“Oh, that would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it?” she spat. “So you can keep screwing that little whore for another month. I know she’s from Long Island, right near you. I know these things, Stephen. I’m not an idiot.”
“Jesus Christ, Di. I’m not even going to be home for break. I have to go to fucking Florida with my family to see my grandfather.”
Diana crossed her arms, still frowning. “Why? Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine.”
“How’s your dad?”
“Depressed.”
“And your mom?”
“I haven’t talked to her in a while. Stop grilling me.” I took a long sip of beer.
Diana finally sat down on the couch. “Your room is disgusting.” She picked up a stale, half-eaten slice of pizza from the coffee table and tossed it into the overflowing trash bin.
I looked into her clear brown eyes. “You’re not my girlfriend anymore. You don’t have the right to lecture me about the messiness of my room.”
Diana sighed. She was cracking her knuckles, the way she did when she was stressed.
“I want to be with you,” she said finally. “Thinking about you and that girl is making me sick.”
“So you want to be with me just so I’ll stop fooling around with Lucy? That’s mature.”
“Don’t say her name to me, Stephen. I’ll barf on this table.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Diana. Do you want a drink?”
Diana buried her head between her knees, ignoring my question. “You know I want to be with you,” she mumbled. “But I’m terrified.”
“I wouldn’t cheat on you, again, Di. Never ever ever.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because I swear. Isn’t it clear how much I love you? I send you flowers and cards and nothing is good enough for you.”
“Flowers and cards do not make up for the fact that you slept with someone else. You slept with Nicole right under my nose. I can’t even think about it, it makes me so sick.”
“What happened last spring was the biggest mistake of my life. It put everything in perspective. You are the one I love, Diana. I love you. You.” Ah, the power of the l-word.
Diana finally picked her head up and looked at me. Teardrops clung to the bottom rims of her eyes. “I love you, too,” she said. “But I’m not ready to get back together. I—I need more time.”
“Time.”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Take more fucking time.”
“Just stop hooking up with her, okay? For my own peace of mind. And Jesus Christ, would you stop fucking Nicole Hart, too? God, I feel bad for that poor freshman. She probably thinks you actually like her.”
“Diana—”
“Don’t even try to tell me you’re not sleeping with Nicole.”
“I am not sleeping with Nicole. Jesus Christ, Diana.”
“Fine, but you’ve slept with her this year.”
“I’m sick of fighting with you. This is going in circles. We’re not together. I’m allowed to hook up with other people.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.
“I want you to stop. If I have any hope of trusting you again, I need to know that you’ll stop.”
“You’re being ridiculous. You can’t fucking have it both ways.”
“Say you’ll think about it.”
“Fine. I will.” I tossed my hands up in surrender.
She lingered in the doorway, her hand trembling on the knob for a moment before she turned back around and kissed me hard, panicked. I could feel her indecision as we fucked on the bed, and I knew she was pissed at herself when it was over.
“This isn’t happening again,” she said, grabbing her clothes from the floor and pulling them on in a frenzy. “I swear to God it’s not.”
“You’re the one calling all the shots here, Diana. You want to fuck, we fuck. You want to date, we date.”
“You’re sleeping with other people. I’m not going to date someone who SLEEPS WITH OTHER PEOPLE.” She was really screaming now.
“Can you keep your voice down, please? The walls in Copeland are not thick. And I will not sleep with other people if you commit to this,” I hissed.
“How do I know you will actually commit to this? How do I know that? After what happened, I don’t.” The tears were running down her face again. I felt a massive headache coming on.
“I’m not having this conversation again. You either trust me or you don’t, but I’m begging you to try. Please. Please, Diana.” I knelt on the ground in front of her and wrapped my arms around her little legs, pressed my face into her leggings.
“I hate you for doing this to us.” She pulled away. She grabbed her jacket, and I noticed that her shirt was inside out as she slammed the door, Evan’s over-the-door coat hanger rattling in her wake.
