“Karen, hi,” I say, hoping to distract Mike the jerk. Karen Mitchell is dressed as a flapper with cheap black fringe sewn to the hem of a cheap yellow sheath dress, her short dark hair adorned with a black velvet headache band. She’s wearing a strand of very fake-looking pearls in a long column down the front of her dress; they fall in a straight, flat line, just like a good flapper’s pearls should. Damn, I wish I had her body.
“Hi,” she says brightly. “Have you met Gary Robertson?” A new record has just dropped down on the stereo, killing the momentary silence. “The Ballroom Blitz” blasts out of the speakers. I shake my head and put on a happy face.
Gary Robertson is tanned and dark-haired. His whole demeanor is classier than Mike Dunn’s, and I don’t think that’s his polo outfit talking. Gary is wearing a numbered polo shirt and a beat-up polo helmet, and he’s carrying a polo stick. The only thing missing is the horse. Gary is Karen’s date for the night. Just a date. Some girls seem to be swimming in guys and Karen is one of them. Diane is another one of them.
Somebody has to keep score.
“Hi,” I say, nodding slightly. “Karen, this is Mike Dunn.”
Mike grins and pulls a cigarette out of his pack. He smokes Marlboros. He offers one to Karen, who declines by shaking her head.
“Guess who Mike is supposed to be,” I ask. Maybe I can shame him into leaving me alone.
Karen studies Mike’s face, her head tilted to the side. “James Dean?”
After a moment’s shock, I burst out laughing. “God, you’re good.”
“It was the cigarette,” she says. “You really need a cowboy hat, though, to get that Giant thing going.”
“Giant?” I ask.
“Rock Hudson, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor,” Karen says. “Thursday night at the movies.” She shrugs.
“How’d you know I wasn’t James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause?” Mike asks.
“No jacket,” Karen says.
“You assumed he wasn’t just too lazy to find a jacket,” I say.
“Yeah, I guess I did. Are you lazy, Mike?” Karen asks.
“I was putting all my faith in the cigarette,” Mike says.
Okay, I have to admit, that was funny.
“So, Gary,” I say, trying to get back on track in my evil plan to ditch Mike, “did you find your polo gear on the floor of your closet or at the Salvation Army?”
“On the floor of my dad’s closet,” Gary says, “which isn’t too far off from the Salvation Army.”
“Too bad you didn’t bring the horse,” I say.
“He’s in my car. Wanna come pet him?” Mike says.
Jerk. But sort of funny. In a really nasty way.
I smile at the guys and motion Karen toward me with a flick of my finger; she leans in.
“Look, I’m trying to dump this guy. I just can’t shake him. Don’t leave me alone with him, okay?”
“I’ll do my best, but I’ve got my hands full with Gary,” she whispers.
I nod and we both straighten up.
“You girls need to go to the powder room?” Mike asks.
“Why?” I ask. “Would you give us a ride there on your horse?”
Mike looks at me, his light eyes glittering with humor and arrogance. He’s such a male chauvinist. He’s just oozing with it. “Sure. Right now? Let’s go,” he says.
Mike takes me by the elbow and walks me onto the middle of the patio where everyone is dancing. Because I have the worst luck in the world, it’s a slow dance, “Stairway to Heaven,” which is half a fast dance and half a slow one, but by the time you’re fourteen everybody has figured out that it’s best to dance the whole thing in full-body lock. So here I am, with Mike’s hands wrapped around my back. You can guess where my boobs are. I put my arms around his neck, loosely, and try to make the best of it.
“It’s a law,” he says in my ear. “This song, must dance.”
“It’s not a law in my state,” I say.
“I’m from Chicago. It’s a law in Illinois.”
“An out-of-towner,” I say. “I should have guessed.”
He pulls back and looks at me, smiling, his blue eyes twinkling. His arms are long and hard with muscle. His hips are narrow. His thighs are muscular. Okay, I can admit it. He’s a hunk.
“You’re a native. I should have guessed. Tanned, blond, blue-eyed, a real California girl.”
