Red Hot Blues

by Rachel Dunning

  After the game we went to someone’s house, big party, lots of beer, lots of whiskey, lots of spirits. Lots of drinking.

  I had one beer. Brett? Well, he seemed OK to me when we met secretly.

  After that night, I spoke to no one again at the school. No one! I was too embarrassed. Did they know? Did the football team know?

  Brett and I had been texting for a while. Not much. And I was under no illusions that I was Scarlett Johansson or even Kat Dennings. She has shape. I don’t.

  He and I were in the same science class, sat next to each other. We’d worked on a few projects together so, of course, we’d exchanged numbers. No biggie. I’m smart, and he’d needed my help on some geek stuff. I could do that. Sure, whenever I got a text from him my heart would flutter and my throat would swell and my skin would go moist. I’d struggle to breathe and my chest would tighten.

  Sure. And I knew I’d gone through some hormonal changes and that, at seventeen, I was technically a “woman” and “fertile” and all that jazz. You know, all scientific jargon you learn about in sex-ed or even during Human Anatomy 101. But I still felt these things.

  I kept a cool head about them; really, I did. We’d been texting every now and then, about homework, about school, and he’d then, out of the blue, say something cool in a text like, “You’re cool”—and I’d almost drop the phone.

  Meanwhile, I knew he wasn’t interested, because he had that blonde and that brunette and that Latino chick all over him during school hours. He never talked to me during school. He didn’t ignore me as such, but he didn’t come up and speak to me! I’d get the evil eye from the blonde whenever I’d walk past him. I’d clutch my books to my ample chest and look down at my feet and keep walking. Brett never shouted hi at me while I was doing that.

  But when school was out. When I was at home, alone, doing nothing, or reading, he’d text me, and say shit like, “You looked good at school today.”

  And I’d melt.

  I never chased it up, never asked him if he wanted to date me. I was under no illusions about what I looked like, under no pretenses as to True Love or The One or all that crap. Years of watching my mother’s miserable relationships had taught me all I needed to know about The One and about True Love. It doesn’t exist. There are contracts, there are deals, and there is survival. Mom marries for money. And she’s survived. And although I never wanted that to be me, it’s all I knew.

  It’s all I know.

  Two weeks before the game, the texts had become more frequent. He’d asked to meet me one day after school.

  He kissed me, in a park, under some trees. Secretly.

  We walked, sat on a swing, let the wind blow through our hair. Said nothing.

  We kissed more, no questions asked, no explanations needed. When you’re young, you don’t look for the negative; you’ve suffered too little to be cynical. I wasn’t cynical. I thought this was the natural progression of things with him.

  He’d wanted to keep it quiet. I could live with that. Maybe he’d wanted to be sure...

  At school, he stopped hanging around with the sexy biatches I’d seen him with before. So I knew there was something there. I knew this might have a future.

  I didn’t feel overweight in those two weeks. I felt normal. Liked. Loved?

  We’d meet every day at the park, never at his house. Never at mine. One day, we stayed out late, until nightfall, and he touched me.

  And I burst under him.

  I was falling in love—deeply, irrevocably, in love.

  “I like you,” he said to me, both of us lying under the stars, listening to crickets, feeling the moisture of cooling air before rain.

  “I like you, too.”

  I more than liked him.

  Still, he wanted us to keep things under wraps.

  Brett sent me a text before the game on that fateful night, the night that would change my life forever, the night from which I would never be the same again.

  The text said one thing only:

  I more than like u. I...well...read between the lines.

  I wrote back. Oh? My heart was in my throat.

  Yeah. I really do. I like u for u. And, well...I’ll tell u in person l8er 2nite

  My head was woozy. Tell me what?

  L8er. C me after the game?

  My fingers were trembling by now. Sure. Where?

  I’ll find u. Oh, & Gin, 1 more thing...

  Yeah?

  Keep this 2 urself. It’s very personal 2 me.

  I did.

  Like I’d been doing for two weeks.

