I scrutinize his face, the way he combs his curly hair off his forehead. I don’t like the way he smells, like he bathed in Armani Code, and I don’t like his odd request. But he has a point. It’s his first time, not mine.
“Fine,” I say. “But one weird move and I’ll be tying you up instead, and you won’t like it. Comprende?”
Some girls might like being blindfolded or tied up, but I’m not one of them. Being restricted or cut off from any one of my senses freaks me out. He uses his tie to cover my eyes, which I hate even more because it reeks of his cologne. I try to hold back my panic. Did he wear that tie with this idea in mind? How much thought has this guy given to me, considering I only just met him?
“Such a pretty girl,” he says, trailing his fingers down my arms. “Beautiful.”
I can feel his fingers on my skin, but nothing else. He doesn’t move in for a kiss, or make any moves to disentangle me from my leather bindings.
“There’s nothing wrong with going slow,” I say, hating the shrill tone that my voice has taken on. “But go too slowly and a girl might think you fell asleep on her.” I suddenly wish I would have gone with Faye after the game and not found myself in this predicament. My breath starts to get shallow. With any luck, he’ll think I’m turned on, not terrified.
“I certainly have not fallen asleep on you,” he says, and suddenly I feel the weight of him on my upper body, pushing me onto the bed. I immediately flip him off me and accidentally punch him in the chin.
“Whoa, Don Juan. Word of advice: never do that to a girl.” I rip off my blindfold and brush my hands through my hair, aware that they’re shaking.
“Please forgive me,” he says. “I did not mean to disrespect you.”
At this point, I don’t want to sleep with him at all, so I do something I have never done before. I turn him down.
“You should go,” I say. “I don’t feel right about this. I’m sorry.” I hand his tie back to him, expecting him to get off my bed and scamper away. But he just stares at me, unblinking.
“Please,” he says, pouting his lips like a girl. What a turnoff.
“I’m sorry,” I say again through gritted teeth, wondering why I’m apologizing and why my voice doesn’t sound authoritative like I want it to. I’m so good at ordering guys around in my bedroom. Why am I so bad at ordering one out of it?
“Look. Mercedes,” he says, his voice more like a purr. “I do not want to come across as, what you Americans say, an asshole.” He rolls the tie around in his hand and peeks at me from under his eyelashes. “But Trevor told me a lot about you. He said you would do anything to help guys like us.”
I finger the duvet cover, wishing I could tear it to shreds and strangle Juan Marco Antonio with them. Beneath his silky accent, his voice has a hardness to it that I recognize.
“Are you threatening me?” I fight the urge to wrap my arms around my body protectively.
“Of course not,” he says. “I just would not want the wrong person to find out.” He reaches for my hand. I know that if I let him take it, I’ll be giving my consent. He will get what he came here for, and I’ll get his silence.
“I don’t think I have to tell you how crucial your discretion is,” I say as he threads his fingers through mine and covers my arm with kisses. I force his face up with my hand, enjoying the power that has shifted back to me. “Do you understand me? Nobody finds out about us. Not your friends, not your buddies from the soccer team. Comprende?”
He nods and smiles. I’m not sure I like that smile, but maybe it’s just because the atmosphere in my bedroom has gotten so weird.
And it gets even weirder. He doesn’t want to do it on my bed, so we start doing it on the carpet beside my bed and then end up against the wall. As his hot breath wilts into my ear, I start wondering who exactly is in control and who is being dominated. I keep wishing he would just get it over with like every other guy, but he keeps going and going, like some kind of Energizer bunny. I fight off the fear that mounts as I consider the possibility that I have made a huge mistake. This guy isn’t like any virgin I have ever been with. He has either watched a lot of porn or been blessed with a hell of a lot of stamina.
Either that, or this isn’t his first time. But if that’s the case, why would he choose me over his supposedly precious Isabella?
Afterward, he wants to lie on the floor with me, but I make him put on his pants and leave before he can mention a round two. I guess Trevor kept his mouth shut about that, a fact for which I’m very grateful. And as he’s heading out the door, he blows me a kiss.
