Kiss Crush Collide (8 page)

I stand with my knees locked, my bare legs pressing against the metal seat behind me, my eyes on the grade schoolers.

Having spent the afternoon navigating the crowded, choppy waters of the pool, they now hang limply from the chain-link fence while the sun sets over their freckled shoulders. They look wrung out. I can relate.

Balancing on their rusty three-speeders in damp bathing suits, they sit out the hour while the pool is closed between the afternoon and night swims. They live here all summer, like refugees. It’s not just a pool; it’s a baby-sitting service with free chlorine.

Finally Troy climbs onto his chair, and bicycles drop to the ground like flies. The refugees are ready, good for another go. I, however, am not so sure I have it in me.

When the sharp sound of Troy’s whistle finally splits the soft evening air, I buckle. I pull my legs in close to my body and lean back, with nothing more to do than watch little kids and their parents paddle around for the next two hours while the sun goes down and the temperature sinks.

The greased-up girls of the afternoon, lying side by side on thick beach towels with their bikini straps lowered, are gone. The guys in dark denim and worn baseball caps who sweat in the sun as they flirt and chat with the sunbathers have long since disappeared. They hopped into their cars for a smoke before heading off for a night at the lake.

Tonight it’s mostly families, little kids and parents who have put on a few pounds since their dating days. They do this thing—I remember it from last summer—where they take the first few embarrassing steps, the ones after they drop the beach towel but before they hit the water, on their tiptoes. Like that makes them look skinnier or something.

A breeze lifts the branches that dangle over the top of the fence, and I take a deep breath. It feels like the first one of the day.

Lights are popping up all over the park. Bright circles of white light suddenly appear over splintery teeter-totters, dusty home plates, and empty grass lots, making the night seem instantly darker, the sky more indigo.

The overhead lights around the perimeter of the pool buzz and flicker to life just as Valerie Dickens steps out of the changing room, momentarily caught, all pink and bookish, in her very own fluorescent spotlight.

After yesterday’s outing I thought she would need to stay in the shade and administer cold drinks. Instead she’s back, and she’s wearing some kind of shiny Ravi Shankar caftan that sways around her ankles as she slowly makes her way from the changing room to my side of the pool.

Freddie went through this totally annoying Beatles phase, so I know who Ravi Shankar is. Freddie and Evan would sit in her room with a lava lamp on and listen to
Yellow Submarine
over and over and over. Yorke told her it was worth it only if she was going to get high, or at least listen to
Sgt. Pepper’s,
but at the time Freddie was not willing to risk any brain cells or her chance at being valedictorian.

I’ll bet that is what next year is for—illicit drugs and sex abroad. Although I know Freddie and Evan already do it. I guess he talked about it in the locker room after practice, so everybody knows, but the idea totally grosses me out.

I just don’t think Evan is cute, although that really doesn’t make sense since he is just a lankier version of Shane, who is just a younger version of Evan, who kind of looks like my dad, and Roger looks like them all but just a bit more pinched and trimmed.
Merde.

Valerie walks by my chair, a scuffed and scraped canvas tote bag heavy with books slung over one bony shoulder and the edge of her striped beach towel swiping along behind her on the deck. I can’t resist.

I lean down, smiling fakely, my Lycra-covered boobs pressing warmly onto the tops of my knees as I ask, “Can I expect this pleasure every day?”

“I bought a season pass,” she replies, slowing for a moment to grin back at me with a smile just as fake as mine, before she continues on, pulling at her beach towel in an ongoing struggle to drag it up onto her book-free shoulder and walk at the same time.

Watching her go, the towel trailing over her shoulder like a terry-cloth boa, I lean back and think, Well, there goes her science fair money.

Troy clicks on the office radio, and classic rock rolls across the surface of the pool, filling the spaces between the lazy splashes and soft laughter and the occasional odd remark from Valerie.

“That man is absolutely rotund,” she says suddenly, to no one apparently, and I look over to see her examining a fat man waddling across the deck near the shallow end in a disturbingly tight madras suit.