“Tanned? I’m fish-belly white,” I say.
“If you say so,” he says, tightening his grip, pulling me against him again.
We dance a few turns, not talking. I can feel him against me, the hard press of him in his jeans, the soft pull of his T-shirt over the muscles in his back. James Dean. Marlon Brando. I hate that type. In theory, anyway.
“It’s okay to go back to your date,” I say against his neck. His hair is pure black and gleams in the floodlights aimed at the patio. “I don’t want there to be a problem.”
“No problem,” he says, looking deeply into my eyes. He’s kind of sexy. He traces a finger down my back, from my neck to my waist. I suppress a shiver. “When you need to get back to your date, let me know. Until then, I’m keeping you.”
“What about your date?”
He chuckles. “I guess I forgot about her. Bad, huh?”
Bad, yes. The look in his eyes, that trace down my back . . . I feel shivery and alive. And scared.
Diane
– Fall 1976 –
Doug Anderson came to the party. Not with me, of course, but with Jenny Van Upp, who has long blond hair and the cutest profile in three states. Jenny looks a little drunk. Doug doesn’t. I don’t know if that means he can hold his booze better or if he’s just the kind of guy to get a girl drunk, but there’s no way in hell I believe that.
My date, Stan Jaworski and I are dancing. I completely gave up on Rob Thompson since Ellen seems to be doing fine with some guy in a white T-shirt. Where his date is is anyone’s guess, but I’m voting for the juniper bed. It’s seeing a lot of action.
Stan keeps turning our bodies to the music, so after just a few shuffling steps, my view of Doug is gone. Doug is dressed in his navy whites. Doug takes my breath away. Doug is off-limits, but Doug, not knowing that, still takes my breath away.
Stan does not take my breath away. I do not blame Stan for this; he’s cute, he’s nice, he’s a perfectly great guy, but he’s not Doug Anderson, Midshipman Temptation. I can’t have Doug, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s all I think about.
The music plays, we all shift with it, and my view of Doug and Jenny reappears. They’re dancing, and since Jenny is a lot shorter than Doug, her head is tilted back, her blond hair spilling down to touch his hands. She’s talking, smiling up at him, and Doug is smiling back. She looks very sexy, her hair cascading down that way, tickling the backs of his hands. My hair is long, but not that long, and besides, if I held my head like that, my ears would show.
Doug has seen my ears.
This is an important detail and one that I’m trying to forget. It hasn’t been easy, but I’m working on it. I think there’s hope I can push it out of my mind permanently. See, in ROTC no hair can touch the collar, not the top of the collar and certainly not the bottom of the collar. The guys all get really short haircuts and the girls either get really short haircuts or they wear their hair up and fastened securely, which means ugly and tight with an entire package of bobby pins holding it all in place. Naturally, my ears show. All the time. And then there’s the white hat. And the ugly white man-shoes. I look hideous in my navy dress whites. You can’t even imagine. I wish I couldn’t even imagine, but even I’m not that good at denial.
Stan’s hands are on my back, holding me close as Bread’s “Make It with You” fades out, and I’m not going to comment on the perfection of that song in this momen
t, when I step on something behind me, twist my ankle slightly, and turn, an apology already half out of my mouth.
It’s Doug. He has his hand out, holding me by the elbow, and he had to let go of Jenny to do it. It’s not very nice of me, but I’m thrilled.
“Easy,” Doug says. “You okay?”
“Good hands,” I say, looking into his blue eyes. That was a mistake because now I can’t look away, and no one with 20/20 eyesight could look away from Doug Anderson. “Nothing that a pair of crutches and a hot toddy won’t fix,” I say. “I’ll get right on that, Mr. Anderson.”
“Wait,” Doug says, staring hard at me. “Ryan, Diane?”
“Affirmative, Anderson, Douglas.”
That’s how bad I look in my ROTC gear. He doesn’t even recognize me with my ears covered and my curves on display in my thin black jersey, which is a thought I can’t help but run with.
“You . . .” he says, looking startled and, dare I hope, delighted, “look great. You’re a Beta Pi?”
