by Tom Leveen
I get on the mattress, on top of the same floral comforter she had the first time I was here. She rolls over again, now on her back, and scoots up a bit, a pillow under her head.
My entire body is shaking now, as if in the throes of frostbite. I crawl my way between her, above her, elbows locked.
I lower my head toward hers, looking straight into her eyes, so deep I can see my own reflection. For the first time, I see little flecks of gold and amber in her irises. Guess I’ve never been close enough to see them before.
So beautiful.
Becky blinks up at me. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
The volume in her voice startles me. Not yelling, but speaking in an everyday tone of voice, not all whispery and soft like Sydney does. Did.
“Like what?” It’s impossible to keep from panting.
“No, I mean … at all?”
Not knowing what else to do, how to answer, I bend my head down to, at long last, kiss Becky Webb.
She twists away.
“What—what’re you doing?” she says.
“… Kissing you.”
“Why?”
Why? I almost say it right back to her. Why? Why else? Isn’t it obvious? How can I possibly make it more clear that not only is my single biggest dream in life coming true, but that she is at the center of it?
Becky tilts her head against the pillow. The frown on her face slowly relaxes away, replaced by something else. I don’t know what. My arms are starting to shake so bad I’m afraid I’ll lose strength and crash into her. Not that this would be totally horrible—
“Wait,” Becky says.
So I don’t move. I can wait as long as she wants. “Okay,” I say. I lick my lips.
I watch Becky’s eyes begin to dart all over the place: the window, door, bathroom, my shoulder. Everywhere but my eyes. When her hands land lightly on my ribs, I almost scream.
“Stop.”
She says it so softly that it’s almost mouthed rather than spoken.
And once again—I almost scream.
“Just—don’t kiss me,” she says, not meeting my eyes. “Okay?”
Unbidden, I see Matthew. Ross. Scott.
I wonder how many more.
Part of me screams in agony, Go! Just do it, what are you waiting for, you idiot, go go go!
Becky’s gaze is still turned away from me, her eyes open, absently studying her desk chair. Like she’s doing math homework in her head.
“You’re beautiful,” I say. It just sort of pops out.
One of Becky’s eyes twitches. The corners of her mouth turn down, and her lower lip trembles ever so slightly as she looks back at me.
“What?” Becky says.
I stare into her eyes so hard that soon all I can see is the blackness of her pupils. I fall into them.
“… I love you.”
Becky’s head twists to one side again, but she keeps her eyes on me, lids narrowing to near slits. She slides to a sitting position, making me shuffle backward. She points shamelessly to my groin.
“That’s not love,” she says. “So you don’t get to say that. Not you. You fucking asshole, don’t you say that to me, don’t …”
Her eyes squeeze tight, breaking our gaze. A soft hiccup escapes her throat.
Then she wraps her arms around her belly and bends at the waist, her legs crossed, until her forehead meets the comforter, her shoulders shaking, soundless, naked. A moment later, a high vibrato sob pours out from her and chills my whole body.
Unthinking now, I scramble off the bed and pull up my boxers. I grab the royal-purple robe from the hook in the bathroom and take it over to her, draping it over her hunched form. Then I sit beside her, crossing my own legs too, and pull her against my body as tightly as I can.
I say nothing for ten full minutes as I hold Becky in my arms until they are cramped and rigid, but I will not let her go. I feel drops of tears, snot, and spit drip onto my bare ankle, and I don’t care. I will not move.
Eventually, she pulls away from me. Slowly. Wraps the robe around herself and scoots to one side. With the bottom edge of the robe, she wipes off her face, which is red and damp.
She picks at the thin white skin of her forearm. I move to face her. I will wait. I will do anything she wants. Leave, hold her again, die, live forever. She has only to speak it.
Which makes her next words a shock to my already spinning head.
“Everyone thinks I’m a slut.”
I shake my head quickly. “I don’t think that.” Which is an embellishment; many times the past couple years, that thought has crossed my mind, but only when I was mad, and I never let myself really believe it.
“Everyone else thinks I’m a slut,” Becky says.
“What do you think?”
She holds her breath for a moment.
“That’s way too deep for me right now.” She drags one sleeve of the robe beneath her nose and sniffles.
“Okay.”
The room gets quiet again. For a long time. I don’t care.
“When I was in eighth grade,” Becky says quietly, “I was friends with this guy Derek. Knew him from the club. We’d gone to school together since kindergarten. And one Saturday, we were at some kid’s house for a pool party. He took me into the pool house and asked me if I’d … do something. For him.”
She raises a shoulder, as if to hide behind it.
“So I did. Stuff I didn’t even know the names for back then. I didn’t want to do it.”
My hands clench. “Do you mean he …”
“No,” Becky says. “I mean, nothing that would hold up in court. I just didn’t say …”
She turns to look out her window—or at her window, rather, since the curtains are drawn and it’s dark outside anyway. The glare of headlights from a passing car slowly brighten and abruptly fade as she stares.
“I never say no.”
