All Fore Revenge

by Piper Denna

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Hi Mom,” Will said.

  “Hey Will. How’s Florida?” Cam’s eyes met mine over the bed of his truck before I walked a few vehicles away.

  “Hot.”

  “How’s Dad doing in his tournament?” I could hear Cam commanding Emily to “stay here,” rather than follow me.

  “He’s ranked sixth. I think he’s worried about you. Are you feeling okay, Mom?”

  “Yeah honey, I’m good. I promise. Why would he be worried about me?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just not concentrating. I thought maybe you knew why. Or maybe if you came down, he’d feel better.”

  “Oh, hon, I doubt I could get a ticket for this weekend on such short notice. The tournament would be over when I got there. And you’ll be at Epcot on Monday, right?” I felt like such a jerk for refusing to join my family on vacation. “He doesn’t always win, remember?”

  “I know. I guess it seems like you’ve been alone a lot lately. I miss you, Mom.”

  “I miss you, too. How ‘bout when you and Andy get back, we take the bikes up to the canyon for a ride?”

  “Are you worried about being fat?”

  “Will.” I was getting exasperated with the bulimia/fat thing. “I’m healthy, and I want to stay that way for a long time. Are you afraid I’ll leave you in the dust, or what?”

  “I’ll take ya, but no crying like a girl when I smoke you,” he laughed. “Wanta talk to Dad?”

  “Does he need me for something?”

  “Mom,” he warned. “I’m going in the room now. Here’s Andy first.”

  “Hi Andy,” I said, when he came on.

  “Hi,” he grumped.

  “Are you having fun? Did you go to the hotel pool yet?”

  “We have a pool at home, Mom.”

  “I guess. So, any cute girls around?”

  “It’s all old people. I’d rather be hanging at Aunt Kerri’s. I’m never going to another tournament!”

  “You’ll have more fun on Monday.”

  “Yeah, right. Dad’s a real laugh a minute without you around. Thanks a lot.”

  Bill came on the phone then. “Geez, I guess we know who’s too tired to go to the beach!” he yelled after Andy. “Hey, Honey.”

  “Hey. Tough crowd, isn’t he?”

  “Cranky little shit. Gets that from you, not me,” he teased.

  I responded with a gratifying chuckle and then we fell into an uncomfortable silence. Over at his truck, Cam was done loading and roping.

  Bill cleared his throat. “Well, okay. You alright, then? Sounds like you’re awake. I hear traffic.”

  He was hunting for details on my whereabouts, but I wasn’t inclined to give them. “Yeah, I’m fine. Good luck tomorrow. Bye.”

  When I got back to the truck, Emily chimed, “Was that your other family?”

  “Em,” Cam told her, “we’re not her family.” He added under his breath, “Yet.” And then, “It’s not polite to be snoopy. If Ali wants you to know who she’s talking to, she’ll tell you herself.”

  “Oh,” she said, chagrined.

  “It was my sons and my husband,” I told her in the truck.

  Cam glanced sideways at me as he started driving, but said nothing more. When Emily fell asleep in the back seat, I slid next to Cam and he put his arm around me the rest of the way home.

  *

  Stars hung above me in patches, broken here and there by gathering clouds that meant rain by morning. The hammock on my back deck swayed gently under me while Cam tucked in Emily. We’d decided it was too risky to try fooling around in my room, lest she wake and catch us in the act. Other than a few more stolen kisses in the tack shed while Emily rode Butter again, it had been a pretty chaste visit, and he’d be leaving the next day. I ignored the gloom I felt at the prospect.

  At last Cam joined me, and we laughed together as he struggled to climb in the hammock without upending us both.

  “Guess the chances of getting frisky in this thing without killing us both are pretty small,” he chuckled.

  “I’m not gonna complain about getting to be this close to you. I’ll stay out here ‘til the rain comes or the mosquitoes carry me away.”

  “Think you’ll be back in Phoenix any time soon?” He sounded worried.

