5. Fourteen Years Ago
GAVIN
What was I doing chasing this girl around? Until an hour ago, I literally believed we were put on this planet to eat and fuck. Now all I wanted to do was wash her hair and suck on her ears. What was happening to me?
I was currently hungover and tweaking from coffee. And this girl, Penny, the dancer with the almost black eyes and silky hair, was making me crazy.
I want to swim around in her dark oceans I’m gonna fuck her. No, I want to cook breakfast for her in my underwear. I want to kiss her with a mouth full of hot chocolate, then fuck her.
I was confused.
“Hey man, so what do you think?” the professor asked.
“She’s amazing.” That was a gigantic understatement. She was warming up, and I was observing her flexibility. Joey had his hand on his hip, staring at us from the edge of the stage. I waved at him and batted my eyelashes. He looked embarrassed. I could tell he was jealous of Penny. She danced beautifully. It was impossible to take my eyes off her. Not to mention I could see her nipples through her tank top.
“She and Joey have been partners for two years. They really are the best we have here,” Doug said.
“What’s his problem?”
“A crisis of confidence, perhaps. Not unusual for seniors.”
Penny was doing this insane jump across the stage while Joey Jackoff was just standing there.
“She’s so good,” I said.
“Yeah, almost too good for this place.”
Joey took his eyes off Penny for one second and seemed to miss his mark where he was supposed to catch her and fall back, shielding her from hitting the stage. She fell to the floor with a thud and landed on her knees.
“Are you fucking kidding, Joey?” she yelled.
“Settle down, Penny,” Doug said.
My little firecracker had a temper and I liked it.
Doug went to the front of the stage and ordered Penny to stay on the ground. “Penny, straighten your legs and stretch them out. Just rest for a bit, I’ll get you some ice.” He turned toward Joey. “You’re out today. Get it together. Let’s hope this isn’t a serious injury.”
Joey shrugged and pranced off the stage like he didn’t care. Just before he was out of view, he turned and looked at me. I flipped him off.
I walked toward Penny as she sat with her knee propped up. She was watching me.
“That guy is such a fucking baby. I’m sick of his shit,” she said.
Penny didn’t seem to be in pain, though she did look extremely pissed. Doug ran off to get ice.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Yeah, but he could have really messed up my knee.”
She stood up easily and began stretching, bending over right in front of me as I watched her with intense focus. I’m not gonna lie, I was embarrassingly turned on.
Doug had a strange look on his face when he returned with the ice. “Do you even need this?” he said to her.
“No, I’m fine. I just wanted to get rid of Joey. He’s ruining this routine for me, Doug.”
“I’ll have a talk with him. He’ll get it. The level of difficulty on his part is minimal, but we all know how he is. He doesn’t like to be in the shadow.”
“Put a goddamn spotlight on him if it’s going to patch up his ego. I don’t want to get hurt.” She was so assertive and smart and witty. I was totally into it.
Doug kept looking at me like he was sizing me up. I smiled.
He put his attention back on Penny. “Can you continue, or do you want to call it a night?”
“No, I want to try the jump a few more times. I want to work through this bruise, otherwise I’ll be sore in the morning.”
Doug looked at me again.
“You’re not thinking . . . ?” Penny said.
“Well, he looks strong.”
Before I even let the conversation go any further, I said, “I can’t dance to save my life. Seriously, two left feet. Just awful . . . a spectacle, really.” It wasn’t entirely true. Back in Hollywood, where I grew up with my mom, she had taught me how to dance, but I wasn’t about to jump around on a stage in a pair of tights.
“No, we just need you for the lifts,” Doug said.
I would get to hold Penny? My eyes lit up. “Lift?”
“But he won’t have the form, Doug.”
“No faith in me, Little P?”
She smiled. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“No, Penny. He’s got the strength and I want to get you off your feet. Work on balance for a bit.”
If my roommate Mike were here witnessing this, I’d definitely get an earful. He was always heckling me about falling in love in five minutes, then out of love five minutes later.
