Perfectly Good White Boy

by Carrie Mesrobian

  The .410. Had to use that when I was a kid. Brad gave me so much shit.

  Then I opened my eyes and looked down at her and we kissed a whole bunch but I just couldn’t do it any longer, even though it hadn’t probably been more than thirty seconds. I couldn’t think. About guns or anything besides everything “good” and “wet” and “awesome” and “fuck.”

  I choked out, “Hallie?” Like I was asking permission.

  She said in my ear, “Just do it, Sean.” Four magic words like a switch, and so I just did it, I came, everything came, and for a minute everything was black but so excellent and I collapsed on her, feeling her arms around me and like I might sleep for ten years.

  I lifted my head up. A minute later. A thousand minutes later. I looked down at her, her hair everywhere on the sheet. There were no pillows—what had happened to them? Did she move them? I barely knew where I was.

  “Hallie?” I said. Looking down at her. She had sweat between her boobs. I thought I should pull out of her, but it felt so good, still, to be in there. I never wanted to be anywhere else on earth.

  “Yes?” she said. Looking straight up at me.

  It kind of hit me, then. Crazy. Like something that would happen to someone else, not me. Like Brad asking Krista to marry him on the beach in Florida on their vacation, under a full moon and bonfire on the sand and everything all beautiful, at least the way Krista always told it. Or a TV-show thing, where the music kicks in and the hero looks at the girl and everything becomes so meaningful. Totally cheesy. But that’s exactly how it was. Except all in my head.

  “You all right?” I asked. My throat was instantly scratchy. Like I’d drank sand.

  “Yeah,” she said. Lifted up to kiss me, and everything lurched down there in a way that seemed dangerously impregnating but she didn’t let me move. We kissed a little more, and the whole time that same dramatic television feeling was in me. The urge to say it. I’d never said it to her, never meant to say it to her. Had never said it to anyone else, besides my mom. Though I hadn’t said it to her, even, since I was probably ten years old.

  I think I love her. Hallie. I think I love her. I do.

  “I think I love you,” I said.

  She stared at me. Quiet.

  I looked away. It was raining now, lightning and heavy clouds over the lake. The water all chop and whitecaps.

  Several more centuries of silence. She cleared her throat and I could feel it all rumble down there again, so I got up, turning so she didn’t see everything hanging off me, and went to the bathroom.

  I chucked the condom in the toilet. Then I pissed on it, trying to push it under the water, like all this was its fault.

  She’s leaving in a month. Stop being such a pussy. Go in there and deal. At least get your clothes back on.

  In the bed, Hallie was sitting up, wrapped in a sheet—again, another TV-style detail. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to touch her again. I wanted to leave. I wanted to scream at her.

  I scanned the floor for my clothes.

  “Sean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you standing there for? Get back in bed.”

  Christ. I didn’t know if I was in trouble. Or if it was okay now.

  I got in bed with her and she curled next to me, and the second I felt her all naked and she laid her head on my chest I was thinking it would be okay. Maybe.

  Then she covered us both up with the sheet, like the cameras were rolling, and I could feel her foot next to my foot, her legs sliding beside mine, her breathing on my chest in that caved-in spot that seemed to defy any sort of fitness attempt to fix it, and everything snapped back to good. Or not exactly good. But better. Feeling like I could sleep a thousand years again, I shut my eyes.

  Maybe she didn’t hear me.

  She stretched up. Put her mouth just beneath my ear. My eyes whipped open.

  “I think I am, too,” she said.

  And I knew instantly what she meant. We stared at each other and then we kissed some more and then she laughed and I laughed and I rolled her on top of me. The words caught between us.

  Words that I kept hearing for the rest of the night. Even after everyone came back to the cabin, drunker and smelling like pizza, and we rushed back into our clothes, we were still watching each other, across the deck and the fire pit, both of us knowing what had happened but acting normal, not saying anything, and the ride back into town, both of us holding hands across the long bench seat of my car, not talking, just listening to music and knowing the secret of everything.

