by Gabi Moore
He was right.
If there was anything more lame and middle aged than packing seed bars for a plane trip, I couldn’t think of it. I usually think my mom exaggerates with most things in life. For instance, I’m pretty sure that anal sex doesn’t mean your children will have cleft palates, and that soy isn’t a crop invented by the communists to make good people resist the teachings of Jesus. But still, staring at this young guy and my ridiculously red aunt, I had to say: this was quite something else.
Was she paying him? It didn’t make sense. Why would a guy like this do a thing like that? And why would my sweet, goofy aunt do a thing like that, for that matter? He looked no older than me, it was true. And immediately feeling embarrassed, I wondered if I should have worn something a little nicer to judge him in.
He threw the seed bars back in the cupboard and shrugged, laughing.
“You’re right! You’re so right. Why am I packing them? God, I don’t even like them. This is what I love about you, Jared, you’re so carefree,” she said, smiling a big flushed smile at him. Jared beamed right back at her. Gross. My eyes scanned over my aunt’s matronly figure, over her freckled hands with her wedding ring still attached (“It’s water weight! I’ll take it off once the swelling goes down!”).
My aunt was an elegant lady, of course, and I loved her to bits, but she was also fifty-four years old.
I glanced over at him, trying not to dwell on his branded hoodie and squeaky clean trainers. Did they …you know …? I shuddered to think. Just as I had pushed the thought out of my head, he leaned over and pecked her on her cheek, just like that, right in front of me. I swear, if they ended up an item I would not invite them to my wedding. No sir. My aunt’s maroon hair alone would be enough to ruin the color scheme, for sure.
I cleared my throat and plunked my bag down onto a kitchen stool. I took out my laptop and plugged it in, getting ready for a long weekend where I could pretend that I was actually a grown up who lived alone.
My aunt began to fuss with a few more things in her bag. Jared turned his attention to me, eyeing my laptop.
“So you’re Mel? I’ve heard all about you.”
“And I’ve heard about you too,” I said, unconsciously taking over my mom’s work in her absence. He didn’t respond to this, but kept eyeing the laptop.
“What’s that for? Don’t tell me you’re going to study?! It’s the weekend, girl, loosen up!”
I hated him. Settling down and putting Buttons in my lap, I casually replied, “No, no work, but I have other things I wanted to get done this weekend…”
He grinned at me. “Other things, eh? Looking at naughty things on the internet I bet.”
My face burned. Aunt Carol absentmindedly swatted his meaty arm, “Oh leave her alone, babe, she’s a good girl.”
He stood there, the fool, staring at me full on. He winked, cracked a bubble of gum between his teeth. “Yeah, no, I’m sure she is,” he said in an arrogant voice.
I wanted to hit him. I couldn’t decide what irritated me more. The fact that my aunt was so dismissive about me, or the fact that this meathead had technically guessed one of my two big secrets within 5 minutes of meeting me. Nevermind, he would never know how right he was, and I certainly would never let him know my other secret.
I hugged and kissed my aunt goodbye and they hauled their luggage out to the car.
Hadn’t he gone to school, like a decent, normal boy? Where on earth did my aunt even find him? Why was any of this happening, for that matter? It was annoying, to say the least. What was the point of anything if idiots like him could just swan in and take advantage of a vulnerable widow like me dear aunt? Although honestly, at this very second she didn’t look quite so vulnerable as I would have liked.
Jared hoisted up her bags onto his broad shoulders, the spidery edges of some tattoos on his belly peaking out as he stretched upwards. He went out to the car, came back in and then slapped my aunt’s ass as she grabbed her coat, and she both giggle and jiggled, reminding me of a very happy Miss Piggy. Bizarrely, he then spread his arms wide and demanded a hug from me, too. Before I knew it, he was squashing his indecently hard body against mine and squeezing me goodbye as well.