“Affirmative,” I say, grinning, looking at Jenny to see how she’s taking all this. She seems to be taking it very well. She must be blitzed on her ass. “Doug Anderson, ROTC, Jenny Van Upp, Beta Pi, meet Stan Jaworski, fellow Spartan.”
“Nice to meet you,” Stan says with a friendly nod. “How about another drink?”
“No, thanks,” Doug says, meeting Stan’s eyes in that friendly, slightly dismissive guy way.
“Sure!” Jenny says on a squeak of laughter, leaving Doug’s side to loop her arm through Stan’s. She really must be plastered to leave Doug for any reason, including alcohol.
In a matter of seconds, not only am I alone—okay, not actually alone since there are one hundred other people around, but more alone than I’ve ever been with Doug before—but the song that comes through the stereo speakers is another slow one, “The Best of My Love” by the Eagles.
The lighting is dim. I’m looking sexy. The right music is playing.
Look, it’s not like I planned this, but when the Great Pumpkin drops a bag of Halloween candy in your lap, what’s a girl to do but take a bite?
Okay, so that might be the three vodkas talking, but after three vodkas do I really care who’s talking?
Damn straight I don’t.
“Are you with him?” Doug asks, nodding in the direction Stan has taken with Jenny.
“Just for tonight. How about you?” I ask.
“This is our second date.”
“How’s it going?”
“Better and better,” Doug says with a grin.
I lick my lips and smile back. Free candy, that’s what he is. A pile of chocolate, mine for the taking.
Except I can’t take him, no matter how much I want to. He’s the nicest guy, and the most gorgeous guy, but the nicest guy. Really. I sit three rows behind him in Seamanship class so I’m practically an expert on the guy. Of course, I don’t have any hands-on experience. Not yet.
Yeah, definitely the three vodkas talking.
“I love this song,” I say, universal code for Ask me to dance.
Doug smiles wider, offers me his hand, and says, “Would you care to dance?”
“How nice of you to ask, seeing as I’ve been temporarily ditched by my date. I’m trying not to sob. Please, no pity or I’ll break down completely,” I say, grinning as I put my hand in his.
“No pity,” he says, leading me to the dark edge of the patio. “I promise.” And then he takes me in his arms and from that instant on it’s the best night of my life.
Laurie
– Fall 1976 –
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” Pete says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, pulling me next to him as he drives a fraternity brother’s borrowed SS Monte Carlo.
To be honest, I don’t actually care where we’re going; I only care that we’re together and that we’re alone. I lied to everyone about what I was going to be doing tonight, the night of the Beta Pi Halloween party, because I didn’t want to share Pete with anyone. I’m not going to include Barbie in that thought. Barbie is gone. Pete told me all about Barbie, about how his father and her father have been golfing partners for almost ten years, and about how the families belong to the same country club, and that their mothers took paddle tennis lessons together, and how all of that, all of that togetherness, resulted in Pete and Barbie being, by default, together. Barbie was a noose he had to slip. She was the girl his family wouldn’t let him leave behind, but now he has because now he’s with me, and I’m with him. I am most definitely with him.
Edging along Los Angeles streets, avoiding the freeways, Pete’s borrowed car snakes through Vermont Canyon, climbing up toward Griffith Observatory. Pete’s left arm is stretched toward the steering wheel and the other is wrapped around me, Pete’s hand caressing my breast as he drives. I am breathless. I am shameless and I am breathless. I don’t know when I was reduced to this, to this shaking, quivering girl sitting tucked under the arm of a Rho Delt, but that is who I am.
Pete parks the car so that we’re on the edge of the view, the Los Angeles basin stretching out before us, lights fading in geometric precision into the haze.
“Nice view, huh?” Pete says, sweeping a hand through his hair, his smile moving across his mouth just before he kisses me. “But the best view is right here.”
I am swept up in this, in him, and yet part of me is still onshore, watching, nervous, hesitant. When his hand slips from my breast to the button on my jeans, I put my hand over his, stopping him.
