Never Turn Back

by Christopher Swann

  We are seated at our table, and our waiter comes and delivers the standard patter about specials and house specialties. Marisa listens to him with a half smile, the candlelight softening her face, glinting off her hair.

  “Do you like wine?” I ask, picking up the wine list.

  “A day without wine is like a day without sunshine,” she replies, and for a second everything skips a beat. A memory as clear and bright as a new coin drops into my head—sitting at the dinner table with my parents, Susannah in a high chair, a box of takeout pizza on the counter, my father pouring my mother a glass of wine. A day without wine is like a day without sunshine, he said to her, smiling, and then he kissed her.

  Marisa frowns slightly. “Ethan? Something wrong?”

  I shake my head and make myself smile. “No,” I say brightly. “Not a thing. You like red or white?”

  We choose a South African red. The waiter brings it and pours for both of us, then leaves without asking for our orders. That annoys me until I realize the waiter is deliberately not rushing us, giving us time. The memory of my parents has thrown the evening slightly off-kilter, and I take a breath, willing myself to relax. The red wine helps.

  “This is nice,” Marisa says, swirling her wine gently in her glass. “But it’s a little backwards.”

  She has caught me midsip, and I swallow my wine quickly. “You don’t like it?” I say, indicating the glass in my hand. “We can order a different bottle.”

  She shakes her head and leans forward a little, looking me in the eye and dropping her voice just a notch. “I mean this. Going out on a date, to a nice dinner, getting to know each other better.” She gives the barest hint of a smile, the corner of her mouth slowly rising. “Usually that’s what happens before you go to bed with someone.”

  I wait a beat, watching her smile widen, and then I match it with one of my own. “That’s the usual course of events,” I say.

  She laughs and tips her glass toward me, conceding a point.

  * * *

  DINNER IS GOOD, our conversation easy and pleasant. But beneath it all is a strong current that tugs at both of us, rising slowly like a river we have waded into. It strengthens when we share a dessert, when the check comes and we flirt over who is paying for dinner, when we walk outside and come to that moment where Marisa will need to call an Uber or not.

  “I can take you home,” I say. “If you want.”

  Marisa is leaning into me, my arm around her, and that vanilla-pepper scent wraps around me. She turns her head so her lips are at my ear. “I don’t want to go home,” she says.

  The valet brings my car around. I’m not sure how I manage to drive us home, in large part because Marisa rests her hand on my thigh as I’m driving. As it is, when I do get to my street, I go up my driveway fast enough that we bounce over the tree roots and I hit my head on the roof of the car. Marisa laughs, deep and throaty, and when I park the car I reach over and kiss her, hard, her mouth opening to mine and our tongues meeting, exploring. We barely get out of the car and into the house. I think fleetingly of how glad I am that Susannah is out tonight, and that I took Wilson to the vet today for his annual checkup and left him overnight because he loves to play with the other dogs, and then I’m fully swept up in the current that carries us down the hallway, Marisa’s lips on my neck, her tongue teasing my ear, my fingers searching for the zipper at the back of her dress, and we are both swept over the edge and fall, limbs and mouths and hair entangled, onto my bed.

  * * *

  “WE,” I SAY, a bit breathlessly, and then I have to wet my lips with my tongue because they are suddenly dry. “We need to do that again.”

  Marisa, having already made a discreet run to the bathroom, stretches luxuriantly next to me and gives an affirmative mmm. She nestles next to me, head on my shoulder, one leg over mine. “Definitely,” she murmurs. Her hand splays across my chest, stroking gently.

  I kiss her forehead. “Slower next time, maybe.”

  She turns her head to look up at me, her eyes wide and innocent. “You didn’t like it?”

  I smile and run one hand down her side, the curve of her hip. “I liked it fine,” I say. “But I’d like to enjoy it for longer.”

  “Well, then,” Marisa says, and she gracefully throws one leg over me so she’s straddling me, arms on either side of my head, face inches above mine. In the dark I can hear the smile in her voice. “No time like the present.”

