Home and Away

by Candice Montgomery

  Slow seems to be the name of our game.

  He is fumbling, but sweet and dedicated, as he presses his hand between my legs and then pushes a finger into me.

  We are familiar in this. We have done this. More than once. We know this and that’s why, when he adds another finger, I don’t flinch or give it much thought at all.

  The pressure is a lot and it doesn’t feel good at all.

  “Yeah?” Kai asks. I say yes, but I’m starting to tense up a lot and Kai is about to pull his hand back when I stop him.

  “No, no, please. I want to, please. Just go slow.”

  “I’ve never been with a virgin before. You’re not a virgin.”

  I shake my head. I don’t know if this is a question. I don’t think it is, but I’ve told him about it. “Not really. I’ve done it before, once. Last year. For like a second.”

  Kai exhales. “Oh, yeah. Right, right. Okay.” He places his fingers against his mouth and then presses them back into me. The feeling is better, and when I press a hand to my clit, things finally click together like a bolt sliding into its lock.

  Kai slips on a condom. He’s very sure about that.

  And when he pushes into me, he does it slowly. Too slowly. I ask him repeatedly to “just go fast.” And after asking gets me nowhere, I tell him. But he won’t.

  We’re laughing so much that my abs start to hurt. We’re laughing so much that I barely even notice that he’s all the way in until he flexes his hips and I mewl and he says, softly, sweetly, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” And he kisses my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  I nod, and I cry because it hurts and I ask Kai not to stop because it makes something in me feel good, emotionally.

  And we learn each other that way.

  We learn each other steadily, clumsily, lovingly.

  As though we are each the other’s syllabus, a detailed course guide.

  And I wouldn’t have it any other way, this boy and his sweet mouth. Sun in his throat, honeyed tongue. I don’t come. But I know—in the second that he comes apart above me—that he’s been singing panties off of hips since his voice dropped, that hip logic was his first lesson in geometry, that boys like him don’t even have to try, that not just girls—but anyone—would be helpless against him.

  Kai El Khoury is the kind of dizzying that makes wind twist in the blood.

  In the morning we Uber home, bags under our eyes, blisters on our feet, lazy, unsure smiles on our faces, all of us having grown up just a little more overnight, all of us bonding on a wave of unspoken words, as though we’ve just survived a week lost in the wilderness. Kai and I catch one together because apparently doing the sex has made us inseparable. More inseparable, that is.

  We arrive at Merrick’s as though we’ve drifted here on a cloud, Kai leaning against the seat, me—back to his chest—draped languidly.

  Before I get out, we don’t kiss. I think the Uber driver is sick of us doing that, so we refrain.

  “You love me,” I say.

  “I love you,” he confirms.

  Inside, after the Uber takes Kai away, after a long bath, after a few hours of homework and watching game tape and reading some school email about receiving college acceptance letters, I text Slim.

  hey hey heyyyy

  sup fat albert, how was it??

  omg slim. stacy lim. I have to tell you ALL … who’s fat albert?

  lol. FT?

  So I FaceTime her.

  She picks up fast. “You guys had sexxxxxxx!”

  I can feel the blood ripping through my cheeks. “Shut up, oh my God, you’re so loud.”

  “Sorry, sorry. But, okay. So? It was?”

  “It was good. I don’t know. There were bad parts, but the good parts were really good and all I’m thinking about is doing it again and again.”

  She laughs. “You sore?”

  I nod. “I took the longest bath ever. Merrick’s pissed because my bath ball left glitter in the tub.”

  “Ha. So, like, you’re definitely seeing your gyno tomorrow, right?”

  I … am not sure. “My gyno?”

  “Oh my God, Teez. You need to see your OB after sex.”

  “I thought that was only for the first time!”

  “It’s been over a year. You need to see them yearly.”

  My God, I didn’t know that. Mamma never told me that! Nobody ever told me that!

  Okay. Chill, chill, chill, Tasia.

