by S. Celi
Like anyone would turn that invitation down.
“Okay. Um. Do you want something to drink from the mini bar?”
“Sure. Make it good.”
“How good?”
“Surprise me.”
I opened up the fridge next to the love seat and found two cold cans of Diet Coke next to a couple of bottles of bourbon and vodka. While the monologue played, I dumped them together into two plastic cups. She laughed every few seconds at something the actors said, and each time I fell in love with her a tiny bit more. By the time the host stepped out on stage to warm up the audience, I wanted to marry her.
Okay, maybe not marry. Maybe get a tattoo with her name in cursive across my ankle. Something permanent, like that. Anything to make sure I would never forget her.
“Ohhhhhh, I love the SNL digital shorts,” she said, as I handed her a cup. “I hope they have one tonight.”
Laine stretched her legs out on the bed, and leaned her back against the headboard. I mimicked her, and we sat in silence for a while, watching the sketches and laughing, the fan from the air conditioner the only other sound in the room. As we sat there, I tried not to spit out the drink the few times I sipped it. It tasted like cough medicine. I shouldn’t have been so liberal with the bourbon.
“You like a strong drink, don’t you?” she said, during a commercial for Skyline Chili. “A really strong drink.”
“Hey, you said to make it good.”
“I know, but that’s really—it’s really, strong.” She set it on the bedside table, and turned to me. “Are you nervous, Geoff?”
“Nervous?”
“We’re alone in a hotel room. That would make some people nervous.”
“No.” I glanced down at my cup, and my hands shook. “Yes.”
“Okay. Me too.” She leaned over and took the cup from me, placing it next to hers. “Thanks for rescuing me, by the way.”
“I didn’t rescue you, Laine.”
“Well, you were the only one who checked on me out there.” She closed her eyes, and her head fell back against the headboard. “All my friends were there. All of them, and none of them noticed anything. God, some friends, huh?”
“Maybe they did notice,” I lied. “Maybe they didn’t know what to do.”
“Still. Some friends.”
I studied her as the lights from the TV fell on her face. It didn’t look like Evan’s hand had left a mark on her cheek, and only the barest bit of a mascara streak remained near her left eyelid. Even after a hard cry, her puffy face seemed angelic and vulnerable. She was like a broken but beautiful Christmas present, and she was with me. Me. Geoffrey Paul Miller.
Time to man up, and seize the moment.
I leaned in and brushed my lips against the dip underneath her left eye. When she responded, I planted a trail of kisses down her cheek, and to her lips. My lips softly pressed against hers, and I tasted that familiar bubble gum. It had an almost comforting scent, and my hand found its favorite place on the back of her neck, at the base of her up do.
“Don’t stop kissing me,” she said against my mouth. “You’re a good kisser.”
I grew bolder with her words. My kisses turned urgent, and my tongue cut a path into her mouth, where it twisted with hers. She held onto my shirt, and before I knew it, I was hard and desperate, but I didn’t know what to do about it. She must have sensed it, because she popped a few of the buttons on my shirt before she slid further down on to the bed.
“It’s okay, Geoff.” She sounded out of breath. “I want this.”
“You do?”
I held my head above hers, and our eyes locked. If we were going to stop this, we had to stop it right then. I held my breath for another beat. If she stopped this, it wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened to me. I might even laugh about it later. When I was fifty. And drunk. After about $50,000 worth of therapy.
Laine reached up and drew her finger down my jaw line, not taking her eyes off mine. “You have a nice jaw. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Nope.”
“You’re really kinda handsome.. I like your sandy hair.”
“My mom says I got it from my dad.”
Her other hand reached up and found the hidden zipper on the side of her dress. I heard the twist of metal as she slid it open, and, in that moment, there couldn’t have been a sweeter sound in the world. I knew I should take whatever happened next as slow as I could. I should, I should, I should . . .
“This is happening, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad it’s happening with you.”
I kissed Laine again, and she guided my hand to the opening of the dress. I shivered when my hand touched her side, curving into the flesh beneath her armpit, centimeters from her breast. I kissed her out of sheer terror, scared to death she would notice how fast my heart pounded, and feel the sweat I knew had formed on the back of my neck. I kissed her out of desperation. And I kissed her because I knew nothing after that night would ever be the same.
After a few moments, she resumed unbuttoning my shirt, and when she opened the last one I could take it no longer. Neither could she. We pulled apart from each other so I could slip out of my shirt, and she pulled off her dress, returning to me in a pair of black pasties and black underwear. She popped the button on my pants and I gasped, knowing this was the moment of no return. I reached a tentative hand out and cupped her now free breast, my hand caressing a mix of silicone pasty and warm, tender flesh.
This was better than anything I had ever imagined, all the times I’d looked at Internet porn late at night on the computer. Not just better. Intimate. More subtle. And live.
“Can I take these off?” I asked against her mouth as my hand drew a circle around the pasties.
She nodded, and bucked her hips against me as I pulled them off her nipples. Then she yanked down her underwear and lay naked underneath me, officially the first real woman I had ever seen this way. I paused to take in the sight. She had a flat stomach and small round breasts, and when I ran my hand over her bony hip, she shivered.
