by Doyle, S.
I didn’t think I was hideous. I just needed to straighten my shoulders and smile more. That’s what both Ethan and Daniel said.
“We sleep together in your bed all the time,” I told him. Whenever I hung out late in his room, pretty much, because he didn’t like me walking to my dorm late at night by myself and he said he was too lazy to walk with me. “But not once in all that time have you so much as touched me in a sexual way.”
“I’ve got to go.”
He scrambled off my bed and pushed his books into his satchel.
“Are you kidding me right now? You’re seriously not going to answer that question?”
He looked grim. “No, I’m not going to answer the question. And you should have known better than to ask.”
“I’m trying to decide why I’m unfuckable,” I grumbled.
He bent down and grabbed my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You’re not unfuckable and you know it. And you know that we’re bigger than a damn roll in bed. Say you know that, Jules.”
I pulled my chin free. “Forget I asked. It’s not like I’d want you anyway. You’re the opposite of my type. I like my guys with a little beef on them.”
He stood there for a minute, his hands on his hips as if he was internally debating something. Then he shook his head and pushed his book bag over his jacket.
“I’m pissed at you,” he said.
“You’re pissed at me?” I asked, my jaw dropping. “It was just a question.”
“It was more than a question and yes, I’m pissed at you. Thinking about quitting class, thinking about fucking. Are you trying to ruin everything?”
“Geezus, Ethan. You do understand that sometimes you’re the only one who knows what you mean.”
His jaw snapped shut. “This subject is closed.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Tomorrow we’re going to pretend this conversation never happened.” He said it like an order. Which was how he spoke sometimes. As if he could decree things and make it so.
“Tomorrow you can go fuck yourself.” Which is how I typically responded when he spoke like that.
He laughed and, because he did, I did, too.
And just like that, the subject was closed.
For now.
* * *
“What are you doing?” Ethan asked as I slid off the bed. “One more. Come on.”
I looked over my shoulder as I reached for my coat on the desk chair where I’d left it. We’d just finished watching three straight episodes of Game of Thrones on Ethan’s laptop. I knew I wasn’t going to make it through another one and Game of Thrones wasn’t a show you fell asleep while watching.
“It’s late,” I said. “I’m tired.”
“Okay, so we’ll switch to Friends.”
Because that was a show you could fall asleep to, which is what we typically did when I stayed over in his room.
After our conversation the other day, though, or our lack of conversation, really, I decided it didn’t make sense for us to do this. Share a bed, sleep together. Maybe that’s what was messing with my head when it came to Ethan.
The idea that he could find me so totally lacking in any kind of sex appeal that sleeping beside me didn’t cause him a second of physical discomfort, well, it stung. I mean, weren’t guys supposed to be permanently horny?
Not Ethan. At least not when it came to me.
“Nah, I’m going to head back to my room,” I said as I shrugged into my coat.
He stood then, setting the laptop down and crossing his arms over his chest.
“I get it. This is you getting back at me.”
I didn’t try to play dumb, but he was wrong. I wasn’t doing this out of spite, I was doing it out of self-protection.
“I knew you were going to think that, but that’s not why I’m leaving. I just…I need space.”
“Space from us?”
“No,” I said quickly. Because the thought of that sent a bolt of fear into my gut. Ethan and I were a team. I’d never been part of something like this before and I didn’t want to lose it. “Not like that. I just don’t think we should sleep together. It’s not what friends do. If Daniel were here, you wouldn’t be like ‘Hey, Dude, I don’t feel like walking you home so stay the night.’”
“I wouldn’t have a problem with Daniel walking across campus by himself.”
“It’s fucking Harvard,” I groaned. “It’s lit. It’s safe. I’ll be fine.”
I started to move toward the door, but he stepped in front of it.
“What if I said I didn’t want you to go? What if I said I liked falling asleep with you?”
“I would say, I’m not your stuffed animal or your blankie or whatever comfort item you need to sleep with at night. I’m a person, Ethan.”
“I know that, Jules.”
I shook my head. “Sometimes I don’t think you do.”
“This is really about me not fucking you,” he said grimly.
No. Maybe. I wasn’t sure anymore. I just knew that I didn’t want to curl up next to him and fall asleep when I knew that it wasn’t real.
“This is about me wanting to go back to my room. Sleep in my bed. Alone.”
“Where it’s safe,” he said, as if it was an accusation.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“You’re starting to freak out about how close we’re getting and so you’re running. You forget how well we know each other, Jules. There is no running from that.”
I pointed at him. “You do not have all the answers, Ethan. You don’t. Now step aside and let me leave.”
He did, but only to grab his coat off the hook he’d hung next to his closet. He pulled it on and shoved his feet into unlaced sneakers.
I didn’t object because there was no point. He made sure he had his key and we left. Together, walking silently across campus. He stopped when we reached my dorm.
“What does this mean, Jules?” he asked, his hand patting rhythmically against his thigh. It was a habit he had when he got overly agitated.
“Nothing, Ethan. Don’t make it a thing and I won’t, either.”
