Loner (18 page)

“We should wait,” she said, sounding more sober.

“But it feels so good,” I said, poking at an oblique angle. “And I want to feel close to you in a way I haven't before.” It came off as a cheesy line. I needed something heartfelt.

“I love you,” I said. The words tumbled out with strange ease. I hadn't told my parents I loved them since I was a child.

The sounds of our breathing. The rumble of her white-noise machine. The clanking of the radiator.

“I love you, too,” Sara said.

I evol uoy, oot.

I cautiously rejoined our bodies.

“I don't know if I'm ready,” she said.

“We'll take it slow,” I promised her, gripping my penis and manually rubbing it up and down her vagina. She was wet and didn't say anything as I guided myself inside.

I won't lewdly describe the sensation. Greater than the physical pleasure, anyway, was the gratification of clearing away the stigmatized reek of virginity I emanated.

“I want to come inside you,” I whispered into her ear. She didn't protest, and so I did, in a gloriously undammed eruption whose aftermath felt so unlike the disgrace that typically accompanied my self-inflicted climaxes. This was more akin to extricating a slimy clot of hair from a sink drain and watching the filthy standing water swirl out of sight with a satisfying glug.

And with that, my chronic ache for you felt a little less acute. I was a copulative agent now, same as you, inducted into the society of those who practiced physical intimacy in its most classic form. You weren't towering above me anymore.

“Have you done that before?” I imagined you asking, our limbs tethered in a postcoital clutch.

“Of course,” I'd say, and it would be true.

Chapter 11

I
n the morning Sara seemed aloof, or maybe bashful; she didn't mention anything about the threshold we'd crossed hours earlier, and I wasn't going to bring it up. Perhaps it was the result of her vicious hangover. Or maybe it was her attempt to mirror my cool, which she likely attributed to my veteran reaction to intercourse: the emotionless junction of anatomies, a mercantile transfer of bodily fluids, nothing worth making a fuss about.

Yet inwardly I was rejoicing over my new status, estimating how many of the other freshmen in the dining hall were virgins—those sad, perfect little Harvard students who spent all their time in libraries. Indeed, there was more to college than studying.

I went to Sara's room that night, hoping to repeat our performance and to see you. Neither event happened. Though we still didn't discuss having had sex, upon getting into bed she mentioned that she was having painful premenstrual cramps. I took the hint and we went to sleep.

Only three more weeks until our next paper was due in Prufrock.
Based on the successful results of our first collaboration, I expected another request for assistance. I just needed to go through the motions a little longer with Sara.

That Friday evening we saw
Macbeth
at the American Repertory Theater, with Layla as a third wheel, and went afterward to a nearby café for tea. As we waited in line, I observed a cat—I assume the owner's—staring with a stoner's intensity at a heating vent. Eventually a cockroach crawled out of the vent, and the cat lunged. But instead of killing it, it pawed the insect around, curtailing its path in every direction.

I nudged the girls and pointed. Layla looked disgusted; Sara, distressed.

“Don't watch,” Sara said, turning away. “It's upsetting.”

The cat flipped its quarry on its exoskeleton and, as the cockroaches' legs waved feebly in the air, enjoyed the spectacle for a few moments before further torturing it.

My attention was diverted by a familiar voice at the front of the line. Tom the TF. When he was done placing his order, I stepped forward to say hello. This was what I had imagined my life here would be like: bumping into people I knew wherever I went, even grad students.

“Tom,” I said as Sara and Layla spectated. “It's David.”

He looked as if he were trying to place me.

“From Prufrock,” I added to jog his memory. “Not your section, though.”

“Nice meeting you,” he said.

“We actually met a few weeks ago. At another café, in fact—the Barker Café.” I forced a chuckle. “You made the joke about how your section devolves into prurient discussions about nineteenth-­century sexuality.”

He thought for a couple of seconds. “Oh, right-right-right,” he said, seemingly less self-possessed out of a classroom context. “This is my wife, Lucy.” He put his arm around the woman by his side. “And I'm sorry—remind me of your name?”

