All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (37 page)

“So, do you think I have a chance with Wavy?” Joshua shot me a panty-melting grin.

For a few seconds, a whole scenario played out in my mind. After I broke the bad news to him about Wavy's fiancé being paroled, I would usher him into my bedroom. Wavy could drive herself to Wellburg. Meanwhile, I would comfort Joshua, listening sympathetically, while I arranged myself on my bed in a flattering pose. I would make him feel sexy and smart and funny.

That's exactly what I was imagining. I would get him in my room and seduce him, thereby accomplishing the whole point of me inviting him to the party in the first place. He really was amazingly good-looking. It wouldn't be a hardship to fall into bed with him, but what kind of lies would I have to tell myself to pretend I wasn't a second choice rebound?

“The thing is,” I said. “Wavy has a lot of baggage. Like a nine-piece matched set of hard-sided Samsonite. The girl is so far—”

For the first time in my life, I stopped. It wasn't my story to tell.

“What? Help me here,” Joshua said. Even though I wasn't going to kiss his booboo and make it better, I yanked the Band-Aid off.

“Wavy's engaged. She's going to see her fiancé as soon as she gets out of the shower.”

*   *   *

I would have needed new clothes and hours to get ready. Wavy showered, fluffed her wispy hair, and put on her favorite dress. It was gray with thin white stripes in it, worn to limp softness. She hadn't seen him in almost seven years and that's what she was wearing.

On the drive, we made a plan. Or I made a plan anyway. I would drop Wavy off at Kellen's house, and then I would go to the library at Wellburg College and work on my Women's Studies essay. That way my evening wouldn't be a total waste, and Wavy could check in with me before I drove home.

By the time we got to Wellburg, it was late afternoon and it had started to rain. We circled Kellen's address and then parked half a block back, where we could see the front door to the apartment building, which was a run-down brick tenement. It faced onto what was basically an alley, with garbage Dumpsters on the sidewalks.

Would Wavy want to live with him in that dismal place? It hadn't occurred to me that I was orchestrating the end of us being roommates. I'd been going along thinking I was Shakespeare, but I'd written myself out of the play. I was staring out at the rain, feeling sorry for myself, when this big old truck drove past and parked at the end of the block.

“Nineteen sixty-nine Ford F-250,” Wavy said. She was weird that way. She always knew the years of cars. The man who got out of the truck wore blue work pants and a blue and white striped shirt, like a uniform. Reaching back into the truck cab, he pulled out a baseball bat. He ducked his head against the rain, but he didn't run for cover. Walking up the block slowly, he looked around, but he didn't see us watching him.

 

8

WAVY

Kellen had lost weight. Of course, they hadn't fed him well in prison, but I could make all his favorite foods and fix that. Seeing him free, my heart jumped in my chest. Not empty, not burning. Alive.

“Oh my God, that's him? That's him,” Renee said. “What are you going to do?”

I opened the car door, but she grabbed the sleeve of my raincoat.

“Wait. Should I wait for you? What should I do?”

“I don't know.” My heart was moving too far ahead to think about that.

“Well, I'll be at the library. Just let me know everything's okay.”

Kellen was already through the apartment building door. I ran across the street, splashing through puddles, and my hand shook on the door handle. I was all the things I'd almost forgotten how to be—nervous, excited, happy. I wanted to run up the stairs, but my legs could only manage one step at a time.

There was no doorbell, no peephole.

I knocked and Kellen answered.

Water dripped out of his starling-wing hair. Embroidered over the pocket of his wet uniform shirt: Jesse Joe. Three buttons undone, showing the tops of the arrows and the calumet on his chest.

“Wavy,” he said.

I didn't know what to say. I hadn't thought about that at all. Did I have to say anything? I never had before. I took a step forward, wanting to be in the same room with him. To breathe his air. His eyes weren't soft. They were hot and frightened. He was afraid of me. I was afraid of me.

Sunlight broke through the clouds and rain stopped pounding against the windows. Kellen's breath hitched. Anything could happen. Everything. I pressed against him, smelling him. His sweat.

