DAY 6
(PART THREE)
My name is Claude Henry, and I just had sex for the first time.
It happened five minutes ago. Jeremiah Crew is in the bathroom, and I am sitting here on the steps of his blue house, dress and underwear back on, staring out into the night because it’s a million degrees inside and I needed air.
I should feel electrified and awake. Grown-up. Worldly. Maybe even the slightest bit French? But all I know is how I don’t feel. Not like a woman. Or a girl. Or anything. It’s as if I’ve been emptied out of who I am.
The door opens behind me and it’s Miah, still naked. Instinctively, I look away, which is silly because minutes ago he was literally inside me. He steps out and sits down next to me. “Jesus, Captain. You ran out of there like you were on fire.”
“Sorry.”
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great.”
This isn’t true, or maybe it is. But even if it isn’t, I’m not about to sit here and talk about feelings with him. No crying or Please hold me or I love you, baby or You make my world go round or Love me forever please please please. Just Miah on top of me, heavier than I expected him to be, and a band called the Zombies playing in the background.
He says, “You look cold.”
“I am cold.”
And suddenly I am, down in my bones. I shiver and he hooks his arm around me and rubs my elbow, trying to warm me up. I lay my head on his shoulder, because if I don’t rest it somewhere, it might fall off my body and go thudding down the path.
He says, “Do you want me to take you home?”
And for a minute I’m like, Yes, please take me to Ohio. But I realize he means the house where we’re living now, my mom and me, this summer.
“Yes,” I say to him. “I’d like to go home.”
I follow him to the truck and climb in, and I’m not Robot Claude, exactly, more like Empty Claude. It’s a wonder I can move my limbs. Miah turns the headlights on and it’s like a little death. No more moon, no more fireflies.
I think about how amazing it is that you can have someone that close to you, that for the first time you literally aren’t alone in your body anymore. Yet somehow you can still feel lonely.
* * *
—
Mom is lying on the sofa, television volume on low, book open on top of her, Dandelion napping against her leg. When I walk in, she opens her eyes.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say. “Miah and Jared and I stayed at the beach to watch for turtles.”
Maybe New Claude isn’t always truthful after all.
“That’s okay. What time is it?” She’s still half asleep, but she clicks off the TV and closes her book and stands up like it’s morning and she’s ready to go.
“Ten after one.”
“I think we can let that ten minutes slide.” She hugs me then, and now she’s looking at my face. “Everything okay?”
“Just tired. It was a good day, though.”
And this is enough for her, my mom, the one person who’s always been able to see through me and into me. One thing they don’t tell you—sex can be a wall, and your mom is on one side and you’re on the other. Actually, everyone is on one side, and you’re on the other side all by yourself.
* * *
—
Even though it’s two hundred degrees outside, I burrow under the covers in my bed, tucking myself up and in as tight as I can.
“Saz, if you can hear me, is this how it felt? Is this how you felt?” I whisper it to the night. Why didn’t I ask her how she felt after she slept with Yvonne? More than anything right now, I want to talk to her. She may have been a little late in telling me about Yvonne, but she was trying to let me in. And, okay, I didn’t let her in, but did that mean I had to stop being a good friend?
DAY 7
At ten-thirty the next morning, I’m still in bed. Mom knocks on the door and then pokes her head in. “I’m heading out, first to the museum and then to meet with some local storytellers to interview them. You okay?”
I give her a thumbs-up. “Just feeling lazy.”
* * *
—
At noon I’m still in bed, eating crackers under the covers. I don’t want to see anyone, not even my mom. I just want to lie here and think.
* * *
—
Dr. Alex Comfort writes in The Joy of Sex about something called la petite mort, “the little death.” Apparently some women and the occasional man can pass out cold after orgasm. As an example of this, he mentions some poor man who experienced this with the first woman he slept with. By the time she regained consciousness, he had called the police and an ambulance.
* * *
—
An hour later I’m writing in the blank notebook I found in Addy’s office, the one with the blue cover.
The little death.
Three words that could also refer to losing your virginity. Not in a morbid, tragic way. Not in a sad way. But in a this-is-the-end-of-your-childhood kind of way. Even though I still feel stupidly young.
I set down every feeling, no matter how dark, and every thought, even the ones that make me want to go back under the covers. Because whatever happens, I want to remember all of them.
* * *
—
By two forty-five p.m. I’ve stopped writing and am lying there once again. If I had any energy at all, I would walk to the general store, which may or may not be closed, depending on Terri, and sit at my corner table and call Saz. Because even though she didn’t tell me about Yvonne right away, and even though I didn’t listen when she did try to tell me, I want, more than anything, to talk to her and have her tell me she still loves me and I’m still me and everything’s okay.
DAY 8
I am walking down Main Road and I’m not a virgin anymore.
