Take My Dress Off

by S. Gilmour

  She puckered into the mirror then folded the visor back up. “Shoot.”

  “You know I’m totally over Dillon.”

  “So you claim…go on.”

  “Well I am! So why do I still get butterflies when he’s around?”

  “Because you’re human and even though he’s an a-hole, he is a totally fine a-hole.”

  “I’m very happy with Chaz.” I said it again under my breath, wondering why it felt more like I was trying to convince myself instead of Danielle.

  I pulled into Rocket’s and looked for an empty bay. Danielle wasn’t kidding, the place was packed with Vista High students.

  “I read an article about this last week,” she began.

  A small smile escaped my lips and I rolled my eyes. Danielle always had the answers.

  “You have a love–hate relationship. You feel both at the same time. It’s worse for you because you never actually had a relationship. You’re stuck in this endless flirting hell.” A black truck backed out of a space and I swooped in.

  “So what should I do?”

  “Fuck his brains out.”

  “Danielle!”

  “What? You need to get him out of your system.”

  “That’s totally not going to happen. Ever.”

  She cocked a dark eyebrow and started moaning Dillon’s name, clutching her purse to herself suggestively.

  “Stop it,” I barked. “What do you want to order?”

  “The usual.”

  After we devoured tater-tots smothered in green chili queso, we took the tray back, making note of who was with who, various genres of music blaring as we meandered through the bays of the drive-in. There were football players and cheerleaders at the picnic tables seeking shade under the red umbrellas and goths and geeks sitting on the grass. Then I saw Dillon. Sloane was sitting on his lap facing backwards, her back to the picnic table. She had her legs wrapped around him and they were in full make-out mode, like whoever got their tongue the furthest down the other’s throat would win a prize.

  I gagged. Danielle smirked.

  “How are your butterflies now?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I didn’t get my period.”

  I raised my eyes from the menu and looked across the booth to Danielle. She numbly stared back.

  “How late?” I asked.

  “Two weeks.”

  “I’ve been late before.” I scanned the menu.

  “I threw up yesterday…and this morning.” Her usually animated voice was flat. I sucked in my breath and set the menu on the table.

  “Who? How?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I mean I know…how…but, you know?”

  “Shane of course. Must have been when we were at Piper’s party. That’s the last time I was with him.”

  “But I thought Shane…” I glanced around the diner. I could feel my cheeks warming. I leaned forward and whispered, “Pulled out.”

  “Pulled out and passed out,” hissed Danielle shaking her head. She slowly stirred Sweet and Low into her glass of iced tea with the straw. She capped the open end with her fingers and lifted it out of the cup. Liquid dribbled from the tip. “What?” she asked with an icy glare.

  I mentally counted back the weeks since Piper’s party. Had it been long enough to be Shane? “What about Donny?”

  “Donny?” she glared. “Jesus, Paige.”

  “I know, but you’ve…done stuff with him.” I lowered my eyes back down to the menu.

  “You can’t get pregnant from blow jobs,” she scolded.

  Whatever kind of relationship they had…I didn’t get it so I returned my attention to the menu.

  “Good Lord, next you’ll be saying I got knocked up from a toilet seat.”

  “No one else?”

  “Paige, really?”

  “I’m not judging you, Danielle. I don’t expect you tell me everything about your sex life.”

  “But I do tell you everything.”

  She did.

  Too much at times.

  “You tell me everything, right?”

  I nodded my head hoping I didn’t look guilty.

  Xavier appeared next to our table with a wide grin as he set down my Dr. Pepper. His jet-black hair looked striking against his crisp white shirt. Maddie always said he was drop- dead gorgeous but I didn’t notice until now.

  “Ready to order, ladies?”

  “Wheat toast,” barked Danielle.

  “Toast?” scoffed Xavier. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it, sweetheart,” she growled.

  I ordered a BLT and Xavier scurried away from Danielle’s glare.