I stammered a goodbye and closed the door, nothing but my own surprise and Buttons’s bored green eyes to keep me company. I sniffed my sweater: I smelled like him now. Gross. I tore it off and tossed it onto the sofa, unsettled by the whole thing. So what if I did look at naughty stuff on the internet? Who was he to judge, when he was running around with a woman more than twice his age?
I opened my laptop, clicking to open a secret browser, looking over my shoulder to see if Buttons had anything to say about it. Don’t judge me, but my favorite these days was “2 tattooed jocks fuck teen” and I had watched it dozens of times before. I know, I know. But at least if I kept coming back to only this one clip, it would mean that I’d only technically watched one of them, which was less terrible than watching a whole bunch of them, right? I’d stop eventually, I was just stressed these days, that’s all. I would give it up one day, definitely. I was a good girl, and this kind of nonsense was definitely not in my life plan. But oh well, it was just me and Buttons here, and I was pretty tired, and it didn’t count since it was just this same clip anyway.
The familiar figures moved across the screen and I watched. Some badly behaved college boys, ink all over their hard chest and abs, roughly passing a girl between them. I was ashamed. My hand found its way into my skirt and I desperately rubbed that shame away. Then it was at the best part – the part where they’re both, well, you know, and she’s completely and utterly, well. You can just imagine. What a dirty slut she was. I sighed. It would all be fine just as long as I never watched anything more than this one clip. It would be OK, I’m sure.
Just then, with a little flutter of horror I realized: they look like him.
I looked closer at the screen and crunched up my face. Yup, just like him. Darn it. The same cocky smiles, the same toned shoulders and rough hands. I sat back, a little irritated. Well, he had completely ruined that for me, the idiot. I quickly closed the window and found Pinterest instead. Maybe the problem was that I was thinking too classic. Too traditional. Maybe instead of petit fours inside the rose desserts, it should be white éclairs? Buttons looked on, completely uninterested in my mortal soul.
Chapter Four
Well, they do say the devil finds work for idle hands, and that weekend, well, let’s just say I didn’t have much of anything to do and hands kept finding their way to where they shouldn’t be. Buttons and I sat around and watched series; I cooked and added a paragraph here and there to my essay, slept in late the next morning…
But each time I shut my eyes, he was there behind my eyelids, stupid grey hoodie half unzipped and a big stupid grin on his face. And without being able to stop it, my mind hit “play” to its own evil little clip where he was somehow melded into my favorite forbidden pleasure. Well, at least it had been my favorite until he had tainted it. Well, tainted it even further. Whatever. You know what I mean.
Anyway the solution was simple; I’d just have to keep my eyes open, then. I fell asleep eventually, but I made sure to keep my hands outside the covers, you know.
Time floated away and soon it was Sunday evening and they came back, much the same way they had left. Jared seemed even more tanned than when he left and my aunt even ditzier somehow, and with more hippie bangles jangling on her arms. They were sorry, the flight was delayed a little, then there was some traffic on the drive back, and they hoped I hadn’t been bored here all alone.
I was happy to leave, shall we say, the scene of the crime, and was hurriedly packing my backpack; my warm and innocent bed only a 10-minute bus ride away.
“Oh don’t be silly, sweetie! Sleep here the night and I’ll drop you in the morning. Your mom won’t mind.”
But will I?
Jared seemed completely unfazed by this suggestion, as outrageous as it was. It was like he just wal
tzed around all his life vacationing with women his mother’s age and sleeping in houses with …girls.
I cleared my throat to explain that I was a good girl and so on and that I couldn’t possibly do that, but she was speaking again, rattling off in that excited way of hers.
“We can all watch a movie or something, I’m exhausted.”
I most certainly did not want to watch a movie, and even more so didn’t want to do “or something”. Ok, just relax. Maybe my nasty secret (not that one, the other one) was making me jump to conclusions. I looked over at her two seater couch and imagined how hard I was going to judge this boy if he even so much as tried to get a crush on me, which he obviously would.
“Ok, sure, we can watch a movie. Or have an early night. Whatever.”