He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets to still them. “Fine then, if it’s not a thing, say you’ll go out with me next week for St. Patrick’s Day.”
I groaned. He’d been trying to get me to agree to it for the last week. “You know I can’t.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re not going to get in trouble going to a bar. The ID is foolproof.”
It had been his Christmas gift to me. A fake ID because he knew I couldn’t afford one and also knew I wouldn’t consider attempting to do something that might get me in trouble.
Always, the threat of having everything taken away from me lingered over my head. I was feeling slightly more comfortable in my second semester, but far from stable. I didn’t think that would happen until I actually walked across the stage for graduation.
“You don’t even have to drink if you don’t want to. Just come out with me and see what it’s like to be young and have fun.”
“I have fun!”
He snorted. He was right. I didn’t have a lot of fun. Not without him, anyway, and now I’d regulated the fun I could have with him.
Because it was messing with my head. I was self-aware enough to admit that now.
“Okay. I’ll go.”
He gave an abbreviated fist pump. “My plan to you corrupt you, phase one complete.”
“I’m going inside now,” I said, not paying him any more attention.
“Jules,” he called out to me before I could step inside the dorm.
“What?”
“I’m going to miss you tonight.”
“You’ll live,” I told him. And I would, too. Because this is what friends did. They went back to their separate corners and they called it a day.
I opened the door to my room to find Nicki still up, her computer open on her lap. I wasn’t sure if she was studying or watching some show like Etha
n and I had been doing. It wasn’t often that I saw her studying.
Then again, it wasn’t often that I saw her in our room. Because I was usually with Ethan in his.
“What are you doing here?”
“Uh, it’s my room.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. When you’re hanging at Ethan’s, you usually stay the night. You guys have a fight?”
Was there more than curiosity in her tone? She’d had a thing for him last semester, but she’d been with other guys in the past few months. I’d figured she was over Ethan. I wanted to tell her how bad they would be as a couple, if that’s what she was imagining, but she’d only deny it.
“No, I just felt like sleeping in my own bed.”
Another modified eye roll.
“What? That’s a thing,” I said, pulling off my coat then sitting on my bed to pull off my boots.
“For losers. No one sleeps alone if you can be sleeping with someone else. Even if it’s just to sleep.”
“Okay, so where is your sleep buddy?”
“I’m looking for a replacement for Dan. He was hot and sweet, but I need someone with a little more edge.”
Ethan had intellectual edge, and for some reason Nicki had always interpreted that as being part badass. Which, I suppose, he was in his way. For someone who could appreciate that. I didn’t think Nicki was that person.
“I’m sure you’ll find him,” I said casually. “In the meantime, sleeping alone means no one hogs the blankets, no one snores, no one farts unexpectedly, and no one else besides me drools on the pillow.”
Her mouth turned down. “Right,” she sighed. “Sleeping alone is for losers.”
I thought about my mom, who’d shared a bed with my dad for over twenty-five years. Did she hate it? Sleeping alone? Or did she secretly like the fact that she could take up space in the whole bed?
No, she was probably miserable without him. Just one more point of pain in her already stressed-out life. I would call her tomorrow. Tell her how much I loved her. Try to make that pain recede a little bit.
I slept poorly that night. Because my pillow didn’t smell as good as Ethan’s. My blanket wasn’t as warm as Ethan. The reality was, as much as I thought I’d done the right thing, I could also concede that Nicki was right.
Sleeping alone was for losers.
8
Harvard
Julia
I was drunk. For the first time in my life. And it wasn’t so bad. I could still stand, could still manage the beer in my hand, could still deal with the crush of people in the bar for St. Patrick’s Day. My fake ID worked, as Ethan had said it would, so I didn’t turn it down when Ethan pushed a beer into my hand.
So this was what it was like? I didn’t really feel stressed out about anything. Not the fact that I was drunk, certainly. And I was pressed up against Ethan and I thought that felt nice, too. When we were like this, I realized how much taller than me he was. And when I could feel his torso and his chest pressed against my side, I realized how hard he was all over.
Not skinny, but lean and tight and he smelled good.
And he was mine.
Not mine mine. But close enough. Because it really didn’t matter how many girls he was with: he always came back to me. I was his lodestone.
“You’re looking at me funny,” he bent to say in my ear. It was the only way we could talk in the crush of people.
“I am not. I just…I’m your stone and I know that, that’s all.”
He beamed. “You’re drunk! Excellent. I’ve done my job and phase two is complete.”
“It feels really weird. But not too bad.” I finished my beer and he ordered us two more. “Like I’m not exactly in control of my thoughts and they’re just springing up all over the place now that they’re free.”
I watched as he took long sip from his plastic cup. No glass on St. Patrick’s Day for this bar. Given the amount of beer currently spilled on the floor, I would say that was a sound decision.
But watching him drink, something didn’t sit right in my brain. “Should you be drinking?”
“Shut up, Mom.”
I slapped his arm, but not hard.
“Seriously, are you drunk?” I asked him.
