“Easy for you to say Mr. Big Shot Beef Cake Personal Let Me Give You A Post Work Out Stretch Trainer. Girls are all over you all the time.”
You’d just give me a half smile and say: "You know I'm a jealous man, but let them look. You come home with me; you sleep in my bed at the end of the day." You’d kiss me on the cheek, and then spin me around and slap my ass good naturedly to get me to walk away and forget about it all.
We had that routine memorized. You could replace the name Markus with any man I saw regularly. Mailman, garbage man, bag boy at the grocery. We went through it for them all. All except one.
Something else that's gone: No one will ever be jealous over me again.
*****
I decided after all to ditch my "friends" and go with Teddy to get food. I did text, using Teddy's phone, I'd be away, but didn't get a response. Figures. We weren't dressed for anything but lying around on the beach, so Teddy suggested a drive through.
We walked in relative silence to his car. Nothing but the crunching sound of our feet across sand-dusted asphalt between us and and panic began to rise in my throat about riding in cars with boys. I was immediately assuaged when that biting, nasty voice started yelling at me: He's just being nice, Charley. It doesn't mean he wants to marry you. Stop it. He's just being nice. He's not into you like that. He's just being nice. How could he be? Look at you! You’re disgusting. No one, especially not this man, will ever want you! That understanding made the walk less awkward, even though twice the back of his hand brushed against mine. Once, after I'd switched purse-carrying shoulders, and the other when he reached in his pocket for his car keys. He clicked the keyless entry and pointed at, what I assumed to be a joke, but when the headlights flashed and the doors unlocked my jaw dropped. Teddy drove a brand new Mercedes. Jet black. Limo tinted windows. Chrome detail. The interior was soft cream leather with black trim. I didn't have to ask if it was his. His books in the backseat, the graduation tassel hanging from the rear view and a photo of him and a leggy blond in the console told me all I needed to know. Leggy blond? Who is she? I felt jealousy tingle the back of my neck, but stopped myself before I got started. Teddy and I are merely acquaintances, he doesn’t even know my last name. He can see whoever he wants. Besides He's just being nice to you, Charley. That’s the kind of girl that gets a boy like this, not you! You’re brown, you’re short, you’re ugly. There’s no contest.
As I chanted internally, I couldn't help look at the photo. It was a candid, but it looked like a picture from a magazine. They were both so perfectly matched. She was tall, pale with the most striking eyes like Teddy’s, only hers were green. There was a ring of yellow around her iris that almost seemed to glow in the sunlight. The way he held her waist, the way her head was thrown back in laughter. The way he was beaming while whispering in her delicate ear, there was no way they weren’t involved. I knew it, but jealousy and pride needed him to say it. Stop it Charley. He's just being nice to you. It shouldn't matter that he's got a beautiful girlfriend He’ll never hold you like that. You’re not her! And truly it shouldn't have mattered so I was content as the car purred to life and we drove off.
In the moments leading up to ordering I actually felt nervous, but was reminded of the blond in the photo and my mantra kicked in. The words played over and over until they all ran together and I felt liberated. Besides, it was rare I got to eat plain old drive through food, so I was going to do it up right.
"What do you want?"
"A double bacon burger, no mayo and a really large coke. Not diet. Regular."
"Okay," he chuckled. “Sure you can handle all that, little girl?”
“You have no idea.”
"Fries?"
"Ew, no. I hate fries, but I'll split an onion ring with you if they've got 'em." I was being totally serious but he was looking at me with an amused expression and I really resented being laughed at. Again.
"What is so funny?"
He burst into an all-out guffaw, "You. Jesus, you're persnickety. You may be the only person on Earth who doesn't like fries."
"That cannot possibly be true. And anyway it's not like I'm some fast food Nazi.” I realized my mistake too late and hoped he wouldn’t call me on it. Thank god he tried to change the subject after rolling his eyes. While he droned on about something totally nonsensical, I reached in my bag for my wallet. When I'd almost gotten it out his hand came down hard and gripped my wrist. When I looked up, we were almost nose to nose. His pale blue eyes were burning into me.
