by Faye McCray
I walked in, and Kerry was sitting on the couch with her back to the door. Phil was sitting across from her and stood when he noticed me walking in.
“Here he is,” he sang. “I told you he would be right here.”
Kerry stood from where she was sitting and turned to me. “Surprise,” she said smiling.
“Hey, baby,” I said embracing her. I was trying hard to shake off the feeling that she would know immediately. “How long have you been waiting here?”
“Awhile,” she said. “I wanted to surprise you when you got off work but Phil said you guys went out. Your landlord let me in so I’ve been hanging out on your couch. You know you guys have nothing in your fridge?” She laughed. Her laugh was cut off by a deep yawn and I felt awful. The thought of her sitting here trying to wait up for me while I fucked Jayna made me feel sick to my stomach.
“I’m going to hit the sack,” Phil said looking at me. “I told Kerry it probably took you awhile to get a taxi.” Phil walked to his room glancing back at me with questions in his eyes. I could only imagine what he was thinking or where he thought I had been.
I nodded.
“I know I should’ve called,” Kerry said when Phil closed his door. “I just felt like things with us have been off. I wanted to tell you in person how much I missed you.” She wrapped her arms around my waist and tilted her chin for me to kiss her. I did. I wondered if I tasted different. I wondered if she would know. I pulled away from her and yawned.
“Let me jump in the shower,” I said, hoping I appeared relaxed and nonchalant.
“Okay,” she said walking into my room. “I may fall asleep,” she whispered giggling. I smiled at her and walked towards the bathroom. More than anything, I hoped she would.
***
If Kerry suspected anything, she didn’t let it show. In fact, it felt like she was going out of her way to show me how much she loved and missed me. She downplayed her success at work and told me she was counting down the days until she was back in D.C. with me. She said she missed how strong she felt with me because in New York, she felt lost. I listened. I held her. I tried my best to convince her that everything was okay. She asked me once about not answering her calls, and I lied that I didn’t get good cell service from my job. I also complained that summer courses were kicking my butt because the professors had to cram a full semester into the short summer months. The lies slipped off my tongue like ice, and Kerry sucked it up.
On Saturday night, she surprised me with my favorite take-out and a massage to show me how proud she was for all my hard work. That night, when we made love she was almost subservient, mumbling things about belonging to me and how she would never leave me. I felt like crying watching her lying beneath me, kissing me with all the passion she could muster and calling my name like she was made for me. I wanted desperately for what she was saying to be true.
I was scared to death that what she was saying was true.
***
“Was that too much last night?” she asked at breakfast the next morning. We only had a few hours before I would drive her to the bus, and I found myself growing solemn at the thought of her leaving. I wondered if it was too late to start over - start going to class and answering her calls. If it was even possible to forget the night I spent with Jayna. I glanced out the window. The faint sounds of an old Nina Simone song, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” was echoing from someone’s apartment. Aunt Laura had loved Nina Simone. Hearing the song, one of her favorites, brought with it a breeze of nostalgia. Suddenly, I could smell her pies and feel her touch. I thought of my sister. I thought of what I was keeping from Kerry. I wondered if Aunt Laura was looking down on me with disapproval or if she was looking down on me at all.
“What?”
“Was I too much?” she asked biting her lower lip. She had been intense, and it scared me. I wasn’t even a little bit worthy of her feelings for me, as much as I wanted to be.
“No,” I lied.
“I love you, Nate,” she continued. “I don’t ever want you to doubt that.”
I stood and took her hand, pulling her gently from where she sat to standing. I held her close, pressing my cheek to hers and swaying us to the music.
“I don’t even hear music,” she said laughing.
“Shh,” I said putting my finger to my lips. “Listen.”
She grew quiet and then nodded when she heard the faint, sweet sounds.
“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good…” I sang. My voice was barely a whisper. I felt her body melt into mine. We stood there swaying long after the music stopped.