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Bill has a tournament in Charleston, and one in San Diego this month. Maybe while he’s gone one of those times. You still dating Randall the lumber jack?”

  “She’s a beautician,” he laughed. “Where’d lumber jack come from?”

  “You said she was butch, so I created this burly-girl image. I don’t know.”

  After a hearty laugh, he said, “We were never an official item or anything. Just somebody to see once in a while, casually.”

  “For casual sex.”

  “Mmm, like you did Sunday night.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, that wasn’t exactly casual. He was an old crush, a church-going good boy.”

  He poked my ribs and asked with mock dismay, “You seduced him into sinning?”

  “Not exactly. He was looking for practice, before he gets married.”

  “Practice, as in, he didn’t have much?”

  “Any. He fibbed about it until after, but it wasn’t hard to guess.”

  “I had no idea you were out doing public service.” Was he amused?

  “It doesn’t bother you?” Why did it bother me so much that it didn’t?

  “Virgins over thirty?”

  “Me, with other men.” I felt him tense against me.

  “We’re not committed yet. And as long as they don’t mean anything to you, not really. I don’t like it, but it seems like you’ve got a lot to get out of your system, sexually.”

  “You think I’m a nympho or something?”

  “More like you’re really pissed and you’ve got something to prove.”

  “That’s why you’re not sleeping with me?”

  “I don’t want to be one of the points you make, and whatever’s gone wrong in your life, I want it fixed before…”

  “So now I’m damaged goods, or what?” I snapped.

  “Ali. Not another confrontation.” Cam’s fingers were grinding in his eyes. I’d seen him do this when he struggled to remain patient with Emily. “You have issues with sex.”

  “No I don’t. I like sex, that’s all. That’s healthy.”

  “How healthy was sex with your friend?”

  I sucked in my breath.

  “And why did I see you backing away from her like a cornered rabbit?”

  I shifted so my back was to him.

  “Cam. Let’s not go there. It’s not the way it sounds. And that history she was talking about, well, I only slept with three guys before I was married. I wasn’t some slut like she wants you to think.”

  “Hey,” his arm circled me, “I’m not worried about your history. I’m worried about you. What’s going on? Tell me?”

  I tried to think of a way to get him off the subject, to leave me alone.

  His tone was soothing when he said, “Lots of girls experiment. So do some guys,” he added with a hint of distaste. “It’s not a big deal, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Do you think it was wrong?”

  “Please?” I begged. “It took so long to forget about it. I don’t know why she started bringing it up again. I can’t… talk about it.”

  “I don’t like the way she intimidates you, Ali. That’s not how friends should act. I wish you’d come back to Phoenix.”

  I was starting to feel like there might be more for me to face in Colorado than there was in Arizona. Maybe I needed somewhere new to run.

  “Can you just, um, hold me? I know it sounds cliché, but I’d like that. I need it.”

  We hung there together in the hammock, watching the stars blink in and out among the clouds. I snuggled against his bare chest to keep off the chill when the wind came. He held me tight while we talked of our first loves and weddings, our
grandparents and favorite TV shows.

  When the rain came, we went inside. Emily was snoring in the bedroom, so we cuddled together on the couch where we’d hear her if she woke up.

  *

  I woke with my face against Cam’s chest. A great start to a lousy day. Dread sunk my heart like a stone anchor at the prospect of his departure. That pessimistic old saying, All good things must come to an end, came to mind and added a bitter tinge to my mood.

  “You were so happy when you were sleeping. What’s wrong, Babydoll?” Cam murmured.

  I looked up to find him wide awake and watching me. The words couldn’t form in my head. They wouldn’t have come out whole through my mouth anyway, because my full attention was on the tears I already tasted. Crying over him leaving was only going to make both of us more miserable, and Emily as well. I shook my head and plastered my forehead against his chest, concentrating on how he smelled and felt next to me. Keeping something to remember later.

  “Daddy?” Emily called, and her voice was already coming closer. I made haste to move off the couch, retreating to my bathroom. It was a gray, drizzly day, and it would only be getting worse, I thought morosely, staring out the big window above the tub. A good day to sleep right through.

