by LP Tvorik
Alex nodded, still not looking me in the eye. “It’s not you,” she said hoarsely, and I appreciated the lie. “I don’t want you to think it’s you. He’ll just… he’ll be so disappointed and he’ll find a way to keep us apart.”
“So we’ll keep our deal,” I said with a shrug. It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t let it matter. “The only difference is I’m not your secret friend, anymore.”
Alex just frowned.
“I’m your secret boyfriend.”
I smiled when her face split into a grin and she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me again. I locked my hands behind her back and held her against me as she stood on her tiptoes to deepen it. That kiss was short but it was just as powerful as the first. It set off the same crazy fireworks at the base of my spine. Would every kiss with her be like this?
We were both breathless when I pulled away from her with a frustrated groan.
“You’re a fast learner,” I croaked. “But we gotta save some progress for next time.”
Alex grinned and pulled away without a word, leading the way through the maze of her neighborhood’s shared backyard. When we reached the tree beside her house I hefted her up onto the lowest branch, watching with clenched, sweaty fists as she clambered up to her window and slipped inside.
After her window slid shut, I turned and made my way back across the yard to the sanctity of the trees. I followed the same worn-down path back to the spot and then past it to my neighborhood. I clambered through my own window, stripped off my shoes and jeans, and slid beneath the covers. It was the same pattern I always followed. Nothing was different. And yet, somehow, everything had changed.
‥ ‥ ‥
I’d always hated summer break. For most kids I guess summer meant a magical three months of adventure and freedom. Pool parties and Disney trips and camp. Sleeping late, cartoons, and lazy days eating popsicles. That kind of crap.
For me, though, summer always just meant more stress. Work instead of school. More overlap where the kids and I were at home with our foster parents. High temperatures and higher tempers. Worst of all: no school lunches.
The summer before my senior year, though, wasn’t so bad.
I did what I told Alex and went to the vice principal the day after we kissed. I told him it was me who beat up Freddy Whitehouse. I told them a version of the truth, wherein I stumbled upon Freddy and his buddies giving Tom a hard time. I just left out of the part where I’d been following the kid around all day waiting for an excuse to confront him.
They brought Tom in and he vouched for my story, but it didn’t make much of a difference. I was suspended for a week. Freddy somehow escaped with three days of detention. Not that it bothered me, much. Suspension just meant more time to myself. Plus, Freddy might have escaped punishment from the school but he didn’t escape justice. His face was a puffed-up mess and I knew he and his buddies would leave Tom alone as long as I was around.
My foster dad kicked my ass when he found out, but I didn’t mind that, either. Nothing got to me, that week. I had the taste of Alex on my lips and her scent on my skin no matter how many times I showered or brushed my teeth. I was invincible.
After my suspension was over there were only two weeks left in school and I drifted through those in a happy haze. Although my deal with Alex remained intact, the energy between us shifted. She no longer averted her gaze when she saw me. Our eyes would lock across the room and her skin would flush pink, her lips would pinch together, and I knew without asking that the shadow of my kiss followed her around the way hers followed me.
When the school year ended I went to work with a kind of fervor. Years before, as soon as it was legal, I’d secured a job at an auto shop within walking distance of my foster parents’ house. In the beginning it was just stupid shitwork the older guys didn’t wanna do. I cleaned bathrooms and swept floors and crap like that. After a while, though, some of the mechanics took me under their wing. They let me tag along and help on the simpler jobs. By the time I turned sixteen I was doing the simpler jobs on my own and helping out with more complicated work. By the time I turned seventeen I was doing complicated jobs by myself.
The shop’s owner, Red Mattis, was a pudgy older guy who chain smoked Marlboro Reds and sported a shiny bald patch that was perpetually smeared with engine grease. He was gruff and brusque, but he was a good guy. He worked on the floor with the rest of us and had a strict code of honor that built a loyal customer base. Red treated his workers well and would never lie to a customer or charge them for something they didn’t need.
