I’d eaten half my chicken and a few forkfuls of vegetables and potatoes when the lights dimmed for the first dance. Polly and my dad had opted to have couples join them on the floor. Joe waited for me to finish a dance with my uncle Rich, who was my dad’s best man. Then it was our turn.
We started to sway to “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel, and Joe put his hands on my waist. My head came up to his chin, and when he cocked his head to whisper in my ear, his breath was warm on my neck. “So is it weird, being in your dad’s wedding?”
“It’s not as weird as you’d think,” I said. “Or maybe I’m getting used to dealing with strange circumstances.”
“So now you can tell me what the strange circumstances were with St. Mark’s.”
“Well, I don’t know how to say this, but there are dirty movie theaters downtown where I’d see fewer penises than I did today.”
“Wait . . . what?”
I told him about Ken and the team’s streaking, and douching, and what we’d done to the field, and how we’d gotten caught and Bobby had managed it. “I was really afraid he’d be pissed, but he actually approved of it.”
“So you and him . . . talk a lot?” I could sense the bigger question—whether I had a thing for Bobby—underneath the one he’d asked. But he was the one who’d had about thirty different girlfriends since we’d met, and Bobby was just my coach.
“He’s . . . a good coach,” I said. “But that’s it.”
“Huh,” Joe said. The same “huh” from outside. Then he leaned closer to me, his mouth right next to my ear, and whispered, “Do you think I need to kick Ken’s ass on Monday?”
Before I could tell him I was happy with the way the team had handled it, he said, “Wait, sorry, I’m being a douche. I mean, a jerk. You already got him back.”
“You don’t need to defend my honor,” I said in a light tone. “But if you feel like kicking Ken’s ass, I’m sure he deserves it for other reasons.”
“Yeah, I never told you the whole story, but he and I used to be friends.”
“What?”
“He joined the team after me and he was my backup at goalie. And I guess he didn’t like that, because one day he was tending goal and I was playing forward at scrimmage and he tripped me on purpose. And if you pull your foot back right when the other guy is flying, you can really fuck up their quad muscle. But he got what he wanted, and I’m better off, I think.”
“You’re such a good player, though,” I said, and looked into his eyes so he’d know I meant it. “But . . . I guess we might not have met if you were still hanging out with him.”
“Yeah, I’m better off,” Joe said. He bit his lip and my heart pounded. At that moment, my entire focus was on him, with no distractions or daydreams intruding. No Paul Newman, no Han Solo. I wanted Joe to kiss me, and I felt like he wanted the same thing. I felt like if I stared at him longer, I could make it happen.
But I also liked the feeling of anticipation. I glanced away, looking around the dance floor.
“The concert the other day—why did you ask me and not Jeannette?” I asked. “Or Lizzy, or one of the other ones?”
Joe pulled back so our eyes met again. He put the tip of his tongue against his upper lip, like he was thinking of the right answer. Then a smile came over his face and, without looking away from me, he said, “I guess I can have a good time with a lot of people, but when you know the person you like hanging out with best, why waste time hanging out with people who aren’t her?”
“Oh, I think I get it,” I said, hiding my smile as I tested resting my head on his shoulder. I trusted that he meant what he said, and wasn’t just saying it. It explained why he kept asking me to practice, and to do other things. And I liked hanging out with him, doing anything. He gave me the same feeling I’d get from holding a hot pizza box on my lap. Being with Joe was comforting and exciting at the same time. It wasn’t how I felt with Bobby.
His hands ran down my back until his fingertips grazed the top of my butt. I cocked my head back to look at him and he said, “I’m sorry, is that okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It definitely is.”
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the pressure of his fingertips, and then Joe was whispering into my neck, “I’m enjoying this dance,” and I could feel the light stubble where he shaved. I pressed my body closer to his. There was no space between us now. A deep sigh emerged from him, and he clutched me tighter.
“Me too,” I said. “It’s nice.”
