Kiss Crush Collide (11 page)

I skitter across the gravel to the passenger side. He starts the engine as I slide into my seat, and then I feel it, like a strong yank to my gut—the pull and switch as the clutch lets go and the gas takes over in a perfectly smooth transition under Porter’s control, with no pause or gap or reluctance. So, I think as I relax, leaning into the cushioned leather, that’s how it’s supposed to feel.

We are barely moving, but I need to know before we go any farther or any faster, so I turn to him and ask, “Do you know my name?”

He rolls the car along slowly, the gravel bumping and popping gently underneath the tires. He turns and leans toward me until our foreheads almost touch.

“Yes,” he says, smiling, “of course I do.” He kisses me on the forehead. “You’re Leah.”

I don’t know how he knows. Did I tell him? I thought I did, and I didn’t. I thought he didn’t know, but he did.

“Then why does your jacket say Porter?” My finger embroiders some invisible floss into my T-shirt, right above my heart.

“’Cause I am a porter,” he says simply as he turns the wheel sharply, pointing us away from the rocks and the danger and toward the hum of the highway. “At the club. It’s my job. Park the cars, wash the cars, porter the cars. And you know, occasionally,” he smiles over at me as he turns left onto the highway and we finally hit blacktop with a squawk and leave the dusty gravel for good, “drive the cars.”

“I guess that explains the cars.”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” he replies as he shifts into a higher gear and we take off.

The quarry has become a small strip of purple and bronze streaks in the sparkly oval mirror outside my open window when I finally figure it out. Duh, I think as I drop back into my seat, a little bit blown away.

“You looked at my license,” I say.

He laughs and takes my hand, rubbing his thumb lightly across my knuckles.

“Smart
and
hot,” he says, “Just my type.”

I grin, squinting into the sunlight. That’s exactly what I was thinking.

I remember the grass at our old lake house. It was like a green rug, cool and thick, the whole summer through. It was good for running in bare feet, and we had tons of trees. Oaks. Huge ones that made great shade and tree houses and could hold up the three of us tumbled into one hammock with no trouble.

I learned to golf on that sloped front lawn. With his big arms wrapped around mine, my dad helped me line up my shot with my tiny putter, and then we watched the dimpled white ball roll away, over and over, until it was almost too dark to see it in the thick grass.

But this house is too new, the grass started as seed, the trees too young to provide any shade. Some of them are still staked, and we are just hoping they make it through the summer heat. It doesn’t help that it hasn’t rained in what feels like forever.

I leave the house early each morning. My mother peers over the rim of her latte, spoon resting on the edge of her saucer, because there should
always
be a saucer, gives me a quick visual inspection, and compliments my lip gloss before returning to her bridal magazine. A short lick across her thumb dismisses me as she flicks to the next glossy page, and I am on my way.

The grass crunches and flattens under my feet as I ceremoniously cut a drawn-out sloping angle across our yard, ignoring the buzzing coming from my bag as Dani and Len call yet again, probably after another all-nighter. I avoid our long black driveway for as long as possible and, with it, the imminent early-morning arrival of Roger.

Like clockwork, he downshifts as he makes his military-style turn into our driveway at exactly 8:15 A.M. each day. Exactly.

I overslept once—I think it was after a hard night of fending off Shane—and there I was, still half asleep, propped up in the breakfast nook with my sisters nursing some thick chocolaty milk, when the doorbell rang. I heard my mother’s heels click across the foyer and then her voice echoing into the kitchen: “Oh, Roger, you’re practically family now . . . no need to ring the bell.” Roger shoved himself into the breakfast nook, practically squeezing me out, and leaned over to wrap his arms around Yorke’s stomach and give her what I thought was a very sloppy kiss, morning time or not. I almost barfed.

Now I am sure to escape early, and after weeks of practice I can make it all the way across the yard and to the edge of the driveway before I smile big and fake and wave at Roger just as he angles his red car to ninety degrees and snaps down the drive.

Free for the day, I sling my bag and swing my hips along the path through the park, never sure when and how Porter will show up, but sure that he will. It turns out he was right, he has become a habit.