Last month, after dating Kimber for only four days, I got the word Kimbird tattooed on my chest. Three days after that, she was sleeping with a guy from the basketball team and I didn’t even care. A month before, it was Chelsea, who had a pet rat named Amadeus that sat on her shoulder like a parrot. Before that it was Lena, who liked to be spanked—hard—every time we had sex. I loved women, especially the weird ones. But Penny was more unique and talented and beautiful than any girl I had ever met.
I looked at my watch. I had to be at the garage in fifty minutes.
Screw it; give me the damn tights.
“I can help, but I only have about twenty minutes before I have to bolt.”
“Oh, bummer,” Penny said. “I was hoping you could look at my car in the parking lot. It’s broken down and I actually do need a ride.”
Doug was confused.
“Did I say twenty minutes? I meant an hour and twenty minutes.” Who cares if I was late? Pete could deal with it. I hadn’t been to work late in over a week.
“Take off your boots,” Penny said as she stretched.
“Gladly. Anything else you’d like me to take off?”
God, I couldn’t stop looking at her underwear through her sheer tights, or were they pantyhose? Who cares.
She smirked. “Gavin, get serious. This isn’t a social experiment. If you drop me, I’ll kill you.”
“I won’t drop you.”
“Work on the superman lift first,” Doug said.
“God, that lift is hard,” she said under her breath. She was nervous. “Okay, stagger your legs like this.” She showed me and I mimicked her. “You need a solid center of gravity. I’ll jump and you’ll lift me over your head.”
“Like Dirty Dancing?”
“Kind of, yes. Just don’t drop me, Casanova. I’ll handle the rest.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
She placed my hands on her hips. “This is where you’ll be lifting me from, which means most of my body will be over your head and back. If you lift me too hard and fast, I’ll go flying and come crashing down, probably on my head. I could die or be paralyzed.”
“No pressure,” I said.
“How tall are you anyway?”
“Six-two.”
“Great.” She wasn’t smiling. “I don’t know why I’m agreeing to do this.”
The music came on but it was different. I recognized it immediately. It was a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman,” sung by Jeff Buckley. How fitting.
“God, I love this song,” I said.
“I love him, too. You ready?”
“I can play this for you later if you want.”
“I’d like that,” she said.
“It’s such a perfect song for right now.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you someday.”
We were five inches apart. Our chests were heaving. And we liked the same music. How the hell was this happening?
“You ready to throw me in the air or what, Gavin?”
Right at the lyric, “She makes love just like a woman,” she ran toward me, I picked her up, and a moment later she was over my head. I could feel her strength in my hands. We were steady. I knew she made love just like a woman; I could feel it in my fingertips.
Doug clapped. “Beautiful. Hold it. Beautiful, just beautiful.”
It felt like she weighed nothing.
“Okay, Gavin, you’re going to cradle her now. Watch her knee.”
When I dropped her into my arms, she giggled, but I was frozen . . . mesmerized.
“What?” she said. “Why are you staring at me?”
“I don’t know.” I held her.
All of a sudden I didn’t want to fuck her anymore. I mean I did, but more than that, I wanted to get to know her.
When I set her down, she said, “Well done. You’re an old pro.”
“That was easy.”
Doug came onto the stage. “Don’t worry, that was it,” he told me. “We’re not going to ask you to dance. I wanted Penny to test something. How’d you feel?” he asked her.
“Strong,” she said.
“Good. Keep your head up. I’ll bring Joey in for extra conditioning. He needs to regain his confidence.”
Doug shook my hand and said, “Thanks a lot, Gavin. This whole thing is about trust. It seems like you two have it.”
She trusted me?
“Penny and Joey have struggled with their lifts lately. It’s not always easy to find the right partner. It requires a subtle alchemy. You know? A little bit of magic.”
I looked over at Penny, who was squinting at me with the same peculiar look I’m sure I was giving her. I didn’t take my eyes off her when I responded to Doug. “Well, she is my best friend, so yeah, the trust is there.”
Penny laughed and shook her head.
After she gathered her stuff and we headed to the door, she turned to me. “Sure you don’t mind taking a look at my car and giving me a ride? I live really close by.”
Giving me a ride?
“I’m sure I don’t mind. Let’s hit it.”
I was converting every word of our conversation into a sexual proposition. I needed to get a grip.