  *

  An hour later, I stood waving from my front window as the smell of another pancake breakfast permeated my house with sickening completeness. Cam’s truck was getting smaller, with Emily waving furiously back. Cam had run back inside, once, after getting Emily settled, pressing me against the wall and kissing me desperately, before he told me again that he loved me. And then he was gone. Rain fell quietly but persistently, clouding my view when the truck turned onto the county road. Or maybe that was tears blurring the image.

  I took my own little rainstorm inside, crawled under my comforter to hide out from all the things I should be facing, and put myself to sleep for the day.

  *

  “It’s always all about the sex, isn’t it?” Shurre murmured against my neck. Her hands were—I didn’t want to think about where her hands had gone. My heart was pounding, and I was sickened by the arousal I felt.

  “No, it’s not,” I protested. “Please quit, we’re fr—”

  Her smoky mouth covered mine, smothering my argument. I closed my eyes and hoped that it was all some sick, lust-shamed dream.

  I woke with my heart still racing, overcome with nausea. Streams of rain, battered against my bedroom window by the wind, slithered to join others in their quest to hit the ground and race off toward larger masses. Watching the water, I wondered why it would be “always about the sex.” I’d managed to convince myself I was too messed up to remember that night, but I could remember it, if I tried. I knew I could.

  Why would I want to?

  I really needed to go throw up.

  Guilt over Will’s worries made me hug my abdomen instead, and ride out the nausea.

  All Fore Revenge

  Chapter 11

  I lost myself in my work again. As effective as a tumbler of bourbon, it numbed the emptiness inside. Cam and Emily made it home. Bill finished third in his tournament. My mother nagged that I should be going to church. And I kept working.

  Monday was a blur of words, a series of scenes in my story, ‘til my eyes were so fried from staring at the screen that I had to stop writing. A bean burrito in my belly, I lay down on the couch and sank, unwillingly, into the exhausted sleep I knew would take me to dreams I dreaded.

  Shurre and I were at our senior prom, in the girls’ room.

  I’d scrimped and saved for a dress so I could go with my boyfriend of six months. In a tacit agreement, Johnny and I both had decided this would be “the night” for us. I was nervous, and Shurre was coaching me.

  She’d landed a date with the captain of the baseball team who, by no coincidence, knew she’d be taking him all the way home later on. Good old Uncle Ronnie had sprung for her dress, a much pricier model than the one I sported. She filled it out nicely, all ripe curves and cleavage, and knew it.

  “Take a chill pill, Ali. It’s not like you’re the first girl to ever have sex, you know.” She lit up and snuck a couple of drags from a slightly mangled Marlboro she’d pulled out of her tiny, elegant handbag.

  “Easy for you to say,” I muttered to my own reflection in the mirror. I wiped away yet another smudge of lipstick from my ever-too-thin upper lip. The zit I’d prayed over, performed a no-acne pagan dance against, and even stabbed on Shurre’s voodoo troll, stood proud and horrible dead center on my forehead. “Why’d I have to get a freaking zit for prom?”

  “Johnny’s not gonna be looking at your face, sweetheart.” She smashed out the cigarette and soaked the end of it in the sink before hiding it in the garbage can. “Ali,” she told me patiently, her hands on my shoulders, “remember how I told you to touch yourself?” I felt myself blush, thankful that the gaggle of popular girls had just cleared out, because Shurre would have said those exact words right in front of them.

  “Make him touch you like that. You get hot when you make out, right?”

  I nodded, still blushing.

  “Forget all that sin and eternal damnation church bullshit. The God you spend so much time imagining wouldn’t have given us bodies that felt so good if he didn’t want us to use ‘em that way. We’d just back up to a guy once a year, like the fucking sheep in the field. Right?”

  Somewhere in her garbled reasoning, part of what she said made sense to me, so I nodded again.