I take my lunch to Rosecroft and eat on the steps and I’m not a virgin anymore.
Everywhere I go and everything I do, it’s all I can think: I’m not a virgin anymore.
I study everyone’s faces, my mom’s especially, to see if they can register this fact.
I run my hands over my body, the way Miah did. I try to see myself with his eyes. I study my own face in the mirror—not that I expect to look any different, but I am looking for signs of virginity loss.
The thing is, I don’t look any different from my regular old self. Honestly, it’s a bit like the day after Christmas. A little bit of Huh and Now what? This is what it’s like on the other side of something you’ve been anticipating for a long time. My parents are still getting divorced. Saz and I are still going to different colleges. I somehow thought it was going to be bigger and more monumental than it was. Instead, it just is.
* * *
—
Inside the general store’s Wi-Fi zone, a voice mail pops up from Saz.
Claude, it’s me. I’m sorry I didn’t listen as well as I should have. It’s just that Yvonne is here and you’re not, and I didn’t know you were calling and I didn’t know you were going to tell me something earth-shattering or I would have sent her home. Friends first. Always.
Yeah, you shouldn’t have told Wyatt before telling me, but I guess I get why you did. And yeah, you shouldn’t have hung up on me, but I shouldn’t have said that about your parents. What I should have said is that I’m surprised but not surprised. I’m surprised because this seems like a thing that can’t happen in life.
You, your mom, your dad—you’re like this weird unit where everyone does everything together and gets along. I can’t imagine the three of you without each other. But I’m not surprised for all the reasons I said. I just should have listened better all the way around. Just know I’m here. And I’m serious about meeting you halfway. If it gets too bad out there on that island, let me know. I love you more than Katniss and thumbprint cook
ies and all the freckles on your face.
I lay my head down on the table and cry. It’s not just Saz; it’s everything. Something goes clunk next to me, and there is a box of Kleenex. Terri sets one hand on my head and then walks back to her seat behind the counter. I try to rein myself in, but the tears keep coming, even when I hear the door to the store open and close and the sound of someone’s footsteps. There is talking between this person and Terri, and then the door opens and closes again. I lift my head and squint with one eye at Terri, who somehow isn’t staring at me.
I wipe my eyes and nose and then I call Saz back. When it goes to voice mail, I tell her I’m sorry too, and that I’m not a virgin anymore and that I like this boy, really like this boy, but that I don’t know how to feel. That I want to understand how she felt after her first time with Yvonne because I have no idea what I’m feeling.
When I hang up, I have a new notification. Wyatt has sent me a text. Hey. You home yet? Been thinking about you. After all the time I spent creating a deep and thoughtful inner life for him, after making him greater than himself and greater than Mary Grove, Ohio, and greater than all boys everywhere, after all the possibility and almostness and maybe, I feel nothing.
I start to text him back, but I don’t have anything to say because I’m not interested in him anymore. I’m interested in someone else.
Before I leave, I set the Kleenex box on the counter in front of Terri.
“Sorry about that little scene. I miss my friend and I’m also getting my period….”
She lays her book facedown. “You’ve been hanging out with Jeremiah Crew.” And it sounds like an accusation. If she’d said, I know you used to masturbate to Wyatt Jones, I couldn’t be more surprised. “Look here, it’s none of my business, but you should be careful.”
“Careful how?”
“Experience tells me that boys who get in trouble stay in trouble. And he might be on a bit of a clean streak lately, but trust me, it won’t last.”
I always wonder about people who feel compelled to give advice, as if they know you, as if you’re someone who can’t find her way in the world on her own. I want to say, It’s none of your business who I hang out with or what kind of fun we have, but Terri means well.
I thank her for looking out for me, and then I get out of there as fast as I can.
* * *
—
I walk to the beach and I can see a group of tourists coming up from the ferry. Checking in like it’s a normal day. If this were a movie, there would be some sort of heart-tugging song playing as I mooned around, but there’s no soundtrack unless you count the cicadas.
Boys who get in trouble stay in trouble.
I try to push Terri’s words out of my head. On the outside, the day is passing like any other. Miah is at work. My mom is at work. Jared and Wednesday and Emory and the rest of the island staff are at work. Guests are walking or biking to the beach or Rosecroft. The Park Service trucks are toting visitors up to the north end.
I wish I could go back to the night before last. I wish it was still ahead of me, that it was happening tonight. I want the chance to try to hold on to all of it—Jeremiah and me, naked together for the first time—longer. No one told the night before last that it was a historic occasion. It just passed in regular time, like any other.
Did I like it? Yes and no. Was it like I imagined when I closed my eyes and pictured Wyatt or Miah or Mr. Rochester? Yes and no. I didn’t have multiple orgasms like in the movies. I actually didn’t even have one, although I was right there on the edge, or at least in the general neighborhood. But there were fireflies and the room spinning. Do I feel closer to him because we had sex? Did it make me like him more? I don’t know. It’s complicated. I definitely feel more tangled with him.
