Bleed (3 page)

I step one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and that’s when I hear it.
Him.
His voice. In
my
yard.

“Is that invitation still good?” he asks.

I turn around and there he is, standing only a few feet away, by the fence, turning my skin to absolute gooseflesh.

“Hi,” he says.

I have no idea how to answer him or what to say. I just stare at him, my mouth hanging open, like I’m the biggest dork
ever.
I realize I’m doing this, and that only makes it worse, makes my mouth flutter, like I
want
to say something. Miraculously, the word “hi” manages to squeak its way out.

Sean shifts his weight from side to side in a nervous sort of dance. “Are your parents home?”

I shake my head and look away as he peels off his T-shirt.

“Do you expect ‘em soon? I mean, I don’t want them to get mad that I’m in your pool or anything.”

“They won’t be back for a while,” I blurt, feeling my heart load up with panic. I take a deep breath to calm myself down, trying to piece together what’s really going on here. I mean, there’s a good chance that Kelly won’t even care. Maybe she won’t even find out. And even if she does, I can just say Sean looked like he was gonna pass out from the heat. I guess he sort of does.

“Cool.” He twiddles with the strap of his belt for several moments. “I probably shouldn’t get these shorts wet.” His hand is on the zipper of his long khaki shorts.

I grab the raft for security and begin paddling in a circle. But before I know it, I’m facing him again. A pair of plaid boxer shorts, the cotton kind, I think. A bare chest with that woven stripe of hair right below the navel.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” he says, making his way in.

I let out a dorky giggle and begin making waves with the raft.

Sean pushes his feet off the wall of the pool. The blades of his shoulders slice through the skin of the water as he swims across. “This feels incredible,” he says. He takes a gulp of water and squirts it out between his teeth like a fan. It hits my cheek, and I laugh, a bit too hard, making a weird hiccup noise. I consider squirting him back, but that would definitely wash my lipstick off completely.

He disappears under the water and swims around me like a shark. The tiny bits of dirt at the bottom make a spiraling funnel around my ankles. He grabs my calf and yanks me under with him. I feel myself laughing beneath the surface, my mouth and nostrils filling up with water. And then our legs touch and I feel those tiny, prickly hairs that I have studied so intently rub against the skin of my knee and up my thigh, and … I freak.

I break the surface of the water and try to catch my breath. I wonder if the touching was a mistake.

Sean comes up and looks at me, and now I’m the one being studied. I grab the raft, squishy from loss of air.

“Nicole?” He places his hand on the raft, a thumb-length from mine. It suddenly dawns on me that this is the first time he’s said my name. And it sounds so different coming from him, sort of sweet and exotic at the same time.

“Yeah?” I swallow hard, dipping my mouth into the water to hide my lip.

“Did you ever … I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“No, what?”

“I don’t know, did you ever, you know, maybe think about you and me?”

“Sean,” I say, pushing the raft away, trying to laugh it off as a joke.

“What?
Did
you?”

“I don’t know. What kind of question is that? Did
you?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

“Really?”

“Once or twice.”

I feel my insides light up like birthday candles, even though this is evil, even though we shouldn’t be talking this way. And suddenly I feel sort of … free. Like, I know I’ve known all along, but it suddenly hits me. Kelly isn’t here. It’s just me. And Sean.

“Maybe,” I say.

He edges in closer and I can smell the heat of his breath, like freshly cut grass. “Nicole?” His lips are too close to mine to speak, like they might bump together by forming words. And before I know it, they are kissing mine and I’m feeling this tiny, tingling sensation in my right pinky. The tingling sparkles through my veins and down my spine and encourages me to kiss him back. I do.

Our legs touch again and I feel myself float toward him. Thighs bumping thighs. Calves weaving through calves.

He covers my lips with his kiss again, and it tastes salty and wet. I press the inside of my knee against his outer thigh and feel the web of bristly hair crawl up my leg.

“Sean,” I whisper. I place both palms on the side of the pool and lift my body up to sit on the ledge. “Come on.” I take his hand and lead him over to the garden, where it’s all pretty and magical, and where no one can see. I look down at his boxers, the button-fly kind, dripping wet, the cotton checks sticking to his …
thing.
Sticking out a bit. And I can’t look, have to turn away, feel my cheeks get all fiery hot. It suddenly occurs to me that if I wanted to, I could call this whole thing off, tell him that I have to go inside, that I have to go and pick up Maria.

But I don’t.

And so I find myself lying on the ground with him, feeling the cool and peppery soil at my back and in the strands of my hair. He rolls himself on top of me, and the wetness of his skin slips against my legs. I slide my hands down his back and glide them up and down his hips, trying to imagine the way Vanessa does it on
Sands of Time.

Sean moves his hand in between my legs and I think it’s the first time he notices my bathing suit has shorts for bottoms—tight, spandex shorts. He rolls us over, sort of on our side, facing one another, and I feel his hand at the back zipper. “Is this cool?” he asks.

I sort of give a nod. It’s so easy for him, like he’s done this before, like it’s no big deal.

I think about Vanessa’s first time. How she and Roland had come so close so many times, but then decided to wait. Then, on the anniversary of the day they first met, Roland surprised Vanessa by re-creating a scene from
Night Falls in Star Land
, her favorite storybook. He took her to the planetarium, after hours, because it was winter and too cold outside for a picnic at night. And then they made love right there under the Big Dipper. I think how it was Roland’s first time, too.

I feel my shorts being tugged down my hips, but not getting very far. “Can I have some help here?” Sean asks. I lift up my butt and feel the shorts slide down my legs. I kick them from around my ankles with my heels.

