Sex & Violence (30 page)

“I know.”

“You have to like her for her, not as if you’re righting a wrong.”

“Okay.”

“Because it’s not your wrong to right. You can’t live out the past in this relationship.”

“So … you think we should have sex?”

“No, I didn’t say that,” Dr. Penny sighed. “I’m saying that you should see Jordan as her own person. As an individual.

With very different needs than Collette.”

“Okay,” I said. Not really getting what she meant.

“I think you should consider sending Collette a letter soon, Evan,” she said. “I think it would be helpful to tell her some of these things you’ve shared with me.”

“I don’t want to upset her. I think even thinking about me would make her feel terrible.”

“It’s her choice to open a letter, Evan,” Dr. Penny said. “She doesn’t have to respond. Telling her how you feel would be an act of taking responsibility. Don’t underestimate the good in this. For both of you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

Dr. Penny went on about closure, about how offering someone your true self was the greatest gift and blah-blah-blah.

Then she gave me an assignment to write about something in the past that was painful and tell how I dealt with it, which wasn’t anything I was in a rush to write. Though I knew she meant my dead mother, of course. She was waiting for me to tell that whole story out, and I just wouldn’t and avoided the topic in our sessions as much as I could. The whole idea made me panicky.

Then I started getting panicky about Jordan too, thinking about her leaving for college. Not panicky in the sense that what the fuck was I doing with my life, where was I going to college. Me applying to college had about the same odds as me going to the moon, really. It wasn’t just the idea of leaving, but more that everything was moving too fast and I just wanted it to stop. Or at least slow down for a little while longer.

I knew just where I’d slow everything down too. We’d have these marathon make-out sessions in Jordan’s living room after school, before her mom came home from work, and they were slow and stuff but still really good. Nice. Relaxing. Every time, after it was over and I was getting my clothes on—Jordan liked to strip me down but rarely took off her own stuff, like I was some giant doll to play with, I guess—I’d think how shitty it was, that nothing good could ever just freeze and stay good.

I mean, I’d have stayed in my boxers all afternoon if Jordan wanted. Forever, even. No sex, either. Just her and me and everything good and quiet.

And then, on cue, it was like Jordan knew that I wanted everything to slow down and stop. That I wasn’t accepting reality. We were in Foods one day, and I was telling her the latest news from Tom—he and Kelly had broken up, Everything apparently not being Enough—and though I was joking about it, Jordan wasn’t laughing.

“I guess that’s just what sex does to relationships,” I said.

Pregnant Chick rolled her eyes. Homeless Guy giggled.

“
Physicality is not a substitute for trust
,” Jordan quoted.

Maybe Dr. Richter was getting to her too, because soon after that, Jordan broke up with me. I was talking about my summer plans, about Soren bringing Mac to visit, when she announced she couldn’t be my girlfriend anymore.

I thought,
God, I have an actual girlfriend
!—just as it was clearly no longer applicable.

She went into a long speech about going to college and maybe it’d be easier on both of us if it just ended now. It was shitty but made sense, because the whole time she was talking I pictured the entire sky filling up with storm clouds and I just wanted to run from it. And her.

“Okay,” I said, not arguing. Then she cried, and I felt like a dick. As if I’d made the decision myself.

But then a week later, she showed up at my track meet and then we got dinner at Mackinanny’s together and we ended up making out. We didn’t talk about it, but soon we were in a pattern. She would break up with me, and though I’d feel panicked and crazy again, I’d agree. But then she’d show up and want to hang out like nothing happened. Sometimes I was the one who showed up. Either way, the world’s longest make out would occur and we’d act normal until she decided she couldn’t be attached any longer and I couldn’t handle the sadness that always came after she said stuff like that. Clearly, relationships were a big ball of insanity.

***

After graduation, the school had an all-night lock-in where we did shit like play poker and get our palms read and eat pizza and play basketball and watch movies in the library. The whole point was to keep us from getting shitfaced and plowing our cars into trees, but it was pretty fun. At five in the morning, while eating cinnamon rolls and watching the sun come up, through the cafeteria windows, Jordan broke up with me again.