  Chapter Three

  Hallie pulled up her skirt but left her bra and shirt on the seat between us. My car was the kind that was big with senior citizens back in the eighties, all plush and padded, with that weird velvety fabric for seats, which made it hot as hell in the summer, even with the windows open. I was sweating so much my hair dripped.

  She was leaving for college. Tomorrow.

  Which was why we’d just done it, for the last time probably, at one of our favorite spots, down below the old railroad trestle by the dried-up riverbed six miles out of Oak Prairie, between the RV dealership and about twenty miles of cornfields. The railroad trestle hadn’t supported a train since I’d been coming here, back in junior high. Now it was just a place for kids to act like shitheads because it was out of the way, through a bunch of dirt roads that had originally been a KOA campground, but now nobody who hadn’t taken them before would be able to figure them out. The first time I’d come here was with Eddie and his older cousin, when we’d smoked pot for the first time. Back then, the river was deep and kids sometimes jumped off the trestle into the water. I’d jumped it a dozen times myself. When the river dried up, like it had this summer, it was just a stripe of mud and beer cans and trash. Lots of used condoms too. I pulled on my boxers and got out to add another one to the collection.

  Getting back into the car, my foot caught on a plastic to-go cup on the floor mat. Hallie’s soda cup. I hated trash in my car. I chucked it out the window.

  “Litterer,” Hallie said. “God, Sean.” She sounded like a mom. I ignored her when she talked like that, generally.

  “What time you guys . . . get on the road?” I couldn’t say “leave.” Or look at her.

  “Five a.m.,” she said. “My dad wants to leave earlier, though. He’s saying four. My mom refused. Thank god.” She kind of laughed.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked. “Don’t you have all day to move in?”

  Just talking about her moving in made me feel like shit. It took so much energy to act natural, I thought my heart might stop.

  “There’s this orientation for parents at noon,” she said. She went on to explain the details of the day, but I could barely listen. None of them mattered; I wouldn’t be there for any of them.

  “Sean, we should talk about this,” she said.

  No, we shouldn’t.

  “I’m so glad everything happened that happened,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. Her boobs jiggled against my ribs.

  I couldn’t speak. Or move.

  “Sean?”

  “What.” My voice was all crackly, like my nuts hadn’t dropped.

  “We can’t help it that this all turned out this way. But it’ll be fine. It’ll all work out.”

  “Hallie, you’re going to college five hours away,” I said.

  “I don’t mean that.”

  “Well, what the hell are you even talking about?”

  “Us. Being together. For this summer. I’m glad we were able to do it.”

  Were?

  I looked up. Though her hands were nowhere near my neck, I felt like she was strangling me.

  Then she kissed me. She leaned against me more and our skin pressed together, all sticky. Like, you could even hear it being sticky, when it touched and pulled apart.

  “I like you, Sean. I love you. I didn’t think I would. But I do. Love you. And we had so much fun this summer, you know? It was more than I expected. But I’m
glad it was.”

  Was.

  She kept kissing me. Around my face, on the cheeks. My forehead.

  I kind of wanted to shake her. Ask her what she was talking about. But really, I just wanted to leave. I pictured her, standing in the dry creekbed, in her underwear. And me driving away, driving fast, her standing there yelling after me. The image rushed so close to the surface, right under my skin. Right under where she was kissing. So I didn’t move. Couldn’t. She kissed my shoulder, and I thought, now I have to hate you.

  Finally, she stopped kissing me and sat back. No matter how half-cocked she was sounding now, Hallie wasn’t dumb.

  “Did we . . . you just broke up with me,” I said. “Right? Hallie?”

  “I don’t want to call it that, Sean.” She picked up her bra and put it on.

  I turned away from her.

  “Well, what do you want to call it?”

  “Can’t you just appreciate it for what it was?” She ran her hands over my arms a bunch. I pictured her again, screaming after me, the Buick kicking up dust as I sped away.