Each car is different. Every day is new. He just rolls up,
rrvvvvvvvt
, and my life changes. When my butt settles into the warp of someone else’s seat, it feels as if Porter and I are starting again, fresh and new.

The smell of a stranger’s perfume, the feel of the upholstery, the wrappers and maps and pens and glove box, are a discovery each time. It’s a lot like my relationship, if you can call it that, with him.

It’s bits and pieces that I stick together in my mind to make a whole. Two hours here and then ten minutes there. Part of a story about his dad that is cut short ’cause the car we are roaming around in is due back, or a long description of the scar that I noticed on his hand and how he got it when he was twelve and wanted to paint his bedroom and tried to open a can of black semigloss with a humongous flat screwdriver that slipped out of the groove and stabbed him in the hand that was trying to hold everything steady.

I know that he and Big Duff don’t exactly get along but tolerate each other. That Big Duff walked out on Porter and his mom when Porter was five and then drank himself into a hole. That Big Duff is now clean and sober (surprise to me) and has a toaster oven that he likes to cook personal pizzas in. That Porter has to show him how to do it each and every time. That Porter thinks Big Duff’s cigarettes or the toaster oven are going to burn the house down one night.

I have never seen it, the house about to go up in toaster oven flames, but I imagine a leather sofa and matching love seat covered in sloppy vinyl tape Xs that hide the cigarette burns and worn spots. It is very man decorated and has a slight smell, probably from the oversplashing of Big Duff’s cologne as he leaves for his dates.

I know that Big Duff does three things religiously—Wednesday night AA meetings, a 6:00 A.M. tee time on Thursdays, and Sunday morning service—and that he is not happy that Porter will not join him in any of the three.

Porter is hard to pin down, so I know how Big Duff feels. He changes cars the way I change outfits or lip gloss. He can appear in a car borrowed from someone at a tennis lesson, or in a Jeep with a fresh buff and wax, even in a gold Mercedes owned by a bronzed trophy wife spending the day in the club spa. I hop in, and Porter slides his arm along the back of the seat, fingers sparking their way across the upholstery before they light onto my tan shoulder and we take off.

I never know where we are going. It could be the park, or the quarry, maybe the lake, or even the curvy road that goes past the bluff. With Porter it seems nothing is out of the way or out of bounds or too far. It’s so unpredictable that it’s perfect.

One time we spent the morning parked in front of the big screen at the abandoned drive-in theater two towns over. The screen was slashed, but the white Porsche was brand-new. Oddly, the dash, and practically every other surface visible from the driver’s seat, was covered in neon-colored Post-it notes, the little teeny, tiny ones that are practically impossible to write on. They were stuck to the odometer, the radio display, and the cup holders. They were everywhere.

I put my feet up on the dash and leaned my head back, laughing as Porter peeled off each note, squinted, and attempted to decipher the elfin handwriting, reading it out loud if he could, before he put the note back in a completely different spot. Later that day I found a bright pink Post-it stuck to the bottom of my sandal. Scratched and dirty, it said simply “Dry cleaning.” I folded it up and stashed it away in the front pocket of my backpack. Someone’s shirts may be forgotten, but I will remember that day always.

Eight days later we drove for forever in a totally dirty and disgusting Cadillac with green and purple Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview mirror and crumbs of unknown origin all over the floor. Running out, doors left open, we dipped our feet into a river three counties away from home, cool and mossy, just to run back up the bank and drive home with dripping ankles in time for Porter to return the car to an old man in plaid golf pants. Porter told me the next day that the guy tipped him fifteen bucks for taking such good care of it.

Sometimes he drives by with only a minute to spare and we get orange juice and powdered sugar doughnuts and make out on the hood of some random car in the parking lot at the Supervalue. He is sticky sweet, and I want to swallow him whole.

I can’t imagine how to explain this confusion and anticipation and unexpected delight to anyone, especially to anyone in my family. So for now I don’t. I know I am safe because my mother is buried in invitation samples and calligraphy choices and Shane is hidden under a helmet, sweating it up on the fifty-yard line blocks away.

You would think I would be used to it by now, but Porter still leaves me feeling wide awake and trembling. Before, I knew exactly what was going to happen and how and with whom and when. But life with Porter rolls by so fast, a moving feast of kissing and supermarket baked goods and sneaking around.