  I search everywhere for my doctor’s information, which I thought fate might have left in my email inbox somewhere.

  I don’t find it, but I do find several places on Google that might see me. If I can get my health insurance information to them.

  American healthcare is bullshit.

  I learn this with 100 percent certainty when I call six different doctor’s offices and they say they can’t book me unless they have my insurance provider. So I find Merrick in the living room polishing off a bag of Lays. Watching—of all things—football. I’d be proud if we weren’t still weird about each other. But we are, and I’m about to make it worse.

  I stand in front of the TV.

  “Your father’s not a glass maker, kiddo. I can’t see.”

  What? “I need something.”

  “Can it wait until the game’s over?”

  This. This right here is what sets me off. I hate him for a second and I decide to make him my prisoner simply because I can.

  “I need you to call my OB/GYN and give them my health insurance information so I can make an appointment. It needs to be now, before the game is over. I had sex last night and I need to be checked out.”

  And then I walk into the kitchen to make a sandwich, which I eat standing right there at the bar. Then go to my room to worry for the rest of the day.

  Just a quick twenty minutes later, Merrick walks into my room and hands me a small piece of paper with a date and time written down for my appointment.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I made the appointment. Thank you for coming to me. And … I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I’m at practice guzzling a twenty-two of water when Coach tells me I’m starting in Friday’s game, which is tomorrow.

  It’s taken so much longer to get it across to these guys that I’m good. That I’m fricking great. Longer than it would have taken if I was, y’know, male and had a penis. Longer than it would’ve taken if I was a white girl, too.

  “Quirk!” he yells. So I trot out to him across the field in my practice jersey, practice pads, and cleats. “Yeah, Coach?”

  “How you feeling?”

  “Feel okay.”

  “I’m not asking if you’re PMSing, Quirk. I’m asking you how good you feel about the plays, your defense. How you’re gettin’ on with Cole.”

  Cole has been incredibly standoffish with me and when he’s not being standoffish, he’s being hostile or outright mean. I have wondered, in the part of my mind that holds petty dismissals and half-assed goodbyes, if it’s because of my skin. But then I see him with Victory and he is kind and gentle. He is funny and playful.

  But that thought is always there. Sometimes, even unconsciously, prejudice creeps in for people who can barely even spell the word racism.

  It’s hard to attribute his moods to Kai when Dahlia’s been with him, too, and there’s essentially zero angst there.

  “I feel real good about the plays, Coach.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nod, sure. “Confident. I feel focused.”

  “Good. I gotta say, I’m pleasantly surprised. I’m not wrong a lot, and when I am, I don’t admit it. I’m admitting it now. You’re making good breaks on the ball, keeping your hips open, and your tackling has gotten more sure, which we worried about with you at first. You’re not stepping in the bucket, and you’re visualizing the picks—I can tell. You’re doing excellent things for the defensive game and I have not seen that from other corners in a long time.”

  Oh my God.

  Coach’s hands
go to his hips, his clipboard held under one of his arms. “You see holes in the offenses’ positioning and that’s not a skill a lot of high school corners have. I’m being honest.” His voice gets quiet. “If you were male, I’d work to get you a scholarship, placed on a good college team. But the chances of that—”

  “Nonexistent. I know. I just want to play ball here, now, Coach.” Anyway, the team at Cal hasn’t had a good season since about the fifties.

  “Good enough. You’re starting tomorrow. Eat good tonight, rest up. Come ready to play.”

  On the inside, I am screaming like I just hit the jackpot playing the penny slots. On the outside, I am cool as a cucumber. I offer Coach a simple bro nod and say, “You got it, Coach.”

  I turn to walk away when Coach calls me back. “Quirk!”

  “Yeah, Coach?”

  He switches his clipboard from arm to arm before speaking again. “I, uhh, I had a meeting with the school counselor.”

