Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift (31 page)

“So am I.”

Sheila Renfro asks me a question that causes me to spit my tea back into my cup.

“Edward, have you ever kissed a girl?”

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“What—”

“Remember, I kissed you right before you went to bed. You were there.”

Sheila Renfro smiles and grips her teacup with both hands.

“That was more me kissing you than you kissing me. Have you ever kissed a girl besides me?”

“No, not with my mouth. Donna Middleton—she’s now Donna Hays—has kissed me on the cheek, but I’ve never kissed her back. This girl in high school let me kiss her, but it was just so she could embarrass me in front of her friends.”

“I hate that girl.”

“She was pretty mean.”

“Tell me about Donna Middleton.”

“Donna Hays.”

“Yes. Tell me about her.”

This is one of my favorite subjects. I tell Sheila Renfro about how Donna didn’t trust me initially because men had been mean to her, but that Kyle and I were friends first, and then Donna and I became friends. I tell her about how we threw snowballs at each other and had pizza, and how bad things kept happening but we hung in there together and remained friends. I tell her about Donna marrying Victor and moving away. I also tell her what happened with Kyle.

“She sounds like a wonderful friend,” Sheila Renfro says, and she is correct about that. “I wish I had a friend like that here.”

“Donna Middleton has been very good to me. I mean, Donna Hays. I always forget to use her married name.”

“I don’t think she liked me.”

I was hurt when I was in the hospital, so I don’t remember all of Sheila Renfro’s interactions with Donna.

“It was a tense situation,” I say, and Sheila Renfro nods.

“Did you ever want to kiss Donna?” she asks.

I consider this for a moment. It’s true that I developed strong feelings for Donna as we were becoming friends, but I don’t think those feelings were romantic. At the time, I was much more interested in Joy Annette, my blind date, and that turned out to be a disaster.

“No,” I say. “She was just my friend.”

“Would you like to kiss me?” Sheila Renfro asks.

I look down at my cup. I don’t like making eye contact with people when I’m uncomfortable, or at all.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“That’s not how you talk confidently to a girl.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be good at it. Also, mouths are gross.”

“I could teach you. And we could brush our teeth first.”

“Can we also floss and use mouthwash?”

Sheila Renfro laughs. “Yes.”

“Because mouths are gross.”

“I know, Edward.”

Sheila Renfro gives me my own new toothbrush and a tiny tube of Crest brand toothpaste, along with a tiny bottle of Oral-B brand mouthwash and Johnson & Johnson brand dental floss. She says she keeps these small items on hand for lodgers who forget to bring their own supplies.

We stand together at the mirror in Sheila Renfro’s bathroom and we floss, brush, and swig mouthwash. In the reflection in the mirror, it looks like we choreographed it. I have to give Sheila Renfro credit. She is a very competent steward of her dental health. She brushes with at least one hundred strokes, just like I do. Some people rush through things like brushing their teeth, but they shouldn’t. It’s important to take the time to do the most important things the proper way.

We sit facing each other at an angle on Sheila Renfro’s couch.

“I’m nervous,” I say.

She puts her hands on my thighs and leans in.

“It’s going to be all right. Now, stop leaning away from me, or this won’t work.”

I return to an upright sitting position. Sheila Renfro leans in again. Her breath smells good.

Her eyes are closed when her lips touch mine. My eyes are open, which is how I know hers are closed. She moves her head in small, tight circles, and I try to move mine in the same direction along with her. Her lips feel warm against mine.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy what we’re doing. I do. It’s that I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to do what I’ve seen in movies, but it feels weird.

Sheila Renfro, her mouth now removed from mine but still very close, gives me instructions.

“Put your hands on my hips,” she says.

I do that, and she slides her hands farther up my thighs as she leans in again. This time I lean toward her, even though my ribs ache a little bit, and we kiss again.

I can feel her tongue trying to get between my lips. I pull back and look at her.

“Open your mouth,” she says. “Move your hands up.”