  “I don’t really get what you’re saying here,” I said.

  “Sean, come on. I will always feel good about it. Because it’s, like, love, you know? It’s good. Love is always good.”

  “Okay.”

  I wondered if she’d cry, if I really left her here. What she’d do. Would she walk the whole way home? Hitchhike? A girl couldn’t hitchhike in her underwear. No. Maybe I’d toss her phone out the window at her?

  “Plus you never know where we’ll end up. There’s so much possibility in life, you know?”

  Nope: no phone. Just her clothes, then. She could walk. She might not always act like it, but at the end of the day, she was strong. Physically at least. She might cry the whole way, but it wouldn’t matter. I’d be gone, no matter how much she cried.

  “Sean? Do you get what I mean?”

  I got what she meant. I got that she had dumped me and seemed to think it was something pretty great, from the smile on her face and the glowing sound of her voice and the way she was squeezing my shoulders now like a python and when you couldn’t love someone anymore you had to hate them. So, I hated her now. I had to. I had to, because I was in love with her and she was doing this. Whatever this was. Why was she doing this?

  “Okay,” I said. It was a strain to keep this still, but I didn’t trust myself. The image of her in my rearview mirror as I sped off was so clear—what the hell was wrong with me? But it wouldn’t go away. Almost clinically, I kept walking through it. Like it was a math problem or something. Wondered how I’d get her out of the car. Would I trick her? Carry her out? Would she fight me? Would she be surprised? What would she say? She’d probably yell. And there’d be no tricking her. I’d have to remove her physically, which I could do, but not easily. She wasn’t as tall as me, but I was skinnier. She was like a woman, Hallie. Built. While I was tall, a lot of me still looked like a boy. Skinny little weasel, my dad used to tease me, Brad laughing. Dad and Brad, being built and stocky and football-player-like. I started feeling around for my shirt.

  “So, we’re, what?” I asked. “Friends?”

  “We’re more than friends,” she said. “We always will be. But we have to accept . . .”

  Her voice got all choked-sounding. She wouldn’t look at me. Then she wiped her eyes. We stared at each other, then, and I felt a little sorry. For imagining ditching her in the dirt. For the fact that we’d never again talk like this, have sex like this. For hating her, too.

  “We have to accept that our lives are changing,” she said, clearing her throat. Her voice sounded so bad that it made me feel like crying, too. And I didn’t even really understand what she was saying. But she kept talking, looking at the hollow spot in my chest. It made me straighten up, square my shoulders so it wasn’t as noticeable.

  “And we’ll be able to see each other, again. When I come back home to visit. But we have to be thankful. And we have to let each other be free, because . . .”

  “Hallie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look at me, okay?”

  She looked up. And stopped talking. Finally. She’d been sounding like some shitty paper I’d write for English, where you just go on and on for the sake of the word count but not really saying anything.

  “So, we’re done, then,” I said. “This is it.”

  “For now,” she said. “It’s just geography. I want you to have your freedom. It’s your senior year, you know? But who can say where this might go, so . . .”

  Fuck geography. I’m leaving. Never coming back.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I get it.”

  I don’t get it.

  “You could meet so many new people too, Sean. You have to believe that. We have so many opportunities right now, it’s crazy if we didn’t . . .”

  “I know,” I said. Then I kissed her. Like it would do any good, really. Like there was a point to it any more. But she kissed me back and that stopped the talking, which was weird but I wasn’t complaining and then the leaving her in the dust and driving off idea dissolved and things got to the point that we might do it again. Hallie was like that, sometimes, with sex. She just wanted it when she wanted it, the fact of which kept me in a constant state of semi-hardness since we’d first done it.

  And I swear, even having just done it, and having just broken up, even in the weird way Hallie was explaining it out to be, we would have fucked again. Except a bunch of cars showed up, kids coming to get wasted, and Hallie always freaked out about that, about anyone seeing her like that. So I drove her home and we didn’t say good-bye, but talk to you soon, something casual like that, like it was nothing.