I sleepily agreed. It was time; school was over. I tried to think about other things as I drove home that morning and collapsed into bed.

But a couple of weeks into summer, while my dad was in Minneapolis for work, Jordan texted me.

My mom’s got an all nite shift at the hospital.

I paused the movie I was watching, stared at the text like it was from another galaxy. Pearl Lake was another galaxy this summer too. Mid-June and things were completely weird.

There’d been no Midsummer Party, since Peggy Tonneson blew out her back. Brenda was in London with Baker until July.

Soren was coming with Mac, but not until August.

So I texted back:
Come over
.

Jordan curled up by me on the couch, like she always did, like I was an extension of the furniture, something very comfortable and trustworthy. I asked if she wanted to watch something else, but she shook her head, and I could smell her girl smell, her skin fresh and damp, like she’d just taken a shower.

I wasn’t sure where this was going, since it was only a few more weeks before she left for college. Still, once the movie ended, I leaned over and kissed her. Then I pressed my head against hers and stared at her. Giving her one last out. She could leave. She could talk to me. She could go into full make-out mode. Any of these would be fine—that was what I was trying to tell her with my eyes.

She said, “Let’s go upstairs and listen to music.”

Well, that wasn’t on the script. But we went upstairs. She flipped through my playlists and then sat down on the bed.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.

I wasn’t just asking because girls expect you to. I was used to her saying what she was thinking so it bugged me that she was quiet. She stared down at her bare feet, her bare arms in her tank top crossed over herself. She was so cute. Pretty. Crazy-hot, too, on my bed, with her girl smell. Everything about Jordan was just so
good
.

But I wanted to be good too. Really
be
it. Not just give the appearance of goodness. Or drown her in hot sex urges, so she’d be flattered, mistake that for goodness, like some other girls had. I wasn’t just thinking about getting down with her.

Okay, maybe I was. Because inside, I was the same Evan Carter. The Dirtbag profiler. The guy who yanked it often enough thinking about Jordan-shaped objects. Lots of other girl-shaped objects too. That Evan wasn’t loyal, but he was constant. And that Evan wasn’t going away, not entirely.

But that Evan wasn’t the one who’d stayed with Jordan over half a dozen breakups.

The Evan now sitting beside her on his bed?
That
Evan could lounge under a blanket with her looking at stars without getting handsy. That Evan did jigsaw puzzles and made shep-herd’s pie and still locked the bathroom door before he stripped to shower.

Both of these Evans wanted to see Jordan naked, of course.

But only one of them didn’t mind if it didn’t happen.

Which probably explained why it did.

Jordan switched on the nightstand lamp, turned off the overhead light, and said, “Just come here for a second.”

So I did, instantly next to her at pretty much the speed of light, because it was awesome to know what direction this was going. She lifted my hoodie off me, then my T-shirt. She touched my scar, softly, and then ran her hands down my arms, which I was secretly proud of since they were finally bulking up. Not to Tim Beauchant standards, of course, which maybe explained why she didn’t linger there. Maybe girls didn’t give a shit about arms? Or maybe just Jordan didn’t. It wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on, because I was rattled enough by how bossy-yet-quiet she was acting.

“Hey,” I said. “What the hell’s up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t keep doing this forever,” I argued.

“We can’t keep doing
anything
forever,” she argued back and then pushed me into in standard make-out mode. Clearly I’d been arguing for no reason.

She stripped off all my clothes, until I was in my boxers, which was also awesome, but also made me instantly calculate the hours between now and when she left, the math of which was full of Almost-Weepiness, a feeling so big and terrible that our multiple breakups began to make sense.

From all our afternoon make outs, I’d gotten over feeling like a dork about being the only half-naked one. It was her thing, and I never said anything about it. So it shocked me when she took off her own stuff. I tried not to look surprised at seeing her bra and panties, which had a matching blue-dot pattern that was cute, not meant to be sexy. Which made them instantly sexy to me, of course.

“Let’s get under the blankets,” she said.

