by Naomi Niles
“Um, mostly,” I said with an air of hesitation. In the window, I could see the reflection of my own face turning the color of the tangerine on Nic’s plate. “He got my shirt part of the way off, and then I took the rest of it off. At first, I was scared to take off my bra because I didn’t want him to know that I’m completely boob-less, but he somehow got it unhooked while we were making out. He pulled my jeans down to my ankles—and then he started laughing, and I asked him what was funny and he wouldn’t tell me.”
“You must have been so scared.”
“I was terrified. It’s not the response you want when a boy sees you almost-naked for the first time. But I think I figured it out later. When I was putting my jeans back on, I realized that my underwear had cute cartoon turtles all over it, because of course, it did. Do other women our age not wear cute cartoon underwear?”
“I don’t,” said Nic quietly.
“So that happened, and we somehow got through it despite the fact that I couldn’t figure out why he was laughing. Of course, I was panicking, thinking maybe I looked weird down there. I’m sure he’s seen a bunch of other girls and they probably all looked normal, and I bet they all shaved. I thought maybe the hair would be distracting, but he didn’t seem to mind.”
“I think Darren was probably willing to overlook a lot of things for the chance to spend a few hours in bed with you.”
“And I’m not even sure why,” I replied, raising my hands in the air with a bewildered look. “It’s not like I’m anyone great or special that the other boys are lining up to sleep with. I’m just a girl who lives with her dad in rural Texas and watches Doctor Who and works part-time at an auto parts store. There’s nothing particularly unique or interesting about me. Why is he settling for Dr. Pepper for when he could be drinking champagne?”
“Well, I won’t pretend to know what goes on in boys’ minds,” said Nic, “but you’re a fun, quirky girl, and a lot of guys really dig that. Plus, I think it’s assumed that if a girl regularly goes bungee-jumping and skydiving and is adventurous and sort of eccentric, she’s probably amazing in bed.”
“Well, sorry to be a disappointment!” I shouted, a little too loudly. “At least now he won’t have to spend the rest of his life wondering what it’s like to sleep with me. And who knows? Maybe the more we practice, the better I’ll get. Give it a year or two, and we could be having really—you know, not earth-shaking, but respectable sex. And I’ll learn to wear more sensible underwear.”
But Nic lowered her eyes, and I could sense there was something she was holding back. “What’s wrong? Do you not think I could get better?”
She drew a deep breath and turned to face the rain-lashed window. “I’m sure you will with enough practice. I’m more worried that Darren isn’t going to stick around long enough to let that happen.”
I stared down at my plate with a sinking feeling of disappointment in my stomach. “Is it because I’m not good enough?”
“No, it’s got nothing to do with that! Don’t worry. I just don’t see Darren as being the sort of person who’s willing to commit to an exclusive, monogamous relationship. I’ve known a lot of boys like him, and they don’t generally stick around for more than a few months.”
I knew she was only trying to help, but there was something distasteful in the tone of her last remark. Instinctively, I felt myself wanting to defend Darren. “Why is it that women in our generation are so cynical and skeptical about everything?” I demanded. “Why can’t you just hope for the best instead of expecting him to bail at the first opportunity?”
“Pen, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
“It’s not just you; it’s everyone. ‘You need to be careful because guys are only after one thing!’ I just wish we would give boys a chance to prove themselves instead of assuming that they’re animals. What if he likes my body because he likes me? What if he wanted to sleep with me because he likes me, and what if he goes on liking me?”
“I mean, I guess I can only speak from my own experience, and in my experience, boys haven’t wanted to stick around much after the first encounter. There have been a lot of one-night stands. But you’re right, let’s admit that maybe I’ve had some bad luck with boys and that maybe your experience will be different.”
“Nic, I don’t think you know Darren like I do. I can see why you would think that, but it’s really not up to you to say what sort of guy Darren is. You’re welcome to offer your opinions, but they’re never going to overrule mine because I know him better than you do.”
“Right,” said Nic, raising her hands in surrender, “and I should never have said otherwise. I’m sorry. I’m sure what you have with him is great, and I really hope it continues and flourishes.” Her voice remained tinged with skepticism in spite of her reassurance.
We were both in a rotten mood by the time we left Waffle House. She offered to pay for my meal, but I told her I would do it myself. We were silent on the way to work as the car plowed through the rain-flooded streets, tires spraying water in every direction. An old bearded man stood on the corner in a fisherman’s hat and a gray rain coat; I might have offered him a ride if Nic hadn’t been in the car. She had always said I was too trusting and that I must never give rides to people I hadn’t met.
At work, I half-heartedly deflected the continuing flirtations of Adam. He and a couple other guys wanted to know where Dad had been and how he was doing. I went through the motions of talking, but my mind and heart were elsewhere. As the morning wore on, I kept one eye on the door waiting for Darren to come in. Whenever I heard the crunch of gravel or the whir of tires in the parking lot, I felt a momentary surge of hope.
