by Gabi Moore
He shrugged and returned his gaze to his book. Studying together was no big deal for us. David would come to my house or I would go to his, and we’d prep for exams or do our assignments in silence together. Next year, when college started, these moments might be more difficult to coordinate, so part of me relished hanging out like this now, while we still could. Something was wrong, though.
“Everything ok?” I asked.
“Violet, you asked me that five minutes ago, and my answer is the same as it was five minutes ago. There’s nothing wrong, ok?”
He didn’t even make eye contact. This was bad. I slammed my biology textbook shut, perhaps a little too dramatically. He looked up at me again.
The trouble with finding your soul mate, and I say this without any irony, is that you don’t really get too much practice having mature and respectful fights. David and I just didn’t fight. We didn’t really know how. Which made him sulking right now extra inconvenient.
“Is this about before? About what I said?” I asked him, frustrated that no amount of staring at the top of his dusty blond head could make him look at me. He sighed deeply and closed his books too, perhaps with not enough drama
“If you want to talk about it again, fine,” he said, “but there’s no point. You don’t want to. Cool. I got it. I won’t beg.”
“I don’t want you to beg.”
“Fine. And I’m not going to. What I want is for you to want to …and you don’t.”
“That’s not true. I’m perfectly happy to do whatever it takes to-”
“Ok, lets do it then.”
“But—”
“See? Call it what you like, that sounds like a no to me.”
Lately, we hadn’t been agreeing much on what did and didn’t count as sex. We had had this disagreement at least four times in the last six months alone. He wanted oral sex, and me …well let’s just say I felt that that would a slope that was somewhat, uh, slippery.
“David, I’ve explained this to you, it’s not saying no to you at all, believe me, I want to as much as you do…”
“Then let’s do it.”
“But …can’t we just kiss?”
“Just?” He shot an accusatory eyebrow at me.
He was right. It felt rotten offering him a kiss as some sort of consolation prize.
I had always scoffed inwardly at girls who slept with boys just to win a little more of their attention, or moved faster than they wanted to just to keep an impatient guy from leaving. While the girls at our school were living out epic sagas of love and rejection in the course of a single evening of hooking up, while they courted and consummated and broke up literally overnight, I admit I always felt a little smug and that I was somehow immune. That I was on a different, more sophisticated timeline. But I looked at him again, and there was no denying it: he was getting impatient with me. Even my timeline had its limits, apparently.
In the story of whimsy and romance I had already written for both of us, I had never foreseen this outcome, stupid as that may sound to some of you. Our promise was always something that made me feel safe and sure. Now, my boyfriend was hungry and irritable, and our promise hung there on the tree like a fruit that might rot and be inedible if left even for a day longer.
A very ugly thought jumped into my mind – what if David and I became bored of each other? What if the promise of things to come wasn’t enough to fix things right here in the moment? I opened my book and tried to study again. ‘Phosphorylation’ suddenly seemed like a different word, now. An ugly, threatening word. Like the rustling of veils about to be pulled off.
Chapter 3
“Most girls swallow, everybody knows that,” she said.
The other girls in my group of friends immediately nodded as if yes, they did of course know that, even though I could tell that many of them hadn’t considered this fact at all till Jess mentioned it.
“And if he really likes the girl, his cum won’t taste so bad, that’s a fact,” she carried on.
This last bit proved to be too much; Jess might be the most “experienced” girl in our group, but even she had trouble convincing us of some things.
“That doesn’t make sense Jess. Like, his cum actually changes depending on how much he likes the girl?”
Lizzy was the only other virgin in our group, besides me, but I like to think she was definitely the most clueless of us all. We didn’t know much, but we had managed to figure out a lot about the mysteries of sex right there on the lawn after school.
“Exactly. I read it somewhere. He produces, like, more sugars in there if he likes the girl.”
“Bullshit” I said.
“Nah, it’s true.” Jess scowled at me, disappointed that I wasn’t fully appreciating that she had read it somewhere and that was the end of it. It was a romantic idea, sure, but I hated her having anything to do with it.
“So, like, if he tastes bad and then all of a sudden he tastes good, then you know he’s falling in love with you.”
I laughed. As if the time to determine whether a boy loved you or not was after his dick was already in your mouth.
“Maybe if it tastes good and then suddenly doesn’t, that’s a sign that he’s cheating or he’s into some other girl.”
Now, I like a good bit of whimsy myself, but never, I repeat never underestimate your standard teen girl’s endless ability to look for “signs”. There are signs that he likes you, signs that he doesn’t, omens in the way he kisses and secret symbols in the way he texts, and whether he does it 5 minutes after he reads your text or 15 can spell out a whole world of secrets and insinuations. Teen girls are experts at reading the hidden meanings in everything, especially the hidden meanings that don’t technically exist. The more direct methods elude us. Just talking to the damn guy, for example.
“Anyway, all boys cheat eventually, everybody knows that” Jess continued. Her sermons about what the human male did and why seemed suspiciously full of information that everybody already knew.