  * * *

  AFTER, BOTH OF us lying on our backs, catching our breaths, I realize we are holding hands, Marisa’s fingers entwined with mine. It’s curiously more intimate than anything else we’ve done that evening. Something swells in my chest then, pleasant and warm and golden-light. It takes me a moment to realize it’s happiness.

  “Be right back,” Marisa says; then she lets go of my hand and gets out of bed. I know she’s just going to pee, but I don’t like the empty side of the bed she leaves behind. I lay in the dark, my head and heart both whirling. Lucky, I keep thinking, like a mantra.

  A flush, then Marisa padding across my room and getting back in bed. “Cold,” she says, snuggling up to me.

  “Do you want a T-shirt?” I ask. I feel her head nod against my chest. “Okay.” I slide out from the covers and go to my chest of drawers, take out a T-shirt, and carry it back to her. As she pulls it on, I find my boxers and pull them up, then lie back down on my pillow, waiting for Marisa to curl up next to me, which she does. She’s warm and smooth and … present, is the best way I can describe it. She’s fully here, with me, my arm around her like it belongs there.

  “God, I feel so close to you,” she says, her lips brushing my shoulder.

  I squeeze her in acknowledgment, my eyes drifting shut.

  “It’s like we can share anything,” she says. “No secrets.”

  My eyes open.

  “Tell me something I don’t know about you,” she says.

  “I’m really, really good at Jeopardy!,” I say.

  She pinches my nipple gently. “Not like that,” she says.

  “Ow.” I swat her hand away playfully.

  She raises herself up on her side, looking at me. “Seriously,” she says. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

  I stare up at the ceiling, feeling as if I’ve stepped off a cliff and just realized it a split second before I began to fall. “Why?” I ask.

  There’s a pause, and I lie there in the dark, wondering if I’ve made a mistake.

  Marisa says, “Because I want to know you.”

  It’s a good answer. Part of me would like to ask that question too, although I’m afraid of the answer. “Okay,” I say, thinking. “I’m scared that I’m not a good enough teacher.”

  Another pause. “Seriously?” she says. She sounds genuinely surprised.

  “Yeah,” I say to the darkened ceiling. “I am.”

  Another pause. “But you’re so good at it,” she says.

  I shrug, then realize she probably can’t see me shrug in the dark. “I’ve got a good act,” I say. “Like a performer. It’s not that I’m faking it. I like what I do, and I know things. I just—I don’t know.”

  Marisa seems to hesitate, and then her fingers are brushing my arm, making tentative contact. “Is it because of your mom?” she asks softly.

  The walls come up then, thick stone and barred windows. I close my eyes and concentrate, imagining that vault in my head, the place where I can stuff all those unwanted thoughts. “Maybe,” I say, eyes still closed. In my mind I’m holding that overstuffed shoebox, now messily wrapped in duct tape, but the vault isn’t there; it’s some indistinct distance ahead of me. “Tell me about your mom,” I say, still concentrating. I’m walking across a desert floor, sand beneath my feet, the shoebox in my hands growing heavier. And then I’m at the vault and I put the shoebox inside and slam the door shut with a boom …

  I open my eyes, coming back to my darkened room, realizing Marisa hasn’t said anything. “Hey,” I say, turning to
look at her. She’s still there, lying on her side in my bed. “You okay?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” she says, and her voice is flat.

  “That’s okay,” I say, sitting up. “We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

  I can’t see her face clearly, although she’s still looking at me. Then she sits up abruptly. “Oh gosh,” she says, her voice back to normal. “It’s late. I have to get back home.”

