Problem was, I could not get Felicia’s voice out of my head, playing like a skipping CD. Click, click click, I thought you were better than that. I thought you were better than that. I thought you were better than that . . . which was turning into a total cockblocker for me.
Christina’s uncle’s “cabin” was not a cabin at all, but a multilevel redwood house in the woods with a deck on the upper level that wrapped around all sides and had multiple stairs leading up the front and the back. To get to the house we had to turn off the winding mountain road, down a gravel road, past two other houses on the left, nothing but woods on the right, until we stopped at the end, number 1221, with a crooked sign that said “Haines.” I looked past the house to the sloping lawn in the back that separated the property from the forest with a row of pine trees, and I breathed in the mountain air while Christina fumbled with the lawn ornaments that led up the path until she found the one that was, in reality, a key holder.
We entered the lower level, which smelled of firewood and mildew (oddly like my Aunt Randi’s one-time boyfriend), past the semicircular couch that faced a giant flat-screen TV and a fireplace at the same time, up the stairs to the open living room area, which had a superhigh ceiling and a series of floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out to the deck in the back. To the right, the bedroom.
Christina led the way into the rustic room that looked fit for a cowboy, more floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. I dropped my bag onto the bed, unlocked one of the sliders, and stepped out to the deck, where there was this ginormous hot tub, and I heard Evan’s voice in the back of my head saying “Sweeeeeet . . .”
I realized that I was still mostly high but coming down and needing another hit of Jacob’s Gold. Then I heard the voice again: I thought you were better than that.
Fuckme.
My cell had a “Searching for Service” warning, then an X. At least no one could get to me now.
Down and up a few times with the other packages, and back in the master bedroom, I noticed the pictures on the wall, I assumed they were her uncle and his family. Gray-bearded guy with a tough-looking wife and two young girls who looked like their mom. One set of pictures with them skiing. Another set of the entire family on horseback. Another that must’ve been taken in the Caribbean, aqua-blue water, all four in bathing suits. If I stared long enough, I could practically hear their voices echoing in the house, the little girls in snow-crusted wool caps, squealing for hot chocolate as their father yanked off their ski boots one by one. There was never any happiness like that in my family. Vacations made life even more miserable, with Jacob constantly watching me, waiting to criticize everything I did, and my mom yelling at him, and my sisters watching Jacob and me in horror and total annoyance. No wonder I sucked at skiing.
“Are you OK?” Christina asked, keeping her distance.
“I’m thinking maybe we should light up again,” I said, trying to cover, realizing why I was there in the first place. Newman’s voice was the next sound to echo through my mind with a very clear snap out of it, Crash, which I had every intention of doing.
“Really?” She sounded disappointed. “I thought we’d wait on that. Until later tonight. In the meantime, I have a surprise . . .”
She left the room with me wondering what kind of surprise she had in mind.
I wandered out onto the deck. Supernice day, not a cloud in the sky. The air was crisp and a little cool. First breeze of fall. It hit me that in a few short weeks I would be in college, we would all be in college. And I’d be far from my closest friends and far from the girl who was with me now. It also hit me that no way was I going to be able to finish the book in time, even though I brought my laptop with me. This thought only served to increase my anxiety level. I twiddled with the canister in my pocket, unscrewed the lid, and inhaled the sweet weed smell of Jacob’s Gold.
It did not, as I expected it to, relax me at all.
Then Christina returned, all happy, with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. She popped open the bottle and we sat on the deck chairs next to each other, me with my glass, Christina with hers. Cheers.
“If it helps at all, you should know that it isn’t you,” she said. OK, I have already admitted that there were times when I wasn’t exactly sure what she was ever talking about. So this was nothing new. Except, this time, I really had no clue at all.
“What isn’t me?” I had to ask, remembering Mrs. Barbash telling us all in biology class that there are no stupid questions. And then yelling at me when I asked a question that she thought was stupid. I have been careful ever since.
“Your father is an asshole, Steven,” she laughed. “I just had to say it.”
This caused me to laugh out loud. Because here she was, one of the smartest girls in my school, and she was just figuring out what seemed to me to be the most obvious thing in the universe.
“Yeah, he is” is all I said, downing the champagne and watching her do the same. And watching her, it hit me.
How could I not have noticed it before?
She was nervous.
Visibly uncomfortable.
Her hand had a slight tremor when she placed the empty glass on the small table between us. And maybe when she said that it wasn’t me, she was really referring to the fact that I wasn’t really the agitated one. Maybe I was picking up the jitteriness from her, as I sometimes did from other kids. I almost always picked it up from Burn whenever we were in the same room together, especially whenever he showed up at our lunch table or I sat next to him in a class. There were other kids who left me feeling that way, mostly after I smoked megadoses of weed. I picked up on other people’s energies all the time. It was Felicia who first pointed that out to me; one of my unusual talents, she said.