“Now you have to get naked, Geoff,” she prompted.
Oh, right.
With my eyes still on her, I moved off the bed and unzipped my pants. Then I slid them down my legs, and stood next to the bed in my boxer shorts.
“You’re still not naked,” she said. “And do you have one?”
My tongue thickened in my mouth. “Have one what?”
“A condom?”
I blinked at her. Condoms? I hadn’t thought about this part. I couldn’t bring myself to even say the word. God, she made me so nervous. Like any second I might pass out from the combination of adrenaline and hormones that coursed through my body like a flood. I was about to have sex. Right then. With Laine Phillips. Who had time to think about the small stuff?
“Do you have one?” she asked again.
“Well . . . I mean . . .” I struggled with what to say next. “You really have done this before, haven’t you?”
“Just with Evan a couple of times,” she admitted. “It wasn’t good. He was—well, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to talk about it. Does it matter, though?” Her voice turned small and unsure.
“No. Not at all.”
It really didn’t. I didn’t care. She was here with me now. In this bed. Naked. Wanting me. That’s what I cared about. Behind me, on the TV, SNL introduced a band I had never heard of as the musical act. I barely heard it. If I could have, I would have stopped time, so that all I had for the rest of my life was this moment with her. It might have been love. It might have been lust. It was probably somewhere in the middle.
I didn’t really care what it was.
“Geoff,” she said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Do you have a condom with you?”
“Um.” I frowned, and then my stomach twisted. Thank God for Josh Anderson. What a friend. I was about to owe him a million bucks. “Yeah.” I dug around my pants until I found my wallet. There, i
nside the front flap, lay the red-wrapped condom he’d given me a few weeks earlier at lunch. I held it out to her. “I have this one.”
“Okay.” She grinned at me, satisfied. “I’m ready if you are.”
I pulled down my boxer shorts and crawled on top of her. As I did, she found the condom with one hand, and my hardness with her other. I closed my eyes. Everything seemed to crash over me at once—all the time I had waited, my feelings for her, the bizarreness of that night, and now the intimacy of this moment.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about hurting me.”
“Hurting you?” My eyes flew open. I wanted to do plenty of things to her, but I didn’t want to hurt her. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She giggled against my chest. “You’re pretty big.”
“I am?”
“You won’t hurt me,” she said against my mouth. “So don’t worry.” She kissed me again, and I responded, my hands somewhere in her hair, and my body on top of hers, skin to skin. We kissed like that for a long time, the unwrapped condom between us like a promise of what would happen next. After a few moments, she shifted her legs so that I sank between them, propping my chest and upper body on the fluffy white pillows behind her head.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She didn’t have to say it. I knew she was, with every cell in my body. I shut my eyes and concentrated on breathing; I was terrified I would screw up the next few minutes. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale…
“Geoff?”
I opened my eyes. My breath came out hard and fast, and my heart pounded against my ribcage. “What?”
“You look weird. Your face is all red.”
“Is it?” I tried to ignore the growing panic in my stomach.
“Are you okay?”
I gulped. “Yeah . . . I am . . . No . . .”
Laine put her hands on my shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said after a pause. “Are you nervous?”
“No . . .” I started to lie, but I couldn’t go through with it. “Yeah, I’m nervous. I am.” Her right hand traveled up my shoulder, lightly caressing my skin, and she hooked her fingers around my ear. I held my whole body rigid. “I just . . . I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t do this,” I said. No one in his or her right mind would turn this girl down, but here I was, doing just that. “I can’t.”
She pulled back some on the pillows. “You can’t?”
I shut my eyes again. “I can’t. Not right now. I don’t . . . I’m not ready.”
Goddamn it. Loser. What a loser. Worse than a loser.
“Just doesn’t feel right,” I admitted, my lips somewhere in her hair now, my body still above hers, but the magic of this moment broken. I knew I would regret this every day for the rest of my life. It might be my only chance with her, but in the end, it didn’t feel right. Not after what had happened between her and Evan; not in a hotel room Evan had paid for in the hope of landing in bed with Laine himself. And not with SNL playing behind us, the blue lights of the TV dancing through the dark room and landing somewhere on the bed. Slowly, my hardness faded away. This moment was over. Way over.
“Do you hate me?” I whispered when she stayed silent.
“No.” Her forehead rested against mine. “I could never hate you.”
I rolled off of her and propped myself on my elbow. “I wanted to do it. I did. Just didn’t feel quite right—”
“It’s okay.” She yawned and looked at the clock on the bedside table. “12:45 a.m. I’m actually really tired.”
I chuckled. “We’re supposed to stay up late. Like, all night. It’s prom night.”
“I know, but I could just fall asleep right now.” She yawned again, and curled against me.
“Do you want to get dressed?”
“No.” She picked up the remote control and switched off the TV. Darkness flooded the room. “Let’s just go to sleep”
SUNDAY, MAY 5
THE TEXT MESSAGE ping on my phone woke me up around seven a.m.
