“What if you die in a freak accident next week? What if your firstborn gets leukemia? Jesus, Caroline, don’t make this the center of your entire fucking life!”
I hear what I sound like in the silence afterward.
Pissed off. Accusing.
I feel like the lowest thing. Worse than a worm. Something rotten, disgusting. Something decayed in me.
I’m as bad as every guy she’s worried about. I jerked off talking to her on the phone a few hours ago, and if that doesn’t make me a pervert and an asshole, I’m not sure what would.
I just hate hearing her talk about this other guy. I hate that her hope is attached to a name that isn’t mine, her future to a name that isn’t hers.
Shame floods through me, a hot impulse that makes me angry she’s not talking. Makes me fill the silence with more stupidity. “It’s normal,” I tell her. “It’s tits and a cunt, legs, an ass—it’s not the end of the fucking world, Caro. You think you’re so fucking special, but there’s a million other girls’ cunts online, and most of those girls aren’t moaning that their lives are over just because some random dude is getting off looking at them.”
Quiet again. In the nice neighborhood where Caroline lives, everyone is sleeping tonight. That makes me feel vile, too. That she should live in this place that’s just exactly the kind of place where I want to put Frankie. Surrounded by safety.
That I am the thing here, tonight, that’s making her unsafe.
I risk a glance at her face. She looks like I slapped her.
I did slap her.
The worst part is, there’s no reason for me to be mad at her. I’m not—I’m just mad in general.
I’m mad the world sucks so much, that this should have happened to her, that she should feel so bad about it.
I’m mad that sex can’t just be sex, it has to be everything else, too—money and power and misery and pleasure all mixed together. Because I want her, I’m mad at her, and it’s fucking stupid.
The whole thing. Stupid.
I sigh and stand up. Pace out the rooftop. This giant house where Caroline spent her whole life, sheltered from anything half as bad as what her punk-ass ex-boyfriend did to her. He probably grew up in a house like this, too. Probably wrecked her whole world without a second thought.
I walk back toward Caroline.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “That came out … I’m just sorry, all right?”
She shakes her head. She’s got her arms wrapped around her legs, her head turned away. “You know, I never called it that?”
“It?”
“Cunt,” she says, like the word tastes bad in her mouth. “Pussy. Slit. Tits. Cock. All those words—they never had anything to do with me before.”
She angles her head toward me, and I see her eyes, full of tears. “I don’t want them to have anything to do with me.”
I sit down a few feet away. Not sure what to tell her.
“There are so many things I’m not sure I can ever get back,” she says quietly. “I mean … I get what you’re saying. I get that life doesn’t end because of a couple grainy pictures online. But it kind of does, too, you know? Because now everything I’ve seen people say about me is in me. I have a cunt, I am a cunt, I’m dressed like a slut, I am a slut, I’m frigid, I’m a bitch, I want cum on my face—all those dirty things that never used to apply to me and now they do. They just eat away at me. So if I feel something, if I want a guy, if I get … if I get wet for a guy, if I want somebody to kiss me—it’s not the same anymore. It’s always going to be full of that stuff, either because I’m pushing all those words away or because I’m trying to figure out how to make them mine. And I hate that.”
I wish I didn’t know what she meant, but I do. I can’t tease a woman, work for a smile, get her off with my tongue inside her, without thinking about what she wants from me. What I’m going to get for it.
That’s the thing about trading sex for favors. It makes everything feel like a transaction.
“Do you want somebody to kiss you?” I ask. “Is this all theoretical, or …”
Her arms wrap tighter around her legs. “It’s not theoretical.”
“Scott?”
“Sure, Scott. I mean, maybe. I just met him. But what if, right? Why does it all have to be spoiled before it’s even started?”
“It’s not spoiled.”
“It feels spoiled.”
“That sucks.”
“It does.”
She traces a circle on her kneecap with her fingertip. “I only talked to him for a couple minutes. I liked him. He’s easy, you know? And Quinn got ahold of his number for me, but I just haven’t … I don’t want to think of him like that. I want all those words and body parts to have nothing to do with any of it. Except they do.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much inevitable if you’re gonna date the guy.”
She looks right at me for a second, then back at the roof. “I was starting to feel almost like I could do it, earlier today. Call him up and ask him out after break. I thought … But I have to say, you kind of ruined that whole idea, so thanks.”
There’s a smile in her voice, though. A small one, but it’s there.
“I get that I was a prick, but I don’t get what I ruined. You’re gonna have to explain that.”
“I don’t think I can do it. Any of it. I’m going to become a nun.”
“That would be a waste.” Now I can see the smile, the apple of her cheek lifting, though she’s still not looking at me.
“No, I can see now it’s the only way.”
“Sister Caroline,” I say. “Martyr of Internet Porn.”
She lifts her head. I can’t look away from the brilliance of her teeth, her lips, because I have this sudden, awful, amazing idea, and I’m focusing all my attention on keeping it from coming out of my mouth.
