The Girl He Used to Know

by Tracey Garvis Graves

“But you told Eric you were.”

  Jonathan opened the door and then locked it behind us and slid the chain into place. He responded to my statement with a long, deep kiss that sort of caught me off guard. “I didn’t want to announce to everyone that I wanted to be alone with you. It’s been almost four weeks. I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?”

  “Oh,” I said, finally realizing where he was going with this. “Yes!” There had been so many nights I’d lain in bed thinking about how much I missed being kissed and touched by him. I threw myself into his arms, which made him laugh. He lifted me and I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him as he walked toward the bed. We fell onto it, and I didn’t mind that he landed on me because the mattress absorbed some of his weight and kept him from crushing me. We kissed for a few minutes and then he took off my clothes.

  Jonathan knew exactly how to touch me. He ran the palms of his hands over my skin with a firm touch, because anything lighter tickled me, which was a sensation I couldn’t handle. His fingers were bold, searching out my innermost spots. Jonathan always made me come with his fingers, then he entered me and he came, then we cuddled. So it alarmed and confused me when he pulled his hand away, took off all his clothes but his underwear, and said, “Touch me, Annika.”

  “I don’t know how.” I’d come to rely on the exact, predictable pattern we had always followed, and I did not want or need variety.

  “I’ll teach you.” He reached for my hand and placed it between his legs, and I could feel how hard he was already. He swallowed. “Please.”

  It’s not like I wasn’t used to Jonathan’s penis by then. He was every bit as comfortable with nudity as I was, and I knew the size and shape of it well enough to draw it if I’d wanted to. It had been inside of me plenty of times. I’d watched him roll on condoms and I’d watched him dispose of them. He seemed to be always, effortlessly hard and since I never had to touch him to get him that way, it had never occurred to me that he’d want me to. “What do I do now?”

  “Rub up and down with the palm of your hand.”

  I rubbed him gently, the fabric providing a thin barrier to my touch that helped ease my progress on this next step. “Like this?”

  “A little bit harder.” When I complied he said, “Yeah. Just like that.”

  “What should I do next?”

  “Take off my underwear.”

  I should have known that, because Jonathan was always taking off mine. I pulled down his black boxer briefs, and as soon as they’d cleared his hips Jonathan reached for my hand and wrapped my fingers around the base of his penis. He put his hand over mine and showed me what to do. Though his penis was rock-hard, the skin covering it felt soft and much silkier than any other part of his body that I’d touched.

  He put his hand between my legs again and it felt so good that I stopped touching him, not because I didn’t want him to feel good, too, but because it was too much like trying to pat my head while rubbing circles on my belly: I could really only do one of those things at a time. He pressed my hand down on him again and I resumed stroking him, trying as hard as I could to please him and enjoy the way he was trying to please me.

  But then he stopped touching me when I was very close. “What’s happening?” I said, opening my eyes and looking around to see what had made him stop.

  Jonathan was on his knees, rolling on a condom. “Spread your legs.”

  I did and he entered me. It was better because I only had to concentrate on one thing, but I couldn’t get the rising sensations back. Jonathan groaned, so it must have felt good to him, but I didn’t know how to find my rhythm again, and everything felt a bit off. I felt like I needed to start again from the beginning, but Jonathan seemed closer to the end.

  “I can’t hold off much longer,” he gasped.

  I didn’t know what to do. It still felt good with him inside me, but there was no way I was going to have an orgasm.

  “Annika, really. I can’t.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, and I’d barely gotten the words out when he groaned and shook in a way he never had before. He was out of breath and panting into my neck and squeezing me tight, and I could feel him throbbing inside of me.

  “Oh my God,” he said, and the last word came out soft, like a whisper. It seemed like it felt extra good for him and I was glad about that because I worried I’d messed it up somehow. He kissed my forehead, my cheek, my mouth. “Didn’t it feel good to you?”

  “It did,” I said.

  “You didn’t come. Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “I can touch you again. I can start over and make you feel good.”

  “That’s okay.”

  He was silent then. “Oh.”

  He got up and went to the bathroom. When he came back, he slid under the covers and put his arms loosely around me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too,” I said. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d done wrong, but I knew I’d done something.

  “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. It was my fault.”

  I had no idea how I was supposed to respond to that, so rather than risk saying the wrong thing, I didn’t say anything at all. Jonathan rolled onto his back. Eventually we fell asleep, although it seemed like it took us both an extra long time.

  * * *

  I woke up a few hours later, and I couldn’t get back to sleep because I worried that whatever had happened earlier would finally convince Jonathan there was something wrong with me and that I was the worst girlfriend in the world. I replayed what had happened over and over in my mind, right up until the point he’d deviated from our usual routine. A funny thing happened then. The desire I hadn’t been able to hold on to earlier suddenly came roaring back. I didn’t have enough experience to know that it worked like that sometimes—that it could be unpredictably elusive, and return when you least expected it.