I had gotten used to that feeling by now and sometimes forgot I did it. Seeing as Christina was so nervous, and knowing what I know, I regained control of the situation, grabbed the bottle, and poured us both another glass. Problem easily solved thanks to Don Perignon.
“Steven, he treats you like dirt, like you’re a failure, which you’re not. It’s truly embarrassing, and I’m sorry for you.” She continued, “If you want to know the truth, it makes me really angry. I know I have no right to be, but I don’t like the way he talks to you at all.”
“Well, I apparently got him back, didn’t I?” I said, downing my second glass. My confidence was returning with every gulp.
“You definitely did.” She laughed back and downed her glass. Who knew Christina was going to be so much fun? I repoured for both of us.
“I have another bottle of Dom,” she said. And now I burst out laughing, because I had no fucking clue that it was Dom with an “m” all this time. But there it was on the bottle, like who changed it and didn’t send me the text?
“What are you laughing at?” she asked.
“Just . . . this is nice.”
Now I started thinking about exactly how I was going to close this deal. I mean, we both knew what we were there for, and we were apparently only a few drinks away from homerunsville. I settled into the chair, more comfortably. The mountain air was refreshing and revitalizing; no, beyond that, it was totally motherfucking relaxing.
More importantly, Felicia’s voice and her accusation were settling somewhere in the recesses of my brain, and the echo wasn’t as overwhelming as it was earlier. Thank you, Dom Pérignon, wherever you are.
“Steven, I know it’s not my business, but I just can’t stand by and say nothing when someone I care about is getting hurt like he hurts you.”
OK, now I’m starting to feel like we should be moving on from this conversation, because honestly, it is a bit of a sore spot, my lack of a relationship with Jacob, and now I’m wondering is she trying to get me to open up or something. Because that’s not going to happen. And if she keeps going, it’s only going to piss me off and ruin everything. She, of course, doesn’t know this, as she has no idea how short my fuse can be about certain things.
“What makes him
think he’s better than everyone else?”
“I don’t know.” I took another sip.
“And what’s up with that wife of his? I know you are like BFFs with her, but if you ask me, she’s more than a little strange.”
This stopped me cold. “What do you mean?”
“She’s so . . . I don’t know . . . calculating,” Christina shot back. “If you ask me, she’s sneaky.”
This came as a shock. No one to my knowledge had ever said a bad word about Felicia. I was caught between total loyalty, as in ready for battle over my stepmother’s honor, and . . . curiosity. “In what way?” I asked.
“I just get the sense that she doesn’t really belong with your father. Maybe it’s, like, a career move for her, or something like that. I’ve heard about these women who come over from eastern Europe. . . .”
“That’s it? That’s all you got?” I snorted, defensively. “That she’s from eastern Europe and she seems sneaky to you? She speaks like five languages, grew up in a culture that values a certain standard of excellence that we as Americans don’t have, like etiquette and posture and stuff, and she studied music and art, plays Beethoven and jazz on the piano, and knows more about U.S. history than most of our high school teachers and holds her own in a business of cutthroat men twice her age and you think she’s sneaky because she’s different from the people you know.” OK, I was back to getting defensive out of loyalty, so much so that I had just delivered the exact same speech that I heard Felicia once give to Lindsey when Lindsey asked her why she always had to look perfect.
“Steven, I knew you were going to react badly. I’m sorry I brought it up. It’s just . . . I think you trust her too much.” Neither of us were drinking during this part of our conversation, and it got me thinking that trusting Felicia wasn’t the problem, because whenever I trusted her, it always worked out well for me. She was the one who trusted me and got betrayed, and didn’t she tell me, back before I visited Roxanne in the hospital, that the reason she tried to commit suicide was because someone betrayed her, someone she trusted?
Another mountain breeze brought me back. Eyes on the prize, Crash, eyes on the prize. And with my attention back on Christina, it hit me:
How could I not have noticed it before?
She was jealous of my relationship with Felicia. She was so into me that it bothered her that I had feelings for my stepmom. Maybe I was too obvious about it when Christina was at my father’s apartment. Still, I wasn’t going to sell out my stepmother for any reason, not after everything she had done for me.
I was better than that.
Except I did not feel compelled to have my entire night ruined just to prove the point at that particular moment. As in, I almost called Christina on it, and I almost told her my impression of her being jealous and all, but I decided against it and instead totally caught her off guard by saying this:
“Christina, here we are, totally and completely cut off from the world, enjoying time together in a perfect setting on a perfect day. Why are we talking about them? Why aren’t we talking about us?”
She laughed. “Give you this, Crashinsky, you can be so smoooooth sometimes.”
She left her chair and joined me in mine. As she stood, I could see that she was tipsy. She almost dropped her champagne glass, and I quickly caught it in one hand and placed it on the table next to my glass, both empty.
“See?” she said, climbing closer. “Smoooooth.”
I glanced at the bottle. It was almost empty, maybe enough for one more glass. Guess who would be drinking the rest of that? Call me evil if you want, but you always have to have a plan.