“Wavy, you can't be here.”

I tried to will him to kiss me, the way I used to, but he frowned down at me with his mouth closed. I turned my back on him, and a spiraling hot thing in my chest said,
Leave
. Behind me was the kitchen table. Grabbing the closest chair, I carried it to Kellen and stepped up. Then I was the Giant, towering over him. I took his face in my hands the way he did on the morning I knew he loved me. I lifted his mouth to mine. Would he resist? No.

He opened his lips and I knew Val had been right. People could get into you that way. I was creeping into Kellen. He wanted me to. He kissed me, but he wouldn't touch me, so I took off the raincoat. I unbuttoned the dress myself and dropped it to my feet. The slip, all slippery silk, whispered off me. The panties, which I wanted him to ease down the way he had the first time. The last time. This time my hands did it. My hands for his hands.

Freeing his mouth for a moment, I looked into his eyes, to see if he would come to me.

“Kellen,” I said.

“Are you real?”

I nodded. His hands came to rest on my hips, and he lifted me off the chair. I wrapped my legs around him and he carried me to the bedroom. I'd always imagined it on the kitchen table, or the desk at the garage, but a bed was good, too. Everything I needed was there. His shirt off quick, his arms cool with rain and his chest sticky with sweat. I ran my hands over him and found a long puckered scar that split the skin over his ribs. Something they had done to him in prison.

I was eager to rub my tits against his, to show him mine were finally bigger. His hands were all over me. My hands everywhere else. His mouth laughing, even while he tried to kiss every part of me.

“Goddamn, these are
some
boots. How do you get 'em off?” he said.

“Slowly.”

He gave up on unlacing when I slid my feet over his shoulders.

His tongue felt good, going into where I was already wet for him. I'd been wet there for him for seven years. His tongue was good but not enough. Pulling him to me, I found less belly to slip my hand past to reach his belt.

“Orion.” The same buckle, the one I knew how to open, and he was in my hand. We could go fast now. He shoved his pants down only as far as we needed. That was how much he wanted me, he wasn't even going to take his boots off.

He was so heavy my breath caught in my chest. That was pleasure, being pinned under him, where the air was thin. His cock was as hot as I remembered pressed between my legs.

We could move time. Go back to that day. Undo seven years. I opened my eyes, to let him into me everywhere.

That first moment, when he pushed against me, hardness against softness, was wonderful. The next moment, when he pushed into me, burning pressure and a tearing pain. It hurt more than I thought it would. Kellen was in me everywhere. Inside my nerves. He moaned against my ear.

“Oh, Wavy. I love you all the way.”

I pressed my face into his neck and held on, not breathing, thinking the pain would stop, the way it had when he put his fingers into me. I waited for it to go to burning pleasure, because it couldn't go on being unbearable. But it did. The pain cauterized my throat. I thought I might choke until the seal broke open, let out the sob I'd been keeping in.

Kellen stopped. I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn't look back.

“Are you okay?” he said.

I nodded but the tears I'd been holding back escaped. He jerked out of me, as painful as the going in.

“Oh, Jesus, Wavy. You waited for me?”

“Who else?” I said.

“Oh, shit, I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd wait for me. I never thought—after all that mess, I never thought you'd want me. You didn't come to my parole hearings, and I figured I'd ruined everything.”

He was pulling away from me, but I dug in, my nails into his shoulders, my heels into his thighs.

“Hold on tight. Don't let go.” I learned that from him.

“I'm hurting you, though. And we shouldn't be doing this. You don't under—”

“Yes.” I held him tighter, reached between us, found him sticky and still hard. He groaned when I pressed him into me. I only had to guide him there and he stopped arguing. My stomach clenched and my legs shook when he sank into me. Kellen stopped again.

I clawed at his back.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he said.

“All the way.”

He started again, slowly, and as much as it hurt, I could see how eventually it would stop hurting. The next time and the time after. Given enough time there would be burning pleasure where my softness and his hardness met.