  Neither one of us was wearing any clothes. Jonathan was lying on his side—not quite spooning me, because although I’d grown to love cuddling after sex, I’d finally admitted it was difficult for me to fall asleep with his arms around me, but close enough that I could feel the presence of another person when I moved. I turned so that I was facing him and pressed my body against his. There was something thrilling about the feel of his nakedness, the warmth of his skin, and the fact that he was unaware of what I was doing. I pressed against him a little harder, and he stirred but still didn’t wake up. I felt him grow hard against me, which I found baffling.

  How does that work? What will happen if I touch him?

  I fluttered kisses down his neck and, growing bolder, I reached between his legs and wrapped my hand around him, remembering what he’d taught me. He woke up with a groan so loud it startled me.

  “Is it okay that I did that?” I yanked my hand away in case the answer was no. He grabbed for it, put it back.

  “Yeah, it’s more than okay. It’s great. It just caught me by surprise.” His words came out in fits and starts, as if he were having trouble regulating his breathing. He kissed me, roughly, and I kissed him back with every bit as much force.

  Jonathan always wanted the lights on when we had sex. Janice said that was because men were more visual than women. I never minded, but I did struggle with the face-to-face aspect of being intimate with someone. When Jonathan touched me, he often looked deep into my eyes, but I’d have to squeeze mine shut in order to concentrate. The pitch-black darkness of the hotel room did not allow for eye contact, and it unleashed something in me I’d never experienced before. I felt confident, uninhibited, in control. We were a blur of hands and mouths, each of us trying to give more than we took. He kissed his way down my body and when he put his face between my legs, I didn’t stop him, because I wanted him to do it. It was intense but it wasn’t too much for me after all. As the incredible sensations coursed through me I twisted my fingers in his hair and made so much noise I hoped I never ran into the people in
the room next to us.

  Jonathan reached for a condom on the nightstand and put it on. “Holy shit, what is happening,” he said when I climbed on top of him. He started laughing, and so did I because, for once, I got it. I understood that I was doing exactly what he’d hoped for earlier. Not necessarily the sex, although that was happening, too, but my willingness to break free from familiar patterns and try something different.

  It felt so good that I never wanted it to end. I didn’t think it was possible to feel closer to Jonathan than I already did, but that night in our hotel room, I learned that the closeness of two people had no limits.

  Out of all the firsts I experienced with Jonathan, that was the one I treasured the most.

  24

  Annika

  THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

  AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

  1991

  When we walked into the ballroom, my palms grew damp. The thrum of the players’ conversations filled the area, and my pulse quickened. We were one of the only collegiate teams that was student led and didn’t have a coach, so we were on our own and would have to rely on one another for guidance and support. If one of our team members were suddenly unable to compete and I had to step up, I wasn’t sure I would be able to.

  “Are you nervous?” I asked Jonathan. “I’m very nervous.”

  He smiled and grabbed my hand, swinging it as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I’m not nervous. I’m ready. We’ve got an excellent team. I have a good feeling about the tournament.” In addition to Eric and Jonathan, a graduate student in physics named Vivek Rao and a phenomenally talented junior from Wisconsin named Casey Baumgartner would round out the team.

  I watched Jonathan play that day, in awe of his talent and so proud that this smart and kind guy belonged to me. It was clear from the start that Illinois was a serious contender to go all the way, and as each day of the competition blurred into the next, they kept winning.

  I took care of Jonathan the way he often took care of me. I made sure to have something for him to eat or drink between his matches. I kept track of who he would be playing, and when and where. I helped him unwind and it did feel a little like Jonathan and I were playing house when we returned to our hotel room at the end of the day. Though I wasn’t the kind of person who imagined things like marriage proposals and what kind of house we would buy, I loved the way it felt to share a living space with Jonathan, even temporarily.

  It made me feel secure and happy and calm.

  * * *

  On the last day of the tournament, Vivek Rao defeated Gata Kamsky in seventy-three moves in the fourth-round game, clinching the championship for Illinois. What surprised me the most as we gathered, shouting and cheering, around Vivek was the slight regret I felt at not being called into play after all.

  * * *

  We stormed into the bar afterward, high on our victory, surrounded by a crush of competitors. Jonathan walked in front of me, paving the way with his body, holding tightly to my hand as he pulled me through the crowd to a small table in the back. Once we claimed it, he settled me on a stool that backed to the wall. “Is this okay?” he asked. It was loud and he had to yell a little, but to my surprise, it was okay. Because of the way he positioned me, I could see everything that was going on without worrying about someone jostling me or invading my space. I had a wall to my left and Jonathan stood next to the table on my right, making me feel like I was in my own little protected corner. He ordered himself a beer and asked me what I wanted.

  “Do they have wine coolers?” I asked.

  “I’m sure they do. What flavor?”

  “Cherry.” Those were the kind Janice always brought home from the store.