Laine lay sleeping beside me, wrapped in a white sheet, and tucked in the crook of my arm. Twisted pieces of what remained of her up do spread out over the pillow, and she slept with a slight smile of her face. Not wanting to wake her up, it took me five or six minutes to pull my arm out from underneath her body. When I finally did, the arm stung from sleeping in such an awkward position. I disregarded that and fumbled for the phone in my pants pocket. Four text messages from Josh waited for me.
11:45 PM Where R U?
12:36 AM Meet us at After Prom. We’re already here
1:57 AM Hope U R OK. Getting kinda worried.
5:45AM Holy Shit. Call me.
Jesus. I must have been in a coma. Well, for at least half of the night, I had been pretty distracted. I looked from the phone to Laine, and back again. Whatever Josh wanted, it could wait. This was more important. She was more important. I had fucking slept next to Laine Phillips, and she didn’t laugh in my face. She lay in my arms all night. Naked. Vulnerable. In this hotel room. Even after we didn’t have sex, she still didn’t leave me.
This had been the best night of my life. Thank God I went to prom. Thank fucking God.
Staring at her, I knew I wanted a keepsake—some way to remember that moment. Something to prove to myself that it happened on the days when I didn’t believe it. When the phone buzzed in my hand from another text message, it didn’t annoy me that time. It gave me the fucking answer to my problems.
I eased back in bed with her, and unlocked the camera on the phone. When the screen came up, I switched it to “selfie” mode, and aligned it as well as I could. She lay next to me in a dead sleep, her arm covering her naked breasts. I snuggled closer to her and snapped the photo. Then I threw the phone back on my pile of clothes and gently put my hands on her stomach. She stirred, nestling her body into me. God, this could have been a scene from an awesome movie, but it wasn’t.
This was my fucking life. Awesome.
“Mmmmhhhhph,” she said as she opened her eyes. “Hey, you.” She yawned.
“Hey, Laine.”
Her neck cracked as she stretched it. “So. What . . . what time is it?”
“It’s early. Seven.”
She yawned again, and then her eyes widened. “Oh God, seven?”
“Yeah. Seven.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Yep.”
She sat up, and the bed sheet fell away from her body. My eyes immediately fell on her breasts. God, they were prefect. And I had felt them. Whenever I wanted. All night.
Maybe she’d let me touch them again.
“I’m late,” she said. She sounded frantic, and it jarred me out of my daydream. “Oh, God. Curfew.” She got out of bed and started looking for her clothes.
“What curfew?” I’d never had one. Mom and David knew I wouldn’t do anything reckless, and I never had. Well, not before prom night.
“My parents said to be home at six,” she said as she pulled on her underwear. “They said six a.m. on the dot. They didn’t know Evan and I were coming here, and I was supposed to just stay half the night so they wouldn’t find out.”
I got out of bed, and followed her lead. My pants, boxer shorts, and shirt lay in a wilted heap on the floor. They didn’t look nearly as James Bond like in the harsh light of morning. Instead, they just looked cheap. Wrinkled. And cliché.
I blew out a long breath and started putting on the clothes. I also slipped the unwrapped condom back in my pants pocket.
“Are they really strict?”
“Kind of. I should have—I should have called, and told them I was spending the night at Jillian’s house.” She zipped up her dress, and the action might as well have been a slap across my face. This wasn’t midnight with a clock, pumpkin and glass slipper, but it was what seven a.m. looked like on the morning after the best night of my life. Fantasy over. No more dreaming. No more soft, serene sleep next to the pristine princes
s of my high school.
“God, they’re going to kill me.” She walked over to the nightstand and fumbled around for the bobby pins and crystal clips that made up part of her hairdo.
“Why don’t you just call them now?” I buttoned the last button on my shirt and grabbed my phone, making sure to lock it so she wouldn’t see the photo I took of her.
“No, they won’t . . . they won’t believe me. Not an hour after curfew.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take you home right now.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the best thing.”
Questions flooded my mind. Did she think this had all been a mistake? Was last night awful? Did she hate me for backing out on her? Did I look disgusting naked? Had I imagined all of this?
When I reached the hotel room door, she pulled me out of my thoughts with a quick kiss. “Last night was nice, Geoff.”
“Nice?”
“More than nice.” She opened the door of the room and the vast hallway greeted us. “But now we have to go.”
We didn’t pay the balance on the room. We didn’t even stop by guest services to check out. Whatever. Evan, or his brother, or whoever’s name had secured the reservation could pay the balance later.
Laine and I rushed outside to the valet stand, and left as fast as we could. Cincinnati was waking up all around us, and the bright sunlight bothered me. Why couldn’t last night have just lasted forever? Why? Why did things have to be like this?
Once again, I drove the BMW as fast as I could manage, but this time for a different reason. We zipped through downtown and across the Big Mac Bridge in less than five minutes. The car didn’t hit any red lights this time. Kinda what I expected. We pulled up to her house a mere five minutes after that.
“Do you want me to say anything to your parents?” I asked as I put the car in park by the curb. She hadn’t spoken to me the entire drive home. “I could tell them some kind of story, say something . . . er . . . maybe you came over to my house because of Evan . . .”
“No. It won’t do any good. They won’t believe you. It’s my fault for not telling them anything.”
