He brings me to orgasm and then he sits up. “Okay, we’re good,” he says, and he smiles. “Oh, hell, I need another shower.”
He leaves and I hear the water start. I’m dying from need, from wanting him inside of me, from understanding how beautiful passion is when it’s linked to love. I want to stand up, to join him, but my legs are still shaking. I finally manage to get off the bed, although I hear the water turn off as I do. I drag myself along the wall, my legs still weak, and I enter the bathroom. Dave is standing naked in the shower, which is now off, and he’s leaning his head against the wall; his palms are pressed hard against the tiles. He doesn’t look up until I clear my throat. I can’t stand so I have to use the sink to hold myself up.
“Why’d you leave?” I ask as he turns around.
“I’m so weak when it comes to you,” he says, his eyes scanning my body.
“Yeah? I’m the one who can’t stand up,” I tease.
“Oh, God, Alana. I want you so badly.”
“I know. The thing is, I want you, too. I mean, I really, really do. Not in the way that it was before. I told you. I’m here. And I want you. This girl, standing in front of you? She’s here with you. She’s not thinking about anything but you.”
He steps out of the shower, although I would be happy to go for it right here, and he says nothing before he picks me up and brings me back to bed. He lays me down and then, he’s on me. His hands, and his mouth, and his cock. All I know is his body. He’s pressing down on me, although I’m still waiting to be full of him. I bite down on his lower lip as he kisses me and he makes a soft noise against my mouth. I don’t know how to even differentiate all the things that are happening; I just feel everything. He holds himself up, so as not to put too much weight on me, and then, almost as if our bodies are not even ours to dictate when it happens, he enters me. I’m wet and open and he slides in easily. I feel myself move up to meet him and then he’s in and out, thrusting and holding my hands as he does. His eyes are locked on mine and he’s just saying my name and telling me I’m beautiful, but it’s senseless. The world is swimming and, at the same time, it’s on fire, and I feel him pushing deeper and deeper into my pussy.
“Oh my God,” I moan, because I have never experienced this. I have never been so willing to give to someone. Maybe when I was younger, but I’m not young and naïve anymore. Dave is my future and it’s so clear as he smiles while I try to catch my breath. Holy hell, he is incredible. His body, his hands, the way he moves, they’re all just an orchestra of sensual perfection. When I come, there are tears, because it’s so staggering. All the stress and worry and anxiety – they’re gone. He rolls over and he helps me position myself so that I can sit on top of him and keep going. He cups my tits in his hands and I ride him, his cock reaching all the way into me, and I push my thighs against his. It could be hours or minutes or days or forever, but I don’t know and I don’t care. I just want this, want him, want to feel this good about something.
“I love you so much. You are so beautiful,” he repeats.
“I love you, too,” I groan and I fall against his chest, running my fingers over his shaved head and clutching him tight inside of me as I feel wave after wave of orgasm shoot through my toes and all the way up my body. Dave hangs on to me as my body shakes and then he flips me over one more time. I can’t be on top anymore because I have no control over myself and I just let myself sink into the bed, my body meeting his thrusts, and I close my eyes. It’s beautifully perfect; his lips brush my neck and I feel him starting to come, but first, my body demands another orgasm of my own.
I wrap my legs around him and beg for more, needing that last crash, and as it comes, I yell his name probably way too loud for a hotel. He doesn’t stop, pushing harder and harder, and then my body is nothing but water below him and he feels me let go because he leans down and whispers, “You’re even more beautiful when you come.”
I don’t know what’s happening but he thrusts one last time and then he’s gone and it’s over and I can feel him come along my stomach. He hurries to clean up and then he takes me in his arms, wrapping me up completely inside of his embrace. He says nothing, but I don’t need him to say anything. I fall asleep, my body still feeling the tremors from his body against mine and inside of me.
38
I don’t have happy memories. I think that’s pretty much the norm for the people in my life, but I do have one memory. One happy day in a collection of a lot of black days.
I was ten. My grandparents were still alive and my grandmother wanted me to come over to visit them. There were a lot of times that my mother was busy and my father didn’t seem to want me around, so it was always strange going to see my grandparents. It was weird to feel like I was wanted.
That weekend, my grandmother took me to the mall. She told me that she wanted to buy me something special and she asked what I liked most in the world. I was still young, but I had recently begun to draw and I loved art. I was learning all about artists, things most ten-year-olds had no interest in, and I brought her to the poster store and asked for a poster of Starry Night.
“I want to do that,” I told her. “I want to make things beautiful like that.”
She looked at the poster and nodded. It was just a poster, but it was the act of her buying it for me, and it was the idea that it was something worth having. She had them wrap it up for me and then she took me to the food court for McDonald’s.
“Someday you will,” my grandmother said, as if the conversation hadn’t ended. “Someday you will be as famous as that Vincent van Gogh and you’ll make us all proud. Someday you will leave your mark on the world, Alana.”
I remembered those words for most of my life. When my grandmother died less than a year later, and my grandfather within the month of her out of loneliness, I was devastated. But then my mom gave me a photo album my grandmother had made for me. However, instead of pictures, there were drawings. Drawings that she had done. She left a note on the inside.