I can practically hear her bones grinding against the cement from way up here when she rolls onto her stomach, pulls a pink highlighter from between her front teeth, and watches a diver arc off the high dive.

“Not a good angle,” she comments like an Olympic judge, lowering her eyes back down to her book.

The diver is still underwater, making his way through the glowing water of the diving well, so I am guessing the ongoing dialogue is meant for me.

When she calls out, “George Washington Carver was an excellent swimmer,” I have no doubt. She is trying to lead me astray educationally and drive me bat shit at the same time.

I decide to ignore her completely. First because I don’t think her views regarding the swimming skills of the preeminent inventor of peanut agricultural science are true or in any way verifiable, but mostly because I think it should cost anyone, and especially her, way more than fifty-five dollars to get to torture me for the entire summer.

At the stroke of nine, mostly everybody packs up and heads for the exits, weary and wet—everyone except for Valerie.

She is attempting to wedge an entire library full of books, probably according to the Dewey decimal system, back into her bag and is temporarily rendered speechless by the effort.

I am cleaning my side of the pool, stretching out as far as I can to reach the middle with the long-handled skimmer, straining for a bug or a Band-Aid or something that is floating just beyond my reach, when, from right behind me, Valerie asks, “So . . . Shane got a new car?”

I jump and sink the bug or whatever it is to the murky depths. I look over my shoulder, struggling to see past the bright headlights as a car pulls right up onto the grassy slope next to the pool.

It is a big, black, shiny
SUV
, the kind with dark-tinted windows and those fancy rims that spin. I move toward the fence, dragging the skimmer behind me.

The lights flash once. Twice. Off. I reach up to put the skimmer away, squinting into the deep darkness, and catch my finger in the skimmer latch. I inhale sharp and fast.

“That’s not Shane,” I breathe as the driver’s door cracks open.

“Hey, lifeguard.”

He walks toward the pool, hair messy, a blue T-shirt that says RAY’S
MIDTOWN
CYCLES
half tucked into faded jeans that are held up by a thick worn belt. His belt tweaks up at the end with a little leather curl instead of behaving and lying flat.

“Hey, Porter.”

He looks me up and down as he hooks his fingers into the fence just above his left shoulder and then says, “Nice whistle.”

My pulse starts to race. I am vibrating. Like the little summer bugs circling the lamps above our heads, I know I am about to get burned, but I am still kind of looking forward to the sizzle.

“Thanks,” I manage as the sound of a heavy canvas bag being hoisted onto a razor-sharp shoulder stops the buzzing in my brain and brings my attention back to Valerie.

I try to ignore her, but I can feel her gaze burning into my back as she walks away, measuring, dissecting, parsing, syllabicating.

Troy clicks the underwater lights off, and the smooth pool water goes dramatically dark.

Porter leans away from the fence and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

“Are you done here?” he asks.

“I guess,” I say with a shrug.

I can hear Troy behind me, digging around on the desk, swearing and shuffling newspapers and sign-in sheets with his burly man hands, searching for his keys, the way he does at the end of every night swim, so he can lock up.

“Okay,” Porter says, and I don’t know what that means.

Is it like, Okay, I’ll see you later, or Okay, I’ll wait, or Okay, I gotta go, ’cause my girlfriend is waiting in the car?

“Okay,” I say.

His smile slides open, and I feel his eyes following me as I walk away, my bare feet padding softly on the cement. I am glad that I am wearing this suit, glad that I can fill it out, and glad that I am not wearing a caftan and carrying a prehistoric book bag like Valerie.

She is eyeballing me from the path outside the pool as I leave through the side gate. I wave to Troy as he clicks off the office light, pulls the door shut behind him, and then turns to put his key in the lock.

Porter is sitting on top of a graffiti-carved picnic table, his beat-up work boots on the bench, elbows propped on his knees, watching me make my way across the grassy slope. Valerie’s car rattles behind me as she drives off.

As I get closer, he rises slowly, stretches, and slides his hands down his thighs before standing tall. I pause, my flip-flops flipping to a stop as he walks back over to the black
SUV
.