"Stop," he whispered, still clutching my wrist, "I've got this."
I wanted to protest. I wanted to point out that insisting on paying was a perpetuation of the 1950s "little woman, big man" construct, of which I wanted no part, but I couldn't. I was frozen, staring into his impossibly blue eyes which, until that moment, had not looked at me with such intensity. A look which, in conjunction with his firm hold on my wrist, turned me to putty. My body’s response to his touch, to his nearness, shocked me. The instantaneous desire to be near him, to feel his hands on other parts of me was powerful. I felt myself involuntarily leaning infinitesimally closer to him. My breath uneven, my eyes widened with anticipation and wonder, my mouth twitching in expectation. I’d never experienced anything like it, but I was sure I could get used to it.
What was, I'm sure, no more than a few seconds felt like an eternity. Like time stopped and everything was suspended, including all my sense of reasoning. Thankfully, he broke away first to pay, and I positioned my face directly in front of the air vent to stave off a massive, full body blush. I could've insisted I pay him back, could've left money in the car, but I didn't really have it to spare. I was feeling almost grateful to him for saving me from having to pay for my meal in spare change.
Teddy drove to a place where we could eat in the car with a view of the water. We were out of the way of tourists and screaming kids but could see the fishing boats off in horizon. The view was so breathtaking and serene that it could’ve also been construed as a "make-out" point. It occurred to me that Teddy had probably been there dozens if not hundreds of times with the blond, and the thought turned my stomach. This has to stop Charley. He doesn't want to marry you. You're friends at best.
Friends? It was the first time the word entered my mind in connection with Teddy and it made me feel good. Better than good, I felt alive. I felt present in that moment; a warm feeling, like being wrapped in a blanket, spread from my stomach outward to all of my limbs and made me smile. Friends. I tested it out over and over. We're friends...Here's my friend, Teddy.... I'm going to the beach with my friend. I was still repeating it over and over when his biting voice whispered: If he's a friend, he can hurt you. I reared back in my seat in horror. Friend meant he was somehow in my life and could find a way to use me, exploit me, screw with me. No way. I was content to be alone.
*****
"Where do you live?"
I sat on top of my sweaty hands in the passenger seat to keep them from shaking. I wanted to wipe them on my thigh but I didn't want it to be so obvious I was internally freaking. My shell could not crack, though the mushy interior was pushing on all walls like concrete against glass. I’d had these moments before but with Teddy every look, every touch, every heartbeat seemed to be magnified and every time I felt like this. Like I was going to lose the tenuous grip I had on reality. When you go through the kinds of things that I went through, there’s such a fine line between a great day and a cluster fuck, a line that I’d learned, in my own way, to skirt. Being with Teddy blurred that line so much, and I was on the precipice of a possible disaster.
"Charley? Did you hear me?"
"I...I don't...not yet, okay?"
"What?" the look in his eyes was concern and question. There was something else, too. Something wonderfully warm and familiar like a quilt or a hug. It calmed me enough to tell him the truth.
"I'm not ready for you to see my house, okay? Can you just drop me off right here?"
"Charley, this is t
he middle of downtown Tampa. It's dangerous. I'm not letting you walk all the way by yourself," I wanted to cry with how nice he was being but I couldn't let him see my house.
"Just drop me off at the University campus. We're only about a mile from my place. I just...I'm not ready." The intent concern in his eyes wavered as he looked thoroughly conflicted, but slowed the car and let me out on the brick paved road of the University of Tampa. "Please be careful." He said.
"Got it, boss." The physical distance between us seemed to bring back that apprehension, but I couldn’t let him see it after he’d reluctantly agreed to drop me off.
"When will I see you again?" he asked through the open window of the passenger door, the concern in his voice audible.
"Tomorrow of course." I smiled trying to bring some levity to the conversation. It didn’t work, but he drove away anyway.