You should be careful.
You should be careful.
You should be careful.
I walk for miles on the beach because I can’t sit still and I have all this energy to burn. The thing is, much as I try, I can’t get him off my mind.
I wonder if he’s thinking about me now.
And now.
And now.
* * *
—
In the afternoon I’m walking back to Addy’s and I see him—Miah. He is standing on the broad white porch of the inn, and my heart starts doing these wild Cirque du Soleil leaps, but then I see he’s standing with a girl. He’s leaning against one of the white columns and she’s got her hand on his arm and he’s laughing, and he leans in and says something in her ear, and now she’s laughing. So much leaning and laughing.
And then she turns and I see it’s Wednesday, and in that instant I feel so stupid. Hot boy on remote island equals he can have anyone he wants. This kind of thing must happen to him all the time, and I’m just another girl passing through.
I walk away, hoping he won’t see me. I keep walking even as he’s yelling my name, but I pretend I don’t hear him. He catches up with me, breathing like he’s run for miles.
“Jesus, Captain. It’s a little late to play hard to get, don’t you think?”
“Sorry.”
“What’s up?”
“ ‘What’s up’?”
“Yeah. What’s up?” He says it louder and slower. “We can keep repeating it or I can ask it another way. What are you doing? How is your day?”
“It’s super, thanks.” I keep walking.
“Hey.”
“What?”
He falls in step beside me. “What. Is. Up?”
“Nothing,” I say, and I sound like a child who isn’t getting her way. “I just thought you were working today.” To make it worse, I can see the aerial view of this—the way I keep walking, the way I won’t look at him, even though he’s done nothing wrong. I wish I had a Claude-size eraser so that I could make myself disappear. But instead I look up at the inn and at Wednesday.
His gaze follows mine and then he sighs. “I was afraid this would happen. I told you not to fall in love with me.”
“I’m not in love with you.” And the way I say it makes it sound like I absolutely am, even though I’m absolutely not because I literally met him eight days ago.
“First, Captain, you’re jealous. Second, that ended last summer.”
“What ended?”
“Wednesday and me.”
“Oh.”
And he might as well slap me across the face because of course there was a Wednesday and him. I mean, of course. What did you think? You were the only girl he’d ever been with on this island? The only girl he’d ever been with anywhere?
I suddenly feel cornered. And incredibly stupid. And like maybe Terri was right and I should be careful. If I don’t start walking, I won’t be able to breathe, and I know if I stay, I’ll only make it worse by saying something I’ll instantly want to take back, and I won’t be able to take it back because it will be said and out there forever.
“I’m supposed to meet my mom at the museum.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“That’s okay. I like walking.” I like walking? Shut up, Claude.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
Our eyes lock, neither of us blinking, neither of us looking away.
Finally he holds up his hands. “Okay.”
He doesn’t stop me as I walk away, and it’s now and only now that I can think about what it is I’m feeling.
Afraid, for one. Afraid. Afraid. Afraid.
Unsettled.
Mad at myself for starting to open up to this person I barely know.
Mad at him for making me think I could open up.
Stupid for believing I was different and he was different and this was different in any way.
Trapped behind the wall I’ve built around myself, unable to move or breathe or do
anything but keep building it up around me, brick by brick, fast as I can.
Guilty because I should have told him I was a virgin. And now if I tell him, he’ll think it means more to me than it did, and that I’m asking him to love me or tell me there’s only me or something, on and on, blah blah blah.
But here’s the thing—maybe it was a bigger deal to me than I expected. Maybe it actually did matter.
* * *
—
One hour later, I manage to find my way to his house. I ring the bell and wait, scratching my bug bites, fanning myself in the heat. Even as I’m standing there, I’m telling myself, Walk away. Don’t make things worse. This doesn’t need to be serious. This doesn’t need to be anything.
The door opens to reveal Jeremiah Crew, shirtless, barefoot, gripping a snake in one hand, and I don’t mean a sexual-euphemism kind of snake, I mean an actual one.
“Hey,” he says.
“Uh. Hey.”
He holds the door so that I can come in. I bump into the doorframe, giving the snake the widest berth I can. The screen slams behind us. I follow him into the living room, and my eyes go right to the couch.
He says, “I thought you were going to the museum.”
“I was. I am. Why are you holding a snake?”
“Stowaway.”
“Is it poisonous?”
“Not this one.” He holds the snake as far away from me as his arm will allow. “Make yourself at home.” And then he walks out, screen door slamming again. Instead of sitting, I stand. I don’t look at the record player or the couch because these are clearly instruments of seduction and I am not falling for them again.
Breathless Page 17