  I drove around for a while before I went home. It was late, but I wasn’t tired. For some reason I decided to drive over to our old neighborhood. Our old house.

  It wasn’t a big house, but it was much bigger than the rental. We had a two-car garage, attached, and above it had been Brad’s room, where he could climb out his window to the backside of the garage and sneak out. He’d never let me do that when he still lived with us, but I did once he moved out, of course.

  The For Sale sign was still up; at least the notice from the sheriff wasn’t on the door anymore. The grass looked long and shaggy; there were those freebie rolled-up newspapers nobody ever read in a pile on the front step.

  I didn’t want to slow down, but I did anyway. Parked. Looked at the front living room, which had a curtain drawn shut across it. We always had that curtain shut, too. It looked like we could have still lived there, except the lawn wasn’t mowed and I’d always done that job. Not just because toward the end, my dad was too wasted to be trusted around machinery, cars or even something basic like a mower. But because I liked it, mowing. Liked those stripes on the grass, how much it made everything seem better than it was. You could look back at the whole lawn and see something. Progress. Change.

  Then I worried Eddie might see my car, me sitting here like some kind of stalker. I reversed and turned around so I wouldn’t have to pass his house, which was only four houses down, and headed back to the rental.

  No one was around when I walked in the door. Otis stood there, barking, his tail whacking against the wall. Dogs are idiots, sometimes, how they get so happy they hurt themselves. I petted Otis, gave him a treat from the little jar my mom finally unpacked for his dog treats, and he clunked down on the floor to gnaw on it.

  Then I went into the kitchen and saw my mom had gotten some groceries. Cereal and more orange juice. But I couldn’t find a clean cereal bowl, so I poured a bunch of Frosted Flakes into a giant mug my mom used for drinking tea and went to the table. Which was covered in stuff for Krista and Brad’s wedding—ribbons and hot glue and paper—and a pile of mail that was all OPEN IMMEDIATELY and SECOND NOTICE. Basically, the shit we’d been flooded with the past couple of years with my dad not working. I put all the mail and wedding junk to the side so I wouldn’t spill on it and started eating. Sometimes after s
ex I’d be hungrier than shit, and this time was no different. Hallie always thought I was weird for being that way, but she was sort of uptight about food and dieting and stuff like that.

  In front of me was another unopened box, marked BASEMENT/OFFICE, in Brad’s crappy handwriting. This didn’t make sense; the office in this house wasn’t in the basement. My room was in the basement, right next to the laundry and the furnace. And the office was just another little dinky bedroom across from my mom’s upstairs. My mom hadn’t really set it up as an office yet; there was nothing in there but books and a desk. And she didn’t have an office at our old house. No wonder the box was still sitting there, unopened.

  I finished my cereal, then drank the sweet milk, then some orange juice. Then I sat there and looked at the BASEMENT/OFFICE box. School started in two weeks, and Hallie was leaving in just a few hours. And it would all be fine because of geography and all our opportunities, who could say where it would all go. All of this freedom. All of our possibilities. All of it so good.

  Chapter Four

  I was not going to be a dumbshit about Hallie. I was not. It was my senior year; I’d waited my whole goddamn life for it. Not the stupid glory parts, like sitting in the senior section at pep rallies or getting lockers on the first-floor hallway. Just, really, being the oldest in the school for once. Being the ones who knew the most. Who nobody could say didn’t belong there. When you were the oldest in the school, you could finally relax.

  I didn’t even tell Eddie about Hallie until after the first week of school. And then it was only because he asked.

  “She’s at college now,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Then he started saying crap about Libby, the girl he’d been circling around all summer while I’d been up Hallie’s ass. And how Libby had a cute friend and that I should hang out with them all.

  “She’s a sophomore,” I said.

  “No, she’s a junior now,” Eddie corrected.

  “Whatever. Still.”