But it was better than nice, and way worse than nice. I felt like I couldn’t get close enough to Joe. I’d worked myself into a state of horniness so thorough, I couldn’t take it. My breath was coming short and shallow, and I put my lips just at the top of his collar, where it touched his skin.
I heard him take a sharp breath, and his fingers pressed into my hips. The very idea that I’d made him feel what I was feeling made me want more. Every touch felt so good, and I liked him so much.
I really liked him, and that was the strangest part of it all to me.
I put my lips near his ear and said, “Should we . . .”
Joe finished the sentence. “Get out of here?”
At the same time, with the same resolution, we both said, “YES.”
Twenty-Nine
Joe had my hand and we tried not to look like we were running for our horny lives as we bolted from the ballroom.
“Should we go for a drive?” he asked. “Someplace else?”
“I shouldn’t leave,” I said. “But maybe we can go somewhere in the building.” I saw a door and dragged him toward it. I opened it. It was a coat closet. “This okay?”
“It’s great,” Joe said.
I pulled him inside. I didn’t wait for him to make the first move—I made it, and pushed him up against the back wall of the closet. Neither of us kissed the other one first—we were synchronized as our lips met for the first time. The kiss was an avalanche, toppling out of each of us and pulling us together, like gravity. We were kissing and pressing and panting and my shoe got stuck in a fallen hanger and I slipped so he had to catch me before I hit the floor. We laughed, giggles that collided in the dark. Then, as I righted myself, I nearly elbowed him in the face. “Watch it, killer,” he said, before kissing me again, slower this time. I grabbed the back of his neck and he pressed a thumb under the narrow strap of my dress. We stumbled again, as a pair, and I had to put my hand on the wall to keep us upright.
I was only one minute in, but making out with someone I really liked—shoving old ladies’ coats out of the way, fumbling around in the dark, excited and laughing as our limbs and feet and hair tangled—wasn’t anything like the soft-lit love scenes I’d seen in most movies. It wasn’t like sex ed, either, where every step was like the instructions to assemble furniture. It was clumsy and messy, but also perfect and better.
The strap of my dress fell down and then part of my dress, and I started to pull it up, and Joe did, too, but his fingertips on my skin felt so good that I said, “No, leave it.” And my boob, not even my favorite one, was partly out. Joe trailed his hand down my collarbone and then down to my chest and when he touched me, I gasped.
I was so horny I thought I’d die. I tugged at his shirt and pulled it from his pants so I could touch his skin. We kept kissing the whole time, and as I ran my hands down his chest, I stopped at his pants and then, touching his belt, asked him, “May I?” like he’d asked me.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice thick, and he still had my breast in his hand and, as his thumb rolled over my nipple, a dizzying electricity surged through me. Between my legs I had the feeling of having to pee but not having to pee. As I unzipped Joe’s pants and let them drop to the floor, I hiked my dress up so that we were pressed together, underwear to underwear.
“I don’t think we should . . . ,” Joe started.
“We won’t,” I said, thinking, We won’t YET, as I moved against him. Joe was as excited as I was, but it was more obvious on him, and th
e friction as our fulcrums met, coupled with the kissing—Joe touching my face, swooping his fingers lightly down my cheek and across my jaw in a way that gave me happy chills—felt sensational.
There was nothing dignified about dry humping, but I didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable doing it with Joe. He was a good guy, like Bobby. Wait . . . why was I thinking about Bobby? Oh God, why could I not think about Bobby, just a little? Bobby driving me in his car, at his office, in the health food store, at the motel in Wisconsin—Joe kissed my neck, and I ground my hips harder against him. I was so close to coming that the added pressure was all I needed to tip me past the edge.
Then I was coming. Pleasure rolled over me in a wave as I uttered, “Oh my God, Bobby.”
Yes. I said, “Oh my God, Bobby.”
Joe dropped his hands from my face and stared at me. “What did you say?”
For the first time since we got inside the closet together, I felt too naked. I stuttered useless syllables as I began to answer, but then the door flew open and a man’s voice said, “It’s been a while since I smoked a cigar.”
My dad’s voice.