  -4-

  It all happened so fast. There was a throng of people around me. The afterparty. I was indoors. Music rocked from speakers and thin girls were twerking with hard and solid dudes and grinding their asses against their crotches and hollering, screaming, going “Woohoo!” and letting their dripping hair stick to their sweaty faces while they moved their hands over their breasts and opened their mouths just slightly, and then bent over, slowly, and ground against jeans and slid their hands down their knees...

  Lights strobed and people shouted and confusion whirled.

  I was so out of my element.

  I’m a little shorter than most people. All I saw was heads, baseball caps, people around me, squashing my large figure, bumping me, sweat forming on my arms despite the light sundress I’d worn. I could feel the salt fall into my eyes and sting them, body heat, the smell of stale warmth and then—

  Sweet, delicate fingers entwined themselves in mine. I knew it was him. My whole body relaxed. My muscles eased. I breathed in deeply and it suddenly felt like I was on a mountain of dew, sipping in the breaths of a fresh forest.

  Brett had grabbed my hand.

  And then he let it go.

  I turned, saw him, smiling, bright eyes shining and grin melting me from top to bottom. I was so his.

  He tipped his head in the direction of the French doors to the pool, then looked around like it was some kind of secret. I knew the deal. He’d said so in his text: Keep this 2 urself. It’s very personal 2 me.

  You know what it’s like when you’re seventeen. We could over-analyze it, say I was “insecure.” Maybe I was. But, more than anything else, I was just naive. Just plain, fucking, naive.

  He made it through the throng. I had a can of Rolling Rock in my hand. I still drank beer in those days, occasionally. I struggled through the crowd as well, being bumped every which way, jostled, kicked, slammed into. Eventually I got outside. It was a fresh night, cool, crisp air. A little cold suddenly, compared to inside. Some beer had fallen on my wrist and I licked it off.

  It was mostly dark, except for a shining blue pool, a few pool chairs. I looked around for him, unsure where he was. And then I felt that hand again, out of nowhere, and I heard a laugh. A friendly laugh. Call me naive back then, but to this day I know that laugh was genuine. It was the laugh of someone who wants to break the mold. The laugh of someone who wants to “get it on with the not-sexiest girl because he really likes her.” To this day, I believe that. To this day, I believe that, no matter what happened before or after, Brett got it on with me because he wanted to get it on with me. And because he liked me. No matter what the other facts—if there really was a dare, or whatever—he liked me. He really did.

  It doesn’t make it hurt any less.

  Before I knew it, we were behind the house, my back up against a cold, brick wall. A glorious wall. Goosepimples had formed on every pore of my bare legs, my shoulders, my arms. Wind eased itself up my thighs. I shivered. Brett eyed me down with golden eyes. There was a gentle whine in our ears from the breath of the earth’s air. He eased closer to me, and it felt like my whole body expanded by an eighth of an inch. I held my breath, could feel his own brushing against my lips. He wasn’t touching me, not yet, but it felt like he was.

  His smile was melting honey, his gaze, a unicorn on a rainbow.

  I was so in love with him.

  At that moment, my back up against the
wall, Rolling Rock can in my hand, Brett’s body so close to mine, I flashed back to all the reasons why this was real, why it did make sense, why this was meant to be. In those few seconds—maybe even milliseconds because I can’t remember the time of it too well—I forgot all about my mother’s myriad boyfriends, her lovers, her husbands and ex-husbands and all the crap I’d had to grow up with! I forgot about money and weird men who sometimes looked at me like they wanted me more than my mom and I forgot about moving, getting on the road, hot desert suns, cacti, changing schools.

  I forgot about dad.

  I forgot about everything.

  In that moment, I believed in love. True Love. And The One.

  And then he kissed me.

  It was the dawn after six months of night. It wasn’t “insecurities” or “fears” or “lack of self esteem.” It was Love, baby. Real and true fucking Love. I knew that then, and I know it now.