My stomach relaxes, but then gets too relaxed. Loose and full and rumbling. I don’t want to hear whatever she’s going to say next.
Somehow I have to.
“So, Derek went and told all his asshole buddies,” Becky says, sighing. “And they started coming up to me at school. You know. Asking me to do stuff with them. So I just did. One of them was in Drama One with me freshman year, and he must have told one of the guys, and it just … kept happening.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Tell them to stop?”
Her head swivels from her window to her closed door, eyes slitting, jaw set. And without a word she says volumes.
You stupid, arrogant pieces of shit, I think, willing the thought to travel into the hall, into her parents’ bedroom. Sorry, bedrooms, plural. You have no idea what you’re doing to her, do you?
“I don’t chase anyone down, you know,” Becky says suddenly, turning away from her door. “I don’t put notches in my headboard. I’m not always open.”
I wince, recalling Sydney’s words from earlier.
“That’s what they call me,” Becky adds. “Open for Business Becca. I don’t even go by Becca.”
“I know. I hate when people call you that. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Not like Mustardseed?”
“Not at all like Mustardseed.”
“Thanks. You’re sweet.”
It’s a phrase she’s used any number of times: you’re sweet. It always bugged me before. I knew she didn’t mean anything by it.
Does she now? I can’t tell. Does it matter? I don’t know.
Becky sniffles again, then gets up, grabs a tissue from the bathroom, blows her nose, and comes back out, leaning against the bathroom door frame.
“So, I guess this is pretty awkward,” she says, rolling her eyes a bit.
Strangely, I find myself smirking back at her. “Maybe.”
She takes a step, then stops. “What’s that?” she asks, bending down.
Before I can think to stop her, she’s plucked the folded magazine from my jeans.
“The Literar
y Quarterly Review,” she reads. “Is your werewolf story in here?”
Here we go. Or have we already gone?
“Not exactly,” I say. “A different one.”
“Yeah?” She thumbs through the pages.
“Page seventeen,” I say. My voice sounds like an echo bouncing down a dark tunnel.
Becky goes to the page and starts reading. I sit back against the headboard, letting my eyes close for a minute. When I open them, Becky’s expression is curious.
“This sounds like our school.”
“Pretty much. You might want to read the whole thing.” I’m way too out of it to attempt reading it to her.
Becky comes back to her side of the bed, sits, and reads the entire story all the way through. When she’s done, she closes the magazine. Her fingers curl around the edges, wrinkling the cover.
“What the hell is this?”
I blink rapidly, trying to catch up to her mood shift. “It’s a story … about …”
Her fingers graze the star tattoo, a detail I may have included in the story.
“Is this supposed to be me?”
“It’s based on you.…”
Becky throws the magazine. It hits my chest with a splash, paper-cutting my ribs.
Of all the possible responses I’d ever dreamed of getting after telling Becky how I felt, good and proper, this one never crossed my mind.
“Becky, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? Shit, fuck, Tyler! That isn’t me! That won’t ever be me!”
Feeling like the most melodramatic asshole in the known universe, I can’t help but say, “But it could be.”
“They’d never let me.”
“Who?”
“Anyone. Everyone! This is who I am now, I’m stuck with it, and …”
She hesitates, then pulls the magazine off my lap. She flips back to the first page of the story.
“… and it hasn’t made any difference.”
I stay quiet. Becky thumbs through the story again, not appearing to really read it, but absorbing it all the same.
“Tyler,” she says finally, “why the hell didn’t you say something before? If this is how you see me, why didn’t you say so?”
“I was too scared,” I say. “You’re one of my best friends. We hung out, we talked … I didn’t want to risk losing what I had. I thought you’d freak out.”
“So that’s why you said you loved me?”
“You mean you really didn’t know?”
Becky bites her lip. Still, even in this moment: so damn sexy.
“I mean, when Sydney told me to stay out of her way, I kind of wondered,” she says. “And when you looked all mad when you saw me and Ross, it crossed my mind, but … well, hell, man, you were with Sydney. All the time. You seemed happy. And you were cool with me, and talked to me, and I just figured it was because you were a nice guy. When did this happen?”
“The first day I saw you in the cafeteria. Freshman year. You sure you didn’t know? Because according to Sydney, everyone else on the planet did.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. You were reading Night Shift and eating animal crackers. Some of them, anyway, you were sort of separating them.…”
I can’t help but be amazed at the sudden ease with which this conversation is happening. Maybe it’s because in so many ways, physical and otherwise, we just don’t have anything to hide. I mean, I’m in my boxers.
“God,” Becky says. “That’s what Sydney was talking about? About staying out of her way?”
“It’s, uh, been a bit of a trip,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she goes. “I can see how it might be.” She reaches for my hand. Hers is soft. “Tyler, I’m sorry … you must’ve thought I was totally leading you on or something.”
“Actually, I never thought that,” I say. Believe it or not, it’s the very first time it’s ever occurred to me that she even could lead me on. “I was happy we got to be friends.”
She withdraws her hand. “Guess that’s sort of over with, huh?”