Under the blankets like little kids, we looked at each other in the half-dark. Smiling like we were getting away with something. Her shy hands tickled me—she enjoyed making me squirm. To make her stop, I pressed her to me, and she was so still, I wondered if she might fall asleep. But then she started kissing me again. Slow, like always. She smelled and felt so good, but I avoided the bra and panties zones, as if they were something priceless and untouchable from a museum. She didn’t do the same for me, though. Her hands dipped down my boxers and she kind of sighed when she felt my hard dick—

Jesus
—and I wanted to apologize and almost did, but she pulled back and I breathed out, slowly.

She whispered, “I keep doing this because I really like you, Evan.”

Which made me almost lose it. I wanted to cry. Crush her with happiness too.

“I like you too,” I said, my throat filling up with a salty lump.

Then I kissed her, as if that would make all the Weepy go away.

All sweaty together under the blankets, I wanted it to both stop and keep going. The huge sadness seemed to get closer.

Tears rained down my throat, my nose. Twice she asked me if I was getting a cold or had allergies. Both times I pretended not to know what she was talking about. Finally, I got up to piss.

Something I’d never done when getting down with a chick.

Which was probably good—pissing with a boner’s tricky. But I had to do something about the Goddamn Weepy.

In the bathroom with the door locked, I looked at myself.

Flexed in the mirror. I had become a total strutting douche about my muscles, though I was private about it. For some reason, just seeing myself, alone, made me feel a little better. Made the fucking Weepy recede, at least.

Back in my room, under the blankets, my hands discovered a now all-the-way-naked Jordan.

“Is that okay?” she asked.

“Jesus, don’t be crazy.”

“I
am
crazy, Evan.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I have condoms,” she said. “If you want to.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yeah. But only if you do.”

“Jesus!” I said. “Yes. Of course I do. But only if you want to.”

“We sound like total idiots.”

“I don’t care.”

“They’re in my bag.”

I didn’t feel right telling her I had my own condoms. My own condoms felt somehow unlucky. So I grabbed her bag and handed it to her. Regardless of which Evan I was, neither one enjoyed rummaging through a girl’s purse.

She pressed a condom square on my chest, like a little medal, instantly activating Dirtbag Evan. I didn’t want to be gross and grabby, but Jesus Christ she felt great. She felt like relief. Like the antidote to Weepy. I struggled to be cool. Slow and gentle. I decided that this had to be good, since it was her first time since the Almost-Rape. But then she crawled on top of me and completely took charge. Which was surprising. And unbelievably hot.

And pretty much flushed away any ideas of me being
good
. I didn’t last long and once she pitched herself off me and I’d gotten back to life, I felt dumb about it. We laid there breathing and listening to the faint noise from the waves coming through my open window. I rolled over, wanting to amend things somehow, but the only thing I could think to say was, “Sorry.” Which is a shit thing to say to a girl after you’ve done it with her, really.

So I just stared at her, the first girl I’d ever brought home to my bed. Though my father was often absent, physically and mentally, I had avoided bringing girls back to my rooms in all the anonymous condos. Only Collette had been in my bed, but I never thought of the bed in Connison as really mine. I always saw myself as a kind of adventurer, exploring the exotic, poten-tially hostile habitat that was a girl’s bedroom. Piles of clothes on the floor. Candles and jewelry on the dresser. Posters and pictures on every available surface. Parents lurking nearby.

Jordan’s own bedroom was like that, and her bed had nicer, fancier sheets than mine and probably better mood light-ing than my stark reading lamp too, but looking at her naked on my boring, needing-to-be-changed white sheets, with her short hair all rucked up and sweaty, it was like seeing something so perfect. Beyond seeing her naked, which, of course, was nice. But it was like I also could see
her
. All of her. Jordan, Almost-Raped girl, turning into a story. But something more than just a story too.

She whispered that this wouldn’t be our only opportunity; though I knew the math on that, I nodded into her neck. I waited for the huge sadness to roll over us again, but it didn’t come.

Not even when she cried a little and then laughed, called herself stupid for crying. My head still hiding in the soft skin of her neck, I said that she was beautiful. And good. And, yeah, crazy, but so was I, so we were perfect together. Which was probably a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t help it. Then I pulled the covers up, because the breeze from the window was suddenly cold, and though my bed was just a twin, nothing like Jordan’s giant deluxe one, we fell asleep together.