My temples pounded. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered to try to make it work with Diana. Perhaps the damage had been done. But the thought of losing her didn’t sit well; the notion of getting through the rest of Baird without Diana, knowing she’d won, made my blood boil.
Lucy knocked on my door around ten. We already had plans to watch a movie, and despite my impending headache, it would’ve been rude to cancel. Lucy looked great in a fitted white sweater, her long chestnut hair all shiny and good-smelling.
I was tired from my evening with Diana, but Lucy plunked down onto my lap and I felt myself grow hard against her, the pain in my head dulling. I fidgeted with the button on her jeans.
“Let’s watch the movie first,” she whispered, but my hand was already down her pants, and I watched her neck fall back as it slid deeper.
“Hmm . . . if you want to watch the movie, then why are you so wet?” I pushed her down on the couch and pulled her pants all the way off. I pressed my mouth against the thin fabric of her tiny black thong, and that was the end of that conversation.
I watched Lucy come, closing her eyes and opening her mouth, digging her fingers into my back. As we lay there after, panting, I traced my fingers over her smooth, warm back and stared at her perfect ass.
“I could stare at you naked forever,” I said.
“You know,” she said, propping up on one elbow. “You’re the first guy I’ve ever . . . come with . . . during sex.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, though I wasn’t surprised. Most guys don’t know what the hell they’re doing.
“Yes.” She rested her head back down on my chest.
“Well, I’m honored, Luce. And for the record, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever had the pleasure of luring into my bed.”
“You’re so sweet,” she said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to give you a real chance.”
“It’s no big deal. You’re a freshman. I understand what it’s like to want to play the field.”
“No, Stephen. It’s not like that.”
I knew it wasn’t like that for her. Girls like Lucy can probably count the number of sexual partners they’ve had on one hand. This was the only negative consequence of sex with Lucy—now that we were sleeping together and especially now that I was giving her all these eye-opening orgasms, she would expect me to be her boyfriend. This was impossible, of course, because it would require total severance from Diana.
At one point I did adore Diana, but the adoration stage never lasts long. What I’ve come to learn and what most people fail to understand is that love is a choice. If you assess the worth of your relationship solely in terms of your feelings it is likely to fail, or at least be extremely short-term. You cannot go on having these “feelings” for someone forever. With girls, the exciting part is winning their affection. That’s the fun. Then you have to choose who you’re going to love, backed by the reasons why. This may sound a bit calculated, but in all honesty I can’t stand being single. I’ve always found life to run much more efficiently with a girlfriend.
It’s been this way since my first relationship, my high school girlfriend, Jenna Landry. Jenna w
as the daughter of one of the chemistry teachers. She had thick hair like a horse’s tail and a natural athleticism that propelled her onto the varsity track and volleyball teams. When I met Jenna, I’d had just enough practice with girls to know that if I played my cards right, I could make her mine. I’ve never been the guy girls drool over at first sight—I have my green eyes and a thick head of hair that grows too quickly, but amid the rest of the average Joe package those features are unexceptional, often lost.
But charm, that was something I could cultivate. It came naturally to me to flirt with the right amount of confidence, to know what others wanted to hear and express it with perceived candor. I was good at being charming, and it felt a hell of a lot more valid than being nice to look at. With limited trial and error, charm quickly became the quality I could rely on to get me into a girl’s pants, to get me laid at summer camp by age fourteen, and then to get me Jenna.
Sexually Jenna was open and explorative; she let me take her virginity freshman spring, the night I told her I loved her on the couch in her basement. At first I spent time with Jenna just to avoid being at home with my depressed father, but then I learned the satisfaction that came with having a girlfriend—someone who was there for you, someone who was obligated to support you and provide consistent affection, someone to introduce to your family so they would think you were normal, like you were loved. Jenna and I broke up several times over the course of high school after various fights and squabbles, most of which she unreasonably deemed my fault. We broke up for good a week before we left for separate colleges, three weeks after the accident, two weeks before I met Diana Bunn.