***
I dropped Kerry off at the bus station minutes before her bus arrived. After breakfast, we had gotten back in bed and watched mindless television until we both fell back asleep. Kerry got teary during the car ride and promised to visit in another two weeks. After her internship, she would spend the last two weeks of the summer in Connecticut until the dorms reopened. I could tell she wanted me to invite her to stay at our place, but I brushed it off reminding her of how messy Phil and I were and how her parents would probably have a fit. She reluctantly agreed.
We exchanged “I love you’s” and said our goodbyes. I promised to call her back more often so she wouldn’t worry, and she promised there would be no more surprises.
The moment I pulled away from the bus station, my mind was consumed with thoughts of Jayna. Kerry’s visit had been such a whirlwind that I had struggled to shove what happened between Jayna and me out of my mind. I feared Kerry would read it on my face and know immediately that I had been with someone else.
That I had been with Jayna.
The guilt. The anxiety. It was almost unbearable. The minute she left, I allowed myself to remember Jayna’s touch, the sound of her voice, the feel of her body. The shame dissipating as I allowed myself to become intoxicated in her memory. I could barely see straight when I dialed Jayna’s number minutes after I dropped Kerry off. She answered on the first ring and told me she would meet me at my apartment. Not wanting to face Phil’s judgment, I asked her if I could meet her at her place instead.
She agreed.
Jayna and I only made it halfway up the stairs to her room before most of our clothes were off. She rode me hard with her back to me on the top of the stairs, my hands grabbing at her ravenously as she bounced up and down screaming and grunting like a wild cat. I clung to every piece of her, every bit, hoping to forget any part of me that had ever belonged to Kerry.
***
“This is crazy,” Jayna said one evening.
It was a humid day at the end of July. Jayna and I were meeting almost daily, and I had called out of work on more than one occasion unable to let her go. As the summer neared an end, our time together had begun to feel urgent. Like we were moving backwards towards a brick wall. We both knew it was only a matter of time before we crashed but as long as we didn’t see it coming, we could pretend like everything was okay.
That evening, we found a secluded spot in Rock Creek Park and had sex on a blanket in the grass. We clung to each other longer than usual. Basking in the warmth of the sun on our bare bodies. Grunting, moaning and muttering shameful things we dared not say with a sober mind. When we were done, I lay comfortably on the blanket in just my boxers and watched her as she dressed. The setting sun glowing orange as it made its slow descent into the night.
“What’re we doing?” she asked.
I shook my head, wishing she hadn’t ruined the moment with words. “I have no idea.”
She looked at me and pulled her purple sundress over her head. She turned for me to help her zip the back. I sat up and zipped her up.
“Do you ever wonder if they were right about us?” She turned, staring at me in the eyes.
“Right about what?” I asked rising, pulling on my shirt and reaching for my shorts. I put them on and sat back down. The wind blew and a piece of hair flew in her eyes. The setting sun made her hazel eyes almost look like gold. She looked beauti
ful and vulnerable. I pushed the hair from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. My attraction to her burned and never wavered.
“Us,” she continued. “If we are just like them. Just like our parents.”
I looked down, wondering how to stop where this was going. I felt guilty too, but reminding myself that it was just sex freed me of feeling like we needed to stop. With Jayna, it was sex. Wild, uninhibited, crazy sex. With Kerry, it was love.
“Why’re you even saying this?” I asked poking her in the stomach, hoping to lighten her darkening mood and change the direction of the conversation.
She smiled. “It’s something I think about.”
“We aren’t sitting here drinking, Jayna,” I began. “We aren’t fucking up any innocent kids. We’re just having fun…”
“But this is a shitty choice, Nate. What we’re doing is shitty. I feel like shit. It’s just shitty.”
“Can you think of another adjective?” I joked.
“How does this end?” she asked, not laughing.
I shrugged. “Let’s not make this more than it is, Jayna. You said that remember?”