He didn’t pay me a mechanic’s salary, because I wasn’t a mechanic. He did, however, offer to pay for a technical degree after I graduated high school and to keep me on in the interim. He gave me as many hours as he could and often showed up at work with plastic containers of leftovers he claimed he would never eat. He got mad when I got suspended and studied my black eyes and busted knuckles like they left a bad taste in his mouth. Idiot that I was, it was a few years down the road before I finally recognized the concern for what it was.
Red was a good guy, but his charity grated on me and I’d never seriously considered his offer to pay for school and keep a job for me after high school. I’d never seriously considered anything after high school. All I knew was that I wanted out of the life I was living. So I worked my job and saved my pennies and didn’t bother to ask myself what I’d do when I finally turned eighteen and escaped. I knew I wanted to keep looking after my foster siblings but I never asked myself how I’d do it. I knew I wanted to follow Alex but I never wondered if she’d really appreciate a homeless, jobless loser following her around the green lawns and storied brick buildings of her college campus.
That night we kissed, though, it was like a veil lifted. All of a sudden I saw my future and, let me tell you, that shit was bleak.
So I decided to try. It was too late to scrape together the grades to graduate on time, but I resolved to at least obtain the requisite knowledge to pass the GED. I picked up extra hours at Red’s shop to make money enough for an apartment. I spent every free minute devouring the books Mrs. Parker had given me. I pulled my boss aside and told him I was interested in that technical degree.
The summer before my senior year was a chaos of tension and hope. Every day meant long hours on my back or hunched over an engine block, covered in grease and dreaming of something better. Every evening meant finding enough food for the kids and piecing together a semblance of normalcy for them before they grew too old to realize it was fabricated. Every sunset meant lying in my bed in tense wakefulness while I waited for our legal guardians to stumble off to bed.
Every night meant bliss. Sheer, unadulterated heaven. I spent many long hours stretched out on the rock with the weight of Alex’s head on my shoulder, following her finger to the stars and listening to her voice as she talked about dark matter and quarks and the Big Bang Theory. I chased her through the woods playing stupid little kid games, listening to her giggle, and I tasted the sweat on her skin when I finally caught her.
We pushed the boundaries of Alex’s comfort zone that summer and I remember every anniversary like it was yesterday.
On May 10th 2001, the last day of school, I groped her boobs through her shirt.
On May 21st it was raining, so we huddled in the cave beneath the tree and made out for the duration of the time we both had to spare. No constellations, no games in the woods, no distractions. Just her and me and the sound of the raindrops hitting the water of the creek. Alex was straddling my lap and I remember the silky smoothness of her skin and the hard tone of her muscles as I ran my hands up her thighs. I remember her shuddering in pleasure and shifting on my lap. I remember slipping my hands past the hem of her shorts and cupping her bare ass, pulling her tighter against me.
On June 10th she reached between us and, cautious and hesitant and experimen
tal, finally gave a little through-the-pants attention to the part of me that had gone too long neglected.
On June 23rd we spread a blanket out on the sand so we could admire the sky and each other at the same time without tumbling off the rock. She tried to show me a star cluster she’d read about earlier that day. I said she was making shit up. She told me I was being deliberately obtuse. I rolled over and kissed her until she forgot why she was angry. She gripped my shirt and pulled me closer. I snuck a hand to her shorts and released the button. She didn’t stop me.
I moved slowly, sliding my fingers down, feeling the smooth surface of her stomach give way to a small thatch of soft, curly hair. Alex released her grip on my shirt and her hands found their way to my sides, fingers digging into my ribs.
“You okay?” I murmured breathlessly, pulling back to look down at her. She swallowed hard, eyes locked on mine, and nodded.
With a groan of relief, I bent to kiss her, letting my fingers continue to explore. I thought I might’ve died and gone to heaven when I slid one finger deeper and Alex gasped, arching against me. I wish I could say I brought her to a swift and epic orgasm, but I was still young and selfish and hadn’t yet discovered how to coax bliss out of her with just my fingers. Not to say I didn’t figure it out quickly, but June 23rd isn’t that anniversary.