The lights came on. My hands were still on Joe’s hips and he was still pressed to the wall—his arms limp at his sides—but when we registered my dad, with Mr. Trillo right behind him, Joe wrenched away from me, pulled up his pants, and bolted past them.
My first thought was that I’d climaxed with a guy—a guy I liked—for the first time, and I’d called him the wrong name. My second thought was that I might never be aroused again, after being caught by my dad and Mr. Trillo.
And I was caught. My dress was partway down, my hair was now a puffy mass, and one of my pumps had come off. The looks on their faces were nearly as bad as Joe’s had been.
“What the hell is going on? . . . Are you . . . ? Were you?” my dad sputtered.
“Oh God,” Mr. Trillo said, like he was a soldier stepping over mauled and bloody bodies.
“I’m sorry,” my dad said to him. “I don’t know . . .” Neither one was moving, as if they were in shock.
I turned to find Joe, to apologize, and to grab him so I could take him somewhere else to explain. But then I remembered he was gone. I pulled up my dress and scrambled past my dad and Mr. Trillo, picking up my stray shoe and taking off the other one.
I ran. Out the front door of the banquet hall, down the steps, across the circular drive where Bobby had dropped me off hours earlier. I ran to the parking lot, searching for Joe’s car. Searching for Joe. Then, when I was sure he’d left, I stopped and stood there.
He would never want to speak to me again.
I looked toward the reception hall, but I couldn’t go back in there. And no one was coming out for me. So I ran down Ridgeland, probably a ridiculous sight in my peach dress, and cut to a side street where I stopped to think.
I sat inside an empty bus shelter, grateful for the small mercy of a warm November night, and not knowing what to do. Mom was out of town, and Tina was with her dad. I had my teammates but I didn’t know their phone numbers, or where they lived. Candace was probably with George, and I didn’t want this to be the first time I spoke to her since our fight, anyway. My house was miles away. A bus stopped, but I couldn’t even get on because I had no money with me.
Then I remembered: Bobby’s apartment was only a few blocks from the banquet hall. It was Saturday night, and he could be out for the evening, but I’d try him first, and if he wasn’t home, then I’d call Candace. There was no way I could tell him what had happened, but he could drive me home. Maybe he’d have some motivating words if I told him I felt like I’d fucked everything up. He’d said himself I could tell him anything.
I smoothed my dress and composed myself as best I could, turning down 107th Street toward Mansfield. I hated Cinderella even more now. She didn’t have real problems. Who cared if the prince knew her carriage was a pumpkin and her dress was rags? He hadn’t given her an orgasm as she called him by some other prince’s name while her freakin’ dad watched. I didn’t even want to think about what my dad would tell Polly, and I could only hope that I hadn’t ruined their day. There was probably only an hour or so of the reception left. Pretend like nothing happened, at least until tomorrow, Dad, I thought, hoping the message would reach him. Say I didn’t feel well, or you told me I could go for a drive with Joe. Polly deserved that.
It was just after ten. The lights were off in Bobby’s duplex, but music came from the garage and a light shone under the door—he must have been working out. I knocked once, then pushed open the unlocked door. “Hey, I hope it’s okay I’m here—”
Bobby jumped away from Jacqueline, who was almost entirely nude, with her leotard pulled down to her thighs. She covered her bare breasts with her hands.
“Susan,” Bobby said, fumbling to pull up his shorts. The shorts. The ones I thought of as my shorts.
Jacqueline said nothing, and when she recognized me, a faint smirk tugged her lip upward and she dropped her hands from her breasts, as if to show me what she had that I didn’t. She slowly pulled up her leotard as her expression grew more satisfied, like she’d pulled up in a car I’d never be able to afford.
Now the numb shock was mine. He was having sex with Jacqueline. Of all the women he could have, he’d picked someone like her.
It took me less than a second to feel years older. All the ways I’d previously known I was young and inexperienced and naive—all the ways I’d known better, deep down, than to imagine Bobby and I could ever be something—were compressed into a single moment. The years folded in on themselves. Seeing him then, I caught up to him, felt like I was knowing and wise enough for him, finally.