“That’s not true, not all boys cheat” I said, already deciding that I was done with idle chit chat for the afternoon. Surprisingly, they all turned to look at me with something like pity on their faces.
“Oh my god, you guys, what?” I said.
Jess pouted and put her hand on my knee.
“Violet, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s even worse in your case. All boys cheat eventually, but it’ll happen way sooner if you’re, you know…”
“David and I are waiting. We both want to wait,” I said, standing up off the grass to leave.
“Sure, of course. Hey, you’d be the right one to test this out for us – does his cum always taste the same or does it change ever?”
I’m sure she thought she was helping, but the conversation had taken a weird turn. My cheeks flushed a little and I didn’t respond.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. You guys don’t even…?”
I didn’t see why the universe was so hell-bent on getting me to fellate someone so desperately, but I was getting sick of it. I picked up my bag, cheeks feeling very hot all of a sudden.
“I’ll see you guys later” I said to the group, and walked off quickly.
They were wrong, of course, about everything, but at that moment, that didn’t strictly seem relevant.
Chapter 4
This is where the trouble starts.
As it turns out, there are slippery slopes all around, and I went home that afternoon and fell down one myself, badly.
I was messing around on my phone, trying to ignore a tiny niggle in my brain that just wouldn’t keep quiet. I thought about David and his lovely gentle eyes and saintly patience and the way he could always help when I didn’t understand my chemistry. I thought about his soft, dry voice and how funny he was when he did a Russian accent and how his spelling was so bad but in such a cute way.
But curling all around this lovely image of him was something threatening; an amorphous blob of other girls, swooping in on
him and carrying him off from me.
I know, I was being pathetic.
But I couldn’t stop. Every picture on Facebook was a possible mug shot of the adulteress who could any moment descend on my life and pluck away my boyfriend. I looked into the faces of pretty girls on vacations, random snaps, nothing sinister you’d think, but I looked at the arch of their eyebrows or the way they held themselves and wondered, is this a girl who could give him what he really wanted? What about this one?
Cheating happens all the time, everybody knows that. And it could begin with a simple smile, just like this one, or a girl in a sundress in a picture like this. That’s all. I looked at the men, too. Where they all smiling liars? Had they all secretly cheated? Were they all just one hot-enough girl away from doing so?
I was putting myself in a bad mood. I thought of David again, how we had never needed any formal contract; our promise was just already there, in all the little gifts, all our secret confessions, our long walks, how I could seemingly fold the whole of my body into his when we napped together. He would never cheat. Not my David.
I sent him a message. An easy, frivolous message:
Hello :) mwah! Enjoying the sunshine?
Then I sat and waited. For 19 whole minutes, he didn’t reply. By the time the twentieth minute rolled by, I was so upset I had devised and fleshed out the details of a plan that would, once and for all, allow me to get to the root of whether all boys do in fact cheat eventually.
My biology homework sat neglected on the table and I typed furiously.
First I made a new Gmail account, using the name of a distant family friend of his I had met once but who he had fallen out with many years before. I found a dead Twitter account of hers and carefully cut and pasted a little avatar profile picture from one of her tweets. From this new account in her name, I started a new email. “Hi! It’s been such a long time!” and then put his email into the recipient field.
Then I sat back and looked, the full gravity of what I was doing apparent to me all at once. In case you were wondering, yes, it is what it looks like. I was writing an email to my boyfriend, pretending to be another girl.
My mind worked for a few moments, trying to poke possible holes in my plan, places where I could be caught and the experiment would be ruined. I thought I was thinking things through carefully at the time, but in truth I had no idea where I was going with it. I imagined that the only way to settle the thing once and for all would be to catch him red handed; to lay a trap and know, for sure, that he would step around it, and keep the promise he made to me.
Now, before we go any further, I just want to say that I know you’re judging me right now.
You’re thinking I’m insecure, maybe, or a little crazy, or manipulative. There isn’t a name I didn’t call myself in the hours after I created that account, believe me. But it’s hard to explain just how much this doubt had a hold on me, and just how desperate I was to disprove it. I didn’t have high standards for boys, I had high standards for life; the idea that something as ugly as infidelity could exist in my world seemed to justify the extremes I was going to.
See, you need to understand: I didn’t want to catch him doing anything. I wanted to prove to myself that even if someone tempted him, he would never dream of breaking my trust. Really, you have to believe me when I say that.
Two hours had passed since my message and he still hadn’t yet replied. Usually, David responded to messages within a few minutes, especially at this time of day. We weren’t big texters, but I can honestly say that he never dawdled, never made me wait for a response.
Already deeply suspicious, I took his silence as a reply on its own, a reply from the gods themselves, an omen that everything I was worried about was in fact going to come true (didn’t I tell you teenage girls can get carried away with this kind of thing?).
During those two hours I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I sat with the sickening sensation growing in me that I was about to do something that couldn’t be undone. When he didn’t reply, I took it as my first bit of “proof”.
I sat down again and began to compose a short email.