“Alana,
I used to love to draw as well. I used to love a lot of things, but life isn’t always kind to the things we love. I got married and I had a child and those became the things I loved.
Never have I regretted meeting your grandfather and falling in love. Never have I doubted that being a mother was the greatest accomplishment of my life. However, I couldn’t get rid of these. I always thought that maybe someday they would be useful to someone else. Maybe a reminder of how beauty exists even in the hidden places, and that sometimes, changing our path is still okay as well.
You have a real talent, and I hope that you follow your dreams. But someday, if your dreams change, never let go of what you used to dream. Find a way to make your new dreams and your old dreams share the space in your heart. That’s how you will be happy.
Love,
Grandma.”
I had just turned eleven and her message didn’t resonate much with me at that age, but I put the album under my bed and it never moved from its secret spot. Later that year, things changed for me, and as I got older and as my world lost its beauty, I slipped my own drawings between the pages of the album, but never again did I look at it. I didn’t want to look at it now and see something else. I didn’t want it to somehow stop being beautiful.
39
After New York, Dave and I continue to spend all of our time together, but we’re not intimate again. He’s leaving in two days, and I don’t know how to reconcile that, but I’m just trying to enjoy what time we do have. Today, we’re going on a double date with Jack and Lily. I’ve told Dave all about Lily, including my own experience with her. I know that he’s still jealous of Jack, and I’ve tried to tell him that it’s already becoming harder to remember how I used to feel, but then again, I haven’t seen Jack in a while, either. Not since before Christmas.
Jack suggests a pool hall. It’s not a bar, just a local pool hall, and it’s probably a good spot for us. Casual enough to feel comfortable, but formal enough to feel like it’s impo
rtant somehow. I see Lily first when we walk in. Jack’s at the bar and Lily’s sitting at a table in the corner. Her hair is up and she looks incredible. As we get closer, I notice that she has a small tattoo of a blooming rose on her shoulder; her shirt is draped off to the side and it’s a new tattoo. Like maybe even today new.
“You got a tattoo?” I ask her. It comes out sounding a little judgmental, and I try to pull it back. I just didn’t picture her getting a tattoo. Jack, Dave, and I all have them, but Lily? She’s just so… pure. You slept with her, a voice reminds me, but still. I thought she was innocent. Jack calls her a princess and I kind of thought that she was one. But then again, I know more than anyone how little of what people think is actually true of a person.
Lily smiles. “It’s for Jack. For us. It’s about opening up. He’s helping me,” she says.
I don’t know what she needs help from, but I see in her again how right she is for him. They complement one another in a way that’s rare, and definitely worth holding onto.
I introduce her to Dave and Jack comes back with beers for everyone. Dave puts his aside. “Hey, Lily,” he says, “wanna play a game with me?” I know that he’s trying to give me time to talk to Jack, to deal with some of the residue that needs to be addressed for both of us if we’re going to each move forward with these new relationships. It amazes me that he knows to do it without asking and I smile at them as they head to the pool table.
I slide in across from Jack. “Happy New Year,” I tell him.
He smiles. “Fucking weird, huh? New Year and we’re both here, sober, and maybe even a little happy.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. That word is a poison.”
Jack nods. “Yeah. So… you’re that thing, though?”
“I am.” I smile. “I’m ready, you know? I’m ready to let it go.”
“Me, too. I don’t think it’s going to go away. I’m not a moron. But I want to try. I’m tired of hanging on to other people’s shit.”
“I know. But, um, there are some things… several things, really, that I need to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“Well,” I start and then I reach for the beer. Jack pulls it back, though.
“No. Tell me sober. Try it.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I told you. I’m trying,” he argues.
“Fine. Well, for starters… I haven’t been in school in almost a year.”
“What? Why?”
I shake my head. “It’s stupid. There was a guy. From high school. And well… I just couldn’t get away from that part of me.”
“Which guy?” he asks.
“Forget it.”
“Just tell me.”
“Fine,” I concede. “Topher.”
He doesn’t say anything, just nods, but his knuckles turn white around his beer bottle. “Okay.”
“It’s not okay. You’re pissed.”
“Yeah, I am pissed. Why, Alana? He fucking used you.”
I shrug. “I just… I wasn’t sure how to be anything else. I’ve never known how to be anything else.”
“I tried to help. I wanted you to be something else with me.”
I reach over and cover his hand. “And I was. But you couldn’t let go, either. We’re not good together. You told me that.”
He nods. “Okay, so no school. Work?”
I shake my head. “The anxiety started getting really bad. I would only leave to see you, or to go to the bar and hook up with someone. Oh, and to go to therapy.”
“You go to therapy?” he asks, surprised.
“I told you there were a lot of things.”
“Yeah. Okay. So, no school, no work, casual sex-”
“You knew about the casual sex,” I remind him. “You were part of the casual sex.”
“Fine. No school, no work, and therapy.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up. But I’ve been seeing a new therapist and she… well, she’s helped me. She’s the one who said that I needed to reach out to Dave.”