“You’re killing me, Laurie. I need this. I need you,” he whispers, his blue eyes staring into mine. I feel seen with Pete. I think I’ve been starving for that all my life.
“Do you?” I ask, easing the pressure of my hand, letting him stroke the inside seam of my jeans.
“I do. I want you so bad,” he says, his mouth on my neck, one hand on my breast, the other between my legs.
I open my legs, releasing one more inch of control to him, laying my head back against the seat cushion, floating away on a wave of sensation.
I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to lose my virginity to a boy on the seat of a car. I was going to be more careful and more considered and generally more precise about everything, but Pete, with his long hair and his easy grin and his frayed jean jacket, has lured me away from the tedium of being careful.
With hands that seem to be everywhere at once, hands that push me along the hazy edge of awareness, we tumble into the backseat; Pete is on top of me, his mouth and his hands at my breasts, between my legs, on my mouth, a fury of movement and purpose, and I—I am whipped along in his wake, pulled into waves of pleasure and impatience. Somehow, I am naked from the waist up, my pants hanging from one ankle, my panties pushed down to my knees, and suddenly, it is all too real, and instead of being pulled into passion I feel pushed and shoved into something frightening and serious and not at all worthy of a backseat in a deserted parking lot.
My hands reach his, stopping him, holding him off, and his breath stops while I keep panting, trying to flick my hair out of my eyes, trying to find myself within my confusion.
“What?” he says, looking down at me. The light from a distant lamppost illuminates his eyes so that they look silver; his hair is blackest sable in the dark shadows of the backseat. He looks nothing like Pete in that instant. I’m cold. I’m uncomfortable and I’m cold. I don’t want this, but I do want Pete. “Come on,” he says. “Come on, Laurie. Please.”
“Wait. Just wait.”
He lifts his head, his throat looks so long and strong, and then he pushes his hair back with one large hand, and my heart rushes into my throat and he’s Pete again and I remember that I love him and that he wants me.
“Wait?” he says. “What are you? A tease?”
“No.
I’m not,” I say. I don’t want to be that. I want to make him happy. “Really. Don’t stop.”
I pull him down to me, his chest against mine, his legs bent at odd angles to fit within the car and so he can fit within me. He yanks at a condom in his pocket; I don’t watch. I tilt my head back and look out the rear window. The stars have moved since we began—but that’s not right; it’s the earth that’s moved.
He kisses me again, deeply, a wet kiss full of passion and hunger, and I fall into the heat of it. The seat is cool on the skin of my back, a fact I’m dimly aware of. Pete is covering the front of me with heat, his fingers sliding into me, wet and slick, stretching me, and then the condom edges in, the condom, not him. I feel rubber, not flesh, and that makes a difference but I can’t think in what way. Pushing, stretching, and I press against him, urging him forward even though I don’t feel the heat anymore, only the cold on my back.
Pete grunts, a sound of passion, and I revel in it. I groan, giving him my answering cry of passion. He kisses me, my reward.
“God, Laurie,” he says, pressing into me. I feel torn, uncomfortable and too full, like a balloon about to pop or fabric about to rip. It’s too much, but I smile and hold him close, willing myself to find any pleasure in this that I can.
I love him.
“You really meant it. You’re a virgin,” he says.
I nod. I don’t want to say it out loud, now that it’s no longer true.
With a thrust, he pushes in farther and I gasp in pain.
“Try to relax,” he says. “Just relax.”
Before I can relax he pushes in again. I feel something rip and it’s me. A few more grunts and a few more thrusts into my bone-dry vagina, quite painful, and then he lets his weight fall on me. He’s heavy and I’m cold and it hurts; everything hurts.
I don’t know what to do with my hands. I suppose I should hug him to me; what I really want to do is press my hands against my vulva, pressing against the raw pain throbbing with a dry heat. It seems so silly, pondering the question of what to do with my hands; it’s such a stupid thing to wonder, but as I’m chastising myself for that I place my hands on his shoulders and try to appear relaxed and happy. I’m neither.
Sorority Sisters Page 8
