If I Was Your Girl (10 page)

“Listen, babe, I gotta jet,” Virginia said. I could hear her car starting in the background, the familiar sound of V-103 blaring on her stereo. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks for listening,” I said as I began the walk down the bleachers toward the parking lot. I was starting to feel better already. “I think I'm going to be just fine.”

 

11

The sky was slate-gray and pregnant with the threat of another in a week of thunderstorms. A cool, moist wind rushed past Grant and me as we sat in the bed of his friend Rodney's pickup truck. I put my whipping, stinging hair in a ponytail and felt my cheeks warm when I noticed him staring at me. The truck passed over a fallen branch, bouncing both of us a few inches into the air. I clutched the raised wheel well for dear life. Grant laughed softly and smiled, then held his hands up as I kicked playfully at him.

“It's not funny!” I said, starting to smile despite myself. “Riding in the back of a truck is really dangerous!”

“It'll be worth it,” he said. “Muddin's a blast, and I want you to meet the guys.”

“If they're anything like Parker, I hope you won't mind me staying in the truck.”

“They can be a little rough around the edges,” he said, looking up the road and rubbing his neck, “but Parker's kind of a special case. You don't need to worry about him though.” He turned back to me and smiled. “Really, it's less about you meeting them and more about me getting to show you off.”

“Anyway!” I took my turn to look away. “Why didn't you pick me up? Isn't ‘muddin'' more fun if you have your own car?”

“So you admit it sounds like fun?” he said.

“It sounds kind of dumb,” I said, shrugging apologetically.

“Well, sure it does,” Grant said. “But that's what makes it fun. It's an excuse to hang out with your buddies and act like an idiot in the woods and get messy.” I gave him a doubtful look. He patted his backpack. “Don't worry, though. I got picnic stuff in here. We'll make our own fun if you get bored.”

“Thanks,” I said as the truck turned off the highway onto a mud-and-gravel track into the woods. The canopy blotted out the already-weak sunlight and drizzled water on us for a few more minutes until the faint purr of engines could be heard; then we burst into a clearing. The grass was torn and rutted with dozens of wildly curving tire tracks as mud-caked trucks careened back and forth with no real purpose besides the motion itself. A small crowd of equally mud-caked figures congregated around a campfire and a convoy of small red coolers. I recognized some of the faces from school, including Parker's. Grant hopped down once the truck came to a stop a ways off from the crowd.

“Here you go,” Rodney said as he stepped down from the cab and tossed Grant his keys. “I'm gonna grab a beer first.”

“Thanks,” Grant said, and climbed into the driver's seat. He looked down at me with a confused expression. “Whatcha waiting for?”

“We're going already? I was hoping for some time to digest my breakfast first.”

Grant laughed. “Just one go-round, at least?” he said, lolling out the window like a defeated rag doll. “Come on, you gotta! And anyway I brought lotsa sandwiches, so if you yak we can fill you right back up.”

“Charming.” I laughed and made my way to the passenger seat over a chorus of conspicuously loud, whooping cries from behind us. I buckled my seat belt, enjoying Grant's nearness for a moment, until the engine roared and the truck fishtailed.

Grant leaned forward, grinning, his foot stamping the floor. The rear tires shot great arcs of mud into the air behind us for a moment, and then we were off. I screamed and clutched his arm as the edge of the clearing rushed toward us. Grant laughed and spun the wheel at the last second, sending the truck into a long, hissing drift that splashed mud across the trunks of a dozen trees. He righted the drift and took off across the clearing again and now I was laughing too. The truck spun again, this time through a surprisingly deep depression that splattered gouts of mud on the windows and windshield. I remembered insisting that Grant explain muddin' to me and realized that he never could have, really—not in a way that would have made me understand. How much of life was like that, just waiting for me to come and give it a chance? The truck finally came to a stop at the opposite end of the clearing from our classmates. I just sat and panted for a moment, running my adrenaline-shaken hands through my hair.

“That was…” I began breathily, searching for the most accurate word and failing. “That was awesome!”