Panic strikes. “No!” I say. “No, hey. I don’t want that.”
“Look at me,” she says, flapping one corner of her robe. “How could you want to hang around me after this?”
I take a deep breath. “I already told you the answer to that a few minutes ago, I think. But I don’t want to say it again right now, because honestly, it kind of flipped you out.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t mind.”
Another silence.
“You should probably go,” Becky says. “It’s really late.”
“Do you want me to?” I ask. “Go, I mean?”
“I don’t know. Yes. But only because …”
I wait.
“I need to think about some stuff,” she finishes. “I’ve never even dated anyone before. I mean, ever. I’ve only ever …”
She trails off. We both know what she means. But what I’m really interested in is the whole “dated” thing.
“So … just to be clear … are you saying that we could try it? Um, dating, I mean?”
“I don’t know, Ty. I truly do not know.”
I consider this. It’s not a no, at any rate. Maybe that’s enough.
And maybe now’s not the time anyway.
As I think about the expression on her face tonight, lying beneath me—think about her face when Matthew was doing his thing to her, the look she gave Scott in the hallway—she wasn’t into it. Like she said, she let people do things to her, didn’t stop them, never said no.
I don’t want to be with her like that.
Plus, there’s Sydney. My recently ex’d girlfriend. Oh, holy hell, I really did screw her over. It’s not a news flash, this little epiphany, but now that there’s a glimmer of hope with Becky, I don’t need to make things worse by showing up at school with a new girlfriend. Even if it is the one I’ve been dreaming about.
I get off Becky’s bed and start pulling my clothes back on. When I’m done, I take a wandering look around her room, not sure what to do next.
“So … can I call you tomorrow?” I ask.
“Yes,” Becky says quietly.
“All right.” I pat my pockets, make sure I have everything. “And I won’t say anything,” I add. “About … anything.”
She smiles, her eyes tired. “I know.”
I want to hug her again, but I don’t. I move toward her door. When my hand falls on the knob, her voice stops me.
“Sparky?”
“Yeah?”
Becky seems to be searching for words. When they come, they sting.
“This … didn’t mean anything,” she says carefully. “What I did. Well, tried to do. It wasn’t about you. I don’t know if I can be anything but friends with you. If you’re serious about what you said—how you feel—then I have to tell you that right now.”
I shock the hell out of myself by saying, “You might change your mind.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Then that would suck for me,” I say. “But I can’t not hang out with you. Tried it. It doesn’t work.”
“What if I hurt you?”
“You already hurt me. No, I’m sorry, I take that back. I already hurt myself. It’s okay.”
She watches me carefully, and I return her gaze without a flinch. Slowly, she gets up off the bed and comes over to me. Puts her hands on my chest. Leans up.
Kisses me. Once.
Her breath glides over my own, eddies and spins between us. Her lips stun me with their shape, how they blend into mine. I can’t stop myself from gently biting her lower lip as she slowly pulls away.
Becky takes a step back, appearing to think over what she just did. Me, I’m floating, my head bouncing around her ceiling like an errant helium party balloon. I can’t tell if my heart has stopped or is beating so fast I just can’t feel it anymore.
“I’ve never done that before,” she says softly. She gi
ves a short laugh. “My god, Sparky. You were my first kiss.”
And, well, the hell with it. I grab the belt of her robe and pull her back, kissing her again. Longer. Not too hard. Not too soft.
Then I let her go. She stares up at me, eyes wide.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mustardseed,” I say.
“Okay,” she whispers.
I let myself out, walking softly through the house and closing the front door as gently as possible.
Just as I’m unlocking my car door, I see something shoved beneath the windshield wiper.
The Literary Quarterly Review.
I pull the magazine off the windshield and turn to my story. There’s a pink sticky note pasted below the title.
Thought you might want this back. Take care.
The note, written in Sydney’s careful script, is signed Pink Floyd. With a smiley face.
She gave it back. Didn’t destroy it, didn’t throw it in my face. Just gave it back.
At first, I’m grateful. Of course I wanted it back.
And, of course, she knew exactly where to find me. The headlights I saw in Becky’s window belonged to a certain white Sentra. Suddenly, I’m not quite so grateful. I spend one second being pissed at Sydney, but only one second. After that, I’m just an asshole, plain and simple.
Off to the side, I see Becky’s bedroom light go out. I whisper good night and get into my car, dropping the copy of LQR on the seat beside me.
“I’m sorry,” I say out loud. Mostly to Sydney. I know it’s not enough. Even if … even when I talk to Sydney again, it won’t be enough. But I have to say it anyway.
“I kissed Becky Webb,” I say out loud. To see how it sounds. And even though it was what I always wanted, even though it was as sweet as in my dreams, I never wanted it to happen like this.
I held her as she cried.
I say it only in my head. Because I wish now I hadn’t needed to. I wish none of this had happened.
My character Becky is gone forever. Burned out of existence just as quickly as if Sydney had set fire to the magazine. Or is it that she never did exist?