And I never wanted to see him again.
For the second time that night, I ran.
Sprinted, really, my shoes abandoned, down Mansfield, turned onto 107th. I saw Bobby’s car pull up at the corner and ducked into an alley. As I leaned my shoulders against cold brick, hiding, I wondered how he’d gotten rid of Jacqueline.
He got out of the car and called my name. I waited until he gave up and left, and after he did, I stood there as the air turned too cold for me to stay any longer.
I had to call Candace.
There was a convenience store, Pop In, Pop Out, a few blocks away. It was now almost eleven. Some of the store’s customers were just getting their evenings going, but mine was so obviously over that I drew stares from the people milling around the beer case or in line to buy cigarettes.
The clerk looked me over and said, “You okay, honey?”
I told her I was fine, thinking she’d have to be an idiot to believe me. “I just need to use the pay phone.”
She pointed me toward the back. I dialed the operator and asked to make a collect call to Candace. She was probably with George. She would tell him everything I told her the moment we hung up. Like she used to tell me.
Candace accepted the charges, and when I heard her voice, she sounded worried. “Susan, where are you?”
“Pop In, Pop Out.”
I waited for her to ask more, but she didn’t. She just said, “You sound awful. I’ll come get you.”
“What happened to you?” Candace said when she pulled up in Frank Jr.’s pickup truck. I was sitting on the bench outside the store with my arms around myself. “Why aren’t you at the wedding?”
“I got caught with my date in the coat closet,” I told her. “Remember that guy from Dan O’Keefe’s party?”
“The spiky-hair guy? How did he end up at your dad’s wedding?”
“We’ve been hanging out,” I said, understating the truth and skipping over all the good parts, since they didn’t matter now. “He was helping me with soccer. We were friends . . .”
“You never told me about him. Do you like him?”
Leave it to Candace to worry about my romantic entanglements when I looked like dusty peach roadkill. “I do. But I’ll definitely never see him again.” She didn’t ask more, to my surprise, and I said, “Why we
ren’t you doing something with George?”
“He was over, but I told him you needed me and he thought I should come get you by myself, so we could talk.”
“Oh, sensitive,” I said. And then, because I thought Candace seemed smug to announce how understanding her weird boyfriend was, I added, “Are you sure he’s not just pretending to be so caring to get in your pants?”
Candace slammed on the brakes. We were close to her house. “What the fuck, Susan? Is it so impossible to believe someone really likes me?”
“No, of course not,” I said, a perfunctory response. Giving thought to George Tomczak’s real feelings wasn’t my priority at the moment. “But do you even like him?”
“I do like him, and you’d know that if you hadn’t completely ditched me for soccer,” she said.
“Whatever,” I told her. “You’ve been ditching me for guys since we hit puberty. How am I supposed to know if you actually like him, when it’s always seemed you’d take anyone who’ll be your boyfriend?”
“At least my love life exists in reality, unlike some people’s,” she said. “If you really did screw it up with that guy, it’s probably your fault. Did you freak out when you realized you might actually be falling for a real boy instead of some made-up man creation in your head?”
“Fuck you,” I said, having no other answer.
“No, fuck you,” Candace said, as I got out and slammed the car door.
I walked the rest of the way home, like I should have in the first place.
Thirty
I ditched school on Monday. Mom chalked it up to my busy weekend, and the way she said it, I knew no one had told her what had really happened. “You don’t have a fever,” she said. “But you do look a little peaked. Too much excitement.”
She was in a flurry after getting back from her trip, because she’d gotten an interview somewhere she said had a female hiring manager, which she hoped might mean a better shot at getting the job. The interview wasn’t until Thursday, but she’d laid out her outfit already—the briefcase, the shoes—and while she vacuumed before leaving for work, I heard her reciting answers, or parts of them. “My strengths: staying calm, pressure, resourcefulness, attitude.” I hoped more than anything she didn’t have to hear about the wedding until after the interview.
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