“I hoped you'd like it,” Grant said softly. I turned to him, grinning like a kid, and felt a flutter in my chest when I saw a much more reserved smile on his face and his dark eyes locked firmly on mine. He seemed like he was waiting for something. The flutter turned into a tightening as I realized what was about to happen.

“So,” I said, looking away and stroking my hair nervously. I couldn't stop thinking about how he had darted away after school the other day. I didn't want to ruin the moment, but I needed to know. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” Grant said, leaning against the steering wheel and cocking his head.

“Are we dating?”

“Well, we're on a date.”

“I know.” I felt like every cell in my body was vibrating, a steady thrum from my hair to my toes. “But are we going to go on more?”

Grant frowned and looked out the windshield, and for a moment I was certain his answer was no. I was too boring. I was too stuck-up. I'd been a horrible dancer at the party and I'd assumed muddin' was stupid.

“Guess that's up to you,” he said, favoring me with his full smile. I realized his front teeth were actually a little bit crooked, and I realized that a person's flaws could make them even more beautiful sometimes. “I know I want to.”

“But the other day, after school, you seemed like you wanted to be as far away from me as possible.”

“Shit,” Grant said, sighing. His hands beat a steady rhythm on the wheel. “I'm sorry, Amanda. I guess I was just embarrassed about not being able to give you a ride. Made me feel less manly or something. It's just things with you are so fresh and new, and … you ever feel like you only want somebody to see you at your best?”

I couldn't help smiling.

“I don't just want you at your best though,” I said. “I want to get to know you.”

I thought about what Virginia had said, about us both keeping secrets, and I thought about my parents and how quiet it was in our home in the year before they got divorced. How they basically stopped telling each other anything important. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right. I chewed my knuckle for a moment as I remembered the day at the plantation with Bee. “What if we played the honesty game?”

“What's that?” he said. I explained the rules the way Bee had explained them to me. Grant paused a moment, thinking. “So it's like Truth or Dare?” he said.

“Kind of.” I nodded, thinking of how Bee had described it. “Just, you know, without the pervy stuff.” He put on a show of pouting and I gave him a light shove. “Whatever! Play your cards right and pervy stuff might be negotiable. So you'll play it with me?”

He nodded. “Do we start now?”

I shrugged. “No time like the present, right?” I took a deep breath. “Okay, I'll go first.” I took another deep breath and thought of the sermon at church with Anna. The idea of shedding all your layers of secrets and lies. Maybe someday, if we played this long enough, I would be able to tell him the truth about everything. “That night by the lake was my first kiss.”

“No way,” Grant said, shaking his head. “No way.” I nodded emphatically. “How'd you hold out so long? Pretty as you are, guys must've been chasing you since middle school.”

“Thanks,” I said, blushing. “I changed a lot last summer, so this is all pretty new,” I told him truthfully. “Your turn.”

“That was your first kiss,” Grant said, tapping his chin and looking up at the ceiling, “but it was my best.”

I touched my lips and looked down at my knees, my cheeks burning. I had been so afraid I would be a bad kisser or, worse yet, that I would kiss like a boy. I closed my eyes and remembered the kiss and my heart began to race. When I calmed down enough to look back at him I saw him blushing as well. I laced my fingers in his and said, “We can't just let that record stand, can we?”

“Why, no ma'am,” Grant said, leaning toward me, “I suppose we cannot.”

The kiss outside the apartment was beautiful and nervous and almost chaste. The kiss on the bleachers was tender but fleeting. What happened next was different. Our mouths connected and somehow I found myself in the driver's seat, poised above him with my hands on his hard, broad chest and my hair draped around us like a curtain. I pulled back for a moment and we just breathed, staring into each other's eyes. I felt something brush my waist and looked down to see his hand inching toward the hem of my shirt, his gaze questioning if this was okay. I bit my lip and answered by kissing his neck and biting his ear. His fingers burrowed beneath my shirt and drifted past my belly button, where they stopped for a moment, and then I felt them near my ribs.