But he never came, and after waiting for most of the day, I began to fear that maybe Nic had been right after all. Despite what he had said, maybe he had no intention of coming by the store this week. Maybe those were just words he had used to get me out of the car. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of myself for ever having trusted him in the first place. In the future, I would never believe the words a man whispered in the heat of passion. In the future, I would avoid situations that might lead to those passionate moments in the first place.
As the workday drew to a close and the rain continued to drum against the windows, I fell deeper and deeper into despair. I had been too trusting; I ought never to have let Darren into my heart and into my bed…well, the hotel bed I happened to be in. Nic was right, just as she had been right about the homeless man on the corner; I was too trusting. Darren wasn’t the first person I had allowed to take advantage of me. People had been doing it to one degree or another my entire life.
I couldn’t allow it to happen again. I would have to dissociate not only from Darren but from his whole rotten gang of friends. Dickie had sent me a friend request on Facebook over the weekend. I had confirmed it without much thought, but now I realized what a mistake that had been. I would have to un-friend him. If Darren ever showed up wanting to talk, I would show him the door. I wasn’t about to let myself get hurt again. If he hadn’t already, eventually he would realize he had made a mistake hooking up with me. When that happened, he wouldn’t hesitate to remove me from his life, breaking my heart in the process.
The easiest way to prevent that from happening was to reject him before he rejected me. Yes, we had slept together, but we weren’t lovers, and we weren’t friends. I wasn’t in love with him; I wasn’t in love with anyone. And I had no friends.
Chapter Nineteen
Darren
It was another four days before I saw Penny again, four days which I spent thinking over our last meeting and looking ahead to the next.
I could never quite get out of my mind the memory of our lovemaking. I still felt the warmth of her body against mine, the way she softly moaned with closed eyes and hair billowing angelically. The way her whole body shuddered as I thrust my tongue into her belly button; the small, sharp screams that grew louder and louder as we approached climax.
I waited a few days be
fore visiting the store because I wanted to give her time to absorb what had happened between us. Also, I didn’t want to seem over-eager. I knew from painful experience how quickly a woman could lose interest in a boy who wouldn’t leave her alone. I believed in the old adage about absence making the heart grow fonder. I would much rather have her wondering why I didn’t come around more often than wondering why I wouldn’t leave.
You could call it manipulative if you wanted, but that wasn’t how I saw it. I just wanted her to want me, and I wanted to keep on wanting her. So I waited.
It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that I finally found an excuse to visit the store again. When I came into the garage at a quarter to nine, I found Dickie wiping down the hood of the Mustang, wearing a blue blazer and looking very much like Biff Tannen at the end of Back to the Future.
“Hey, did you order an entire exhaust system the last time you went over to Car Quest?” he asked me as he cracked open a cold can of root beer.
“No, why?”
“Because one just came in. Somebody from over there called me about twenty minutes ago and said it was waiting for you to come pick it up.”
It was the first genuinely good news I had heard in several days. “I must have an anonymous admirer.”
“Hmmm, yeah. Maybe they also anonymously paid for it. It’s gonna put you back about four hundred.”
“Shoot, I got that much in coins in my back pocket. Anyway, if you don’t need me, I think I’m gonna go head over there. It’s been a few days since me and the girl have seen each other, and I expect she’ll want to catch up.”
“They usually do,” Dickie said with a philosophical air. “In my experience, once a girl gets a taste of the D, she don’t want to go more’n a few days without it.”
“Yeah, I could’ve done without hearing that from my boss this early in the morning.”
Dickie shrugged. “Hey man, I’m just trying to help.”
As I was on my way out the door, Dickie stopped me. “By the way, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s another race coming up in a couple weeks. The prize this time is phenomenally higher than last time.”
I paused at the edge of the garage and turned toward him. “How much?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” he replied.
I let out a low whistle. “Shit, I bet Adam’d love to have that.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t want it. Anyway, and they’re tightening security to make sure this race isn’t interrupted like last time. If we can get the car fixed up in time, you’ve got a good shot at winning it.”
“I won’t be upset if I do. We just need to get this muffler replaced, and it’ll be good to go. Though the way Penny drove it, I think she’d have an even better shot at winning the money. I’ve gotta figure out a way to enter her into the contest in my place.”
“Well, if you think of one, let me know,” said Dickie as he returned to wiping down the hood. “You’re the one banging her, so it’s not like you would be losing money.”
“Got that right.” I gave a salute of farewell and left.
There was no one else in the store when I came in. Behind the counter, Penny was dancing while the portable radio blared a ‘90s pop song. My heart skipped a few beats as I stood there watching her. There was something so seductive about the way she moved her body that made my pulse race. For a moment I was transported back to the hotel room while she danced in front of me, pressing her hips against me with a smirk and an air of not giving a damn.
Seeing me standing there watching her, Penny grinned shyly and ran to turn off the radio. I followed her with my eyes, feeling somehow both amused and turned on. She didn’t even have to take her clothes off to be sexy. She just was.
I had to fight back a fierce urge to walk up to her right then and tell I loved her. Was that an appropriate thing to say when you had only been dating someone for five days? Probably not. And it might have led to us passionate making out there at the front of the store.