Hi!
It’s been such a long time. Sorry about emailing, I’m not on Facebook anymore, don’t know if you noticed :) I thought of you the other day and wondered how you were doing. You must be finishing up school this year right? It would be great to catch up.
Annie :)
I read it through again and again. I looked at the innocent “Annie :)” and changed it to “Annie ;)” and then looked again.
Yes, there was no point being subtle. A winking face would be the perfect hook, just the right first breadcrumb. Of course, I didn’t want to blow my cover, and ultimately, any cheateriness would have to come from him, so I couldn’t lay things on the table just like that. I would have to strike a fine balance – set the scene for cheating, and see if he walked into it and played the part.
He still hadn’t replied.
I hit send on the email and imagined it shooting off into the ether. I wouldn’t have admitted it to myself then, but even by that point I was a little curious, maybe even a little excited to see what it would feel like to play another girl. To flirt with him, but as someone else.
I sat back in my chair, and waited.
Chapter 5
It was a school night, like they almost all are, and we were both curled up on the sofa, watching comedy shows.
I loved these moments; he was affectionately rubbing his bare feet against mine, and I was tucked into the warm space between his neck and shoulders. He was in a cheerful mood that day, and we had chatted earlier that day at school about him getting accepted into his first choice of college. I was a year beneath him, and this new development had been expected, yet was still strange now that it had actually come. I would join him later, of course, and nothing would change between us, but still.
Engrossed in the show, he stroked a distracted hand up and all the way down my back. We had never had sex, sure, but in many ways, his body was completely and utterly familiar to me. As familiar to me as my own, in fact.
His body was a friendly landscape, one where each of the features was lovable because it belonged to him: the pair of raised moles just hidden in his hairline on the left side of his head, his fingers that were stubby but gentle, nails always a little chewed; the way he always felt so much warmer than me; the freckle on his ankle; that secret, masculine smell of his collarbone; the way he would always pause after a kiss, as though his lips always took a little longer to make sense of things than the rest of him.
Of course, I was less familiar with other parts of him. I had seen him naked only once, and then only by accident, and I had quickly fumbled to shield my eyes, as though the sight of it would break some kind of delicate spell.
It was moments like these, when his mom was doing a late shift and we had some time to ourselves, that his body came the closest to mine. We had often slept beside one another, both in our underwear. I studiously ignored how hard he would get, and he pretended not to catch a faint trace of my scent as we sealed ourselves in the bed like it was our own private envelope.
“Sorry about yesterday. I was being an ass. I don’t want you to do any of that if you’re not ready. Seriously,” he said, still stroking my back.
I squeezed him tighter. This would have been the perfect moment were it not for the fact that now, I felt guilty as hell.
We watched on in silence. His phone bleeped and he took a few moments to examine it, answer a few texts and put it aside again. Had he read “my” email yet? Obviously he had. I had sent it yesterday evening already, which means he had by now had almost 24 full hours to respond. He seemed just the same. I wondered if cheating, before the big Jerry Springer-style reveal at the end, can be detected in the body somewhere. Did the flesh have its own ways of revealing the truth?
I nestled my head further into him, inhaling his smell and finding that everything was as it had always been. Hm.
&
nbsp; Here’s something you learn when you turn into a jealous wreck: the worst thing you can encounter is something that seems totally, 100% legit and innocent. Why? Because that could mean that your partner is even more devious, even more clever than you thought. It’s a weird place to be. I got up to go to the bathroom and sat there for a while, contemplating at what moment I could count myself as in the wrong, when something strange happened: he replied. Right then.
I stared at my phone, a little stunned. Had he waited for me to leave the room before he replied? My mind whirred. Did that count as deceptive? Of course not, silly. It’s polite, if anything. Right? Or does it show a certain level of premeditation?
Sitting there perched on the toilet seat like an idiot, I opened the email and read it about 4000 times before tearing my eyes away.
Hi Annie!
Yeah it’s been a long time. Can’t remember the last time I emailed someone to be honest :) Really glad to hear from you again though. Are you still seeing that guy? I think his name was Anthony…
xxx
D
I pored over this like it was a precious artifact dug out from the side of a mountain. I was transfixed, staring at each and every word, none of which were technically meant for my eyes. I was in some parallel universe now, one that was cold and quiet and smelled of Body Shop shower gel, and here before me was the second breadcrumb, and I was terrified. What had I been expecting anyway?
He had totally fallen for it and didn’t suspect a thing. I weighed up the “evidence” so far. He had matched Annie’s casual tone, and had been casual and curt; but then he was “really glad” to hear from her, which gave me pause, and then the last bit made me think, why would he be concerned about whether she still had a boyfriend or not?
Definitely, this was the most curious element to my new artifact. After all, he could have asked her about anything in the world, but he was curious, of all things, to know if she was single. The xxx was a weird touch too, and the D seemed overly familiar. Or did it? I shoved my phone in my pocket. I was being a jealous bitch, of course, and none of this meant anything. Obviously.