Well, I was now in Aunt Carol’s house, with a stranger, a stranger who was probably paid to you-know-what no less. I was irritated that they seemed totally unashamed of themselves. I suddenly had a thought. What if I paid him? He couldn’t turn it down, it was his job basically, so he’d have to do whatever I told him, right? Technically? What a stupid thought. I went and sat on the couch and played with Buttons. My aunt flitted in and out of her room as she unpacked her bags, then, and you won’t believe this, then he came and sat next to me.
“Get all your ‘work’ done this weekend?” he said, teasing me and making two quotes in the air as he spoke. I would later learn that this was one of his most stubborn habits. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and the redder I went, the more it seemed to suggest exactly the answer I didn’t want to give.
“Aunt Carol? Aunt Carol I think I’d better go home actually. I really need to finish this essay for tomorrow and I have classes in the morning anyway. I can still catch the bus …”
He chuckled at me, getting far too close on the sofa.
Aunt Carol stuck her head through the living room door and frowned at me, a half-filled toiletry back in her hands. “Oh sweetie, you’re so studious. Such a good girl. Fine, but why doesn’t Jared take you? Jared just take my car, be a lamb.”
“Yes ma’am” he said, and I wanted to smack him.
Chapter Five
“Seriously, you’ve never had a boyfriend? Not even one?” he was saying.
I couldn’t believe he had gotten this nosy in a car trip this short. Was he deliberately driving slower than he needed to? “No, not one, and I might say it’s not really any of your business, jeez.”
He paused a little. “Really, but not even one?”
I fumed. He was driving my aunt’s car like he owned it, spreading his legs wider than you’d think any human male was capable of, resting his elbow on the lip of the window like a total ass.
“Nope, not one. I suppose that’s a little hard for someone like you to understand, huh?” I could hear my mother’s voice in my own again.
“Aw, now what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nevermind. Whatever.” I looked out the window, contemplating diving out and running home, anything to get rid of this smell of his cologne, filling up the car now. He was pretty hot, okay, if that’s what you were wondering.
“No, what do you mean by that? Someone like me?”
“Jeez, I don’t know. Forget it,” and I wanted to, but before I knew it I was blurting out, “why are you with my aunt anyway? It’s weird.” I sounded like a little kid.
He grinned. “Weird? What’s weird about it? Your aunt’s a beautiful woman,” he said this last piece like a joke, and it made me defensive.
I love Aunt Carol, even though she had bad taste and freckled hands. “Yes, and she’s also inherited a lot of beautiful money, too” I said, thinking this was a pretty good quip, even if I did say so myself. I’m a pretty witty person, it just usually takes me the next day to think of things. The grin fell off his face and he stared at the road.
“Ah, I forgot, you’re only 18. You think that love has nothing to do with money, and money has nothing to do with sex?”
My ears pricked at this word. In my family, we call it you-know-what. “I’m 19, actually, and I’m not an idiot. How old are you? You’re old enough to be her son. That’s pretty disgusting.” To be honest, I didn’t know why I had such a flash of anger towards him, this person I had barely spent 10 minutes with.
He looked like he didn’t know either. “Well, I think it’s disgusting that you think so little of your aunt that you just assume she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
I opened my mouth to speak but he interrupted me.
“And by the way, have you considered that she may be using me?”
I looked at his smooth, boyish hands on the wheel, his unlined forehead. Nope. He was definitely preying on her; there was no way around it. Besides, I was never wrong on questions of morality, although obviously he didn’t know this yet.
“That’s ridiculous. She’s in a vulnerable condition. My uncle passed only a few months ago, did you know that?”
I couldn’t believe how personal things had gotten. In my home, we usually said …well, we just said nothing. Speaking of which, we were almost there.
“I did, because she told me. She’s a strong woman, I know that. But now it’s time for her to have a bit of fun, don’t you think?”
“Oh and I suppose that bit of fun is you?” I asked, with as much sarcasm as I could muster, secretly hoping he wouldn’t say the s-word again.
