make you drunk?
His frown is totally gone now, and mine must be gone, too, because he ignores what I said, reels me in and kisses me. I feel the press of his chest and the weight of his arm around my waist, all those heavy bones, and I think: OK, fine. But this is it. After this, no more dumb high school hook-ups with dumb high school boys, no matter how hot or soapy-smelling they are. I’m done with this. Done.
Maybe because he can sense it, or because he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, Luke takes his time, lips barely touching, barely brushing mine. The music thumping downstairs plays a heartbeat under my feet as the kiss goes from sweet to serious—slidey and sideways and deep. Like always, a thousand flowers bloom in my gut, my skin tingles everywhere and my brains sidle towards the door.
I don’t know how much time goes by before his fingers are crawling under my various shirts and he’s pushing me backwards towards the bed. Another not-so-good idea. On the bed, he could work me up, peel off all the layers till there’s nothing left to cover me and it’s too hard to say no.
I say, “No.”
He mumbles something against my collarbone, something beginning with “I—I want, I need, I-I-I.” It makes me so mad. Isn’t it enough that I turn into some sort of panting, slobbering wolf-girl when he’s around? I should let him see all of me? Have all of me? Just because he wants it?
I plant my feet and steer him around. I put my hands on his shoulders and sit him down on the edge of the mattress.
“What?” he says.
“Shut up.”
I drop down in front of him. I can’t make him listen or understand or care, and I don’t even want to. But I want to do something. Make him feel me. Make him beg me. Make him be the naked one.
And so, I do.
With Luke’s low groan in my ears and my eyes shutting out the world, I don’t hear the door open behind us, I don’t see the flash of light.
Ash is not a morning person. She is also not a neat person.
When I get in her car on Monday morning, there are old Styrofoam coffee cups strewn on the floor and one attached to her lips. Sheets of paper, crumpled napkins, and random changes of clothes—fresh and foul—litter the backseat.
Sticking to the dashboard is a quarter of a glazed doughnut, age indeterminate. Me and Ash have been friends since the sixth grade and she’s been driving me to school since the day she got her licence, so I’m used to her morning-fog face, her bloodshot eyes, her endless coffee and the disgusting mess that is her personal universe. It’s not even so disgusting any more. I grab a handful of napkins and bravely peel the doughnut off the dashboard and dump it in the ashtray, which is filled with butts from Ash’s on-again, off-again smoking habit.
I don’t say anything for a few minutes, waiting until Ash has more caffeine in her system. After a while, she grumbles, “What are you so happy about?” She pumps the gas pedal of her old Dodge to keep it from dying out at the stoplight.
“Who says I’m happy?” I ask her.
“Because you’re not complaining about the dumb party or the itchy costume or how long it took you to get the make-up off or the fourteen thousand college essays you had to write yesterday,” she says. “That means you’re happy about something.”
Ash is not happy. Fish Tank, she’d told me on the way home from the party, had some girlfriend who went to the Catholic high school, so didn’t want to hook up with Ash or anyone else. I didn’t tell her about ending it with Luke. For some reason, it had felt like a secret, something that was more special because I was the only one in the world who knew it, or at least the only one in the world who knew I was serious about it. Sunday morning, I sat in church while the pastor—the really boring one—babbled on about some dumb movie he saw and what Jesus might think of it, going on so much and so long that he seemed to be putting himself and the rest of us to sleep. So instead of listening to Pastor Narcolepsy, I told God what happened (yeah, yeah, as if she didn’t know already). Anyway, I said that it was over and that I was OK. I said I felt strong, like I’d broken a spell. I swore that I would concentrate on my work again, that I would be back to myself. I would no longer be operating in a Luke-induced lust haze. I would be myself again.
But with the harsh Monday-morning light piercing my eyes, with Ash mumbling like an old drunk into her coffee, I decide to go public.
“I’m not exactly happy,” I say. “But I feel really good. I broke up with Luke on Saturday night.”
“You did what?”
“I broke up with Luke.”
Her mouth hangs open. Then she says, “How can you break up with a guy if you’re not even going out with him?”
This annoys me. “We’ve been hooking up for the last two and a half months, Ash. We were doing something. And now we’re not.”
“Right,” says Ash. She jams her coffee cup into the cup holder. “Ten bucks says you’ll change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.” I check myself as I say this, wondering if I’m telling the truth. But I am. I feel it. At the party, as Luke was buttoning up his shirt over that body, a body so perfect that it was like a punch to the throat, I’d said, “Well, it’s been fun. ‘Bye. Have a nice life,” and walked out of the bedroom without looking back. “I just don’t want it any more, that’s all,” I say.
“Can you hear yourself?” she says. “You don’t want Luke DeSalvio. Everybody wants Luke DeSalvio. Hell, if you guys kept hooking up, maybe he’d ask you to the prom.”
“I’m not going to keep hooking up with some random guy in case the cheerleading squad isn’t available to escort him to the prom.”
“Bite my head off, why don’t you?” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “He’s not exactly random. I thought you liked him. I thought you more than liked him.”
I sigh. “I do. I did. I can’t figure out if I wanted him or I just wanted, well…”
“You dog!”
“That’s the point. I’m not. I’d like to be able to talk to the person I’m hooking up with.”
“Talk? To a guy? What for?” She sees my face and laughs. “Kidding, kidding.” She digs around underneath the doughnut for a still-smokable butt, giving up when she doesn’t find one. “I guess I’m just surprised. I mean, I think it’s totally the right decision. It’s great. It does say something that he went for you, though, as much as I hate to say it.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say.
“You know what I mean,” she says. “You, Miss Skip-a-Grade, 9.45 GPA, off-to-the-Ivy-League prodigy—”
“I wish you would stop saying that.”
“And him with the bazillion varsity letters, the golden tan, and the…”
“Amazing ass?”
Ash pulls an I’m-so-shocked face and adopts her British accent. “Such a cheeky girl!”
“Such a dorky girl,” I say. “Who knows why he was hanging out with me. Maybe I was next on the list.” I reach back and rebundle the hair at the back of my head, thankfully blonde again. “I tried the casual hookup thing. It’s not for me. It’s like I was trying to be someone else. Trying to be him.”
Ash considers this. “I’m not sure that’s such a bad idea. To try to be like guys. Look at them. They just do whatever they want and nobody cares. Why shouldn’t we be like them?”
I sigh.