  His tongue entered me with a smoothness that felt like velvet. His right hand slid up my back, taking my dress up with it, baring the back of my thighs to the cool breeze. The dress snagged momentarily against the wall behind me.

  I fell onto him. My arms wrapped themselves around him and I was on a rainbow, flying, soaring to that pot of gold and gliding on thermals. I heard him groan, such a manly sound. And I remember thinking that very thing: Such a manly sound, and yet we’re both just teens.

  I tasted booze on his lips, but I didn’t care. Not much. Because I knew he wasn’t drunk. And I loved him. I knew that. Why? I don’t know. But what I felt, in that moment, was love. “You’re drunk,” I said as a joke.

  He pulled away, a glint of something like sorrow in his eyes. I saw, in him, at that moment, what I’d seen in my own eyes every day: Fear, Uncertainty, Questioning.

  He was just like me.

  He wasn’t the hot quarterback, the sexy kid in school—not in that moment. In that moment, he was a boy, kissing a girl; a girl he liked.

  His eyebrow twitched once. He said, “I’m not drunk. I promise you.” He glared me down, never unlocking his eyes from mine. He held me tight, and I’m glad he did, because I had no legs anymore. All I saw were his red lips, moist from when my tongue had touched them only seconds ago. I wanted those lips again, wanted his breath inside me again.

  “Brett!” someone howled from somewhere. A shrieky, high-pitched sound. A girl. I remember thinking she even sounded thin. “Brett! Sweetie, where are you?”

  Brett smiled mischievously, he grabbed my hand and tugged me further into the trees at the back of the house. The ground smelled moist and rained-on. The beer was still in my hand. He pushed me up against the wall again, breathed his breath into me. Eventually the beer fell onto the soggy leaves. We kissed, his hand found me, below, and he brought me up, up, to murmuring ecstasy.

  Afterwards, I held him. He held me. From inside the house, muffled, but there, we heard music, a slow song. We danced, right there on the soggy leaves, their crunch ruffling under our shoes. We lay down, right next to the beer and everything, and we kissed more. We touched, he felt me, pushed me up again, to the top of the mountain. I whimpered so loudly, so exquisitely, that I thought the music had stopped for a second.

  He got on top of me, both of us still clothed but my dress hiked up to expose my center behind my underwear. He rode me, pushed up below and kissed my neck above. The mental affinity I was feeling changed to a physical want, a need, an ache.

  The two became confused.

  Suddenly I didn’t want just an orgasm, I wanted to be held, I wanted to be told I was sexy, that I was hot, that I was everything a boy ever wanted. I clutched his neck while he pushed up against me, felt him shudder as he climaxed. My legs wrapped around him.

  I felt sexy.

  I felt wanted.

  I felt human.

  He took my panties off, kissed me, there, lovingly, passionately. He thrust his fingers into me and—again and again and again and again—he brought me up, up, up to the highest highs, chemicals pumping in a body too young to understand them! Chemicals which felt like love, like peace, like nothing could ever go wrong.

  He took his belt off, pushed his boxers off, found a rubber in his pocket and covered his glistening cock. My legs were wide, ready for him. My mind, adrift, caught in the moment, caught in the time we’d just spent outside in the not-too-cold night. A night which had become so hot by way of our combined bodies.

  He grabbed his shaft, bent down and found me, touched me with it. Electricity fired through my body. He bent down so that his lips were by my ear. “Only if you want too, Ginny. No pressure.”

  He wasn’t inside me yet.

  And I wanted him to be. All the way.

  Call it a primal instinct, call it the Call of Nature, call it the reaction of cells with millennia of memories embedded in them, and the satisfaction they demand when faced with the fundamental urge to reproduce themselves for the good of the race. Call it what you will, but the simplicity of it is: I wanted him. I wanted him badly.

  And I loved him—at least according to my understanding of what love was at the age of seventeen.

  It wasn’t a very good understanding. I know that now.

  “I want to,” I said.

  He thrust into me.

  I whimpered.

