sigh and lift five-pound weights the rest of my “workout” while daydreaming of lasagna, and by the time I leave, I’ve barely broken a sweat. But I’m over it anyway- I’ve got some shopping to do. I usually avoid Victoria’s Secret like most people avoid social interaction before their morning coffee, but I have no other choices, and so I slip into the bright, loud store and head for the section with the least garishly-colored items I can find. I settle on a black lacy thong-type thing and matching bra, and I’m in and out within five minutes. Next I hit Target and get a dark blue dress with silver beading around the bust. The fit is a little tight and awkward, and the fabric feels sort of cheap, but I guess that’s the price you pay for not paying much of a price. Next I hit the sale rack and grab a few more pieces that are racier than I usually wear, figuring I’ll work into them my normal wardrobe as the days go on. If he doesn’t check me out in this stuff, I think as I wait in the checkout line, he’s definitely planning on staying celibate. When I return home I skip through the house leaving little surprises, and after I set the booby traps I start on my hair and makeup, hoping I will end up at least a little sexier than before.