Chapter 22
Andrew
I don’t have Kiki this weekend, but Jennifer doesn’t need to know that. We take in an early movie—some romantic comedy she picked out—share a bucket of popcorn, then I drop her off so I can purportedly pick up my daughter by nine.
If Jen notices that I’m distracted, she doesn’t let on. I doubt she notices.
Robert returned to school today even though he was expected to be out the entire week. I’d had to pinch myself a couple of times during class to keep everything nice and loose. He’d done good, almost too good, to the point that I’d found myself willing him to look at me. And here I was worried about him giving us away.
I was the one I had to watch.
But damn, he looked good. Not any different than he looked any other day, but any other day I hadn’t known what it felt like to have him so close to me, to put my mouth on his, to shiver under his touch.
He didn’t linger after class, he didn’t stop by after school, and I found myself thinking I had imagined everything.
“You sure you can’t come in for a minute?” Jen asks, looking up at me with unabashed hope in her eyes.
We’re standing outside her apartment door, which is, thankfully, on the other side of town. I resist checking the messages on my phone.
“Sorry,” I say, shrugging my apology for emphasis. “I’m afraid I’m Daddy first.” Which isn’t exactly a lie.
She slips her arms around my waist, and I know I’m supposed to kiss her good night. “Did you like the movie?” I ask.
“Yeah. It was good. But, I don’t know. I think Jennifer Aniston is a little overexposed. Don’t you?” She says all this in a husky voice, like she’d like to be a little more exposed herself.
“Well, next time, no Jennifer Aniston.”
I can see the next time register in her eyes, a promise that she files away, perhaps only to take out and examine for hidden meaning when she curls up in bed tonight.
I don’t particularly like the deception. But I consider it a necessary evil. She’s young and pretty. She’ll get over it. In fact one day, she’ll soothe her raw emotions with words like prick and douche and that’s okay with me. I’ll spot her a couple of pricks.
“Gotta go,” I say, unlocking her wrists behind me.
“When do I get to meet your daughter?”
“Um, soon.”
“Okay,” she says, and sighs heavily, a long note of resignation.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
With that I let go of her hands and return to my car.
I miss you.
I smile and delete his text.
A lot of singles live in my apartment complex, so it’s not surprising that the parking lot is fairly empty this early on a Friday night. Without any real conscious thought, I find myself scanning the spaces for Robert’s car. I’m both relieved and disappointed when I don’t find it. Maybe he went out with Nic tonight. Maybe he’s hanging out with some band kids. Maybe he’s just sitting at home waiting to exchange some sexy texts with me. As I pull into a parking space opposite my apartment and get out, I realize I’m okay with the last two thoughts, but I don’t like the first one at all.
The light is out on my front porch, and as I fumble for my apartment key in the dark, I make a mental note to buy a new lightbulb tomorrow. The first key I try turns out to be for my classroom door. Before I can identify the right key, my cell phone signals a text. I snatch it from my pocket so quickly I almost fumble it to the ground.
Make me your radio.
I lean back against the door and read the text again in the dark.
“How was your date?”
His voice startles me, and I almost fumble my phone for the second time. I look around and find his silhouette sitting against the wall on the far side of my concrete porch, not four feet from me. “You scared me half to death,” I say, trying to calm my skittering heartbeat. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, getting to his feet. “I just wanted to—I thought—” He doesn’t finish, and even though I can’t make out the features of his face in the dark, I know him well enough now to know he’s chewing on his lip again. It’s that hesitation, that uncertain quality in his voice that I’m becoming increasingly familiar with. So when he asks, “Can I come in?” I can’t say no. “Are you going to behave yourself?” I ask playfully.
“I don’t think so.”
I laugh quietly. “Come on.”
I shut the door behind us and lock it just as he proves he can’t, in fact, be trusted to behave himself. He presses me up against the door with his own body, and for a few moments, I forget what a bad idea this is. I’ve checked my hands at the door, literally, but one of his grips the back of my head. And it strays . . . down the length of my arm, up the back of my shirt, down again over my ass. I feel my nerve endings spring to life. The sense of déjà vu makes me grin, breaking the lip lock he has on me.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Nothing.” And then it clicks. “Did you unscrew my lightbulb?”
“I might have.”
“A life of crime always starts with the little things.”
“Then lock me up before I can cause more harm.”
I might just do that. In his right hand, he’s clutching a small bouquet of what I think are carnations. I smelled them somewhere between getting pressed against the door and getting felt up, but I’ve been a little too busy fighting the urge to throw him to the ground to comment on them. Now seems like a good time.
“You brought me flowers?”
“Isn’t that what a guy does when he’s courting his paramour?”
“Paramour?” I take the flowers from him and run the petals through my fingers in the dark. “Is that one of your SAT words?”
I expect him to laugh; I expect him to make some witty comment; I expect him to reengage my mouth. He does none of those things. Instead, he grows quiet for a moment, and then using both hands this time, addresses the buttons on my shirt.
The primal part of my brain allows him two buttons before the scared-shitless part engages. “Hey, hey, hey,” I whisper, capturing his hands in mine and smacking him in the nose with the carnations in the process. “PG-thirteen, remember?”