When I arrived at the house, almost twenty minutes later, Paul's car was pulling out of the drive. I hid behind the azalea bush of our neighbor's yard before he could see me. He seemed agitated, but then again Paul always seemed agitated. It was strange that he was home in the middle of the day, but sometimes he came home to eat lunch with mother. When I opened the door, mother was sitting at the counter in the kitchen with a cup of tea. She was dressed like she and Paul had come from the country club, she was in an ivory color accented with navy blue from head to toe, like a sailor’s rich sugar mama. For all the things I should hate my mother for, her looks are at the top of the list. My mother was a beautiful woman, even as she got older. She was always so stylish, even with three children, and her skin was flawless due to her stringent and unswerving night routine. I'm only four or so inches taller than her, but I've got broad shoulders and long limbs. If I wasn't so hippy, or if my mother would’ve allowed it I'd have been a great addition to a swimming team.
Mother didn't look stereotypically Jewish, like Paul, especially since she kept her hair blond. She hadn't quite been waiting for me, I doubt she even knew I was gone, but she didn't look surprised when I came in the door. Mother, typically, was more laid back with me when it was just us, but she stayed on guard. This time she wasn't quite as relaxed. She didn't even look up at me before she gave me her standard greeting: "Charlotte, did you go to the beach like that?" That's mother. You're leaving the house like that? You're going to bed like that? Here we go, I thought.
"Yes, mother."
"Darling, you really need to think about your appearance."
"What's there to think about, mother?" The fact that I’m a disappointment, obviously.
"You need to cover yourself up, Charlotte. Showing all of that skin…it’s distasteful. You won’t attract any boy worth attracting looking like that" Please make this stop. Please. Thankfully, she didn't launch into her usual tirade but instead kept her eyes on her tea mug as she pulled a white envelope from her purse.
"Something came for you."
"What is it?"
"It's from Yale," and she slid the envelope over the counter without making eye contact. My heart fluttered in my chest. Of all the ones, this was the one I wanted to hear from the most and it came last. I just stared at the insignia in disbelief. In awe. I didn't want to touch it but I knew it'd traveled a great distance for me to open it. In that moment I longed for Teddy. I wanted someone to share the moment with, someone who really could be happy for me. It was a painful realization that no matter what was in that envelope, I'd never be satisfied. No one would clap for me. There'd be no parties for me. Paul wouldn't embrace me and call me his daughter and be proud of me. I'd always be a stain on the family name even if I got into Yale, which infuriated me.
"Charlotte, I thought we talked about this?" I had almost forgotten she was there. My head snapped to attention and she was looking at me. Not like I had just received a letter from Yale, but like I was a dense child who kept asking Why? Why? Why? when the only answer left is just because. I hated that look. I hated her, everything about the house, and everything about my life in that moment.
"We did mother. Ad nauseam. I know where I stand. Don't worry."
"I just--," she stammered and looked at her hands. She was stalling. She wanted me to reassure her that I was okay but it wasn't, so I couldn't. When she looked up it wasn't love in her eyes but fear and I could bet my life on what the next words out of her mouth would've been, sure enough I was right: "If Paul had seen it..."
"Fuck. Paul." I ran up to my room, letter in hand without a backward glance, mentally kicking myself for losing my cool even for a second. I couldn’t give an inch. Not to her or anyone. I was already in a position of weakness, I couldn’t let them think I was weaker.
It was anti-climactic. Opening the letter. All the others had said the same thing, so I tossed it on top of the pile on my desk.
CHAPTER FOUR
Teddy
She almost gave nothing away, and maybe if it was anyone else they wouldn’t have noticed. But I saw the look in her deep brown eyes when I touched her; they were hungry and vulnerable in a way that she hid so well everywhere else. I knew she felt it too and electricity of our combined attraction crackled between us. I liked seeing her in my car, curled up like she belonged there, eating cheap drive-thru food like it was caviar. It was such a turn on watching her eat. The way that she enjoyed food with sensual abandon betrayed her calm, collected façade. All I could think about was how voraciously she would devour me in the bedroom. If it was anything like the way she attacked a hamburger…I couldn’t even think about it without getting hard.