  “All right. So you’re cool,” she said with a pat on my cheek. “Don’t worry about being a bad girl till you’ve been doin’ it a long time. Then it makes it hotter to think you’re bad. For now, you’re horny, Johnny’s horny—it’s meant to be. Take this,” she said, pressing a condom into my palm. “Don’t need any mini-Johnny’s runnin’ around yet. And no matter what kind of rubber he brings, use this one. It’s got the best lube.”

  Leave it to Shurre to be an expert on lube at seventeen. “Plus, if you go down on him, it won’t taste shitty like those cheap rubbers do.”

  I refrained from telling her I’d already gone down on Johnny the weekend before. Looking back at my experience, the condom maybe would have been better than the vile mouthful I ended up with in only a few seconds.

  The condom went in the evening bag I’d borrowed from my mom.

  “Our class song is next, then we’re outta here,” she said, after touching up her own lipstick. “I’ll call ya tomorrow as soon as I get home, and you can tell me how much it hurts to walk. Oh, relax. I’m kidding, Babes! You’ll be fine. Welcome to the wonderful world of fuckers.”

  We left the restroom with her cackling.

  Johnny Campbell wasn’t my first love. In fact, I really didn’t love him. But he was the first boy I’d considered going all the way with, since tossing aside the morals instilled in me by the same church that tossed me aside because my parents were divorced.

  Johnny was a thin, gangly boy. This trait carried over to all his body parts, a fact I would only come to realize after more sexual experience. He’d had his fingers inside me before and, once he penetrated me, I thought the fingers had been more pleasurable. Still, feeling him hold me and imagining how much he enjoyed it, I didn’t regret letting him do it.

  Lying, heaving, on top of me afterward, he told me he loved me, which I figured was a temporary emotion that would go away when he left for the Army after graduation. And I told him I loved him too, because it seemed mean to ruin the moment for him by not saying it.

  A few car-rocking screws later, Johnny’s technique had improved considerably, and I even enjoyed it some. But he seemed put off by my suggesting where and how he should touch me.

  Shurre told me he was just an insecure little prick and couldn’t handle a woman who knew her own body. I agreed, and broke it off with him a week before we graduated.

  *

  I woke to Shurre banging the front door open, then shut. It was pitch dark out, and raining again. She held
her cell phone open and in front of her as a flashlight, walked over, and flopped beside me where I’d sat up on the couch. When her wet arm went round my shoulders, I could smell the booze on her.

  “Shurre? Are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t drive here like that.”

  “I drove like this.” She giggled hysterically and held her hands on an imaginary wheel, which she imagined overcorrecting repeatedly.

  “I bet you did. What’s going on?”

  “’S rainin.”

  This I knew.

  “Power’s out.”

  This was also evident.

  “Wanted to make sure my little buddy was okey-dokey.”

  “Shurre, why are you drunk?”

  “I drank,” she told me seriously, “a lot.” No kidding. “Jim Bean. With Uncle Ronnie.” She shivered then, head to toe.

  “Come on, you can wear my robe ‘til the power comes on, and then we’ll dry your clothes.”

  “You’re a good fren, Ali. I’d never hurt you. On purpose.”

  Whatever.

  “Yeah, I know. Come on,” I said, tugging her hand to pull her up.

  “Cable Guy leave?” She rose and stumbled after me into my room.

  “Yesterday. Shurre, where are your kids?”

  “At my mom’s. You miss him?” Leaning against the wall in my bedroom, she watched while I lit a candle on the dresser.

  “Cam? Yeah.” I handed her my robe from a hook in the bathroom, which she snuggled her face against. “You’re gonna get it wet. Here, take off your clothes first, goofy.”

  “You tryin’ to get me naked?”

  “Not by choice, girlfriend. Come on.” I rolled her sticky-wet shirt over her head, and then she tossed her bra aside like a stripper.

  She grinned, shaking her newly freed breasts, and I looked away.

  “Here.” I held the robe while she backed her arms into it, toppling sideways in the process. “You’re on your own with the pants thing.” I left the room for her to undress.

  “Whatsa matter Ali?” she called after me. “You scareda me or somethin’?”