“I don’t want PG-thirteen. I’m eighteen, and I want you.”
“And you’ll have me . . . when you graduate. Glaze on a donut, right? In the meantime”—I flip the light on to dampen the obvious sexual tension growing between us—“we keep it above the waist . . . and fully clothed.”
He groans in frustration. I feel his pain to the tip of my toes.
“Come on. You can watch a rerun of Tosh. O with me.”
“Are we going to watch from your bed?”
I try to give him a scowl, but I don’t think I quite pull it off. “You are trouble,” I say.
“No, I’m not,” he replies, grinning.
I leave him to turn on the TV and rummage around in the pantry for some popcorn. Frankly, I had my fill of popcorn at the theater, but Robert needs something to keep his hands and mouth busy, so more popcorn it is. I find a couple of boxes behind the nutritious whole-grain Lucky Charms that Kiki and I keep secret from Maya. “Butter or caramel?” I call out. When he doesn’t respond, I look around the wall to the living room. He’s got the remote in his hand, and he’s scrolling through the onscreen guide, in his boxer briefs. They’re a soft gray flannel, nicely filled out all around. I help myself to a good look before I ahem.
“What channel?” he asks innocently.
“Why are you in your underwear?”
A mock seriousness overtakes his face. “Because I know how much it bothers you when I take off my shirt. So I didn’t. Kudos for me, right?”
I shake my head slowly. “Right.” I turn away, smiling at his brazenness. “Sixty-one,” I call back. “And put your pants on.”
As the popcorn heats up in the microwave, I futilely attempt to cool off, but he’s so damn cute and so sexy. And that’s when the light goes out in the living room. “Too much glare,” he calls out before I can react. God help me. I leave the kitchen light on when I bring the bowl of popcorn in a few minutes later. He picks up the remote again, points it at the TV, and presses the Power button.
“Did I miss something?” I ask, setting the bowl on the sofa table.
“Can we just talk?”
“Not in the dark with you still in your underwear.”
He holds my eyes for a long moment, then gets up and pulls his pants back on. I instantly regret saying anything, but I’d never admit that. He settles back on the futon, and warily, I join him.
I think I know where this is going, but I ask anyway: “What do you want to talk about?”
“I’m eighteen,” he says simply.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Yeah, I think I do. Four months, Robert. We can wait four months.”
“Last night I stopped by the cemetery on my way home.”
I take a deep breath and mentally kick myself for forgetting that his dad has been in the ground barely twenty-four hours. I feel like an ass.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He shrugs and his eyebrows draw together. “I don’t know why I went. I just keep trying to feel something for him. Not anger or hurt or anything like that, you know. But loss, I guess. I mean, I wish I could say that I’m going to miss him, but . . .” He shakes his head. “I feel like I’ve been cheated all my life of something that should have been mine. That’s what gets me. I’ve been trying to remember the last time my dad touched me—the last time anyone touched me like they really meant it. I know Mom used to. And then I went all adolescent on her in junior high, and, well, let’s just say she overcompensated. I think she’s afraid to even hug me now. It’s my fault, but I miss it, Andrew. I miss it so much it aches sometimes, you know?”
I do know. I do know, I want to tell him, but I let him talk. And he does, with a gut-wrenching honesty that tears at my heart.
“I want to be held. Is that so wrong? I want to be held, and stroked. I want to know that someone loves me. I want to feel it on my skin.” He looks at the ceiling and exhales, then meets my eyes again. “But nobody touches me anymore. Not even when I have a fever. Mom just hands me a thermometer now.” He drops his eyes and his ears redden. “Even when you kiss me, you don’t touch me. It’s like I’m a leper or something. I can hardly keep my hands off of you, but it’s not the same for you, is it?”
He has no idea what he does to me, what he’s doing to me right now. I want to make him feel better, make him smile again, lighten the mood. So I smile when I ask, “Why do I feel like I’m being subtly manipulated?” I mean it as a joke. But it’s stupid and ill-timed, and I instantly regret the words.
His face goes slack. “Is that what you think?” he says.
No. Yes. I don’t know. Manipulation suggests there’s something dark behind his intentions, but I see only light in Robert. And God knows I’ve more than met him halfway already.
Abruptly he gets up, and he’s at the door before I realize he’s leaving. He turns the deadbolt and has his hand on the doorknob by the time I reach him. I brace my hand against the door to stop him from opening it.
“Robert . . .”
He presses his forehead to the door. “Just let me go.”
“I can’t.” With my free hand I reach up and tentatively stroke the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean that. I thought you knew me better. You want to know what I really think? I think you’ve opened your heart to me, and you make me want to open mine to you. I think that if I start touching you, I won’t be able to stop. I think that I don’t want you to go, but I’m terrified of what will happen if you stay.”
He turns to face me, but his eyes are on the floor. “It’s okay, Mr. Mac. I’m just gonna go.”
