“Your sister,” I said. “She’s in the living room.”
“She is playing Animal Jam,” he said.
“This isn’t romantic,” I said. “The bathroom.”
I was lost and I knew it.
“No,” Ian said, still pressed against me. “But it’s hot.”
“We haven’t gone on a date.”
“You wanna go on a date?”
“Maybe,” I said. I felt my mouth open into a moan that I held back. “Yes.”
“I’ll take you on a date,” Ian said. “Later, tonight. I’ll take you to the shooting range.”
“Okay,” I said.
I could hear the music from Amelia’s computer game in the living room.
“Could we go into a bedroom?” I asked Ian.
“No,” Ian said. “I want you right now.”
He slid his finger inside me. My underwear was still on the floor. I was not objecting. I leaned back against the sink, grounding my feet on the ceramic tiles.
“Birth control,” I said.
Ian had a condom in his bathing suit pocket. He ripped it open, pulled down his bathing suit, put it on. No awkward fumbling. My breathing was shallow. He pushed himself into me. The angle seemed impossible and it worked, like he was good at this, like he had something to teach me. I had never had sex standing up. My hips were pressed into the ceramic sink, my knees bent.
“Oh my God,” I said.
Ian shifted, pushed in deeper.
“That feels good,” I said.
“Of course it does,” he said.
I was fucking Ian Thornton in the family bathroom on a Friday afternoon.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Oh.”
I had always thought it was dumb, in movies, when people said this. Oh my God. Those were the words that came out of my mouth. Ian’s eyes were open, his gaze penetrating me, like his penis, almost as if he could go straight through me.
“Ian, Rachel,” Amelia called out from the other side of the bathroom door. “Where are you? I’m bored. I want to go swimming.”
“Shut up,” Ian yelled, still looking into my eyes. He kept on fucking me. I prayed for Amelia to go away. I had my hands on Ian’s ass now, pressing him in deeper. Again and again. My legs started slipping and I was going to fall but Ian pushed me back up. “Not yet,” he said. “Stay with me.”
Amelia was knocking on the bathroom door, banging on it with her fists. Ian was thrusting again. Somehow, it seemed even sexier, heightened, wrong, Amelia just outside, about to discover us. This was all so wrong. The door wasn’t locked. She could burst in and catch us.
“Now,” Ian said.
He came. I came with him. We came together. His hands were caught in my hair. He tugged through a knot to get his fingers loose. “Ow,” I said. Was this all I had ever wanted? Sex in a small bathroom with a guy I barely knew. No. This wasn’t it. I was confused. Ian pulled out of me and I sank down to the floor. I felt clammy all over, covered in sweat and out of breath. I reached out for Ian, wanting him to sit with me, hold me even.
But Amelia was still there, pounding on the bathroom door. Somehow, I had tuned her out. Either that or she had stopped knocking. Probably she had heard us. How could she have not? Maybe she wouldn’t know what it was. She was just a kid. I wondered how I would be able to look her in the eye, be her counselor after this. Ian pulled up his swimsuit, calm, unruffled even. Blond. Perfect. He was not someone I would ordinarily talk to.
“I’ll meet you outside.”
I blinked.
“You could use a swim.”
Ian blinked. He had thrown the used condom in the trash, there for anyone to see. Amelia. His mother. His father. I reached for the toilet paper and wiped myself again. I got more and covered the condom. I stood up and splashed cold water on my face and then I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked different. Was that even possible? But I did. I looked like I’d had sex. And I was grinning. I really was. My God. Even if I did not exactly like him. Ian Thornton.
“Look at you,” I said to the mirror.
My heart had stopped racing. Slowly, I was coming down. I reached for my bathing suit. My mother had bought it for me. It was purple. It was plain, unflattering, a bathing suit perfect for my mother, nothing that I would ever pick for myself, but I needed bathing suits and I hated shopping so I wore it.
“Come on, Rachel!” Ian yelled. “What is taking you so long? Hurry up.”
I blinked. Ian wanted me. I had to hurry up. I put on my suit and rushed outside to join Amelia and Ian. They were already walking down the rocky beach.
“There she is,” Ian said. “Rachel.”
I smiled.
He knew my name.
I watched Ian dive underwater. For the longest time he did not come back up. The surface of the water was flat.
“Ian!” Amelia screamed. “What if he drowned? What if he drowned?”
“He didn’t drown,” I said.
He was underwater for a long time, though. I reached for Amelia’s hand. What if he had drowned? What could I do? Swim until I found his body? Would I call the police? What would I do?
“Where is he?” Amelia whispered.
I did not know.
And then Ian emerged, far out in the water.
“Ian!” Amelia screamed, happy, but not letting go of my hand.
I did not understand what had happened. I stared out at Ian, a small blond head, bobbing in the water. Did I just have sex with him in the bathroom? A terrible thought came into my head. I wished that Zahid had cancer.
I led Amelia into the water.
“Let’s go swimming,” I said.
* * *
—
Later that night, Ian took me to a shooting range.