In the end he was pounding into me, panting, saying my name. I was lying on the tracks under a train I was in love with. To not cry, I sank my teeth into his chest. I was a vampire and he had invited me in. He moaned and for a moment all of his weight was on me. Between my legs was an expanse of pain, but my lungs burned with pleasure, breathing him in.

After, his eyes were full of me. I'd imagined he would have so many things to say, but he only lay beside me and looked at me. He was thinking of other ways for me to be his. The ring was on my finger, and I waited for him to see it and remember the one way I already belonged to him.

“Wavy, what are we doing? What am I supposed to do?”

“You love me?” Hearing him say it was like stolen food, to stuff in my mouth when no one was looking. If he said it a hundred times, I would ask him to say it again.

“I love you. I love you with my whole heart.” He took my hand, pressed it to his chest, and saw the ring.

The front door opened—click, swoosh—and filled his eyes with other things than me. Anxiety. Obligation. Guilt.

“Jesse? Are you h—” A woman's voice, then a puff of air, surprise. I hadn't just invaded Kellen. I'd invaded his home. As the woman crossed the kitchen floor, he stood and pulled up his pants. I stayed where he left me on the bed. We were that way when the woman walked in.

“I'm sorry, Beth.” Kellen fastened his pants while she watched. Orion's belt buckled again. Always someone to walk in on us.

“Do you love her?” I said.

He didn't make me wait for the answer: “No.”

Beth's mouth twisted, angry and hurt, but she didn't say, “Liar.”

Kellen loved me. Only me. I stood up naked in my boots, something hot running down the inside of my leg. I wasn't embarrassed. I didn't care what anyone but Kellen thought.

“Who the hell are you?” Beth said.

“Wavy.” As soon as I said it, I knew he hadn't told the woman about me. She didn't even know who I was.

 

9

KELLEN

The way her bare shoulders stiffened, I knew what it looked like. There I was living with some woman who didn't even know about Wavy. All I'd meant to do was protect her. It didn't seem fair to say her name to anybody.

“You fucking pedophile,” Beth said. “You said it was a mistake. One time, you piece of shit. That's what gets you off? Little girls? I ought to call the cops. I swear. How old is she?”

“Twenty-one,” Wavy said.

In a couple months she would be, but seeing her naked in broad daylight for only the second time, I didn't blame Beth for thinking the worst. Wavy was almost as small as she'd been at thirteen. She was all long legs and narrow in the hips. Her tits were perfect, but not even big enough to fill my mouth, let alone my hands. She hadn't hardly grown at all. Did it make me a pervert that I still thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen? Did it make me less of a pervert that twenty and thirteen looked the same on her? When I had her in my arms, none of that mattered.

“Like hell you're twenty-one,” Beth sneered. “Let me give you some advice, little girl. This is his thing. Whatever he told you, he doesn't
love
you. He just wants your little hairless twat.”

Wavy laughed. I almost did, too, except Beth glared hard enough to stop me.

“This is her. Wavy's the girl I went up for,” I said.

“You did six years for her? God, how old
was
she, you creep? She doesn't look old enough to get a driver's license
now
. You're so goddamn stupid, Jesse. You want to ruin your life, go ahead, but don't think I'll lie to your parole officer for you. Get out.”

Beth went back into the kitchen and I pulled my duffel bag out of the closet and shoved clothes into it, with Wavy watching me.

“Get dressed, sweetheart,” I said.

“Yeah, get dressed you crazy little bitch.” Beth walked back into the bedroom and tossed Wavy's clothes on the bed. “Goddamn, my new sheets, too.”

Wavy started putting on her clothes, but she did it like a backwards strip show, smiling at me while she pulled her panties up.

“No cops this time,” she said.

I couldn't even manage a smile to answer that, because maybe the cops weren't going to show up, but Beth stood there in the doorway, glaring at us.

“Get out. And I want your key,” she said.

While Wavy buttoned up her dress, I took the apartment key off my ring. After I gave it to Beth, Wavy and I went down the stairs and out into the street.

“Where's your car parked?” I said.

“My roommate dropped me off.” Her voice just about killed me. Grown up, but still quiet. And happy, the way I'd dreamed about.