On July 5th we lay on the rock and listened to late-night fireworks, no doubt set off by drunken patriots. We listened to sirens sing through the night, no doubt carrying drunken patriots minus a few blown-off digits.
“It’s Independence Day,” Alex said, rolling to her side so that her chest was pressed against my ribs, throwing a leg over mine to hold herself up. She rested a possessive hand on my stomach, and I could feel the heat of each finger through my shirt.
“Technically it’s the fifth,” I said around the thick lump of arousal in my throat. “It’s past midnight.”
“Do you have to be a jerk all the time?” Alex asked, resting her head on my chest. Her hair tickled my chin and filled my nose with the heady scent of her.
“Yeah, I do,” I answered, trailing my fingertips over her upper arm. “It’s kinda my gimmick.”
Alex sighed dramatically. “Can we just pretend it’s still Independence Day?” she implored.
“Sure, why?”
“‘Cuz I wanna feel free.” The wistfulness in her tone leveled me. She lived in a prison, just like me. Sometimes I forgot that, because her prison looked so different from the one I knew. I knew her parents didn’t hit her. Her father didn’t molest her. There was food at her table three times a day and snacks in her cabinet if she got hungry between. I suppose because of those basic luxuries I often slipped into the assumption that her life was sunshine and roses.
It wasn’t, though. Food and safety aren’t the only things a person needs to survive. Alex didn’t have love. Not from her parents. Perhaps, once upon a time, things had been good, but her father cared more for his parish than his family and her mom was tailspinning. And despite their shoddy parenting, neither of them seemed to want to let her live. She was trapped in a cage with apathetic guards who should have had the decency to either love her or let her go but did neither.
“Alright, you got it,” I said, squeezing her with my arm. “It’s still Independence Day. What are you gonna do with your freedom?”
I felt the hesitation in every line in her body. She was nervous, and nervous Alex usually meant good things for me. Please, please, please be ready, I thought, trying to keep my breathing steady. Every night since we’d first kissed I left the house with a condom in my pocket. Just in case.
“I kinda wanna get naked,” Alex said, her voice tinny and stifled by the humid summer air. Her head was still tucked up under my chin so I couldn’t see her face and she couldn’t see mine. Good thing, too, because all of a sudden I was grinning like a maniac.
“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “That’s it, just get naked?”
Soaring hope.
“Yeah!” Alex popped up on an elbow, smiling down at me with excitement all over her features. “It’s hot. I wanna get naked and play in the creek.”
Crashing disappointment.
“Well don’t let me stop you,” I said, shoving her off me playfully. “Get to it.”
“I’m not gonna do it alone,” she said, planting her hands on her hips. When she did that it was a sure sign I was about to lose an argument.
“What, so I gotta do it too?”
“Uh huh!”
“And in return I get to look at you, right? I don’t wanna do some bullshit where we keep our backs turned. That’s no fun.”
In answer, Alex reached down to the hem of her shirt and ripped it off with a flourish, tossing it onto the rock. I swear, my jaw hit the sand. She was wearing a plain white bra and dirty old cargo shorts, her hair in a messy ponytail. Moonlight didn’t gleam off her skin, it just seemed to settle there, making her glow.
“Now you,” Alex said, gesturing at me as if unaware that she’d just stopped my world from spinning.
“Uh…” I cleared my throat. “Not yet. I’m not wearing a bra you know, so you gotta… it wouldn’t be fair if you were still wearing that.”
Her eyes held mine as she reached behind her and unclasped the bra and, with a small motion, tossed it onto the rock with her shirt. “Better?” she asked, placing her hands back on her hips. She was still a little nervous. I could tell by the set of her jaw and the way her throat worked as she swallowed. If you didn’t know her like I did, though, you’d think she’d done this a thousand times.