Both of these things sound inadvisable to me—mouths, even freshly brushed mouths, are gross—but I do as I’m told.

Sheila Renfro’s tongue goes into my mouth, and it’s the strangest thing, because I expect to be grossed out, but I’m not. I like it. She uses her tongue to touch mine, and then she pulls back again.

“Use your tongue, Edward.”

Again I do as I’m told, and my tongue and hers flop around inside our mouths. I move my hands from her hips and up her side. Through her plaid work shirt, I can feel her ribs. As I do this, her hands again move up my thigh, almost to where my legs meet my tallywhacker.

Then she touches my hard tallywhacker through my pants. Holy shit!

“Do you want to go to the bedroom?” she asks.

“I want to keep kissing,” I say.

She smiles at me, the biggest smile I’ve seen yet from her, and I realize that I’m smiling big, too. She leans into me and I meet her with my mouth open.

This is so great.

After we’re done kissing, Sheila Renfro sits close to me and rests her left hand on my right knee.

“When I put my hand on your knee,” she says, “you should put your arm around me and make me feel safe.”

I lean to my left, and I feel the dull ache in my ribs. I lift my right arm and clip her under the chin.

“Ouch.”

“I’m sorry, Sheila Renfro.”

“When are you going to call me just Sheila?”

She holds her jaw between her thumb and first two fingers and moves it back and forth.

“What about S-Money? You liked that.”

“That was just for fun. I don’t like that one anymore, and it’s not warm and sexy to hear my full name.”

“I’m sorry, Sheila Renfro.”

“Edward, put your arm around me.”

I set my arm where her back meets her neck.

“Like this?”

“Don’t hold it so stiff. Wrap me up and pull me in.”

I do as she describes. It feels weird.

“Like this?”

She nestles her head into my shoulder.

“Perfect.”

Her hair smells like strawberries.

“What do you know about sex, Edward?”

I did not expect this question. Expectations are just a way to be disappointed with what you get anyway.

“Just what I read,” I say.

“Have you ever masturbated?”

“Yes.”

“You’re awfully honest about it.”

“I read ‘Dear Abby’ every day. ‘Dear Abby’ says that half of men practice self-satisfaction and the other half lie when they say don’t. I figure with those odds, why lie?”

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

This question is one I expected, given the direction of things.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You keep saying that. Why?”

“It makes me nervous.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I didn’t say I was afraid. I said I was nervous. But, yes, I’m afraid, too.”

“Why?”

“What if I’m not good at it? What if I can’t do it? What if I have sex with you and I think it’s great, and then I have to go home? What if I miss it when I’m gone?”

I hate what-if questions, because they almost never have answers.

Sheila Renfro sits up, removing her head from my shoulder. She makes a half-turn on the couch and faces me.

“You don’t have to go home. My daddy left a full shed of tools here when he died. You could have them. You could stay here. You could help me run this motel.”

“I live in Billings, Montana,” I say. “Not here.”

“Well, I live here,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t you like me?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you like kissing me?”

“Yes.”

“I liked kissing you, too. We could kiss every day if you were here. We could have lunch and work on the motel and go have a beer at the tavern—”

“It’s better that I don’t drink alcohol with my type two diabetes.”

“The alcohol isn’t the point. We could be together. That’s what I mean. Don’t you want that?”

“I live in Billings, Montana,” I say again.

At that, Sheila Renfro stands up and walks away. I call after her, but she doesn’t turn around. She goes into her bedroom and closes the door.

I stay away from Sheila Renfro for the rest of the afternoon and stick to my room. I sat in her living room for sixty-eight minutes after she closed herself in her bedroom, but she never came out. So I left.

I wish I could explain myself to Sheila Renfro. She is asking me to take a leap of faith, and I have a lifetime’s worth of experience that suggests a keen attention to the facts is the more advisable course. My house is in Billings, Montana. My job was there, and while Jay L. Lamb seems to believe that I can make it through the remainder of my days without working, I know I’ll need
something else to do. Returning to the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
is not an option. But it’s a big city, and I will find something.