And then Sean gets up. He walks over to where his shorts are and scrounges through the pockets. At first he takes his cell phone out, and for a brief but humiliating second I think he’s going to make a call, but then he just clicks it off and I get this exciting little jolt up my spine. Like, at least while we’re together, he doesn’t even care if Kelly calls. He fishes through the other pocket for his wallet, plucks it out, and pulls out a condom.

And I can’t believe this is happening. I mean, I’ve
seen
condoms, have had them thrown at me during various besafe assemblies at school, but I’ve never actually held one outside the package. I’ve heard of girls putting the condom on for the guy, some sort of romantic gesture. I wonder if he’ll let me try.

Sitting with his back to me, he throws the torn package into the rose bush and puts it on by himself. I want to see it, to see him—to see what one looks like up close. But his boxers are still on and I can’t see anything through their dark green plaid print.

He slides himself back on top of me, pulls his shorts down just far enough, and at first it’s all hot and urgent between my legs, and I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to be with him. But then I feel a sharp piece of mulch jam into my right butt cheek. I try to readjust, but then Sean pushes himself inside me—a stinging, ripping, ouching pain. I almost cry out but catch myself before any sound escapes.

I try to relax, to tell myself that this is romantic, in the garden, between the tall and purple irises, the blackeyed Susans, and the pretty rhododendron, that Sean must really like me. I look up into his face, to see his eyes, and what they’re thinking. But they’re closed, like he’s concentrating hard, and his lips are parted with breath.

The phone is ringing inside my house. It’s probably Maria, wondering where I am.

I look up into the sky, at the puffy white clouds, and wish it were night or that we were in a planetarium. I wonder if Kelly looks up at the ceiling and thinks these same things. I clench my teeth, wondering when it’ll be over, when I’ll be able to clean myself up of this dirt and mulch. The phone is still ringing. The machine beeps, but I can’t quite make out the voice.

“Nickie,” Sean whispers into my ear, followed by a long and laborious moan. And I think how this feels and sounds so different from TV How nobody but Kelly ever calls me Nickie. How nobody but Kelly ever calls me, period.

Sean rolls off me and pulls his shorts back up, lying on his back, trying to catch his breath, like he’s just run a marathon or something.

He looks over at me and smiles. I smile, too.

Now what? After Vanessa and Roland make love, they usually hug and kiss each other for the rest of the show, tell each other secrets. I rest the tips of my fingers against Sean’s dirty cheek and kiss him full on the mouth.

He smiles at me when the kiss breaks and then looks away. “I should probably get going,” he says. “I haven’t finished with the hedges yet.” He wipes a smear of dirt from my forehead and then kisses the spot before getting up to fetch his clothes.

I pull my shorts back up, noticing droplets of blood between my thighs. I wipe them as best I can with my fingers and then stand up, feeling dirt slide between my legs, noticing how sticky I feel, hiding my dirty hands behind my back.

Sean has already dressed. He turns to leave but then stops. And for one relieving moment I think he’s going to say something really great. But instead he just smiles, lingers a few moments before turning away.

I watch him leave before washing myself off with the garden hose. A few moments later I hear the lawn mower turn on next door, the sound of the motor revving, like it never even happened—like Sean was never even here. I decide I will clean myself up and then vacuum the dirt out of the pool before going to pick up Maria, so we can prepare for Kelly’s welcome-home once and for all.

S
ATURDAY
, A
UGUST
12, 11:45
A.M
.

Sadie’s about to cut me. She’s got the safety pin pressed up to my forearm. Her hands are all jittery, like someone’s leaked all the blood out of her veins and shot them up with Pixie Stix sugar. There are smiley faces across her fingernails, bright pink ones—some with missing eyes where the paint has chipped, others with half chewed—off mouths.

“Hurry up,” I say. “If you don’t do it, you’ll have to go home.”

“No!” she whines.

I tear the sign from her T-shirt. This is the second time this week she’s come over with a torn piece of notebook paper pinned to her shirt, the words
PLEASE DO NOT FEED SADIE
handwritten in pretty cursive letters across the page. Must have been a bad week.

“Don’t!” she shouts at me.

I laugh at her and crumple the sign up into a paper ball, throw it toward my Tupperware garbage pail. “Your mom’s fucked. I’m surprised you don’t just tear it off yourself.” She looks scared, like I really screwed things up for her. “Hurry up,” I say, referring to the pin, trying to take her mind off it.

Her eyes spill over with drippy tears. “Please, Maria, no,” she whines.

“Don’t act like such a baby. I thought you wanted to be my friend.”

“I do.” She nods toward the pin, like it will help her.

“Then prove it.”

It’s been a little goal of mine this past year—to get all my friends to cut me. Not that Sadie’s a real friend. She’s just a kid who always comes around to bug me. But she
thinks
she’s my friend, so that must count for something.

I kick my bare legs back and forth on the bed, my heels bouncing against the naked mattress. I’m thinking about getting a tattoo, one on my arch maybe, but not a butterfly or a snake, or anything lame ass like that. I want a tattoo that no one else has—a squashed chicken with bulging eyes, maybe, or a bunch of rusty nails. When my ex-boyfriend James turned eighteen, he had my face tattooed to his chest, because he said I’d always be in his heart. I laugh whenever I think of him with another girl, with my face coming at her while they’re trying to do the nasty.

I look over at Sadie, at how her barrettes, her T-shirt,
and
her open-toe sandals are all Tinker Bell-theme coordinated, like she’s five. Even the trim on her white tennis skirt has tiny magic wands floating against the swirly pink fabric.

“How old are you now, anyway?” I ask.

“Eleven,” she answers, really concentrating on that pin.

“Well, I’m six years older than you and I don’t like hanging out with babies.”