The accident. I can’t think about Jenna without thinking about the accident the fateful night of August 16, 2008, and it gets under my skin, badly, every time. I close my eyes and I still see the long, twisted piece of red hair, shiny, almost perfectly matching the color of the blood. The overpowering smell of Bubblicious bubble gum.
Too many people dwell on the past; it’s better to pay attention to what’s in front of you. In my bed in my dorm room, Lucy ran her hands through the hairs on my chest. I kissed her temple, proud of myself for successfully enticing a girl of her caliber. Wrigley didn’t think I could do it, but he forgot just how good I am at this game.
There’s something about Lucy. I’m going to keep fucking her for as long as possible. Which, with the correct approach, could be a very long time.
13
LUCY
DECEMBER 2010
This time it was Bree who shook the white powder out onto the mirror, which lay flat on Wrigley’s kitchen table. Bree took out her credit card and buried it in the mound, attempting to sort the coke into neat, even lines, the way Pippa did. But Bree was a novice and so Pippa took over, but not in an authoritative way. That was what I liked about Pippa—she was bold but never commanding. She was just Pippa.
Bree and I had decided to try coke, not due to peer pressure, we promised each other, but out of curiosity. College was about experimenting—CJ had said so herself. I’d watched Pippa blow lines numerous times; Jackie, too; even Stephen now that we were spending more and more time together. They’d all pop up from inhaling their line with the same delighted, eager expression. Pippa said it wasn’t anything like pot—a drug I’d never liked because it made me feel paranoid, stuck inside myself. Pippa said coke was just like drinking a lot of coffee. Plus, according to Pippa, it suppressed your appetite.
It was the night of the Wild West party, and we were pregaming at Wrigley’s. I sat on Stephen’s lap, his hands resting on my stomach, underneath my shirt. Pippa and Wrig were there, Bree, Jackie, and a few of Wrigley and Stephen’s friends. Jackie always invited Stuart to come along when we went to Wrigley’s pregames, but he never did. Stuart wasn’t into drugs, and sometimes I didn’t blame him for not wanting to be around Jackie when she was on them.
When it was my turn, Jackie slid the mirror in front of me.
“You don’t have to, you know,” Stephen whispered in my ear.
“I want to. Really, I want to try it.”
Jackie handed me the tightly rolled twenty-dollar bill. I pinched it in my fingers. I wished everyone wasn’t watching me. I held the bill in front of my right nostril, plugging my other nostril with my left forefinger. Then I inhaled sharply, the way Jackie had instructed. I didn’t get the whole line, but I got most of it. Stephen licked his finger and swiped up the remaining powder.
“Show me your gums,” he said, then wiped the extra coke all over them. “Yee-haw, cowgirl.”
My mouth went numb in a surprisingly pleasant way. My brain felt light but sharp. I knew I’d be up all night.
“What d’you think of the coke?” he asked me later, when we were leaving Wrigley’s to go to the Wild West party.
“It’s fun.” I nodded, unable to control the size of my smile.
“You’re the cutest cowgirl in the history of cowgirls.” He leaned down and kissed me, tipping my Western-style hat back. He tugged lightly at the braids on either side of my head, then ran his hands over the back of my jeans and pulled me close to him. “You’re so tiny. You have the sexiest body.”
Tiny—I cherished the word. The inside of my chest felt warm with praise. I’d lost twelve pounds since the beginning of the semester. I hadn’t meant to initially—I’d just been trying to avoid the freshman fifteen—but once the weight started falling off, I couldn’t stop. I wanted a gap in my thighs, the kind Bree had. Losing weight wasn’t that hard. Four-mile run in the morning, hot vinyasa at YogaLab in the afternoon. I skipped breakfast and ate from the salad bar at the other two meals—lettuce and chickpeas with nonfat dressing, apples for snacks. I learned to appreciate the gnawing in my gut when I fell asleep at night. Food isn’t actually that important, if you think about it. Physically, the human body can go weeks without it. Gandhi survived twenty-one days of complete starvation, and he’s legendary.
