The issue of my shirt is more complicated. He likes to slide his hands underneath it, his fingertips feeling their way along the edge of my bra, and then over the edge, and then under it. I imagine us there, perfect and naked on his bed all the time, except that, of course, I’m not Perfect. I really am Not Perfect, and I don’t want him to see that I’m Not and go find someone else who Is. The thing is, as long as he can actually touch underneath anything he wants to move aside, he is happy. I wear extremely stretchy underwear on purpose. I am happy as hell.
And he says, “Hey, you want to go to the beach?”
I say, “Like the beach beach? Like now? You want to surf?”
“Like the beach house,” Billy says. “You want to go right now?”
And I say, “Yeah, Nash. I do.” And I do. I do. I so so do.
Billy drives us to the end of Sunset, speeding around the curves, and onto the Pacific Coast Highway. It is sunset and the sky is pink and orange, orange flames reflected in the water just off the edge of the highway. The beach is just a little strip of sand with the tide pounding over the traffic noise, pounding in my ears.
And it feels as if after waiting forever, waiting my whole life sort of bored and ready for something else, I am finally getting my something. It is as if it is Billy’s sunset and he is feeding it to me with a big spoon. The ocean, too, all blue and roiling: mine. My day, my spoonful of sunset, my boyfriend, finally my boyfriend, and my decision.
Why not?
Billy and the Beemer and the ride up the coast. His parents’ beach house by the water near Point Dume with the glass doors open to the dark Pacific and the first stars and the big, white rising moon.
Mine.
We pull into the garage, and Billy turns off the car and gets out and opens my door. He kisses my neck.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “You’re very good at that, Nash.”
“You sure?” he says, pulling away. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty damn sure,” I say, and he does it some more, leaning over the car, leaning into the front seat.
It is getting dark. I am almost sure I could do it in the dark.
“We should celebrate,” Billy says, unlocking the door and taking me into the house with still enough light to see the ocean and the foam where the waves hit the beach. “Would the lady care for champagne?”
Champagne. All right, it’s a total cliché, but I completely don’t care. He looks so good and he tastes so salty. He gets two champagne flutes and he carries them upside down between his fingers and the champagne bottle in the other hand, up to the bedroom with its white bed and its pale-green comforter, silky and sweet-smelling.
There is the bite of the champagne, all those little bubbles, all that sweet liquid, and my camisole over my head. Billy’s body, which is pretty much perfect, and me. Billy is looking down at me, the lamplight shining off his pale, blond hair, his arms reaching for me, his fingers tracing my eyebrows and the edges of my face down the sides of my neck and across my collarbone.
And I reach over toward the lamp, to turn it off, so the bed will be a soft, dark nest for us, but he holds my wrist.
And he says, “Gabby, you’re so beautiful.” He is looking right at me in the yellow lamplight, he is seeing me in the yellow light, he is sliding my jeans down over my hips and I am arching my back and this time, I don’t distract him with some fun alternative. This time, it is both of us, together. This time, I don’t say stop it.
There it is, and I like it. He says yes and I say yes and he says yes and I say yes, and I just go with him, like he is taking care of me. The condom, obviously. I giggle at it and he looks at me and I shut up and go with it some more. And I say, “You are really good at this.”
And he says, “Beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
And that is all it takes.
I had never been beautiful before this moment, but now I am. I am beautiful because Billy says I am beautiful. I am beautiful because Billy gave me that, and I am still beautiful from that, even now, underneath all this makeup, after everything, sort of.
I am beautiful, I am happy. Basically, disgustingly icky as they are, if we could have turned into Andie and Andy right then, I would have signed up for it. Right then, before I get my camisole back on even, before I comb my hair in Billy’s parents’ bathroom.
I feel like a love-crazed puppy, all wagging its tail and its tongue hanging out of its mouth, all love me love me love me. I want to lie around on the green comforter, just kissing him and looking at him and holding his face for days, not going to school, not going home, nothing. To hell with everything but him, just to be with him, on the bed in the beach house. Just clinging to Billy Nash, inventor of my beautiful.
But he doesn’t say, “I love you.”
And in the throes of my decision, when I am drunk and a virgin, I don’t care.
And then, when I am beautiful and drunk and completely in love with Billy Nash, I do.
Maybe I should have said it. Maybe I should have grabbed him and told him: I love you forever. I’ll do anything for you. I swear to God, nothing else matters. Maybe everything else would have turned out differently if I’d just told him and asked him and he’d told me one way or the other.
The thing is, I am not a complete moron. I know what every other halfway normal girl in the U.S.A. who ever watches TV or reads Seventeen knows: Cling to Gorgeous Hot Boy and you’re dead in the water.
Even if you Do It, afterward, if you act like you want him too much or you need him just a little or you think he’s perfect, unless you’re Andie from Cute World with a free pass from God to worship Andy Kaplan right out in the open and Kaps still worships you back and gives you Hello Kitty earrings, the guy will run out the door and he’ll never even look back. Even if you’re beautiful. Even if you love him.
