Boyfriend (8 page)

I laughed and pulled away, running my hand over my hair.  She shrugged and smiled, the playfulness still burning in her eyes.  She sauntered off through the crowd leaving me by the wall.

“PLEASE tell me you’ve either hooked up with her before, are going to hook up with her in the future, or are okay with
me
hooking up with her,” Phil said walking up beside me with a bottle of water in his hand.

“None of the above.” My mind was still reeling from what had just happened. 

Phil looked at me confused.

“That’s Jayna.”

“Okay?”

“Kerry’s best friend.”

“Shit!”

I took the bottle from his hand and took a big swig wondering what I had just started.

***

On Sunday afternoon, Kerry called on her way back to school asking if I could pick her up from the bus terminal so we could talk.  I had no idea what to expect.  I spent most of the weekend drunk and as I made the painfully sober drive to the bus terminal, all I could think of was how much I had fucked up.  I could still see her face as she watched Natalie with an odd mix of fear and curiosity.  For a moment after Natalie left, I was sure Kerry had looked at me the same way.

As if the jagged pill of my reality wasn’t enough, I also worried that the dance I had shared with Jayna had somehow gotten back to Kerry.  It was clear from the way Jayna moved, she was sending me an invitation.  It was just as clear how badly I had wanted to accept.   

As Kerry approached me standing outside of Phil’s car, I lowered by head and shoved my hands in my pockets. 

All good things end. 

I needed to man up and be prepared to move on. 

Kerry clutched her red duffel bag in her hand as she approached and ran her fingers through her hair.   “Hi,” she said. 

“Hey.”

“Nate…” she started.

“Kerry, I’m sorry.” I took a step closer to her.  “I’m so fucking sorry.”  I took my hands out of my pocket.  “I shouldn’t have lied.  I shouldn’t have gotten so pissed off…”

She placed her duffle bag on the ground beside us, reached out, and touched my face.  “I know.”

Encouraged, I pulled her to me. “I fucked up.”

She nodded, wrapping her hands around my waist.  “You could’ve told me, Nate.  I love you.  Nothing in your past could change that.”

I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her lips.   I didn’t want her to talk about my past.  Knowing it was enough.  Kerry was sweet and everything about my life in Queens was bitter.  She wanted to know more; her curiosity squeezed me tighter than her embrace and poured from every pause in her kiss.  She wanted to feel what it was like.  Take the journey to when I was ten years old and living in that dirty apartment.  She wanted to take naps with me on my old stained mattress and hold my hand while I ate jellybeans for breakfast.   She had questions that I never wanted to answer.  It was bad enough that she knew.  I didn’t want to go back. 

“I love you,” she murmured in my chest.  I ran my hands up and down her arms.

“I love you too.”

She smiled up at me and pulled me back into a kiss.  Despite the cool air that blew around us, I could feel my palms grow sweaty.  

It all scared me. 

Her kiss.  Her touch.  Her acceptance. 

“I won’t hurt you either, Nate,” she whispered as if hearing my thoughts.  I kissed her back wondering how that could possibly be true. 

***

That evening, Kerry spent the night at my place.  Phil went out to a party, so we had the place to ourselves.  She spent most of the early evening flitting around cleaning up using cleaning products I didn’t even know we had.   When she finally sat down beside me on the couch, she smelled like bleach, and her hairline was damp with sweat.  I kissed her on the forehead and pulled her to me so I hugged her from behind.   

“I can’t believe you did all this,” I said looking around the apartment. “Thank you, baby.”

She pulled out of my embrace and laughed.  “You think all this was for you?”

“It wasn’t?”

“You and Phil are nasty.  I couldn’t sleep here with it looking the way it did.”

I laughed. “Is that right?”

She nodded, smiling.

She leaned back into me and pulled my arms around her and running her fingers up and down my forearms.  “This must’ve taken forever.” She stared at the tattoo sleeves on each of my arms. 

“It wasn’t all at once.”

“Which one was your first?”

I turned over my right arm and pointed to a small three-dimensional star right below the inside of my elbow.  I had gotten it at close to midnight on Lisa’s 18
th
birthday.  She was getting her first tattoo above her breast.  It was the word “Mighty” in cursive, a nickname her dad had given her when she was a kid.  I could still hear her laughter as she lied to the tattoo artist and told him I was 19. 

“Why’d you get it?” Kerry asked running her thumb around it.  I remember Lisa pointing to it on the wall of the small tattoo shop in SoHo.  She looked so sexy leaned back in the chair with her bra down.  I would have done anything she asked.

“I was 14.  It was just something to do, I guess,” I said shrugging looking at my star, which now, was practically buried beside my other tattoos.  She looked back at me and smiled.

“Were your parents mad?”

I laughed to myself.  The question was, did they notice?  “They got over it.”

She smiled and kissed me.  “I think it’s sexy.  I think they’re all sexy.” 

I leaned down and kissed her again, running my hand up her chest and massaging her breasts.  I traced my fingers back down over her stomach and in between her legs.  I unbuckled her jeans, stroking her over her panties as I kissed her.  She moaned leaning into me.   

“Take off your clothes, baby.”  I could feel myself getting hard, and I could feel her grow moist over her panties.

She stood up and turned to face me, staring into my eyes and breathing deeply. She unbuttoned her cream colored blouse and let it fall to the floor.  I leaned back into the couch as she pulled down her pants and stepped out of them.  She started to reach for me, and I stopped her.

“All your clothes,” I said letting my eyes roam all over her body.  She smiled shyly and reached behind her back and unhooked her bra.  I reached out my hand to take it from her and placed it on the couch beside me. She started to pull down her panties and I stopped her. 