Jack looks over to Dave and Lily. Dave’s teaching her how to play and they’re both smiling. They’re both so happy, so nice, so…
“They’re both so good, aren’t they?” I ask Jack.
He nods. “Fucking unreal, huh?”
“Yeah. I just… I have no idea how to be around that kind of goodness.”
Jack shrugs. “Hell, neither do I. But I want to, you know? I want to know what it feels like to see the world like that. I want to know what it’s like to be loved that way. To be loved like I love her.”
It’s a comment that would have hurt a lot a few months ago, but now, the sting is bearable. I still love him. I will always love Jack, but as he wraps his fingers through mine, I know that he’s no longer a lead in my story. And I’m not in his. Our stories will be inextricably linked for the rest of time. Jack – the boy who looked at me in math class and didn’t care that everyone said I was a whore. Jack – the first person who touched me and made me feel like it was normal to want to be touched. Jack – the boy who loved me but wasn’t strong enough to stay alive for me.
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, probably realizing how much that comment could have hurt.
“I know. But you’re right. She’s good, like I said, but you’re good, too. And you’re good with her.”
“Do you know that Dave used to write poems about you?” he asks.
I laugh. “What?”
“Yeah, like fucking notebooks of poems. I found them once when you and I were still together and I flipped out on him. He told me that he would never interfere, and he never did. I pushed you away, but he waited. He always waited. I’m glad it was worth it. I’m glad he won in the end.”
I look at Dave, who catches me looking, and he smiles. My story isn’t the easiest story, and it’s no fairy tale. But when he smiles at me, I’m kind of glad that it’s mine.
40
I didn’t want to go to Prom in the first place, even before Jack made it out to be the worst thing I could ever do. But I also didn’t know how to let down Dave. And he was my boyfriend, after all. Sure, I wasn’t in love with him, but he was my boyfriend and it mattered to him. I suppose it made sense; he was a nice person. He never understood hate and he couldn’t imagine that there wasn’t an explanation for why people hated us. He didn’t agree with how they treated us, and he disliked them all, but I still think that there was some part of him that thought that he could change their minds.
In addition to not wanting to go, I also couldn’t afford it. I knew that everyone would judge my dress, even if I had money that I could dig up to buy something nice. But I didn’t, which made it worse.
“I can’t afford a dress,” I said one afternoon, even though we’d already bought the tickets and we were going. Prom was only a month away and, while a month is plenty of time in normal life, in Prom life, it’s like a second. Every girl had had her dress since January, even before she had a date. In high school, there is this stupid cult of Prom, as if there aren’t a million bigger things in the world. However, I guess there really aren’t; it’s amazing how much one stupid dance defines four years of a person’s life.
Dave and I were doing homework at his house. Jack wasn’t talking to us officially, now that we were going to Prom for sure. He put down his pencil and closed his book. “Come on,” he said.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To get you a dress.”
I shook my head. “I just told you; I’m broke.”
“Yeah, well, me, too, but we’ll find something.”
He brought me to the Salvation Army in town. I was humiliated, because I didn’t want anyone to see me there. I didn’t want them to know that I was poor, but all of that changed when Dave brought me to the back, where they had a collection of dresses.
The stupid thing about Prom gowns is that they cost a fortune, and you only end up wearing them once. Of course, the benefit is to people like me, because the Salvation Army had
racks of dresses that had clearly been worn only one time. I tried on a few different dresses, but then, after I returned them all to the rack, disappointed, I saw it.
It wasn’t anything that would change anyone’s life. It was just a pretty, strapless blue dress with black ribbons along the chest, but it was beautiful to me. It looked elegant and rich and like something that the future cheerleader I used to imagine I’d be would wear. And it fit perfectly, as if it was waiting for me. It needed no alterations and, between my pale skin, dark hair, and the blue dress, I looked pretty. The right kind of pretty – the kind that didn’t lead men to use a girl, but to protect her, to look out for her because she was something worth saving. It was the kind of pretty that Jack made me feel without dresses or words or effort.
“You look… nice,” Dave said, awkwardly. It had only been a month and we were still uncomfortable in the relationship. Friends made sense. Homework buddies made sense. But this didn’t. And there was always that gap between us, the gap that Jack left and that I felt in my new dress, wishing he was here instead to see me.
“Thanks.”
The dress cost $12, which Dave paid, and I was going to Prom. We didn’t talk about it again until Prom night, when he showed up with my corsage. I had forgotten to get him a boutonniere, and I only remembered once we made it to the hotel and I saw all of the other guys wearing them. But my corsage was perfect. It went on my wrist and it was a collection of roses, all dyed various shades of blue, perfectly complementing the dress. The flowers were surrounded in a bunch of black lace and silk that looked like it was the same as the ribbons on my dress. I was shocked that Dave, a guy, remembered that much detail about my stupid Prom dress, but that was the kind of guy he was.
And that night, the flowers on the corsage were trampled in the upstairs bedroom of a guy who didn’t care about my ribbons or really anything else. While the one guy who did sat downstairs and waited for me, eventually giving up and going home, because everyone told him that I would rather be with anyone but him.
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