  My head cocks to the side. What’s that got to do with me? “Okay …”

  “Yeah,” he says, slowly. Coach Rass doesn’t do anything slow. Except this, apparently. “I’m gonna need you to make some time to see her.”

  “What?”

  “Check in,” he says. His voice gets loud. That’s when you know he’s done with the conversation. “Go see her. I don’t wanna hear that you took this in one ear and let it leak out the other. You know where that office is at?”

  No. Never had any real reason to know. “Yes.”

  “Good. Get in there at some point.”

  “Uh … okay, Coach.”

  “Yeah?” he says, louder still.

  “Okay. Yeah. Yes. I will, Coach.”

  He grumbles something I barely hear, breaks eye contact—which I only had about thirty-eight percent of to begin with—and walks away.

  It is the strangest conversation I have ever had with any coach, ever. But the wild, blooming sensation of hell, yes! nips at my heels and settles in heavy. I’m a starter now.

  I practice harder and better than I ever have. Guy gives me horrible looks, but before I make it into the locker room, he pulls me aside and tells me he respects my hustle.

  After practice, sweaty in that gross way and grinning hard, I throw myself into Kai’s arms. It’s the best I’ve felt in a long time. Until I see an email from Mamma with details about her company dinner party.

  Until Kai drops me at my car and takes my keys from me.

  “Home, mulatta?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But … you should probably not keep calling me that.”

  Kai stops, and it is the most serious he has ever been. One of the best things about Kai is that you don’t need eye contact from him in order to understand or gauge his moods. But in this instance, he gives it to me. It’s steady and reminds me, curiously, of my Poppa.

  He squares out his jaw. “Does it offend you? Honestly.”

  “I don’t know. I just think you shouldn’t use it. There are certain words you shouldn’t say. That is one I don’t exactly understand. I mean … I’ve only ever identified as Black because I thought I was only Black. And now that I’m not, I don’t know what being anything else means. I haven’t done the research or talked to enough people who are also biracial, I guess.”

  Kai places a kiss high on my cheek. “I won’t use it. I’m sorry for saying it. For not thinking and for using it as a punch line. I was wrong to do that.”

  My arms come around him.

  “Forgive me?”

  I nod.

  Kai crowds me against the door of my car. “Forgive me,” he says again.

  “I forgive you,” I whisper. And I don’t think, for very long, about what amount of time it might take me to forgive Mamma and V, the two strongest women in my family. The two women who have lied to me for so long.

  That night, after Kai catches the Orange home from the apartment, I finally pull my phone out and text Tristan.

  sorry for going MIA again

  you’re not MIA if you’re still using instagram regularly

  fair, then, so mamma’s dinner??

  you gotta be there

  Oof. Mamma’s gala. It’s not just any dinner. It’s an important one.

  Still, I text, lol no I don’t

  you do tho, then, I need you there

  Then, ok trist, I’ll be there, I promise.

  For him, I can be there.

  On Monday, during Speech class, Mrs. Wu sets a note, facedown, on top of my desk.

  The note is a summons to the in-school therapist’s office. Coach’s request that I make time for this sings in the back of my mind. I’ve never been before, have never had a reason to see her in the time I’ve been a student here. And I don’t really know anyone else who has, either. But maybe that’s the point.

  Last year at Westview, one of the freshmen was exposed for some eating disorder. I don’t know. They’re pretty common, but apparently this case made school officials sit up and take notice. So they added an in-school psychotherapist. I’m a little surprised to find ECR’s got one as well.

  Now we’re all supposed to be writing down our speeches from memory. I stop to raise my hand. “Right now? Do I have to go see her right now?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Pack your things. You’ll miss the rest of class.”

  I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I do experience .0006 seconds of terror that I might be getting called in because of a grades-related football thing. It makes absolutely no sense, but I’ve learned that anxiety has a tendency to be irrational.