She was getting very comfortable on my lap now, feeling very warm, and staring down at me with drunken eyes and moist lips. I most definitely did not want to remind her that only a week before she was giving me such a hard time about only hooking up when I was either drunk or stoned. Not a good time to win that argument.
I almost laughed again. Instead, I kissed her gently, pulled back, took a fake swig of the bottle, and handed it to her to let her down the rest. Insurance.
Now she was the aggressor, kissing me. Very, very deeply, and I could taste the cold champagne and the warmth of her mouth at the same time. I wished that she had let me light up for this occasion and itched for a hit, but was determined not to let my mind wander any more than it already was.
Now her body was pressed really, really close to mine, and I was, tell you the truth, too ready.
And then she whispered to me:
“You should know. This is my first time.”
This I found incredible to believe. I mean, she had been in plays in the city, had flown out to Hollywood a bunch of times on auditions, hung with actors, spent a summer in Barcelona, had other boyfriends, even college boyfriends. She was, as girls go, pretty popular and definitely no prude, plus amazingly hot. And in all this time no one had actually tapped her before? I confess that I actually thought that Burn did back in sophomore year, although I found out after the Massachusetts incident that he didn’t. Still, there were so many opportunities for a girl like Christina that I found this information unfathomable.
Even more incredible than the fact that she hadn’t done it before was the fact that she actually chose me as her first. She had to know that I was not really boyfriend material, not someone who, as a girl, you would want to tell your Sex and the City friends about later in life. I was the guy who nailed you after you had your first experience with Mr. Real Boyfriend, maybe after that relationship went south, maybe because he dumped you and you needed a rebound thing. I was the horse you got back on after falling off with someone else.
So the pressure was on. I tried to be all casual about it, but I let slip out the following:
“No way.”
It definitely ruined the mood, because now instead of a mutual drunken exploration, we were suddenly talking about it, me asking questions, her answering, no, no, no, not that one, me asking exactly how far she went before, and her answering well, yeah, this, but not that, and me asking was she sure about us doing it, and she said that it was something she had thought about for a long time and it had to be me, not just because I saved her life in Massachusetts and again on 4/21, and no she didn’t expect that we would necessarily be together for the rest of our lives, but despite my flaws, there was something special about me, about us, and she was ready for it to be us. And all I could think of at the moment was David Burnett sitting in a cell somewhere, not approving one bit.
And I tried making out with her again, but it felt drastically different. I didn’t know if she recognized it too, but we continued kissing, and this time my hands were exploring, because I wasn’t going to let on that something had changed.
And when my hands started moving down her body, she stopped and said that she didn’t want to do anything outside, not where someone could be watching, even though there were no other houses or people anywhere near where we were, and no possibility of being seen by anyone.
So she got up and I followed her into the bedroom, her leading me by the hand.
And when she got there, she made me sit on the bed and she took her iPhone out and set it into her uncle’s music player, so we had music, not the usual techno stuff that I like, but, like, guitar music and some folk singer, and it seemed like she made a special playlist of songs that must have been important to her (I wondered what the title of the playlist was—songs to get your cherry popped by or something).
With the music going, she stepped between my open legs and slipped out of her dress and was, surprise, wearing absolutely nothing underneath. She was incredible to look at, which I already partially knew, having seen her in a bikini a bunch of times. Still, naked is naked, and you never know exactly what you’re going to get until you see everything, and while her body was flawless, she looked sooo naked and pale standing in front of me that there was an awkward moment where I didn’t know exactly what to do.
Until she took my hand again and moved it onto h
er body. And since she had this thing pretty much all planned out the way she wanted, I didn’t think I should do anything that would interfere with her plans.
And then we were both naked and then she turned all business. Did I have condoms, which I did, but I explained that I don’t like them, and she said “pishposh,” which seemed to mean put one on if you’re going near me. So I got a pack out of my suitcase.
And sure I was all excited, as in full and complete attention, but then we were doing everything so mechanically, as if she had to make sure to get everything in this first time, and I felt kind of like I was the girl, as in, was she just using me to get it over with?
This thought, or maybe the champagne, made it difficult for me to finish, so we were going at it for a long time, and when she was done, she actually asked about me, seemingly concerned, and I told her that the bag was hurting. So she let me take it off and then used other methods on me, but nothing was happening so I started thinking about different things to keep me in the moment, and then during the actual moment of impact, I wasn’t thinking about her at all.
Instead I couldn’t help myself, someone else seemed to invade my mind and wouldn’t leave, and soon that other person was the only one I could think about and . . . get this:
It was Claudia.
“Was it OK for you?” Christina asked me.
And, of course, I said it was great, even though it was kind of weird, and she cuddled with me and started to play again, trying to restart, but I was done for the moment, as in I was hurting, but wouldn’t, couldn’t admit it to her. She finally gave up and draped herself in a sheet and went off to the bathroom, leaving me alone to think about why I couldn’t stop thinking about Claudia.
Crash and Burn Page 26