“Hey!” Rodney yelled, pounding his fist on the window. I screamed and tumbled back to the passenger seat, banging my head in the process. “Come on, y'all, that's new upholstery!”

Grant stammered an apology as we stumbled out of the cab, both of us red-faced with embarrassment and stifled laughter. Rodney climbed into his truck in a huff and sped away, splattering both of us with mud.

We stood there in silence for a moment, shaking and smiling, until Grant leaned over and smeared some of his mud into some of my mud and the laughter we'd been holding in finally escaped in a rush.

 

12

I sat with Bee beneath a canopy of brown and red leaves behind the art building, wisps of smoke rising from our lips as we talked. She fiddled with the settings on a new digital camera while I tried to draw her without her noticing. The cicadas had died off a few weeks before, and everything from the wind to the scratch of my pencil as it moved across the page seemed raw and loud in their absence.

“How was your report card?” I asked, my voice croaking as I handed the joint back to her.

“Shitty,” she said. “I would've done okay in English if Mr. Robinson didn't have it out for me, but I managed to pull out a B anyway. Got a C in chemistry and a D in calc, but who cares, right?”

“I care,” I said, rolling the tension out of my neck as I turned my attention to her hair, trying to translate its movement in the breeze in frozen graphite.

“Oh yeah?” Bee said. “What do you wanna do with your life anyway?”

“I want to go to school up north,” I said. “NYU maybe, if I get in. No idea what to major in though.”

She leaned over suddenly and examined my drawing. I tried to hide it from her, but she grinned.

“I'm like forty pounds heavier than that, but I'm not gonna complain,” she said. “Can I have that when you're done?”

“Sure,” I said, turning to a new page. “But yeah, I'm not dead set on New York. I just know I want to get as far away from here as possible.”

“Word,” Bee said, holding the camera close to her face and screwing her nose up in concentration. “Fuck this place.” She pointed the camera my way and snapped a few photos before I could turn away—a reflex from years of being unable to stomach the sight of myself in photographs. “Why a girl like you doesn't want to be seen is a mystery to me,” Bee said, shaking her head. “How's that boy of yours by the way?”

“Good,” I said, sketching out a bunch of random shapes that I would go back later and fill with faces. I felt my cheeks burn the way they always did when I thought of Grant. I thought of the movies we hadn't paid any attention to, and the rolled-up-jeans walks by the lake, and fingertips brushing and smiling glances in first period while Parker glared sullenly. “Great, actually. Except…” I trailed off, unsure how much I wanted to say.

“Trouble in the garden?” Bee said, grinning. “Does he have bad breath? Is he, like, super racist?”

“No,” I said slowly, arching an eyebrow. “Nothing like that. He's just … It's just…” I looked up at Bee's inquisitive face, and realized that as much as I loved talking to Virginia, I wanted to talk to someone about Grant who actually
knew
Grant, and the words began tumbling out. “He's weird sometimes. Like, we have to meet up for all our dates; he won't pick me up. He says his car is in the shop, but it's been weeks now. And he's always busy with something he doesn't want to talk about. Like, we're lucky if we get to hang out once a week, you know? No way football takes up that much of his time. I feel like he's keeping things from me.”

“Maybe he's gay,” Bee said. She obviously meant it as a joke, but I couldn't help imagining the worst, that he only liked me for the boyish things about me. Was it possible?

“You don't really…” I began, only to trail off. I wondered for a horrible moment if that was why he liked me, but Bee gave me a weird look and stopped my mind from swirling. “You don't really think he's gay, do you?”

“How would I know?” Bee said. “Just 'cause I'm bi doesn't mean I have magic powers. I'm not the plucky queer sidekick in your romantic comedy.”

“I'm sor— Look, I didn't mean it that way,” I said, suppressing the urge to apologize. “It's just you kind of have dirt on everybody, don't you?”

She laughed at the look on my face. “I'm joking! Grant's straight as they come.” She closed her eyes and slid down onto her back like a serpent. “Parker, though? Biggest closet case I ever saw.”

“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “I told you what happened at that party! He's like a giant homophobe!”