  And, like, two juniors have been benched this week alone for GPA drops. I worry that this is my fate too, but the truth is, it’s not likely. Because Merrick might be half-assing this parenting thing, but the part he’s not half-assing, he seems to be excelling at. Trig kicks my ass, but Merrick stays on top of me and my homework and my grades as best he can. This could have everything to do with the fact that he was a teacher.

  I push into the counselor’s office after a quick series of three knocks at her closed door. She calls, “Come in,” and I find myself in front of Dr. Meshell Lloyd who is easily the most confusing “counselor” I’ve ever seen. She’s got long blond hair, green eyes, and a green apple in hand that she’s going to town on.

  “You caught me in the middle of lunch,” she says. “Have a seat, Tasia.”

  Her office smells like lemons. But it’s warm. There are shelves of books covering every flat surface, and I feel like the whole display is a farce, because there’s no way she’s using any of these books on a daily basis.

  The chair I take a seat in is way too comfortable. “You know who I am?”

  “I read your file. All student files have photos.”

  “Okay.”

  “And, TBH, I’ve seen you play football. You’re amazing. I totally want to be you when I grow up.”

  “You’re making me uncomfortable.”

  “Is it the slang?” she whispers. “That displaces a lot of people when they meet me. Or maybe it’s that I look like a Barbie?”

  “All my Barbies were Black, actually. It’s really more that you keep licking the apple juice that’s sliding down your hand.”

  “Oh!” she laughs. “I like you, Tasia. This is going to be fun.”

  I sit back in my brown leather chair. “Yeah, okay. Um. You felt the need to read my file. So why am I here, again?”

  “Typically, my service is called into play in two situations. A, the student reaches out to me and requests my aid; or B, an authority figure, the student’s parent or teacher or legal guardian, will recommend I step in. In your case, obviously, it was an authority figure.”

  “Who stepped in?”

  “Your father.”

  “Which one? The one that doesn’t want me or the one that’s only known me a few months.” I say this purposely to unsettle her, but it doesn’t work.

  She smiles and wipes her hands with a baby wipe. “So I see we do have things to discuss. This is good,
since your seeing me has been highly recommended.”

  “Highly.”

  “Yes.”

  Wait. “Holy hooker. So, then. What—someone suddenly thinks I’m troubled youth or something? I’m not. I’m just pissed off in general, and unlike most teens my age, I have the right to be.”

  “Everyone has the right to be upset, Tasia.”

  I shrug. “I’m just saying, my frustration isn’t because of some spike in hormones.” She says nothing, so I continue. “I’ve been living with Merrick for almost two months, and this is only now coming up?”

  “Both your mother and Merrick feel this would be good for you. But, more important, how do you feel about them making this a necessity?”

  I throw my hands up, roll my eyes for good measure. “My mom’s involved in this?”

  She nods. “Would you rather she wasn’t?”

  “I’d rather they talked to me about this first.”

  “If they had spoken to you about this first, what would it have changed about this? Would you be more cooperative?”

  “Probably.”

  “Probably. But they didn’t, and now we’re here. So, what do you want to do?”

  What’s she saying? I mean, is there anything that needs doing? This isn’t the kind of thing that you just gloss over, I know. And I also know that the adults in my life doin’t necessarily owe me anything.

  I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know any of that right now, and I guess … I guess I’ve made some kinda weird peace with that. There’s so much that I’m unsure about when it comes to what action needs to happen next, but maybe there is one thing I do know.

  With an exhale, I offer, “I want the adults in my life to know what the hell they’re doing.”

  She nods. “Understandable. But there’s a good chance that even you, when you’re an adult, won’t know what you’re doing all the time.”

  “I’m eighteen. I am an adult. And there’s also a chance that I won’t screw up half as bad as the three of them have.”

  I remind myself that they’re all working on it. Even Merrick. They’re all learning how to deal with this now and they’re doing it for me. They’re starting to get it. It doesn’t exactly negate the screwups, but it’s a step I’m really grateful they’re taking.