  “And apparently I’m a super bitch too.” She bowed her head in her hands, her dark curls spreading like a curtain over her face. “Must be the hormones,” she mumbled.

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions. You need to take a test and then you can relax.”

  “I’m glad you’re so confident.”

  I gave her a reassuring smile but honestly I was terrified for her.

  ***

  After lunch we darted across the street to K-Mart and Danielle blew her week’s pay on thirty dollars’ worth of cosmetics, toilet paper, shampoo…and a pregnancy test. We waited in the longer line so she could be served by a female clerk. The other line was being served by a kind looking old man who only had two customers. We decided that we should do the test at my house since Danielle’s mom had the day off and could be home.

  “It says to hold the stick under the urine stream while you pee,” I called to Danielle through my bathroom door.

  “Maddie’s gone all day, right?” she called back.

  “Yes, she’s shopping in Mission Beach.” I heard her fumbling with the wrapper.

  “Okay. How long?”

  “Just hold it there until you’re done,” I called as I scanned the directions. “Then put the cap back on the stick.”

  The toilet flushed, then the water was running. She opened the door. She was pale and shaky. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  We sat on my bed and waited as Fleetwood Mac’s Sara softly flowed from the alarm clock radio on the nightstand. “This is the longest five minutes of my life.” She turned to face me, taking my hands into hers. “In less than five minutes my life could change forever,” her dark eyes clouded with tears.

  “Or it’s a false alarm and nothing changes. Except maybe you’re more careful next time.” I regretted those words as soon as they flew out of my mouth.

  Danielle threw my hands out of hers and jumped up. “Seriously, Paige? You’re giving me a lecture right now? You don’t think I have regrets, like I haven’t thought about that?” She paced back and forth across my pink shag rug. “I’ve been praying non-stop.” She looked up to the ceiling and clasped her hands. “Just get me through this God and I’ll be a nun.” She dropped to her knees. “Okay, I totally just lied. I can’t be a nun. But I swear I’ll won’t have sex again ‘till I’m married.” She crossed herself. “I promise.”

  I smiled at her through my tears. I couldn’t help it.

  She looked up at me from her prayer position. “Now you’re laughing at me? Did I ever tell you that you’re a shitty friend?”

  “Come here.” I opened my arms to her. She crawled over to me, her head sinking into my lap. I stroked through her curls.

  “Is it time yet?” she sniffed.

  I looked over to the red glowing numbers from the clock on the nightstand.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “I can’t do it, Paige.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  She nodded.

  I walked into the bathroom and locked my eyes on the stick perched on the counter, the stick that was going to determine Danielle’s fate. I twisted the stick to bounce the overhead light’s glare from the little plastic windows.

  There were two light blue lines. Danielle was pregnant.

  “Well?” she called.

  I stood in the doorw
ay with the stick. I didn’t know how to tell her. She shook her head and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Oh God, Oh God!” she cried. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She paced around the room in small circles. “This can’t be happening,” she sobbed and fell onto my bed.

  I tossed the stick onto the nightstand and sat down next to her. “It’s going to be okay, Danielle,” I soothed. “It’s not the end of the world, you’re not dying.”

  “I might as well be dead!”

  “Stop it. Millions of women have babies every day.”

  She pushed away from me and sat up. “Well I’m not going to be one of them. I can’t have a baby!”

  “You need to really think about this, Danielle. You’re in shock. Maybe talk to your mom or your sister?”

  Her dark eyes pinned mine. “Are you mental? I can’t tell them. There’s nothing to figure out, I’m not having it,” she glared.

  “Leanne Jones had a baby last year and everything worked out fine for her,” I offered.

  “If you call having a shot-gun wedding, getting your GED, and living with your in-laws in a trailer in Chula Vista fine, then we need to have a talk about setting life goals.”

  “It’s the only friend we know that’s had a baby.”

  “Exactly. Everyone gets rid of it.”