“Good luck,” he says.
“I think you mean good-bye,” I say. He just shrugs.
When he’s finally gone, I wash my sheets immediately and spray perfume around the room to get rid of his scent. But even though his cologne leaves with him, the unsettling feeling in the room doesn’t. It only gets worse after he leaves, when I sit at my desk chair pretending to work on yesterday’s chemistry homework. I try to lose myself in facts, a strategy that usually works. But tonight it doesn’t, and instead I want the unlikeliest distraction of all.
I want my mom. I want her to tell me everything is going to be okay, that I’m being paranoid for nothing. I want her to tuck me in like she never did when I was a little girl because she always had somewhere else to be. Right now, I’d even settle for her acting like her irresponsible self. Anything to make me feel less lonely. But I’m alone in the house, the victim of another hastily scrawled Post-it note. Out tonight!!! Love, Mom.
I remember her sobbing over a martini one night, her sooty black eye makeup running into the fine lines on her face. “The people you love and need the most never need you back,” she had wailed, sloshing the contents of her drink all over my bunny pajamas. She was talking about some guy, but maybe it was the most honest advice my ten-year-old self could hear.
I look at my lamp and count backwards to stop the tears collecting in my eyes from turning into actual crying. I don’t know why today is any different than any other day, why number twelve has made me question everything. I don’t know what I wanted from him that he didn’t give me.
So I do the only thing I know to put Juan Marco Antonio firmly in the past. I open my notebook and write a giant zero beside his name. Number twelve. I fight back momentary panic as I flip through the pages before this one. Twelve sounds awfully high. Good thing I’m done, or this notebook would run out of pages entirely. I tap out a pattern with my pen, something that starts quiet and gets increasingly louder. I don’t want to write anything else, but I write everything else anyway. Everything I would never say out loud. Not to anybody.
Douche bag. Total dick. Why did I sleep with this guy? I didn’t even want to.
I stare at the words until my eyes hurt. I didn’t even want to. My handwriting doesn’t even look like mine, not the neat, orderly little letters that grace my lab reports. These letters are big and loopy and out of control. What’s wrong with me?
He needs a nickname, a way of being put in the past. Then I can turn the page, close the book, and forget about him, same as I have with everybody else. So I give him one that fits, one that puts the control back where it belongs: with me.
Don Wannabe.
11
The morning after Don Wannabe, I’m feeling especially on edge. I don’t put on any makeup and I throw my hair up in a messy bun. I don’t want anybody to notice me today. I just want to blend into the background, be part of the scenery. It helps that I have something else to think about besides Number Twelve. Today I’m meeting with the other person I’m tutoring for Students Helping Students. I’m both nervous and excited and surprised to be either. I don’t know if I’m any good at teaching people about chemistry, something that comes easily to me but not to most people. I never understood how teachers like Mr. Sellers spend their whole lives trying to explain it, over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. But it’s too late to back out now.
When I swing the front door open, I d
on’t expect to see Zach standing on the porch. I jump a foot in the air when I see his smiling face, holding two take-out cups of coffee, almost like he knew I was going to open the door at that exact moment.
“Hello, Wednesday friend,” he says. “I know it’s Friday and I’m breaking the rules, but I thought you could use a pick-me-up.” He hands me a Styrofoam cup.
“Thanks,” I say, wondering how he can be this happy so early in the morning. Besides, where did he come from? There’s no evidence of a car parked nearby. I realize I not only don’t know where Zach lives, but I also have no idea how he gets to school every day.
“Where are you off to?” he says as I pull the door shut. “I thought we could have breakfast.”
I push up my sleeve and glance at my watch. I’m early for my tutoring session. I could probably squeeze in a session upstairs with Zach. It would certainly overshadow Don Wannabe, and I’d feel much more like myself after.