“Yes, because it’s St. Patrick’s Day. It’s, like, a law or something.”
Well, if it was the law, I suppose I couldn’t be too upset. His mother wouldn’t be happy, but she wasn’t here. His father would definitely not be happy.
But I got the impression his father was not happy with anything Ethan did. At least, that’s how Ethan saw it.
There was something else that was off about this night. Different than how things usually were between us.
“You’re not hooking up with any girls,” I pointed out. He was always hooking up or trying to hook up with girls. That was his thing. Blondes, brunettes, short, tall, skinny, full-figured. He did not have a type.
Not me, though. Never me. Uh-uh. Nope. Not once.
But we’d established that we weren’t talking about that.
I guess ever.
“I came here with you,” he said into my ear and it made me shiver. “So you could have your first drunken bar experience. I’m not leaving you.”
He wasn’t going to leave me. That was nice.
“What if I want to hook up with a guy?”
“I’ll kick his ass.”
That made me laugh and I slapped his arm again. “Okay. I get it. We’re a team tonight. I like being on Team Ethan.”
“You’re really drunk,” he said. “I hope I’m not so drunk I forget everything you say.”
“I feel different. I feel like…”
“What?” he shouted.
I felt like I was the girl he was hooking up with tonight. The one he used his charm on, the one he flattered, the one he paid attention to. I liked it. But I had this thought in my head that I wasn’t supposed to. That being that girl was a bad thing because that girl was always temporary.
I wasn’t. I was permanent. He’d told me so.
“We should go,” I suggested. Before things got out of hand. Before I got any drunker. Before I did something stupid that broke us.
Ethan would say I was running again. And maybe he was right, but it felt safer this way.
“Are you kidding? We just got here. There’s a band about to start playing and you and I are going to get our dance on.”
“Nerds don’t dance,” I reminded him.
“These nerds do,” he said, pointing back and forth between us.
“Why are you being nice to me?” I shouted.
That made his face scrunch up. “When am I not nice to you?”
All the time, I wanted to reply, even though it didn’t make any sense. Not even in my drunk brain.
But then the band started playing and I pulled him with me into the throng of people so that he couldn’t ask me any questions and I couldn’t say any more stupid shit. The point of being drunk was to let go. Or forget, in my brother’s case. But I was letting go too much. Thinking things that didn’t make any sense.
So it was easier to dance. Easier to drink. Better to just be than worry about where my thoughts were taking me.
To Ethan. Always back to Ethan.
Just like he always came back to me.
* * *
Later that night
I stared at the condom and decided this was happening.
I’d opened Nicki’s drawer by her bed, the bed where Ethan was currently passed out, and pulled one out of the box she kept there. I didn’t know where she was tonight. I thought she’d told me earlier, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here, which meant Ethan and I had the room to ourselves.
Ethan was here. And I was still super drunk, and I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore.
This was peerrrffecct.
I took off the T-shirt I’d put on and wiggled out of the panties I’d worn to the bar. There was the smell of sex on them because a few times I’d gotten wet just fro
m being around Ethan.
Pulling the blanket back, I got into bed with him. Naked. I’d taken off his jacket and sneakers earlier, so he was just in jeans and the Irish-themed T-shirt he’d worn to the bar.
We’d had such a good night together. Drinking, dancing. He’d put his arms around me, and I’d put mine around his neck, and we’d slow danced until finally the bar closed. Then we cabbed it to campus, sitting against each other in the back of the car. His leg against mine, his shoulder against mine. That had to mean he wanted me, because he didn’t pull away.
We should have gone to his room because it was a single, but mine was closer so we’d stumbled our way up here and Ethan had crashed as soon as he hit the bed.
But now I was going to wake him up with a condom and a hand job and we were going to DO THIS THING!
“Ethan,” I said as I kissed his neck, his chin, his ear. “Let’s have sex.”
I found the top of his jeans and undid the button.
“Ethan, are you awake?”
He moaned when I pushed my hand into his jeans and found his dick. He was thicker than I’d thought he would be—the rest of him was so lanky. And he started to get hard as soon as I stroked him.
Leaning toward him, I found his mouth and we kissed. This was Ethan and I was kissing him. He tasted like beer and it made me like the taste when, the whole time I’d been drinking it tonight, I thought it sucked.
But being drunk did not suck. Being drunk was what gave me the courage to do this. To kiss Ethan and touch his dick and pull his pants down his hips far enough so that I could roll the condom on him.
He rolled toward me and his hand was on my boob, kneading it, and I thought how it felt good, but that wasn’t really what this was about.
“Put it inside,” I whispered. Then it would be over. The thing that was holding me back. The thing that made me undesirable to him, I believed. The real reason I was so unfuckable. I was constantly signaling people to back off, that I wasn’t to be touched. I could change all of that tonight.
“Jules? What are you doing?” He was groggy, and his words were slurred. I didn’t want to remind him I was a virgin. It would only freak him out to realize what we were doing. I just wanted it to be over, so I lifted my leg over his hips and reached down to put him inside me.