  I shuddered at the thought.

  “Your sister had a baby. You love your niece.”

  “Gabi was twenty-four and married when she had Kayla, there’s a big difference. I’m getting out of this fucking town,” she cried, her eyes flashing wildly. “I’m going to keep modeling and I’m going to UCLA. Why should my life be over because I made a stupid drunken mistake?”

  “I guess,” I shrugged. I was out of suggestions.

  Fresh tears streamed down Danielle’s red cheeks.

  “I never thought this would happen to me.” She shook her head and reached for a tissue from the nightstand. Her hand lingered over a picture of us from a fashion show. She picked it up and stared. “God, I’d give anything to go back to that day.” She passed it to me and a small smile teased my lips. Danielle had been pissed because she didn’t like the way her hair had been styled. All of the models had their hair pulled back into slick ponytails like the Robert Palmer girls in the Addicted to Love video. Danielle never wore her hair in a ponytail, she thought her ears were too big.

  “What about Shane?” I asked breaking the silence that hung between us.

  “What about him?” she said hugging my stuffed horse.

  “Aren’t you going to tell him?”

  “As if. What’s the point?”

  “But it’s his baby too.”

  “There’s no baby,” she fired back. “And there’s not going to be one. And since when did you get so self-righteous? You’d be singing a different tune if you were in my position.” She brushed her fingers under her eyes, pulling the smeared black mascara into thick lines. She looked like a football player.

  “I’m not self-righteous, I’m just thinking about what’s fair.”

  “Fair?” Danielle sat up and tossed the stuffed horse to the side. “He wasn’t being fair to me when he didn’t pull out fast enough,” she cried pressing her fist into her chest.

  “You’re not alone in this.”

  She swung her legs to the side of the bed and stood up, smoothing her black pleated skirt over her long tan legs. “I haven’t even talked to him since that night at Piper’s.”

  “You’re not giving him the benefit of the doubt?”

  “No.” She grabbed her keys from the dresser. “I gotta go.”

  “Are you sure you can drive? Hang out here a little while longer.”

  “And get another lecture from Miss Roe v Wade? No thanks.” She glanced at the stick on the nightstand. “Do something with that. You don’t want Maddie to find it and think it’s yours.”

  “Sure,” I whispered. I hated watching her go through this. It was definitely going to put a strain on our relationship, no matter what the outcome.

  She walked through the doorway and paused. “I need to call Linda Owens. She had an abortion last year at a clinic in Tijuana.”

  “I can ask Chaz. He went through this with his last girlfriend.”

  “Oh my God, don’t you dare tell him!”

  “He wouldn’t say anything to anyone.”

  “I don’t care,” she fired back. “I don’t want him to know.”

  I put my hands up, “Okay, okay.”

  “What a day, huh?” she said and leaned in to embrace me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. She nodded her head and walked away without looking back.

  ***

  “Danielle is pregnant.”

  “Come again?” Chaz called from his float. He reached over and yanked my float toward his.

  “Pregnant.”

  I had promised Danielle I wouldn’t tell but I couldn’t keep anything from Chaz and her secret was really wearing on me.

  “She isn’t on the pill?” he asked casually, like we were deciding what we were going to have for dinner.

  “No, it made her crazy.”

  “Then what’s her excuse now?” he chuckled.

  “You’re totally not funny.”

  “Who’s the unlucky guy?”

  “Shane Davis.”

  “That sucks.” He scooped his hand into the pool and tossed water onto his chest. I followed the water drops as they rolled over the ridges of his abs. He raised his neck from the float and lifted his Ray Bans. “Is this why you’ve been acting weird?”

  “I’ve been acting weird?” I turned my head toward him and admired his tan muscular body. Little beads of water dotted his abdomen, pooling on top of the tanning oil.

  He reached out and entwined his hand in mine. “I thought you were pissed because we haven’t spent much time together lately.”