Unable to conjure my voice, I tugged my shirt over my head, praying like hell it was too dark for her to make out the smattering of fading, yellowish bruises that decorated my rib cage. Fortunately, they seemed to escape Alex’s notice. She nodded, a small smile tugging up the corners of her lips as her fingers unclasped the button of her shorts. With a single, smooth motion she shimmied them down her legs and kicked them off to the side.
Throat dry, dick straining, I fumbled with my belt and shoved my jeans down, kicking them over by her shorts.
There we stood, staring. I stared at plain white underwear and she stared at faded blue boxers, both of which probably came in a value pack from the dollar store. We were so ordinary. Just two kids in the heart of America, standing in a creek beneath a pale moon, wearing store-brand underwear and a gleam of sweat from the humid summer air. Just two kids falling deeply, madly, irresponsibly in love.
What a cliché.
“Count of three?” Alex asked, and I heard a quaver in her voice and I guess I’m a sick son of a bitch, because the fact that she was nervous turned me on all the more.
“Sure,” I managed. “One…”
“Two…” Alex whispered.
“Three,” we said together.
That was it. My eyes ate every inch of her perfect body. The soft mounds of her breasts and the smooth curve of her hips. The small patch of hair between her legs and ten small toes with perfectly painted nails curling in the sand.
Fireworks went off overhead and for a moment she stood in spectacular relief, blue and white light flashing on her skin. Then we were plunged back into darkness. I’ll hold that moment in my mind until the universe collapses. July 4th by Alex’s standard, July 5th by mine. Independence Day: the first time I saw my girl naked.
July 13th was Alex’s seventeenth birthday. I didn’t have a lot of money and I was a miser with what I did have, but I shelled out $50 bucks for her. I asked Red what I should get my girlfriend for her birthday and he told me chicks love jewelry. I went to a jewelry store but the sight of me made the clerk grow pale and I guess that makes sense. The only way I was walking out of that place with any merchandise was if I stole it.
It made me a little sick to get my perfect girl a gift from Wal-Mart, but it was all I could afford. I stalked the case for ten minutes, trying to find so
mething suitable but everything seemed dumb. What would my Alex do with a fake diamond bracelet? What would she do with some gaudy gold earrings? Nothing looked right. Not for her.
I was starting to lose hope when I found the small card on a turntable sitting by the display case. In retrospect, I think the brand was for kids. There were little earrings shaped like dolphins and necklace sets with Best/Friend written on two halves of a heart.
At the bottom of the turntable, though, I found a card with the two tiny silver studs shaped like stars. I picked it off the rack, staring at the stars glinting at me and the price sticker on the corner of the card. $35. That much money for two stupid little earrings meant they had to be at least half decent, right?
So I bought the earrings, a package of Oreos, and some tissue paper and tape to wrap up my shitty attempt at a birthday gift. The bill came out to $48.63, so I tossed a Snickers into the mix for my walk home.
We didn’t break down any physical barriers that night. Alex squealed like a little girl when she saw the earrings and made me put them in for her right there. We each ate a row of Oreos and then lay on the rock in a sugar coma.
“Thanks for the earrings,” Alex said eventually, rolling onto her back. It was hot as hell outside, but I felt cold from the loss of her head against my chest.
“I’ll get you something fancier next year,” I said, vowing to follow up on the promise. I’d set aside a whole separate account just for Alex. I’d get her whatever the hell she wanted.
“I don’t like fancy, you know that,” she said. “They’re perfect. Stop being stubborn and just say ‘you’re welcome.’”
“You’re welcome,” I grumbled. My arm was quickly falling asleep under the weight of her head but I didn’t dare shift. I needed her touch like I needed air.
“Hey Nate?”
“Yeah?”
She hesitated, suddenly tense with nervous energy, and I tried not to get too excited. What would it be this time? I’d been doing some research and I was pretty sure I could get her to come if she’d let me try. Now that’d be a good birthday gift. Screw earrings.