Especially if you love him.
And I say to myself in half-crazed affirmation, Gabby, you are just so secure and mature and wonderful. You don’t need him to tell you what you already (kind of) know. You are just the most secure and mature and wonderful girl since Coke in a glass bottle, so if you want to keep this going, you’d better just back the hell off.
Because: Everybody knows that no matter how much you need to talk to Gorgeous Hot Boy, if you phone him fourteen times between ten and ten thirty p.m., by the time he gets to the third message, he’ll hate you, and by message number fourteen, his mother will have a restraining order taken out against you and you’ll be in court-ordered Stalker Recovery Twelve Step before you even have time to make call number fifteen.
So I don’t call him. I don’t even try to cuddle. Not even.
So I don’t presume to follow Billy around or hang out next to him on Monday at school, curved into his side, hooking my fingers through his empty belt loops. Not me. I stumble around watching for him, longing for him. All I can think about is how his body feels, smooth and naked and a little bit damp, pressed up against me. And when he passes me, when I am close to him, the faintly salty smell of him fills me up.
“Hey, Gabs,” he says in the cafeteria the Tuesday after that Sunday in the beach house. “Don’t you like me anymore?”
I am shaking. I am afraid I’m going to drop my tray.
“What do you think, Nash?” I say as casually as possible under the circumstances. “You think you own me now or something?” Thinking: Own me own me own me.
Billy reaches over and he put his fingers through the hair behind my ear. “Yeah,” he says into my ear. “Oh yeah, I own you now.”
XVIII
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SECRETLY, CONSTANTLY wanting Billy to own me and Billy taking actual possession is that now he just assumes I’ll be there, like his wallet and the keys in his front pocket.
It feels safe in there, like I am some indispensable but ordinary thing he can’t do without, because who doesn’t need pocket change and their school library Xerox card and gum? Who doesn’t miss that ordinary, indispensable stuff if they can’t find it? He would look up and there
I would be, the everyday, always-there girlfriend.
I am Billy Nash’s girlfriend and even when he doesn’t have his hands on me, I am still her.
It’s perfect.
In my psychology elective, which is a lot less interesting than you’d expect, we are studying the minds of babies, how when you put their toy behind a barrier so they can’t see it, they supposedly forget all about it and don’t even know it exists anymore. By Thanksgiving, though, I am pretty sure that even when Billy is at the Four Seasons in Maui and I am sitting at my Aunt Adrienne’s country club in La Jolla eating dried-out, room-temperature turkey because being associated with my mother’s side of the family is the kiss of death for edible food, listening to my father and my uncle complain about the weakness of the watered-down mixed drinks, even separated by three thousand miles of blue sky, I am still Billy’s girlfriend.
I have my cell phone in my lap under the table and he texts me and says so.
Billy: If I can’t get out of this room and onto a
surfboard soon I’m going to throw a coconut
Gabs: Isn’t it like 7 a.m. there? Y r u up?
Billy: Forced family bonding. Caitlyn wants to
teach for America. Grandfather thinks she’s a
commie whore
Gabs: Isn’t Agnes a big democrat?
Billy: Don’t tell grandfather that. Ok Caitlyn’s about to
throw tropical fruit
Gabs: Does throwing things run in ur family?
Billy: Yeah well I’m the one with the arm
Gabs: Ur Thanksgiving sounds a lot more
entertaining than mine
Billy: This isn’t Thanksgiving. This is breakfast.
Gotta get out of here before they move on to me
Gabs:?
Billy: Commie whore’s not on probation. I am.
Jesus here it comes
Gabs: Duck
Billy: Ag says teach for America looks good for law
school. This should b good for 10 more minutes
Gabs: Can’t u stretch out T for A until they finish
eating and bounce?
Billy: Can’t open mouth except to eat.
Instructions from on high. Have to shut up
and eat until Monday
Gabs: Yowza.
Billy: That’s my line G. Wish u and me were on the
beach. Need gf fix.
Gabs: Me too.
Billy: What r u wearing?
Gabs: Jesus nash it’s family Thanksgiving. I’m wearing
a silk dress and pearls.
Billy: A boy can always hope
Gabs: xx
Billy: U know it
By the middle of December, I know which Christmas parties we are going to, and where we are going to be on New Year’s Eve. (At Andy Kaplan’s father’s party with Hell’s Gate providing the music and Andy’s latest stepmother wearing a dress held on by denture cream.)
There we are, on the terrace by Andy’s pool, dancing to Hell’s Gate and wondering how much punishment the denture cream can take.
“Andy, that is so not nice to say!” Andie says. “That dress is by Helen Chang. It’s pretty, don’t you think?”
“Too bad part of it went missing,” Andy says. “Maybe Helen freaking Chang gave her a discount on a partial dress.”
“Come on, Kaps,” Billy says. “The woman will be gone by summer. I give her six months on the outside. They’ll be in court by Labor Day.”