She looked away, anger in her eyes. “I’m just like her,” she said, running her hand through her hair.
“Like Kerry?” I asked.
“Like my mother.”
“Jayna, you are nothing like her. We’re nothing like them,” I reassured her.
“Do you know why my parents got a divorce, Nate?” she asked after a moment.
I shook my head.
“Kerry’s Dad was fucking my mother.”
I paused, drawing my chin to my neck confused, wondering if I had heard or imagined the words she just said.
“Kerry’s father what?”
“That should help get him off that pedestal, huh?”
I looked at her dumfounded and started to laugh. I couldn’t help but find humor in deception coming from a man like him. I pictured him sitting across from me at the restaurant with his hand waving dismissively as he spoke, and Kerry and her mom hanging on every pompous word. His dire predictions about my future suddenly seemed riddled in hypocrisy. I soaked up the unexpected gift of this secret. Oh, how much easier it would have been to stomach his self-righteous act if I had known this sooner.
“Glad you think it’s so funny,” Jayna added as I laughed. I looked at her realizing that she wasn’t laughing and stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
“When I was a kid, he would come by when my Dad worked late or sometimes he would meet us out,” she began. “At first, I thought he was just keeping my mom company because they were friends. Then one night when I was about six, my Dad was out of town, and I was having a hard time falling asleep. I was always scared when he was out of town,” she explained.
“I got out of bed to go sleep in my mother’s room, and I opened her door slowly because I didn’t want her to wake up and send me back in my room. I opened the door and he was on her naked… in her.” She paused and grimaced, as if disgusted by her memory. “He turned and saw me and jumped up. I ran to my room. My mother followed to try to talk to me, to try to convince me that what I saw was innocent, but I could barely look at her.”
“Did you tell your father?” My mind was reeling. In that moment, I thought of Kerry and how much a secret like this would completely rock her perfect world.
She shook her head. “I don’t know how he found out,” she started again. “But when he did, it was like he blamed me, too. He left and didn’t even say goodbye.”
Looking at Jayna and witnessing the pain in her face, suddenly everything was crystal clear. Her relationship with Kerry, her relationship with Mr. Wallace… shit, even her relationship with me.
“I’m just like her,” she repeated.
Struggling to find the words to say, I ran my hand up her back and massaged her neck. She shrugged my arm off and stood. She began gathering our things quickly. I followed her lead. She slipped on her sandals as I folded the blanket. We walked back through the park in silence as the sun sank further and further into the sky.
“Jayna,” I said stopping, frustrated that our day was ending this way. She stopped, turning towards me. Now that she was looking at me, I had no clue what to say. I just knew I didn’t want our guilt to affect what was happening between us.
Despite the tension between us and what she just revealed, I felt inextricably drawn to her. I could lie and say Jayna could have been any girl, but the fact was, I wanted this girl. Even with her complexities, I couldn’t give up the way it felt when I was with her. This was my worst. Dirty. Angry. A liar. A cheater. Everything I had ever known I was. I couldn’t imagine giving up the frenzied chaos we made together, the raw pleasure. My only solace was at the core of the tension between us. The wrong that surrounded us. Even in that moment, I wanted to reach out and bring her to me, reach inside of her and stay inside until neither of could speak. She received me at my worst and only demanded I be exactly who I was. With her, there was no accountability, there was no love, there was just me. Fucked up and flawed.
“Let’s go back to my place,” I said.
“I thought you didn’t want your roommate to know.”
I dropped my bags and reached my arms around her waist, kissing her slowly. She kissed me back. I ran my hands down to her ass and squeezed. She laughed.
“I don’t care who knows, Jayna. I don’t care who you think you’re like. I just don’t want this to stop.”
She smiled. “Pick up the bags, dummy.”
I did, and we headed back to my place.