I could kiss you, is what I’m trying not to say.
I could make you forget all about those fucking pictures.
I could make you feel good, wipe out all that shame, show you what’s supposed to be going through your mind when you’re with a guy.
I could. Me.
“You like him a lot,” I say instead. Because she’s already made her choice, and I’m not it. I wasn’t even an option.
“He’s fun.”
“Fun is a little lukewarm.”
“No, don’t. Don’t pick on him. He’s great. Or he could be great. He seems like he could.”
“Too bad he’s so ugly.”
“No, he’s hot, too. Quinn said.”
“Quinn’s into girls.”
“Quinn’s bi.”
“Seriously?”
“You didn’t know that?”
I shake my head.
“Well, she is. And she thinks Scott is hot.”
“So you ask him out, and then you dive right in and kiss him. See what happens.”
I watch her when I say it, because whatever her reaction is, I’m going to memorize it. I’m going to use it to remind myself whenever I need reminding.
She’s not mine. I can’t have her. That’s final.
“I will,” she says. “That’s a great idea.”
But the face she makes—it’s not going to work out as the reminder I wanted.
“You look like you’re thinking about licking a slug.”
“Don’t tease me. I’m working on it.”
I want to tease her, though. I feel suddenly, thoroughly stoned on this idea I’ve had. It’s made it to my brain, I guess. It’s worked through my system in one fast heady rush.
Nothing is real but her and me and this ocean of dark we’re drifting in.
Nothing is real but the way I feel lighter when she smiles. When I’m teasing her, I feel like maybe I’m somebody, after all, and not just a son and a brother, an employee, a quick fuck. I’m more than a student, an impostor, an arrow on its vector toward a goal. Like I matter to her.
Like I matter for me and not for what I can do for somebody else.
“If I said you should suck him off, maybe, maybe, I’d expect that face. But kissing? How can you be into a guy and make that face when you think about kissing him?”
“It’s complicated. Shut up.”
“I’ll shut up when you answer the question.”
“No. I’m not—why are we even talking about this?”
“Because you’re stoned. You have no filter.”
“I do too.”
“We just talked about your cunt. The filters are definitely off-line.”
She laughs and buries her face in her hands. “That was your fault.”
“Everything is my fault.”
I can’t stop this. Can’t stop myself. Not when she’s making me feel this way.
Her shoulders are shaking. I’m not sure when she quits laughing and starts crying, or if she even does quit. It’s maybe all the same thing. Laughing and crying together.
I just know that when she looks up, the tears make her eyes shine, and that’s where the stars are.
That’s how it looks to me. Like the stars are in Caroline, and the whole world is just me and her.
Because I’m stoned.
And because I’m in love with her.
“This, too, Caro,” I say, leaning in. “This is completely my fault.”
When our lips meet, she breathes in, and that’s all that happens. Maybe for a second, maybe forever—it’s hard to tell when you’re stoned. Time gets unpredictable. Sex gets much bigger and much smaller, both, because you can feel everything. Every hair, every breath, every heartbeat, every firing inch of skin. It’s distracting. I get distracted by how Caroline’s mouth feels soft but dry, and it’s like shaking hands, this kiss. Taking her measure. Saying hello. It’s not sexy. It’s … interesting.
“Weird,” she says against my mouth.
“You’re weird.”
“Look who’s talking.”
I lick her bottom lip, and she sinks to her elbows.
I follow her down and do it again. “Still weird?”
“You’re licking me,” she murmurs.
“How’s that working for you?”
She closes her eyes. “I think …”
I draw her lip into my mouth and bite it gently. It feels fleshy between my teeth, more substantial than it looks. I want to do this to every part of her. Lick it and taste it, bite it, test it. Consume her, piece by piece.
“Don’t think. Thinking isn’t your friend.”
“You’re not my friend, either.”
“Funny.” I get my hand in her hair, my thumb under her jawline, tilting her head where I want it so I can really kiss her.
I think, fleetingly, Don’t, and then I do.
Our tongues meet. Our teeth bump gently, and she makes this sound with her breath that would be a laugh if she weren’t so busy sinking her fingers into my hair and kissing me back.
If we were friends, it would be disgusting. Spit and tongues, teeth and lips.
But we’re not friends.
It’s fucking amazing.
I kiss her hard. I control her, use her mouth, direct her head.
I kiss her soft. Tongue that sexy gap between her teeth. Pull back, let her take over, show me what she likes, how she wants it.
She does want it. Maybe only tonight, maybe for all the wrong reasons, I don’t know. I’m not thinking about it. I’m kissing Caroline, which is better than thinking.
We fall into this kind of haze, nothing touching but our mouths, hands stroking over hair, necks, shoulders. I’m hard, but it feels like a faraway piece of information, with no urgency to it. This isn’t sex. It’s kissing. The forever kind of kissing, where there’s no urgency and no time. Kissing like waves lapping. Perfect kissing.