  “What? No,” I say. “Please stay. I’m sorry I—”

  “No, it’s not—you didn’t do anything; I just—”

  “Come on,” I say, reaching for her, but she’s already sitting on the edge of the bed, looking for her clothes. I scoot across the bed and put my hand on her shoulder. “Marisa, I’m sorry, you can stay—”

  She tenses up when I touch her, tight and coiled as a spring, and I almost take my hand away, but I leave it on her shoulder, touching her but not grasping. Then she lets out a breath, and some of that tension falls away. “It’s okay, Ethan,” she says, and she turns and kisses me, her lips pressing lightly against mine. “I just really have to go.” She sighs. “My mom will need me.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Sure.” I take my hand off her shoulder. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “No,” she says. “I’ll Uber home. I want you to stay here.” She stands up and removes my T-shirt, and for a second I see her body, naked and pale in the shadows, before she pulls her dress over her head and tugs it down.

  “But—” I say, protesting.

  Marisa leans across the bed and kisses me, more fully this time. I try to pull her back into the bed with me, but she breaks away. “I really have to go,” she says.

  “Please let me drive you home.”

  She puts a hand on my chest and gently pushes me back down onto the bed. “I want you to stay here,” she says.

  “Marisa—”

  “Shh.” She lays a finger across my lips. “I want you to stay here, in your bed. And I want you to think about me.”

  “That won’t be hard,” I say against her finger.

  “Good,” she says. Then she gets off the bed, and I see the glow of her phone. “Uber is three minutes away,” she says. And then she’s gone. I hear the front door open and then shut.

  “I’m sorry,” I say aloud, without being entirely sure what I’m apologizing for.

  * * *

  I SPEND MOST of Sunday doing my usual chores, grocery shopping and cleaning and getting ready for the week to come, but I’m on autopilot, going through the motions while I try to figure out what happened with Marisa. I parse our dinner conversation like it’s the Rosetta Stone, examining every word and gesture. I consider every kiss, every touch, every move we made in bed like a coach analyzing a game video. Was it weird that she wanted me to share something secret? Was it weird that I didn’t want to? She brought up my mother, a topic I’ve almost always considered off-limits. But then I brought up her mother, too, and she closed down, her voice cold as Siberia. Can I blame her for that? But then she suddenly had to go home, and it was strange that she would rather take an Uber than let me drive her home. What the hell was that? Was she embarrassed by her family? Or was it some sort of emotional game she was playing with me? Because I don’t need that kind of crap in my life.

  These are the thoughts that swirl in my head all day as I wipe off the kitchen counters and clean my toilet and look for cereal and spaghetti at Publix. And I am no closer to a solution after all of that than I was last night.

  Wilson does his usual happy dance when I pick him up from the vet, licking me eagerly when I take him home, so there is that.

  * * *

  ON MONDAY, I do not have my shared class with Marisa. Instead I teach my freshmen and catch up on grading and respond to emails and look over a draft of a test I will give my seniors—the usual. It is easier at work to silence the questions in my head about Marisa. But at lunch I find myself looking around for her, both wanting to see her and nervous about it. She isn’t in the dining hall. When I ask Coleman if he’s seen her, he says she is helping out with a student council meeting, so I let it go.

  That afternoon after school, I am reading over some lecture notes about Frankenstein when there’s a knock on my door, and I look up to see Marisa in the doorway. “Hi,” she says. She is holding what looks like a gift bag tied with a green ribbon.

  “Hi,” I say.

  We stay like that in awkward silence for a moment.

  She holds out the gift bag. “I wanted to apologize. For how I left.”

  I stand. “Hey, if I did anything this weekend—”

  “You didn’t do anything,” she says. “Take this, please.”

  I take the bag. “You didn’t need to get me anything,” I say.

  She smiles. “I know.”

  I open the bag and laugh. Inside is an Archer coffee mug from the school gift shop, along with a Starbucks gift card.

  “I know you like coffee,” she says.

  “Thank you,” I say. “But I’ll only accept this if you let me buy you a cup.”

  She wrinkles her nose, which is almost adorable. “I don’t like coffee.”

  “You don’t like coffee? Seriously?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

  “Total deal breaker. I cannot possibly date anyone who doesn’t like coffee.”

  Now both eyebrows are raised. “Why, Mr. Faulkner, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

  “Maybe,” I say, grinning.