“Just how many cars do you have?” I ask, stalling against his presumption that I will just hop into the car with him and my eagerness to do just that.

“Me?” He gives the chrome handle of the driver’s door a smooth tug.

The
SUV
is highly polished, so clean that under the amber hum of the streetlights I can see the tree branches overhead reflecting back at me from the shiny hood.

“Zero.”

In my head I tally the cars I have seen him driving as he slides up onto the high leather seat. I can count three at least.

“You want a ride?” he asks, a tan work boot dangling casually over the edge of the silver-and-black running board.

My brain is working away.
Zero cars?
Wait. Does that first red car I saw him in count? Because technically, the red car was borrowed from Roger, if you don’t use the strict definition of
borrowed
, so my total is two. Right?

Porter flips the
SUV
key over and over in the palm of his hand. His leg still dangles from the open door.

“I don’t know,” I say, unsure.

“Okay.” He nods and pulls the door shut with a deliberate and expensive-sounding thump.

I take a few steps toward the car, slowly and cautiously. He puts the key in the ignition and starts it up.

Resting his arm along the edge of the open window, he looks out at the pool, then past the fence to the dark, deserted park. His green eyes are questioning and unsure when they settle on mine.

“You sure?” he asks.

I shrug and look down, twisting my toe into the thick grass, as I wait for him to ask again, expecting him to talk me into it the way Shane or any other boy would. Instead he drops the car into reverse, slides his arm along the back of the passenger seat as he twists to check behind him, and leaves me just standing there with my mouth open while he rolls away.

In that small second between reverse and drive— you know, that little lull after you stop backing up but before the car actually starts moving forward, while the machinery is working and the gears are turning or whatever—in that second he turns and looks over at me standing alone on the grassy rise, gaping. He waves, rests his hand on the wheel, and guns it.

My bag slips from my shoulder, and I wave back five seconds too late. I thought he would beg a little bit. I curl my toes tight into my flip-flops and bounce down the hill, not breathing, not thinking, gripping against the dewy grass and hoping I am not too late.

“Porter!” I yell into the spray of gravel landing at my feet as the wheels hit the edge of the road. I jog a couple of steps into the middle of the street and stop to shout at the back of the
SUV
again. “Porter!”

The silvery rims spin backward as he slows to a stop. He adjusts the rearview mirror and looks back at me like, what the hell? But at least he stops.

I take the few strides between me and the
SUV
at a clumsy tear and tap on the tinted glass of the passenger door, out of breath and full of embarrassment. Porter leans across the seat and opens the door with a wry smile.

I smooth my ponytail back with buzzing hands and a pumping pulse, because I don’t want him to think I am hard up or anything, and try to compose myself as I climb in.

Warm lake air spills in through the open windows, mixing into a sweaty storm of lips and breath, stirring the interior of the parked
SUV
as I curse the inventor of the one-piece swimsuit. Porter’s hands are sliding up the slippery Lycra fabric of my regulation lifeguard suit while I straddle him in the front seat.

Cottages dot the shore on the far side of the lake; the yellow glow of porch lights and the stars sprinkling the sky illuminate his quick, skillful movements.

“What the hell,” Porter says as he snaps a thick red strap. “How do I get into this thing?” He slides his hands up my back. “It’s like a chastity suit.”

I laugh as I lean forward to kiss him. “My father would be so proud.”

“Mine, too,” he says.

I lean back with the realization that other than this sudden mention of family, I know absolutely nothing about this guy. Except that he is a very fast driver, always wears boots, smells like beach and forest somehow mixed together with mint, and has the most dangerous green eyes.

I know he can drive and kiss at the same time (but we only did that for a little while), can get my shirt off in five seconds flat, yet is confounded by a tight red bathing suit.

He doesn’t talk a lot. Will leave a girl screaming in the street. Doesn’t push me farther than I want to go but takes me right to the edge and somehow makes me want more. But how does he know what I want? How does he know me at all?

“Why am I here right now?” I ask abruptly, feeling the steering wheel against my back as I lean away from him.