“I thought you were kidding,” I said.
“I don’t kid,” Ian said.
“I’ve never held a gun before,” I said.
I did, in fact, want to go to dinner, a movie, that whole traditional thing. Somehow, instead, I had been left alone with Amelia, responsible for making her dinner. We had macaroni and cheese and sliced cucumbers. Ian had to go somewhere, he did not say where. I didn’t know where the parents were. Clearly, I was doing him a favor, filling in for a babysitter, except that I wasn’t being paid. I was being taken for granted, already. His leaving had seemed so strange. My mother had texted, wanting to know where I was. Come home, she wrote.
On a date, I responded.
It was not completely inaccurate.
Ian came back from wherever he’d gone.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The mother, Amy Thornton, had returned, too. She looked at me curiously. She poured herself a glass of white wine. She poured me one, too. “You look like your mother,” she said, squinting. “I can never thank her enough. Tell her that.”
The shooting range was half an hour away. Ian drove the gold Lamborghini. I had seen this car before, seen his father driving it around town. It was the kind of car you noticed, too ridiculous to be real. I got in the car, and then I was a person who had driven in a gold Lamborghini, out with Ian Thornton. It was weird, surreal even.
“I don’t want to do this,” I told Ian at the range.
My legs were shaking. My arms were shaking. I was holding a loaded weapon. I knew that accidents could happen with guns. I had read so many stories about small children shooting their siblings. I did not want, for instance, to accidentally kill Ian. I did not want him to kill me.
“I can’t,” I said.
I tried to hand the gun back to Ian.
“First of all, chill out,” Ian said. “You are freaking out. Right now, the gun is locked.”
I looked at Ian.
“You’re safe,” he said.
“I’m safe?”
Ian nodded. His eyes were too blue.
I knew what my mother would think. She would be livid. Guns. Shooting with Ian Thornton. They were Republicans. Which made them Trump supporters. There was nothing worse in her book and I did not disagree with this. But Ian was not really one of them. He was a cute guy, a really, really cute guy. He was not a professor. He was not abusing his power. He could not get fired for having sex with me. Probably, rich as he was, he didn’t even have a job. Anyway, I did not care what my mother thought.
I hated that I took my mother’s thoughts into consideration. I didn’t want to think about my mother. My mother in her pink pajamas this morning, home alone with Zahid. Her distracted gaze. Jesus. Just the thought of them made me hold my arms out straight, aim the gun toward the target.
“I don’t believe in guns,” I told Ian.
I was starting to understand why, imagining myself shooting Zahid in the chest. Which would be a lot quicker than cancer.
Ian laughed. “You’re holding one in your hands,” he said. “What don’t you believe?”
“That’s not what I mean,” I said.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
“Especially after what your brother did.”
Ian shook his head.
“Poor sick fuck,” Ian said. “Little baby brother Theo. Honestly, Rachel, he didn’t do anything.”
“Seriously?” I said.
“Seriously,” Ian said. “No one got hurt. He’s the one locked up in an institution.”
He looked pissed now, which was unnerving. I didn’t know what the rules were in the Thornton family. One of them probably was Don’t talk about the sociopath brother at boarding school, but Ian had taken me shooting. How could I not think about this brother? Ian could have taken me to a bar, a restaurant. A motel, even.
“You wanted to go on a date,” Ian said, as if he were reading my mind. “We are on a date. I can take you home if you want.”
“I don’t want to go home,” I said.
But he didn’t understand that I did not ever want to go back home. It was not that I actually wanted to be on a shooting range with him.
“So don’t be a whiny baby,” Ian said. “Try this. This is it. This is your chance. Right now. You might never have it again.”
I looked at Ian.
“Just try it. It’s better than sex.”
I blushed.
I also felt insulted. Because we had had sex.
“And I know you like sex.”
I could feel my face turn red, my stupid face giving everything away. If Ian said, Jump off a cliff, would I jump off a cliff? Part of me was afraid that I probably would. I had fucked him in a bathroom. I thought about the rules, the games women were supposed to play. I could not sink any lower. All of a sudden, I wanted to go home. It didn’t even matter about what I would find there.
I lowered my arms back down.
“You shoot this gun, Rachel, and I will take you back to my house and fuck you.”
Almost involuntarily, I licked my lips.
“That is what I thought,” he said.
“You scare me a little,” I said.
Ian laughed as if he already knew.
“You like it,” he said. “Come on. Concentrate.”
He came closer to me, moving right behind me. He put his arms around me, hands on my hands, and lifted my arms. I let his hands guide me. With his hands on my hands, I pointed the gun.
“Okay,” he said. “Here we go.”
Ian unlocked the gun. He took a step away. “Just hold on tight and shoot. It’s as easy as that.”
I nodded. I bit my lip. I pulled the trigger. The gun reverberated in my hands, and I took a step back. The bullet had hit the target, right in the middle. My ears were ringing.
“Very nice,” Ian said.
And Ian was right. It did feel sexual to me.
I wanted to do it again.