With a slick hand, he gestured towards his body and smiled a big cheesy grin. “Damn right it is!” he said.
“Gross”
Was he actually even wearing anything under that hoodie?
“You know, your aunt spent her whole life like you.”
“Like what?”
“Judgmental. Close-minded. I took care of that.” He chuckled, and I couldn’t help but stare at his crotch for a split second. Gross.
We had arrived in my drive way, thank the Lord. I gathered up my bag and tried to look indignant, although it did feel as though we were cut short in the middle of the conversation, and I don’t think he quite understood yet just how wrong he was.
“Be honest, are you going to keep seeing her?” Man he looked like such a douche, sitting there, legs spread wide, sideways smile and about 150% too much attitude, as though he was in his own music video or something.
He raised a single naughty eyebrow at me and smiled even more sideways. “Are you asking me if you get to keep seeing me?” he said, then winked.
I slammed the car door and marched inside. All I wanted to do was think about how wrong he was, but all I could think about was how my butt looked to him as I walked away and up the stairs.
Chapter Six
Just remember everyone, God never gives you any burdens that he knows you can’t handle.
My burden’s name was “Jared” (idiot) and my God did I carry him everywhere with me. To classes. As I watched TV. When I was alone, in bed, at night. Well, you can see the problem.
He was everywhere in real life too, and everyone in the family begrudgingly accepted his weird new role in my aunt’s life. He seemed part sex-coach, part cheerleader, part gay friend. Thankfully there aren’t too many gays in my town, but I have seen a few, and I like to think I know what I’m looking for – Jared was irritating, and never really settled on a side, I felt. He was clean shaven, boyish, but still predatory. He was a bit of chameleon, changing subtly depending on who he spoke to. He chatted easily with my aunt about yoga and scatter cushions for her living room, and stood outside our house and vaped and wore name brand loungewear and a gold chain. He had the manners of a thug, yet somehow people responded to him as though he was a dapper gentleman. It was confusing. Not only was he spending so much time at our house, he was refusing to fit into any easy categories. Like I said, what an ass.
Anyway, let me cut to the chase here. He kissed me. It was one afternoon and I had no classes. I was killing time at my aunt’s, waiting for her so we could go out and shop for towels later. He barged in, found me in the kitchen and for some stupid
reason, everything went quiet and he leaned in and kissed me. I froze. I wanted to tell him to do it again, but I was so angry with myself for thinking this that I blurted, “So, how much do I owe you now?”
And he looked a little hurt. I ran out the kitchen and sat down at my laptop, where house rules dictated I couldn’t be bothered.
“By the way, you should clear your browser history” he said, closing the fridge and grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl. My skin nearly crawled off my face. He sidled up close to me, so close that his taut belly was right next to my face, so close I could smell a distant shower and …something else on his skin.
“You’re not my type, you know,” I said, praying to God his crotch didn’t move a single inch closer to my downturned eyes.
“Your type? Apparently, I am though,” he laughed, tapped the screen twice with his finger and then walked out with his stupid banana.
That night, I masturbated so furiously I think I nearly passed out.
Chapter Seven
The road to hell is paved with …well, I don’t know really. I don’t know how I ended up here, alone with Jared, as alone as Adam and Eve were in the garden. You know, my horizons were expanding. His argument that I was just as uptight as all the other women in my family had struck a nerve.
He was wrong: I was a reasonable person; I didn’t have any sexual hang ups, no way. Through a vague series of decisions which I had trouble justifying to myself later on, I got him to agree to drive me out to the Carlisle forest parking lot, which even I knew was a place people went to …do things.
My quiet rebellion took the form of a marijuana cigarette, and after some thought I decided this was not me falling into temptation, but rather me inoculating myself from it; doing research, you know, so I was prepared if I ever was tempted for real and so on. We parked and he rolled down the window to rest his elbow. Did he ever wear anything else but sportswear and caps? He pulled a wonky white cigarette from his pocket and gently tapped its dry end on the dashboard, his fat fingers seeming too crude for the task.