  She looks over her shoulder, as if checking, and then walks forward, her hands on my chest and pushing me back across my office. I have a storage closet at the far end of my office, the door now open, and Marisa directs me into the closet until I bump up against the stacked shelves. My hands find her waist, and she raises her arms so her hands rest on my shoulders. “Maybe I can do something to help you overlook my coffee problem,” she says, her face lifted up to mine, and then we are kissing, long and lush and deep.

  I break away first. “Marisa,” I say, looking over her shoulder. No one is there.

  She chuckles, then starts kissing my ear.

  “Wait,” I say. I don’t want to wait, not at all, but both my office and supply closet are wide open. “What if someone comes by?”

  Marisa slides away, my hands falling from her hips, and walks to the office door, closing it and pressing the push-button lock. Then she walks back to me, pulling the closet door shut partially shut behind her so we are in shadow rather than total darkness, sunlight from the classroom windows barely filtering through. She steps right up to me, placing her wrists on my shoulders so her fingertips are in my hair, her scent surrounding me. My hands find their way to her hips again. “Paulie doesn’t come through here until four thirty,” she says. Paulie is the custodian on our hallway. Marisa lowers her head slightly, her eyes still on mine. “Want to stop?”

  A minute later, Marisa has her legs wrapped around me, her arms up and holding onto the shelves, which groan and shake as we ravish each other.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “What’s wrong?” Susannah asks.

  “It’s fine,” I say, trying to shift into park. “Gearshift just gets stuck sometimes.”

  “Gear selector,” Susannah says.

  “What?”

  “It’s called a gear selector if you’ve got an automatic transmission,” she says. “Which you do.”

  “Good to know,” I say, struggling to shove the lever—gear selector—up. It doesn’t want to budge. Then, with a thunk and a plastic crunch, it slides up to park. “See?” I say. “Right as rain.”

  “That’s a stupid saying,” Susannah says. “I hate rain.”

  “Rain is necessary for life,” I say. “Plants need it, they make oxygen and feed herbivores, et cetera.”

  “Rain sucks when you’re out standing in it. And there is nothing right about your car.”

  “What’s wrong with my car? You don’t like Japanese cars?”
>
  “It could be a Tahitian car and your gear selector would still be fucked up. Take it to the garage.”

  I gesture out the windshield at the Petco store I’ve parked in front of. “We have to get food for Wilson.”

  “Which I’m sure he’ll appreciate after we die in a car accident because your Tahitian automatic transmission seized up.” Susannah starts tapping at her phone.

  “I’ve got Pilates in two hours.”

  “Which you can Uber to from the Toyota garage. And the nearest one is like a mile up the road.”

  “I know. That’s my regular garage.”

  “So let’s go.” She looks up from her phone. “You don’t fuck around with stuff like this, Ethan. Trust me.”

  I open my mouth to say something snarky, but there’s something in her voice, in the way she levels her gaze at me, that makes me stop. “Fine,” I say. I put my key back into the ignition and start the engine. “Let Wilson starve.”

  “I left him half a sleeve of Ritz crackers,” Susannah says. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “What? They’re Ritz crackers. How bad could they be?”

  “Imagine a dog having violent diarrhea all over your living room.”

  She pauses, then starts tapping on her phone again.

  “Don’t look for a vet,” I say. “I’ve already got one. You can pay that bill.” I shift the car into drive, and the gear selector makes another ominous thunk.

  “Think I’d rather get the vet bill than your car repair bill,” Susannah says. She gestures lazily. “Onward, Jeeves.”

  * * *

  BY THE TIME I get to the garage and explain the problem to Curtis the mechanic, I’ve already texted my Pilates instructor to tell her I’m not coming. Curtis rubs his beard and makes all sorts of dire predictions about the gearbox. I tell Susannah to get an Uber herself if she needs to go anywhere, but she elects to stay, claiming she can catch up on cable news in the customer lounge. But the one flat-screen TV is turned to the Discovery Channel, some show about a team of urban dog rescuers, and three kids stare openmouthed at the screen. Susannah and I settle in a far corner to wait.