“Do you want to go upstairs?” I say. “I’m doing a tutoring thing at school in a bit, but I have time for a quickie if you’re fast.” I start to dig around in my purse for my house keys with my free hand, but Zach stops me. When I look up, I’m surprised at the rut between his eyebrows, like he’s thinking super hard about something.
“Or we could just hang out,” he says. “Maybe walk to school together.” He shrugs.
I swallow the laugh rising in my throat. “Walk to school? It’s, like, two miles,” I say. “But come on—I’ll drive us.”
Zach has been in the Jeep before, but only in the backseat. He looks strange sitting up front, with his knees pressed into the dashboard. I suddenly realize how infrequently I have passengers in the Jeep. I don’t know what that says about me.
“Do you usually walk to school?” I ask after I do up my seat belt. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I want to take them back. It’s none of my business, and I don’t want to make Zach’s business mine.
But he’s already nodding and smiling like some goofy bobblehead. “Yeah. I mean, my mom drives me when she can, and sometimes I borrow her car, but I hate to put her out. Besides, all that walking does wonders for my glutes.”
I smile without meaning to. I never thought I would hear Zach say the word glutes. Now he looks like he wants to keep talking. This happens all the time with him. I say one thing that veers out of our regular bedroom territory and he gloms onto it. I should know better.
There’s one way that I know to shut him up.
I strain against my seat belt until our faces are an inch apart and press my lips onto his. I suck gently on his top lip, then his bottom one, until he stirs uncomfortably.
“Coffee,” he says weakly. “It’s, uh, spilling on my lap.”
“Sorry,” I say, pulling away and starting the car and pretending nothing weird is going on. The Zach I know wouldn’t pass up a kiss from me for anything, even spilled coffee.
The Zach I know doesn’t show up at my house unannounced, either. He sticks to the time and date. Or so I thought.
“So, tutoring, huh?” Zach says, taking a sip of his coffee. “That’s cool. But I could never get you to tutor me.”
I peel out of the driveway and back over part of the curb in the process. Zach swears under his breath. “Shit,” he says. “I just burned my mouth. Has anyone ever told you you’re a crazy driver?”
“No,” I say, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Just that I’m a wild ride.” I laugh and expect Zach to laugh with me. Maybe he will change his mind and want to pull over somewhere and get in the backseat after all.
But he doesn’t pay any attention to my sexual innuendo. “So why won’t you tutor me?” he says. “I never knew you tutored other people. It’s like you’re cheating on me.”
I sigh exaggeratedly loudly. “You got me,” I say. “I’m stepping out on you.”
“Seriously,” he says. “Am I a lost cause or something?”
His words hang in the air, along with the smell of spilled coffee. I know he’s talking about chemistry, but is that all he’s talking about?
“Of course not,” I say. “But I think you have it pretty good. You get great marks in the class and don’t have to do any of the work. I didn’t think you cared.”
“Maybe you didn’t think,” he says quietly.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t give me grief just because you got stuck with a new lab partner. You know I’ll still help you out. We’re friends, remember? Friends help friends.”
I don’t have to look at him to know he is smiling, and just like that the vibe between us has crossed back to normal, like Zach has stepped back from whatever ledge he was teetering on.
“Can I come?” he says. I’m about to roll my eyes again and sigh, my typical reaction to his dirty jokes, but he finishes the sentence. “Can I come to your tutoring thing with you?”
“Oh,” I say. “I don’t think it works like that. It’s more one-on-one. But I can give you one-on-one time later today, if that’s what you want.”
“I’ll take it,” he says cheerfully. “Let’s go get a milkshake or something.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence, punctuated only by Zach’s slurping noises and my screeching brakes. I’m trying to figure out if “get a milkshake” is code for something else, but I really don’t think so. Does Zach not want to sleep with me anymore? I think back to last week in the kitchen, when he told me he loves me. Maybe I shouldn’t have brushed him off. I don’t want to stop sleeping with Zach. He’s reliable, the one person who gives me a guaranteed release from everything else in my life. I don’t like this feeling, like he’s right in front of me but slipping slowly away. I guess if I want things to stay the way they are, I need to meet him halfway. If he wants to get a milkshake with me, I can give him that.