14
STEPHEN
JANUARY 2011
Manipulation is not a bad word. It’s not a cynical mind-set. It’s a proactive approach to exploiting opportunities. This was something I’d been thinking about ever since Wrigley’s stupid little girlfriend, Pippa, cornered me in the library and told me that I was “manipulating Lucy” and warned me in a girlish whine to stay away from her. Good God. Freshman girls are so tightly wound up with hormones, you can’t take them seriously. They genuinely believe that everything they say matters phenomenally. It’s truly absurd. Girls in general are psychotic.
Pippa scrunched up her nose. “She knows that you slept with Nicole Hart on Sunday, right after she left your room. Do you realize how disgusting that is? You must have so many STDs.”
“Whoa. Take it easy, Pippa.” Pippa. What kind of a bullshit name is Pippa?
“I will not take it easy. Lucy is my best friend. And I know it’s true. Don’t even try to deny it.”
Pippa stormed off before I could say another word. Good Lord. I come to the library for some peace and quiet so I can attempt to tackle my international-policy paper outline, and I’m harassed by hormonal freshman girls. The library used to be my safe haven.
I ducked into a desk behind the last row of shelves on the third floor to avoid further confrontation.
Well, Lucy knew. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Lucy’s faultless image of me went to shit. In any case, I did need to stop fucking Nicole Hart. The consequences of that had proven more trouble than it’s worth—Nicole’s not even attractive. It’s just the rush I’m addicted to. The sneaking around. The getting away with it. The getting away with not getting away with it. There’s something else about cheating, too—it stabilizes me, evens me out. Monogamy isn’t natural.
I wasn’t even planning on seeing Nicole, to be honest. It was last Sunday; Lucy and I woke up, made coffee, watched the first half of the Giants game, and had sex. She always liked to have sex in the morning, which was absolutely fine by me. Sex with Lucy was the best part of Lucy.
After
Lucy left, Nicole called to ask if she could swing by and pick up the blow she’d left in my room on Friday. She walked in ten minutes later. Nicole and I did not hook up regularly—we mainly just did drugs together—but she had a thing for me and was always down, even though she was sort of in Diana’s circle and knew I would never actually date her. Nicole could be annoying and kind of just lurked around, but what did it matter? Sex was sex. We did a couple of lines and banged at the end of the bed, same place we did it on Friday afternoon. Luckily, Lucy found out only about the time in the morning. Luckily, Diana found out about zero times, even though screwing Nicole was well within my rights when it came to Diana and our nonexistent relationship.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m your average scumbag. It is not like that. I understand that by “moral” standards I am fucking up. It’s not that I’m heartless; I just know this type of situation is fixable. People always say that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, but you can. I know what girls in Lucy’s position want to hear, and I can provide that. More flattery doesn’t make the girl feel better, just addicted, and then you’ve hooked her because she continues to be hungry for that certain category of feedback.
When I was eight, my brother, Luke, and I were playing basketball in my aunt and uncle’s driveway, and I accidentally stepped on my cousin Christina’s turtle and killed it. Its shell and guts were all crushed into the pavement. Christina was six and she cried for weeks—she loved that stupid turtle. She’d named it Marvin and put up such a fuss that her first-grade teacher had let her bring him into school every day. He’d sat in the corner in his crate while Christina drew with crayons or whatever the hell you do in first grade.
I remember my father sitting me down the day I killed Marvin and explaining that I needed to apologize even though it was an accident. He said he knew how bad I felt but that accidents happened and that I would feel better with time. I didn’t understand what my father meant because I didn’t feel bad about the situation at all. The only thing that bothered me was the prospect of Christina hating me, so I was very nice and apologetic to her in order to prevent that. I knew she was devastated, and I knew that Marvin was a smashed lump of turtle slime, but that didn’t make me feel bad. It didn’t make me feel anything.
Tell Me Lies Page 10