* * *
—
Ian did not take me back to his house to fuck me. “It’s getting late,” he said, breaking his promise to me, driving right past the road to his house and not stopping.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
What else was I going to say? I wanted you to fuck me. We drove in silence until he pulled up in front of my house.
“I’m going back to L.A. tomorrow,” he said. “I have to pack.”
“Los Angeles?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I gotta get back to work. What did you think I was? A fucking loser living with his parents?”
“Work?”
“The entertainment industry,” he said. “Duh?”
I looked at him.
“I’m an actor,” he said. “You don’t know?”
“You are?”
“You seriously don’t know.”
Ian told me the name of the TV show. I had heard of it. It was on the CW network. One of my housemates once asked me to watch his show. It was her favorite show, even. I started watching, but left during a commercial break because I had a paper to write. My short story, actually. About the flight attendant with a venereal disease. It was one of those slick, impossible shows, sexy adults playing teenagers, wearing amazing clothes, delivering unbelievable lines of dialogue. Ian was on that show. He was famous.
“You’re serious?” I asked again.
How could I not know?
Ian smirked. It was like charity, then, the time he had spent with me. He’d been killing time. I was nothing, nobody.
“I thought you were just another groupie,” Ian said.
I couldn’t tell if he was serious.
“I am not,” I managed to say, “a groupie.”
“I was kidding,” he said. “Kidding.”
“You said you didn’t kid.”
Ian shrugged.
We were in front of my house.
Ian leaned over, which was tricky in the Lamborghini, there was a stick shift, and he kissed me good-bye. It was a new kind of kiss, sweet, tender even. A real and proper, lingering kiss. What I had been hoping for. This felt almost normal, what the end of a date should be. But he was going back to his life in California, where he was a TV star. I basically did not exist.
“You shouldn’t have slept with me,” I said, “if you knew you were leaving.”
“Honestly?” Ian said. “You seemed plenty into it.”
And then, out of nowhere, I was crying.
“This is not about you,” I said. It was mortifying. I would have done anything to make it stop. “Don’t think it is. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “Don’t worry. I have this effect on women. All the time.”
I actually laughed. It was perfect. He had said that. There was something wrong with him. There was comfort to that. It wasn’t me. It was him.
I was lucky to be getting out early, unharmed. I could already feel a sore spot on my hip bone from getting slammed back into the bathroom sink.
Ian kissed me again, and once again, I returned his kiss. He was such a good kisser. It was so stupid. I was so stupid. It didn’t matter anyway, how stupid I was, because he was leaving. He was not going to be my boyfriend. None of this actually counted. My phone started to vibrate in my pocket. I did not have to look. It was my mother, again. The fourth time that day.
The kiss ended when the phone started to buzz. I looked at my house, the lights on in the living room. She would be awake, waiting for me. Ian wiped away a tear on my cheek.
“I’m coming home for Christmas,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“So,” he said. “I’ll call you. You’re sweet.”
That seemed nice, actually nicer than anything I could have expected from him. It was a good moment to leave, my dignity almost intact. I op
ened the door to the car, slung my backpack, somehow heavier than it had been that morning, over my shoulder. It was a gorgeous car, almost too nice to be a car. I wondered how much it cost. How many immigrant families it could save.
* * *
—
I stood there, on the driveway of my mother’s house, outside, looking in. I dropped my backpack at my feet. I sighed audibly. I was so tired. I wanted to go inside, but I also could not fathom the idea. I had grown up in this house, only it didn’t feel like my home anymore. The dog was dead. My father was gone. Zahid was sleeping in his office, swimming in our pool. His poodle was eating from Posey’s dog food bowls. It was like we had both been replaced. My mother was a stranger.
I opened my backpack to confirm what somehow I already knew.
There was the gun, in between a library book and a plastic bag holding my wet bathing suit. I looked down the street. Ian was gone. He was fucking with me, still. I did not want this gun. I did not know what I was supposed to do with it. I was not going to use it. A gun could not make me happy. Could not get me what I wanted.
I wanted Zahid to love me.
I wanted Ian to love me.
I wanted the stupid dog to love me.
The front door to the house opened and there she was.
“Rachel,” my mother called out. “Sweetie? What are you doing out there? Where have you been? I have been so worried about you. Come inside. Please? What’s wrong?”
I zipped my backpack shut.
A gun. I had a gun. It felt incredibly dangerous to have a gun in my possession. I had hit that target on my first try. It had felt so good.
“Rachel?” my mother said. “Honey?”
She walked down the front path, coming toward me. She was barefoot.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Who was that with you? Was that the Thorntons’ car?”
I did not say anything. She knew whose car it was. I did not have to say. I was having very bad luck with men. Was this to be my fate? I bit my lip so hard that it started to bleed.
My mother hugged me, but I did not return her embrace. It seemed unkind on my part, but what else could I do? I had done nothing to suggest that I might want comfort from her. I stood straight and tall, like a tree. The moment felt familiar, like déjà vu, and then I remembered. That very morning, I had hugged Zahid and he’d recoiled from my touch.
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