My newest chemistry student is a baby-faced junior named Toby Easton. Toby wants to become a veterinarian, and with steely determination tells me that he needs at least a B plus in chemistry to get into a good undergrad program.
“This is my weak spot,” he says, rubbing his forehead with his hands. “I spend more time with this textbook than I do with my girlfriend, and I got nothing to show for it.”
As I try to explain monomers and polymers in terms he might understand, my mind wanders to Toby’s relationship. I wonder what he means by “nothing to show for it.” Does he mean crappy grades or a shitty relationship? Maybe both? If this were four months ago, I might offer Toby a different kind of help. But it’s not four months ago, so classroom help is all I have to give.
When the bell rings to signal the start of classes, I’m relieved. This is even more difficult than I thought, trying to get somebody to make sense of something so straightforward. I don’t get why Toby’s brain just isn’t processing what I’m saying. I can almost feel his eyes glazing over, and he just looks so lost. How can he be that lost when there’s always a formula to follow, which means there is always a right and wrong answer?
This bothers me through the rest of the day, through my classes and lunch period and my nondate with Zach, which turns out to be just a milkshake after all, at a little place near the beach. Zach asks me what’s going on when he notices that I have chewed through my straw.
“I’m just feeling off,” I tell him, trying to suck the rest of my milkshake through my mangled straw. I shouldn’t even still be thinking about Toby. Whenever I help somebody in the bedroom, I’m able to keep from obsessing about him. I can remove myself from that part of my brain and not let it trickle into real life. I can literally and mentally shut the page on each guy. But the one guy I’m not going to sleep with is sticking around. I’m annoyed that I can’t get through to him the same way I get through to guys in my bedroom. And I’m annoyed that I even care.
“Want to take a walk on the beach?” Zach says. “We can talk about it. Or not talk.”
I smile at him even though I don’t mean to. The truth is, I’d rather be with Zach than be alone.
We walk mostly in silence. Zach doesn�
�t try to grab my hand or put his arm around me but gives me my space. Usually when Zach and I aren’t talking, it’s because we’re having sex. This is a different kind of silence. It should feel weird but it doesn’t. It feels almost like we’re real friends. Not just Wednesday friends.
“What’re you doing this weekend?” he asks, chucking a pebble into the calm water.
“More tutoring,” I say, remembering that Angela is coming over with Faye to study. Thinking about Faye in my house makes my stomach feel unsettled. I hope she doesn’t mention Zach. I hope she moves on from both of us and finds some other girl to be friends with and some other guy to have a crush on.
“Can I come?” he asks, and I shake my head again, but this time I start to laugh.
“I can’t get rid of you,” I say.
He grins. “That’s the point.”
12
In addition to prayer group and regular Sunday service, Angela and Charlie are part of a youth group that meets at church every weekend. I know this because she usually asks if I want to attend. Sometimes I go, just to maintain appearances. It’s too late now to tell her I’m an atheist, so I have to keep up the façade somehow. But today, I just can’t make myself sit in a circle while some kid gives a sermon on something I don’t believe in, surrounded by people who know those little hymnbooks front to back. I definitely can’t tell Angela that church feels like a cult to me. Today’s excuse is that I have to prepare for our study session this afternoon, which is partially true. I like to live up to my reputation as a chemistry superstar, and spending the other night with Juan Marco Antonio and yesterday after school with Zach didn’t help.
But I can’t seem to concentrate in my bedroom. My eyes keep drifting to the bed, and my mind keeps flashing to the things I have done in it. Usually I do everything in my bed. Besides sleeping and having sex, I also study in it, watch movies, read books. I have a desk but barely use it. Kim used to chastise my attachment to my bed. “Don’t become one of those fatties who lay around all day and end up with bedsores,” she said once, when I was holed up in my room, poring over my notes before finals. Now, when she’s around to see a new guy come in or leave, her eyes flash with something resembling pride. Better a slut than a fatty with bedsores.
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