There was still that nagging part of me that knew something was off. The more time I spent with her, the more self conscious she was about her body, not less. The more she covered it up with wraps and towels. Not like that did much to hide how skinny she was. I thought at first it was because she liked it that way, but then she’d out eat me every time we went to lunch. And I made sure, from that first time on, I fed her often. I’d bring her food from home and we’d go out together, sometimes twice in one beach day. She never turned down food, which was so incongruous with the way she looked and carried herself.
Still, I liked her. For the most part she seemed not to care whether I was around or not, unlike most of the clingy girls I’d been with. Maybe I liked her because I wanted, in some small way, to rebel against you, Lace. I wanted her to be my savior. I wanted her to show me that it was okay to walk away from a life that didn’t really feel my own; that I didn’t’ really belong or fit into anymore. I needed, more than anything, for her to tell me it was okay. Chewing my sandwich one day, the combined aroma of greasy fast food and her natural peachy scent filling the car and making me drunk, she broke our comfortable silence.
“Teddy, I'm going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer."
"Have I ever given you anything but honest?"
"I don't think so, but I don't want you to start now, okay?"
"Okay, just spit it out."
"How long, realistically, can this, whatever it is with us, last?"
"Well, when classes start I won't be able to hang out at the beach all day anymore if that's what you're asking. Are you trying to define us Charley?" She paused, considering.
“We’re friends." She said slowly. “At least until classes start. Maybe not even ‘till then.”
"You sick of me already?"
"Getting there,” she said with this sexy smile on just one side of her mouth. “Look, the reason I ask is because I have a proposition for you."
Finally! I wanted to fist pump the air but didn’t want to jinx the moment. I knew she wanted me. I was already getting excited thinking about seeing her body; drinking in her skin with my tongue and my hands and my tongue. I was so ready. More than ready but I couldn’t let so I did what I did best with girls: played dumb. "Oh? A proposition?"
"Yes. I think we've got a really unique opportunity here. I mean, our relationship is temporal at best. And even if it weren't, I don't think being long term friends is in the cards for either of us because,
frankly, I think you're a pain in the ass and I know that the feeling is mutual."
She had a point, sort of. Get to the propositioning already, please. I could take you right here on this beach. With my tongue. Did I already mention that? "Go on."
"So I propose that we dispense with the nonsense and just be real. You clearly need someone in your life willing to call you out on your bull.”
“Oh and you don’t?”
She smiled. “Maybe I do. This agreement would work both ways.”
“So total honesty.”
“Total and brutal. Yeah. Deal?” I looked at her like she was crazy, but her face said she wasn't kidding, which gave me pause. I hadn’t been truly honest with anyone, especially myself in a long time. Somewhere in me I knew that it could only end badly, but I couldn't say no. I wasn't ready to give her up. I rationalized that brutal honesty could actually be good -I could tell her how much I wanted her and could honestly claim her body. I knew it was flimsy but, I needed to be around her. She was drug. A fixation. An escape from my life.
"Deal." We shook on it and that same electric feeling charged up the air in the car between us like the last tiem I’d touched her. Her skin was supple and warm and I found myself running my hand along the inside of her wrist long after the handshake should’ve been over. Her pupils dialated and her breath quickened, but before I could fully enjoy what my touch could do to her she broke contact.
"Good.” She cleared her throat and rubber her wrist where my hand had been. “Me first: who's the girl?"
Shit. Play dumb. "Who?"
"Her." She said as she tossed a photo in my lap. Goddamnit! How did this end up back here? I thought I got rid of everything! I could feel my jaw clenching which was an immediate tell and she picked up on it right away. I was already resenting this brutal honesty pact.
What Brings Me to You Page 4