“David.” Though not in the same league as you, his wife was sleekly attractive, and it baffled me that she'd be with Tom. Ever since the Barker encounter, I'd found his comments in Prufrock—especially the sardonic ones—increasingly smarmy. He wasn't even that good-looking; he just carried himself as if he were.

“Are you an English grad student here, too?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I teach comp lit at Colby in Maine.”

The barista set two lidded cups on the counter. “And she's been driving all day,” Tom said, grabbing them. “So we should get going. Have a good weekend.”

After our orders came we took a table. I had a hot chocolate with soy milk and Sara and Layla shared a pot of decaf green tea. Sara dispensed quarter cups at a time so that it wouldn't lose its heat, thwarting any burns by vacuum-sipping the liquid's surface. The girls talked about their elementary school drama careers, ­one-upping each other with tales of botched lines and missed stage cues.

“I wish I could act,” Sara said wistfully. “Not for plays, but because it would have benefited me in a number of life situations. David, try my tea, it's really good.”

She poured a fresh serving and passed me her cup. I took a gulp, singeing the roof of my mouth, and loudly sucked in cool air through my teeth.

“Is he okay?” asked Layla as I rocked in discomfort.

“He's fine,” Sara assured her. It took some time for me to recover, and when I did, Sara gave me a tender pat on the head. “It's a good thing you'll never have to endure childbirth.” She turned to Layla. “David doesn't have the highest pain threshold.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You know,” she said. “You're always whining about the littlest things.”

“No I'm not.”

“It's okay that you're sort of delicate,” Sara said, now rubbing my
back. “I'm not the kind of girl who needs her boyfriend to be some manly soldier.”

“Did you ever act in high school, David?” Layla politely inquired, trying to head off a lovers' spat.

My last theatrical role was a nonspeaking part as an anonymous Pilgrim in a fourth-grade Thanksgiving production.

“Actually, I was in
Macbeth
senior year,” I said.

“You
were
?” Sara said. “Why didn't you say anything?”

I shrugged.

“What part were you?” Layla asked.

“Macbeth.”

“
David!
” Sara laughed. “You
played
Macbeth last year, and we just
saw Macbeth
, and you didn't mention it all night?”

“You didn't ask.”

“You must be a really good actor if you got cast as Macbeth,” Layla said. “What else were you in?”

“That was it. I only auditioned for it because my girlfriend was Lady Macbeth—she was the female lead in all the plays—and I always said I didn't think acting was that hard, so she dared me to audition.” I was surprised by how easily the backstory came to me, reinforcing—
buttressing
—my previous lie to Sara about Heidi ­McMasters. “Then, when I got the part, I had to go through with it. The drama teacher kept hounding me to act in the spring production, but I didn't want to. I couldn't stand the theater kids. Acting's for people with no real personality of their own. Just ventriloquists for other people's ideas.”

“Huh.” Sara smiled, looking at my face as if hoping to glean all the other secret talents I had yet to divulge. “You think you know someone.”

When we were home, Sara asked me to scratch an itch on her back. She lay facedown on the mattress and pulled up her shirt.

“You've got a blackhead,” I said as I raked my fingernails over her skin. To my surprise, she asked me to pop it. These were the
familiarities you broached, I supposed, once you'd had sex. I pinched the decimal point until the head crowned and a thin brown pill sprouted out. It would have repulsed me if I didn't take such pleasure in its extraction.

“Got it,” I said.

“
Ooh
, show it to me,” Sara squealed, turning her head around to take a gander. Bearing the fragile specimen on my index finger, I reached in her direction.

“Hold it under the light,” she demanded, scooching toward her bedside lamp. I moved my hand beneath its heat and she squinted with shameless fascination at the dark, bulbous root. She looked disappointed when I flicked it with my thumb into the trash.

“Are there more?” she asked, pulling up her shirt again.

“No,” I said without looking.

We got in bed and her whispery snores picked up within minutes of turning out the light. I lay there contemplating her willingness to have me extirpate her impurity, unable to fathom letting anyone—even Sara—examine at such close range my own vile subcutaneous matter.