Get it together, Savery, I chided myself. You’re in public.
Penny turned back to the counter and folded her hands professionally in front of her as though nothing had happened.
“Hey,” she said quietly. She looked about as nervous as she had felt when we had first started making out on Saturday.
“Hey, you. I heard someone ordered me the parts that I needed without telling me.”
Penny averted her eyes innocently. “I don’t know who it could have been. Sounds like you might have an admirer.”
“I must,” I said with a smile. I leaned over against the counter hoping to quiet my body, but this had the effect of bringing my face closer to Penny’s. From here I could count every freckle on her nose. I could also see that she had been crying.
“What’ve you been up to the last few days?” I asked. There was so much more I wanted to say, but we would have to start there.
“Just taking care of my dad.” She shrugged. “I haven’t been out anywhere.” There was a touch of resentment in her voice as if she blamed me for the fact that she had been trapped inside her house.
It occurred to me only for the first time that I had never clarified whether we were officially dating now, or whether what we had done over the weekend had been just a casual hookup. Undoubtedly, the same question must have occurred to Penny. She must have been agonizing over it, and maybe that was why she had been crying.
After we’d both stood there awkwardly in silence for a minute, she added, “What have you been up to?” in the same accusatory voice.
“Not a whole lot. I went skeet shooting with my dad, and my brother, and my brother’s fiancée on Sunday afternoon. The two of them are fixin’ to get married, and they’re still in that honeymoon stage where they think the world of each other. Then we went back to the house, and Mama had made us roast squash, savory slow-cooked pork, and an apple pie.”
“That sounds fantastic, actually. Why haven’t I been over to your house yet?”
“You’re welcome to come over sometime. I’ll have to let my mom know you’re coming, but I’m sure she would love to have you. She always gets excited when we have—um, friends over.” Given that we hadn’t yet defined our relationship, I didn’t want to say girls. “She’ll put an old Glenn Miller recording on vinyl and stand there in the kitchen talking to you while she roasts the corn.”
“Oh, perfect. Now I have to come over. Is she one of those Edith Bunker ladies who wears floral dresses and plays the piano during dinner as everyone is finishing their meal?”
“Yes, actually. Even has the glasses and everything.”
“I can already tell I’m going to love her.” She had her hands in her back pockets, and the glow was slowly returning to her face. “Well, would you like to see the muffler you ordered? It’s right back here.”
“Sure.”
I thought she was going to lead me into the back room, but instead, we went through it and out the door at the other end. Nic was standing in a dusty corner under a green-tinted bulb unpacking a large box; she stood up as we came through, looking puzzled.
Yesterday’s rain had cleared, and the air smelled faintly of damp and fresh-cut grass. The morning sun cast a warm glow over the red-and-white observation tower and a large, level field spotted with molehills.
“Isn’t this the loveliest place for a picnic?” Penny said with a soft sigh.
“It really is.” I had a sudden image of the two of us coming out here one weekend when the lot was deserted, eating sandwiches out of a large wicker basket and making love in the green grass. Then after the sun had set, we would lie down together and try to count the stars. “Do you come back here often?”
“One night, I slept out here because I was locked out of my house,” Penny replied. I turned and stared at her in surprise. “I woke up the next morning with fertilizer in my hair and a large dairy cow standing over me. She had escaped from a neighboring farm and was just wandering through town quietly grazing on whatever grass sh
e could find. That was a really lonely time in my life. I’m a lot better off now.”
“How’s your dad doing? The last couple times I’ve come over, he hasn’t been around.”
A look of distress flashed across Penny’s face. Casting her eyes down at her sneakers, she kicked a chunk of gravel shyly into the grass. “Do you want to go talk on the tower? We’re a lot less likely to be interrupted up there.”
“Yeah, are you sure you won’t get in trouble?”
“There’s nobody else in the store, and I don’t think Nic will care. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how we even manage to stay open with the amount of business we get. You’re probably the only thing keeping us in business right now.”
“Well, I do what I can.” I desperately wanted to ask her if she was okay—she sure didn’t look it—but I decided to wait until we had reached the top of the tower. Penny led the way up the ladder. Although the sun shone warmly, a cool wind was blowing in from the east carrying the scent of azaleas and pine needles.
Penny sat down at the edge of the tower and swung her legs over. Somehow even in her dingy work uniform, she looked weirdly sexy. She had such an innocent face with those long lashes and large eyes and that perfectly smooth, pale skin. She smiled at me as I sat down, and I could tell, without her having to say anything, that she wanted me there.
“I feel bad for not having told you this sooner,” she said, sweeping her hair out of her face. “We don’t talk about it much outside of the family, but my dad hasn’t been doing very well lately. He’s battling an aggressive form of cancer.”
I’d have thought she was pulling my leg if the tone in her voice wasn’t so deadly earnest. “How did I not already know about this? I feel terrible.”
“It’s okay; it’s my fault for not telling you. He didn’t want a lot of people knowing, so if anyone asks, we tell them he’s on sick leave. Only a few of our regular customers have put two and two together. The rest just assume he’ll be back to work in a few days.”