With Shane it’s like someone is leaning on the brakes, hard. We spend our nights stuck, watching movies or minigolfing, where I always win because his hammy hands are too big to maneuver the tiny putter. We eat burgers and fries at the drive-in, the tray resting on his car door, the dripping glass mugs filled with soda, and Shane’s hand wet and heavy on my thigh.

I don’t fit in Shane’s car anymore. And I used to think it was made for me. I know if I angle my head the right way, I can see myself in the visor mirror and the side mirror at the same time. One of my tampons is buried, in case of emergency, in the back of the compact glove box. My hairbrush is tossed onto the backseat. The interior smells of my perfume. I own this guy.

But I find myself pulling at the seat belt now, stretching it out away from me. It is rubbing my neck, chafing me and pressing me too tight into the seat. I struggle, and Shane reaches over, touching my neck, trying to lean in and kiss it, asking, “Here?”

I swat him away, complaining, “It hurts.”

He is quicksand. The more I fight, the farther in I fall. I feel caught and confused. Finally I give in and close my eyes.

I see fields and farms rolling by in my mind, the ground soft and dark as little green plants shoot up in the morning sun, a bright smile and bright eyes behind the wheel next to me, the road open and unknown before us.

This road exists in a space that is all mine. I don’t have to share it with anyone. It is the most important part of my life but is totally separate from my actual life. It is not one piece of a matching set, it hasn’t been done before, I didn’t just memorize the steps while watching Freddie’s feet tap, tap, tap as the curtain lifted.

When Shane’s lips brush against my ear, my eyes pop open and everything skids to a stop. Reality snaps into focus, and I know exactly where this is headed, whether I want it or not—more Friday nights, more fumbling around in the backseat, more sloppy kisses and copped feels and constantly holding hands in the hallway.

I feel like the last car in the Fourth of July parade, the one stuck behind the horses and the high school band, held up by the Hi-Steppers, the local third-grade baton twirlers who, year after year, never actually seem to learn to twirl a baton. I am idling.

Valerie is officially the color of my mother’s morning coffee. Yes, in six weeks she has become a light, cancery brown, the human approximation of a double nonfat mocha with extra foam and two pink packets of sweetener.

I admit, I had my doubts that tanning was even possible for her when she walked into the pool that first day all frail and pasty and white, then walked out later all pink and broiled, but today, as I watch her through the squeaky clean glass of the office window, the cool metallic honeycomb of the pool fence and gray sky as her backdrop, she definitely looks a little less sickly. Who knows? By the end of the summer she could resemble a real person. Maybe.

I grab a pen and quickly scribble my initials onto the wrinkled, water-spotted staff sign-in sheet. It says
KEEP
IT
SAFE
OUT
THERE! Someone has turned the dot of the exclamation point into the head of a swimmer, drowning in a sea of ballpoint blue waves. A black marker shark swims in to bite his ankles.

I scoop up my rolled towel and whistle and stop to check myself in the mirror hanging next to the peeling door frame. Ignoring the gawking freshman boys watching my every move and Margo with the man voice, I stride across the deck, my suit riding higher with each long, hip-swinging step.

Valerie does an about-face, stalls, and then matches her pace to mine so that we are walking along together. She is wearing white knee socks and those exercise sandal things with a wide-striped halter suit. Ouch. And she wonders why she can’t get a date. Actually, I don’t know if she wonders that, since we never talk about that kind of stuff. But please, there’s her answer. She looks like a broasted chicken with shoes on.
Slip clonk, slip clonk
, her socks and sandals are an evil combo as she tries to keep up with me.

“Shane was looking for you,” she says, completely out of breath.

I pretend I don’t care and simultaneously wonder if I really even do as I remember in delicious detail the car, the kissing, and the store-bought cinnamon coffee cake that was this morning.

“I told him I didn’t know where you were,” she says.

Catching her breath, she holds her hand out and takes my towel from me. I pull myself up onto the first rung of the red lifeguard chair. Reaching down, I take my towel back and ask, “Yeah, what did he say?”