  My feet went off the ground. He kissed me. He rocked me. He pumped. Held me. We whirred.

  And then we came. Together.

  It was beautiful. I’d never felt so close to anyone.

  “I love you,” he said at the end. Whispered it. In my ear.

  I shed a tear. Because I loved him too, I thought I did. And I told him so as well.

  I held him tight, so tight I thought I’d never let him go.

  But I did. And he went inside. I didn’t see him the rest of the night. Didn’t see him at all.

  He just disappeared. Gone.

  I was whirling, spinning, wondering...

  No, he loves me, he told me so—nothing to worry about.

  I went home with a smile on my face; walked. And a buzzing bee of tiny doubt on my mind...

  Tiny, miniscule, almost unnoticeable doubt.

  Then, the next day, at school—he ignored me.

  Completely.

  And the doubt turned into an unshakeable certainty.

  -5-

  At school, back behind a wall where no one could see him talking to the fat girl, probably, he told me what we’d done had been a mistake; that he was really sorry; that he hadn’t meant to hurt my feelings.

  “I just—I just—I just... I can’t, Ginny. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  And he walked away. More like ran.

  I know what he wanted to say. I just can’t date a fat girl.

  Brett and I never talked again.

  -6-

  A little bit of me died inside. I wept. I retched. I held my stomach in pain for weeks—actual pain! I curled into a fetal position on my bed and wrenched with unimaginable agony.

  But I didn’t go back to him. Didn’t beg him. Because I had too much pride. Too much dignity.

  But I lost something that day, something I’ve never recovered since. I lost something and never got it back.

  I lost my confidence.

  Three months later mom found a new husband. And we left the state.

  I’ve never been so relieved.

  -7-

  I’d loved him.

  And he’d loved me.

  On that night, on that soggy ground with beer-covered leaves that had been rained on earlier, we’d loved each other. I know this, and so does he. I’m sure he does. Deep down, I know he knows it.

  Foolish love, naive love, at seventeen, is still love. It’s love to the seventeen year-old. So it’s love. Plain and simple.

  But I was too proud to chase him. I might be overweight, but I’m not desperate.

  Maybe love—True Love—is one of those things that lasts only a second, a moment, a minute. Maybe what Brett and I had had that night can never be repeated. And for t
hat reason I don’t regret it.

  But I can’t say it didn’t scar me. It did. It scarred me forever.

  I still hurt because of it.

  And, sometimes, I still even cry about it.

  I can’t even tell you why.

  -8-

  The Blues Bar is my favorite night-time joint in Nashville. My favorite daytime hangout is, by far, out-and-out, bar none, the library.

  I’ve played it out in my mind many times: Why did I choose to “settle” here and not anywhere else? I could room with anyone in any other state I guess. Was it because I met Layna and we clicked? (The story of her asshole husband rang so close to my story of Brett that it was an instant connection between her and me.) Is it because mom is now settled and comfortable here? Am I afraid of being away from her? Mom’s a little eccentric, and sometimes you just want to get away from her. But could I really live in another state? And if she meets another guy and hops town one more time, will I follow her?

  I’m “grown up” now, they tell me. I don’t feel too grown up. I feel like a girl who gets nervous around boys and has had her heart broken one too many times. Yeah, once. That was one too many.

  Am I here because this bar is the best damned bar in the universe for Soul-Rockin blues? Or am I here because I believe the only other library greater than Nashville’s Downtown library is the very Library of Congress itself?

  I think it’s all of the above.

  I might not love country music, I might hate cowboy hats and Daisy Dukes and cowboy boots. But I love Nashville, I love my bicycle, love Layna, and, most of all, during the day, I love the library.

  It’s three stories—all marble and granite, huge lobby, gilded banisters, music section, research section to the max, old newspaper articles, a civil rights section that makes you cry (I did, several times). And, when you realize MLK walked these streets, that the sit-ins took place in this area, you can’t help but feel there is “something” here. Something bigger, something larger than life.

  Something reverberatingly humane.