  It was nice sitting there eating nachos and drinking my wine cooler, but a short while later the band that had been setting up in the corner started playing. The whine of the guitar and the crash of the drums felt like knives slicing into my eardrums. I put my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will away the awful sounds.

  Jonathan pulled my hands from my ears, shouting, “Annika, what’s wrong?”

  “Too loud.” I put my hands back, because it felt like my brain might explode and leak out my ears. Jonathan put his arm around me and led me from the bar. In the lobby, he set me down on a bench and crouched in front of me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “It was just so loud!”

  “Yes, it was loud.” He grabbed my hands and held them. “Do you want to go back to our room?”

  “Can we?”

  “Of course. Stay here. I’m going to pay our share of the bill and then I’ll come right back.”

  When we reached the blissful quiet of our room, the stillness soothed me and eased the ringing in my ears. Jonathan put his arms around me. “Better?”

  I didn’t answer his question. Instead I whispered, “I love you, Jonathan.”

  “I love you, too. I’ve been thinking about how I was going to tell you.”

  “If you’ve been thinking about it, why didn’t you just say it?”

  “Because the first time you say it to someone, you hope they’ll say it back. And if you’re not sure they will…”

  “Why wouldn’t I say it back? I did say it. Just now.” I thought I was the one confused by relationships and everything that went along with them.

  “Maybe there was a small part of me that worried you wouldn’t. I don’t always know what’s going on up there,” he said, tapping my temple gently.

  “I never know what people are thinking. It’s like visiting a country where you don’t speak the language and you’re trying so hard to understand but no matter how many times you ask for juice, they keep bringing you milk. And I hate it.”

  He smiled. “I love you, Annika. So much.”

  “I love you, too.”

  When I looked back on the time we spent at the Palmer House Hotel, I realized they were some of the best days of my life.

  25

  Annika

  THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

  AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

  1992

  “Are you nervous?” Janice asked as we sat down in the small waiting area of the student health center.

  “Why would I be nervous? You didn’t tell me there was anything to be nervous about.”

  “No, it’s just that I didn’t think you’d ever had a pelvic exam before.”

  “I haven’t.” My mother had taken me to have a physical before I left for college. The doctor had asked if I was sexually active and I said no and that had been the end of it. “Why, does it hurt?”

  “No. It can be a little uncomfortable, but just for a second. You’ll be fine.”

  I filled out the form the receptionist had given me and returned it. “Is this where you went?” I asked Janice when I sat back down.

  “Yes. It’s where everybody goes. Or Planned Parenthood.”

  The nurse called my name. “I’ll wait here,” Janice said, thumbing through a magazine. “Come back and get me when you’re done.”

  * * *

  The nurse weighed me and took my blood pressure. She gave me a paper gown and told me to take off all of my clothing, so I hopped off the table and began shucking my clothes.

  “Oh, I’ll just … let me give you some privacy.”

  All I was wearing by then was my underwear, and I pulled it down and let it drop onto the growing pile on the floor. The paper gown was a little tricky, so she showed me how to slip it on so that it opened in front. Then she gave me a paper sheet to lay across my lap.

  “Well, I guess I’ll let the doctor know you’re ready.”

  “Okay.”

  The doctor looked a little like my dad, and when I told Janice this later she said that would have freaked her out, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Mostly the doctor seemed kind and unthreatening.

  I’d had a basic introduction to reproductive health in fifth grade, but it wasn’t something my mother had spent much time on outside of helping
me when I got my first period. Everything I’d learned about the actual mechanics of sex had come from Jonathan, and that had mostly worked itself out in a variety of experimental, hands-on ways.

  I had so many questions for the doctor as he examined me, starting with a breast exam. What was he doing? What were things supposed to look like? What was the purpose of it all?

  “Not many women take as strong an interest as you have today. I find it admirable that you’re so eager to understand the process.”

  “It’s my body. It’s nice to know how it works.” I didn’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to know.

  When the exam was over, the doctor told me I could scoot back up on the table. “Your paperwork indicates you’re interested in obtaining birth control and that you’re currently sexually active.”

  “Yes. With my boyfriend Jonathan. We love each other.”

  The doctor smiled. “It’s always nice to hear that a couple is in love.”

  I had been so excited to return to school after winter break so I could tell Janice that Jonathan and I had said “I love you.” But when I told her how it happened, the first thing she said was “Oh.”

  When someone said that word to me, I knew what it meant.

  “Did I do it wrong?” I asked, my voice rising in panic. Of course I had. Why would this be any different from all the other things I’d screwed up?

  “No, not at all. It’s just that usually the guy says it first.”

  “Once I realized I loved him I wanted to tell him right away. I didn’t know there were rules about this!”

  Janice had grabbed my hands. “You know what? It’s a stupid rule. It’s not even a rule. It doesn’t matter who said it first. All that matters is that you love him and he loves you.”

  I wanted to believe her. Since we got back to school, Jonathan had told me he loved me seven more times and he always said it first.

  “What method of birth control are you currently using?” the doctor asked.