  I was pissed but not directly at him, it was just the way things were right now. He was really busy with the golf team, working in the pro shop, and I had modeling gigs. I missed the intimacy we had. I needed it, craved it. Things started out so hot and heavy and now… nothing. My insecurities were taking over again.

  “I’m just frustrated,” I began. “Our schedules aren’t allowing us enough time to be together.”

  He lifted up our joined hands and kissed my knuckles. “So what’s Danielle going to do?”

  “She’s going to Tijuana next week.”

  “Are you going with her?”

  “I don’t know, she hasn’t asked.”

  “She can’t drive herself, she’s going to be all drugged out after.”

  “You took Miranda?” I whispered. I don’t know why I whispered, there was no one in the pool but us. It just seemed so wrong.

  “Yep,” he slipped his sunglasses back on and stared up to the sky.

  “Was it horrible?”

  “It was more horrible for her.” His lips tightened. “While I was waiting for her I felt sick, knowing what was happening in that room, but it was her decision, she made it for us.” He took a deep breath and released my hand.

  I pouted at his use of the word “us.” There had been another “us” before us. That he had shared something so intimate with someone else was incomprehensible to me. Not that I wanted to go through that by any means. It was the intimacy that I craved. I still felt like there was something holding him back from me. The only time I really felt like he let me in was when he was inside me.

  It was all too much and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, the air was stifling and burned my lungs. I rolled off the float and plunged into the pool, seeking relief from the scorching heat in the cool quiet water. I felt him slip underneath me, his hands sliding up my body to rest under my butt as we rose together to the surface. He drew me into him and I wrapped my legs around his waist. He pressed his lips against mine and my arms circled his neck as we bobbed over to the edge of the pool. His tongue pushed into my mouth, searching for mine and he pressed me against the hard edge of th
e pool. My nipples tightened as he pressed against me, it had been too long since I had felt him inside me. He lowered his head to my neck and cupped my breast, lifting it out of the confines of the bikini top. Cold water dripped from his hair as his tongue flicked over my hardened nipple and I moaned, not caring that I was outside in broad daylight, that his mom or his sister could come home at any minute. I pulled at the drawstring of his board shorts and pushed my hand inside, eager to pleasure him. I tightened my grip and slid my hand up and down his length, relishing at how hard he felt in my hand. He groaned into my neck and slipped my bikini bottoms to the side, his fingers exploring my soft folds. I sucked in my breath when his fingers swirled inside. I wanted him.

  “Please,” I panted. “I need you now.” I released him from the flap of his board shorts and guided him toward me.

  “No,” he groaned. His tongue tangled with mine and he reached down, covering my hand with his, pulling it back from where I wanted him. His hand tightened over mine, guiding it forcefully back and forth over his arousal. His other hand was cupped between my legs, his fingers inside me in the same rhythm that he kept on my hand. I purred beneath his lips, my sex quickening and pulsing against his fingers. It was so intense I thought I was going to pass out. He threw his head back as he pushed into my hand. I released my grip on him as warmth spread around my fingers. He collapsed against my neck, his heart pounding as fast as mine as we leaned against the rough edge of the pool.

  “Holy shit, that was amazing!” He pulled back and searched my eyes, concern etching his face. “Are you okay, Paige?”

  I nodded and caught my breath. I could feel tears welling behind my lids. Oh God, don’t cry.

  “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

  I moved away and leaned against the edge of the pool.

  “Come here, baby.” He embraced me, pressing his fingers into my back. “You’ve never been under someone’s hand before have you?” he whispered softly.

  “Just mine,” I laughed through my tears. Oh God, did I just say that? I must have no oxygen in my brain right now.

  Chaz let out a howl, lifted me out of the water, and swung me around. “You drive me crazy, you know that?”

  I clung to him, parts of me still quivering from his touch. But I still felt like I needed more. I wanted intimacy, closeness. I wanted to feel the weight of his body covering me. I shivered.