***
Phil wasn’t there when we got back but I would bet money he heard us when he got in. I rolled a blunt for Jayna and me when we got back. High, we fucked each other loud and sloppy on the floor of my room. A little after midnight, Jayna and I snuck out to the kitchen to have a snack. She sauntered out in her bra and panties and sat on top of the counter. I stood in front of her in my boxers, watching her as she ate chips, and running my finger over her panties as she giggled.
“Nate, you’re going to make me choke.” She laughed.
I stood in between her legs and kissed her neck, pushing her panties to the side and putting two fingers inside her. I kissed up her neck and to her lips. She moved against me as I pushed my fingers in and out. After a minute, I pulled my fingers out slowly and licked them, smirking while staring in her eyes.
“More, please,” she whispered not taking her eyes off mine. I laughed.
Just then, Phil walked out of his room. Jayna screamed, covered herself and ran back into my room.
“Hi.” Phil chuckled and waved as she ran past.
“Hi!” Jayna yelled laughing. I looked at Phil, smirking.
“That’s not…?”
“Kerry?”
“No, I know it’s not Kerry. That’s not Kerry’s friend, is it?”
I snickered and popped a chip in my mouth.
“Please, please, please don’t tell me that’s Kerry’s best friend,” Phil said folding his hands in front of him as if he was praying.
“How do you define “best?” ‘Cause technically she wouldn’t be her “best” friend if she was here, right?”
Phil looked at me shaking his head. “Okay, let me rephrase, that’s not the girl Kerry thinks is her best friend is it?”
I was silent.
“Wow… I knew you were mad at her but shit… Nate, this is pretty screwed up.”
“Didn’t you tell me to fuck her?” I laughed.
He shook his head. “I also said to let me fuck her. Clearly, you pick and choose what you hear.”
I waved my hand at him dismissively and walked back into my room. Trying to pretend like him knowing had no effect on me at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The day before Kerry’s next visit, I woke up with Jayna in my bed. The summer was going by like a dream and in two weeks, the dorms would reopen and we would be forced to wake up. I wasn’t sure what would happen between Kerry and me when she retur
ned, but I hadn’t even thought about what that would mean for Jayna and me.
I looked over at where Jayna slept and sighed, wrapping my arms around her. I kissed her neck as I slipped inside her to wake her up. She moaned as she awoke.
“Good morning,” she said grinning when we were done. I pulled out, picking up the phone to call Kerry while she kissed my chest. I put my finger to my lips as a signal for her to be quiet. Our deception had become so routine, it was like we stopped believing it was wrong.
“Hey, baby,” I said after Kerry picked up.
“Hi!”
“Just calling to find out if you’re still heading in TODAY,” I yelled the last part as Jayna bit my nipple. I looked at her mouthing, “Stop”. She smothered her laughter in my chest as I slapped her ass.
“Yep! I’m so excited. I called you last night but you didn’t pick up.”
“Oh yeah?” I watched as Jayna rose to get dressed. She stretched and bent over seductively to pull on her underwear. I laughed.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing. I’m just excited, too.”
Jayna laughed quietly while pulling on her pants.
“Why didn’t you pick up?” Kerry asked.
“You know I come in at night and crash,” I lied. “Plus, I think I may have left my phone on vibrate from work. I’m sorry, baby.”
“Okay.” I could sense the doubt in her voice. “Do you want to just meet at Maggiano’s for dinner? My dad gave me a ton of cash so I’ll pay.”
I winced. “I got it. You don’t need me to pick you up?”
“No, I’ll just grab a cab.”
“All right,” I said as a Jayna sat back beside me on the bed.
“Oh, Nate, do you mind if I invite Jayna to dinner?” she asked. “I haven’t seen her all summer.”
Feeling a brief rush of energy, I smiled to myself and looked at Jayna. “Not at all.”
***
I arrived at Maggiano’s a little late. As I was walking out of work, my boss decided to confront me on my frequent lateness. He was a cool guy and I could tell he didn’t want to talk to me about it. He warned if it continued, I “might want to think about looking for a new job.”