Mr. Mac. Ouch. “It’s not okay,” I say, lifting his chin and forcing him to look at me. I reach past him again and reengage the deadbolt. I’m going to touch him. And I’m going to keep touching him until he knows.
Robert
Tears sting my eyes as I hold him to me. He didn’t have to do this, but damn it feels so good. He’s breathing heavily into my neck and shivers as my fingers trail up and down his spine. After a long quiet moment he turns his head to the side and grapples around on the floor until he comes up with my T-shirt. “Sorry,” he says as he dries me off, and I think he’s actually embarrassed that he ejaculated on my stomach.
He sits up and finds his boxers on the back of the couch and slips them on. Then he hands my boxer briefs to me and turns away to gather up the rest of our clothes and to give me some privacy, which is kind of sweet considering there isn’t any part of my body that he is not intimately acquainted with now. I smile, and over his shoulder he smiles back at me, then stretches out on the couch again and settles his head in my lap and gazes up at me. The hair on his chest is slightly matted with sweat. I run my fingers through it.
“Thank you,” I say.
He responds by taking my hand and pressing it to his mouth.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve looked at that little hint of hair above your top button and wondered what it led to? You’d be doing calculus problems on the board, and I’d be unbuttoning your shirt in my mind.”
“And all that time I thought you were thinking about differentials and derivatives and harmonic progression.”
“I was thinking about harmonic progression. I’m thinking about it right now.”
He rolls his eyes playfully at me, but then he presses his lips together and his expression grows serious.
“Uh-uh,” I say, pinching his lips together with my fingers. “There are no police banging on the door, no lightning strikes, no regrets. And if you keep frowning that way, you’re going to hurt my feelings, not to mention my manhood.”
He smiles at that, then links his fingers with mine. “If anybody finds out, Robert—”
“They won’t. You have my word. I won’t let that happen.”
He flattens my fingers with the palm of his hand, then draws them down to his mouth again and kisses my palm. “I am a bad teacher.”
I laugh. “No, you’re not. We just found each other a few months too soon, that’s all. By June, it won’t even matter anymore.”
He reaches up and takes my wallet from the pocket of my jeans cast recklessly on the back of the futon. He opens it and thumbs through the contents. “Hmm, what is this? American Red Cross Lifeguard Certification. You’re a lifeguard?”
“Last summer. The swan pool.”
“Which one is that?”
“Ridgewood. Do you ever take Kiki to the pool?”
“I might this summer. Are you lifeguarding again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Would you be wearing a Speedo?”
He laughs and his head bounces lightly in my lap.
He shuffles the card to the back of the stack.
“How was your date tonight?” I ask, but what I want to ask is, “What’s wrong?” Was it really just minutes ago that his body was moving so beautifully against mine, his hands everywhere at once, as if I were some text written in Braille that he needed to memorize? But already I can feel him slipping away. He’s scared, I tell myself. But he has nothing to be afraid of.
“Oh, yeah. My date. I’d almost forgotten.” He’s studying my school ID card.
“Did you kiss her good night?”
“Nope.”
“Did she try to kiss you good night?”
“Nope.”
“Did you hold her hand?”
He rolls his eyes up to me. “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“Maybe.”
He looks at my American Express card, which Mom had issued in my name when I started driving. She wanted to make sure I was never stranded without the means to pay for gas or a tow or whatever. Behind the American Express are a medical insurance card and one from the auto insurance company on what to do in case of an accident. I’m about to take the damn cards and fling them across the room when he gets to my driver’s license.
“March twenty-eighth. You have a birthday coming up in two months.” He studies the license for a moment, then suddenly mutters, “Fuck. You’re seventeen?”
I shrug.
“You told me you were eighteen,” he says, sitting up suddenly. He stuffs everything back in my wallet and reaches for his shirt.
“I rounded up.”
“Oh, you rounded up all right. Almost two months’ worth.” He flings my clothes at me. “Get dressed.”
I gather up my shirt and jeans, but I don’t get dressed. “It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal. It is a huge fucking deal. Oh shhhit. You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here with you. Seventeen? Oh, God. Get your clothes on. This did not happen.” He yanks on his jeans, then his shirt. His hands tremble as he struggles with the buttons, and I’m reminded of the way they trembled when he really touched me for the first time.
But this hurts to watch. I get to my feet to help with the buttons, hoping to calm him down some, but he twists away and backs up, throwing up his hands as if to show he is not touching me. The move stings. He turns away and shoves his feet into his loafers by the door.
“I’m seventeen. So the fuck what? I’m still the age of consent. And I consent. Believe me. I totally, with everything I am, consent.”
“Do you not understand?” he says, rounding on me. “I just committed a crime. I could lose my job. I could lose my career. I could lose my daughter. You can’t even vote.”
“It’s not even an election year,” I say quietly.
He zips up his jeans but doesn’t bother to button them, then grabs his keys off the table. “Lock the door behind you, okay?”
“You’re just gonna walk out? Just like that? Pretend like this never happened?”
He stops and screws up his face, then bangs his head on the door. He’s gripping his keys so tightly that his knuckles have gone white. “This didn’t happen. You got that?” Then he slips out without another word.