“Well, at least she won’t have much to pack,” I say.
Andy is laughing so hard he snorts vodka out his nostrils and puts his arm around me.
“I praise the day Benitez jerked off Hank Peterson,” he says.
“What?”
Billy says, “Shut up, Andy.” But Andy is too drunk to shut up.
“When Benitez got friendly with Hank Peterson at Hibbert’s party and Billy broke up with the bitch and we got you.”
Billy says, “Will you shut up?”
Andie, seeing the possibility of impending drama, says, “All he’s saying is that Gabby’s really nice. That’s all. Gabs is a really nice girlfriend.”
Billy shakes his head and takes Andy’s arm off my shoulder which results in Andy, who is not only too drunk to shut up but apparently also too drunk to stand up without assistance, being held up by Andie and a Doric column that is just poking up out of the pool deck looking decorative, and takes me into the pool house. Billy looks righteously pissed off.
“I am a really nice girlfriend,” I say, leaning my face into his tight, pissed-off neck.
“I know, Baby,” he says. “You don’t need to listen to that shit.”
I don’t know what to say, but fortunately, it isn’t necessary to say much, and even though I had been really looking forward to kissing him exactly at midnight, I don’t even notice when midnight comes.
So here I lie, in the land of infinite gray space, hooked up to tubes of liquid and whirring machinery in a hospital gown, and who owns me now?
part two
XIX
AN ORDINARY MIDNIGHT IN THE HOSPITAL IS LESS festive and a lot less eventful. The fluorescent light is still on when the hands on the green, glowing clock over the door click together for a moment until, quivering, the second hand sweeps by.
Vivian has left the room and gone home on the thankless quest for beauty sleep. I have progressed to the point that I can reach over and pick up the phone without throwing up or falling off the electric bed, big whoop, but the sides are locked in their full upright position 100% of the time. If I want to get out of that bed, I have to buzz the nurse.
I am so bored, I am thinking about pressing the buzzer. I am thinking about reaching over and phoning some random person, some late-night wrong number, just to hear a voice.
When Billy calls.
It is such a shock, it is so hard to breathe, that it hits me that in the back of my so-called mind, I really was hanging onto the idea that he was actually dead, that I actually killed him, the eucalyptus tree crushed him, only everyone is keeping it from me, like mirrors and friends.
“Babe,” he says. “Are you alone?”
“Yes.” Tears start pouring down my cheeks and rolling into my ears and soaking the pillow behind my head. “God, Billy, where are you?”
Billy says, “Shhhhhh, Gabs, don’t say my name.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you right now.”
I have this sudden reprise of the Agnes Nash vision, the one with the horns and the pitchfork and the little cloven hooves.
“Jesus, Billy,” I say. “I know Agnes hates me, but I’m in the hospital. My head got smashed. Aren’t you even allowed to show up and go ‘hey, get well soon’ and be somewhat polite?” I am, I admit, somewhat shouting by then, unhinged, I guess, by the mashed head and the weird drugs in the drip bags and my general state of brainlessness.
“Shhhh, poor baby girl, poor Gabs,” Billy whispers in his beautiful, gravelly voice. “Are you all right?”
“No. I’m not all right. I look like an ad for fastening your seat belt and I can’t even believe this! You aren’t supposed to talk to me! Your mom—”
You could hear Billy’s jaw snapping shut, like it does when he is trying to gain control over things so dire that a person just can’t get through them with his mouth hanging open.
“It’s not my mom,” he says. And in the three-second pause I think: Oh my God, if it’s not Agnes, it’s HIM. He’s calling to break up with me. Probably he isn’t here because he already broke up with me and I’m such an idiot I didn’t notice. My life is officially over.
“It’s my probation,” he says. “You know how I’m not supposed to drink or be around drinking or go to parties with drinking, right? This is major. Major like I could go to jail. I have to lie low until we see how this shakes out.”
No doubt my mouth would have snapped shut too had any part of my body been capable of fast action, if there was one single part of me that
didn’t go mushy and stupid as soon as I heard Billy Nash breathe.
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“I could end up in really deep shit here, Gabs. I have to be careful.”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t you talk to me?”
“Gabby, you’re the one they caught. With the car.”
“So?”
“Babe. I am on serious probation and my PO could yank it. Remember? I can’t go near drinking. Just thinking about you violates half my conditions of probation.”
“Billy—”
“Come on. The underage person I was consuming alcohol with way after six p.m. outside my domicile when I was supposed to be serving bedtime snacks to the homeless downtown and then driving straight home. I’m dead. And what happened to the Beemer was not in compliance with the California motor vehicle code either.”
“You think?” And I know which condition of probation it is, too, it’s Condition #6, the one about associating with minors who use alcohol and a vast array of legal and illegal and semi-legal drugs. The one we joked about because it leaves out crack whores, street corner pushers, and the entire Cali drug cartel as long as the whores, pushers, and international drug lords are over twenty-one.
Where It Began Page 8