“Turn around and do it,” I commanded.  She turned around obediently, bending over and slipping her panties off at her feet.  Her body was smooth and flawless.  Even though we had been together a few months, her whole body still blushed a cherry brown when I saw her naked.   It always turned me on.  I unzipped my pants and put on a condom before she turned back around.   Reaching out, I pulled her on top of me and slipped inside of her from behind.  She whispered my name as I kissed her back.  I ran my hands up and down her body moving inside her slowly.  After a moment, I eased my hand along her back bending her over and pushed in harder.  She grabbed my ankles as I thrust inside of her deeply.

“Oh my God,” she yelled looking at me over her shoulder as I pounded over and over again.  Her face was pinched with raw pleasure and I could tell she was enjoying the total loss of control.  I pushed deeper, kneading into her ass with my fingers as I bounced her on top of me, remembering in that moment just how much I liked it that way and not at all surprised at how much she did too.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I’d never been comfortable with happiness.

I was 11 when my Aunt Laura died, and it hit me like one of those cartoon anvils from the sky.  For Natalie and me, Aunt Laura was our safe place.   With our parents, we were always slinking around, trying desperately to go unnoticed and blend in with the walls.  At Aunt Laura’s, we were valued and loved.  Like we mattered and we weren’t just unfortunate mistakes. 

Aunt Laura was plump, warm and always smelled like the sweet fruit from a pie she had made. She loved us as if we were her own and never spared an opportunity to tell us.  Our days with her in North Carolina were spent running around her land, taking care of her animals, and swimming in a nearby lake.  Each night, we’d squeeze in under each of her arms, our bellies full and legs tired, and listen to her read stories and sing songs.  We’d fall fast asleep in her arms and feel completely shielded from the looming dysfunction. 

When our parents would return to get us after weeks away, she would look at them with a leery glare as if sizing them up before they could take us.  I imagined one day she would just say no and keep Natalie and me for good.  I think she did too.

Natalie and I were playing in my room when my mother told us she was gone.  She came in, sat down, and stared at us for a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Your Aunt Laura died.”

Natalie folded beside my mother’s feet, shaking her head as reality set in and tears fell from her face.  My mother never bothered to tell us how or why.  She just told us.  Death was a bitter fact we had no choice but to accept. 

Ripping Aunt Laura away as if she had never been.

My mother’s words replayed again and again in my head for a long time.  Waking me up at night and sticking in the air.  I pictured Aunt Laura lying somewhere as dead as a smashed rat on the subway tracks.  Her eyes open and body still.  The world we had made with her just as dead as she was. 

Aunt Laura’s funeral was a two weeks later, and we scattered her ashes in a pond on her land.  We drove back up to New York in almost complete silence.  My father fiddling with the radio once or twice before slapping the dashboard hard and saying, “Let’s just hope that dyke doesn’t go to hell.” 

My mother drank four beers from his six-pack that night.

***

When my mother called me the last day of classes before summer break, I prepared myself to hear the worst.  The cracks in the world I was building with Kerry were starting to form; I was preparing myself for it to shatter.

“Junior?”

“Hey,” I said, cradling the phone against my shoulder.  I folded the book that was in my lap and stood up from where I sat on the living room floor.

“It’s your mother.”

“I know, Ma.” Kerry looked up at me from where she had been sitting beside me.  We were studying for a final, and she was quizzing me using index cards she had made.  She rose, touching my shoulder gently and heading into the kitchen.

“How’re things?”

“Good. You?”

“Same,” she began. “Your dad is doin’ real good.  Getting better.  Up and walking around.  He isn’t drinking too much neither.” 

I laughed to myself.  The number of times I’d heard my mother tell that lie had genuinely become comical.  “That’s great.”

“Your sister left home.”

“I know.”

“You heard from her?” Her voice was suddenly animated. 

“She came through here a couple of weeks ago with some guy.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

“No.” I shook my head, rubbing the bridge of my nose with my finger.  How hadn’t I noticed? Despite the loose fitting sweater she had worn, I remembered her looking thin.  She may have been pregnant, but she certainly hadn’t looked pregnant.

“I don’t even know if it’s true,” my mother continued.  “She went crazy, Nate. You should have seen it.  She was saying vicious things about your father and slamming stuff around.  I thought she was going to hit me.  You should have seen it, Junior.”

Unable to respond, I just cleared my throat.

“She said she was leaving with her baby.  She said she was six weeks pregnant, and she didn’t want her baby anywhere near us.” 

I didn’t blame her. 

“You’ll tell me if you hear from her, right?” She sounded small and desperate.  “She doesn’t have to come back here,” she added. “I just want to know she’s okay.”

I was quiet.

“You’ll tell me, right?” she repeated.

“Yeah… yeah,” I said.  I imagined my sister mustering up the courage to tell my mother what happened.  Only to be turned away again.  My mother had chosen my father over her.  Her own daughter.  But how could I judge her? I had turned my back on her too.

“Good.” Her voice startled me out of my thoughts.  “You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“Okay, then.” She took a deep breath.  “I’ll give you call some other time.”

I turned off the phone, holding it for a moment in my palm.

“Everything okay?”  Kerry asked coming back into the room and sitting beside me. 

I shrugged.

“Did she hear from your sister?”  Kerry eased her hand up my back and leaned her head on my shoulder.

“No,” I said trying to picture what Natalie was doing and who she was with.

She looked up at me like she was struggling to think of what to say next.  “I’m sure she’ll be okay.”

I was both surprised and impressed that she could be so naïve.  Natalie wasn’t okay.  I didn’t know if she ever would be.  But in Kerry’s world, things always ended up being okay.  How I wished I could be the type of person who lived in that world.