I was on the crumbly precipice of sleep when you entered, briskly slipped into your room, and reemerged soon with your toiletries. Once you were gone I removed myself from the bed, careful not to rouse Sara, donned the mesh shorts I kept at her place for bathroom runs, and stepped into the hallway, shutting the door behind me. I stood there waiting for you to return. Finally the bathroom door opened and you appeared. Preoccupied by your phone, you inched your way down the hall.

“I got locked out,” I said as you approached. “She isn't hearing me knock over her white-noise machine and I don't want to wake up the hall.”

You briefly registered me and returned your attention to the screen.

“Very thoughtful of you,” you muttered, typing away. “You two
have such a wholesome thing going on. Together every night. Happily ever after.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“I wonder what that's like.”

“A healthy relationship?”

You continued to thumb the screen aggressively. After a long break you spoke almost as though you were talking to yourself and had forgotten I was there. “Being attracted to nice guys and not self-centered assholes.”

It took me a moment to come up with a reply.

“People are more complex than simple binaries,” I said. “The ­assholes usually have a little niceness underneath. And the nice guys have a little asshole to them.”

“Do they?” Your lips curled coquettishly. “The nice guys?”

“Some of them.”

“And would you put yourself in that category? One of those ­assholish nice guys?”

The hall was silent except for the apiarian buzz of the overhead light. I canted my head, as if somewhat abashed by the classification. “Others have.”

Your phone vibrated. You closed your eyes before looking at the screen, bracing yourself for bad news. But then your face brightened when you opened them and saw who it was.

“Hey, you,” you answered quietly, turning to unlock the door. “I thought you couldn't talk.” You walked in without holding the door for me. I caught it just before it swung shut.

Back in Sara's room, I thought about flinging your door open like an outlaw in a saloon, striking the phone and Liam's voice out of your hand so I could show you how feral my desire was, that I wasn't the wholesome nice guy you assumed me to be.

Then I reassessed what had just transpired. The way you'd spoken to me was still major progress, the culmination of two months of meticulous strategizing, a beautifully arced shot into the corner of
the goal after a cat's cradle of short, precise passes and incremental gains in field position. I had gotten this far through patience and caution, taking calculated risks, not through brute strength.

I shed my shorts and eased into bed. Sara's body turned in sleep. I pictured you behind your door, telephonic captive to Liam, and slid my hand under old reliable
RAISE OHIO'S MINIMUM WAGE
NOW
!
to fondle her left breast. She shifted again. My hand sauntered down her stomach. She palmed my wrist and dazedly murmured something I couldn't hear.

“I want you,” I said, uncoiling my index finger and prodding her on top of her underpants.

“David,” Sara said, now awake. “Not tonight.”

“But I want you so badly,” I repeated, putting my weight on top of her.

“I'm at the end of my period.”

“I don't care,” I said, and mashed my mouth against hers. I rolled her underpants off. When I tried to penetrate her, Sara spoke up, but not to demur.

“My tampon's still in,” she said. I looked away as she took care of it.

Up until now I'd been mute in all our bedroom activity except for the small glottal exclamation I'd allow myself at the conclusion. But tonight I wanted to be loud, to be heard by Sara, by all of Matthews Hall and Harvard Yard and Cambridge, and, most of all, by Veronica Morgan Wells.

“I love fucking you,” I said, a notch above a whisper, a golf commentator narrating the putt. I found my hand moving to Sara's soft throat and massaging it.

“I love fucking you,” I spoke at normal conversational level, our moans alternating with the cheap
squoink
ing institutional bedsprings, her eyelids shut and quivering.

Then I closed my own eyes and imagined you beneath me—in your white bed, your canvas painting leering at us lasciviously, the
air sugared with your lavender fragrance—as my other hand drifted up to Sara's nape and my fingertips touched with room to spare around her slender neck. When I climaxed I cried out in my loudest voice yet, enough to call someone's attention from across a crowded room, only this time I reversed the second and third words of “I love fucking you.” And I wasn't calling it across a crowded room. I was calling it through the wall.