The Fifth Circle (5 page)

“Thank you, Alex. I love you. I’ll call you later,” he insisted as he left me at my front door. 

My parents would be home soon and I wanted to take a shower and cry a little before I had to face them. I shivered under the scalding water as I washed away the evidence of my crimes. My knees trembled and it was an effort to keep myself upright.

Sean
was my official boyfriend now. The sex was the clincher. Images of our lovemaking flashed across my mind and I could feel myself blushing at the thought of his naked body on mine. Sean told me my body was perfect even though I knew it wasn’t true. Despite everything—the pain, the embarrassment, the shame—I loved him and I decided I would allow it to happen again.  I’d given him my body and that wasn’t something I could take back.

***

Sean called me twice before dinner, begging me to come over. “We won’t do anything. I just want to see you. I miss you,” he said. It felt good to be wanted. 

“I have to help my mom. We’re having Thanksgiving at our house this year. She’s freaking out about all the stuff that needs to get done. You know how she is,” I
said. 

“Well, call me later,” he begged.

My dad volunteered to have everyone over to our house this year. Of course, the burden of actually pulling off the event fell to my mother. He sat on his dead ass in the recliner while she scurried around trying to get everything ready. It was nine when she dragged me out to the grocery store. “I need your help, honey. We’ll have to have two carts. God, why did I volunteer to have dinner at our house?” I chose not to remind her that she didn’t, that it was Dad’s idea, not hers. 

Sean called me
again as we were walking into the store. “What are you doing?” he asked. 

“I’m at
the store with my mom.”

“Honey, who is that?”
Mom asked. I ignored her.

“Do both your parents work tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I knew exactly where he was going with that question.

“Good. You want to come over in the morning?”

I felt a shiver in my thighs. Against my better judgment I agreed. He promised to call me as soon as his mother left for work. 

“Who was that?”
Mom asked.

“Just Sean
.”

“You two have spent a lot of time together
since the dance,” she observed. “Is it serious?”

“Not really
.”

“Just be careful
. Sean is a nice boy, but he’s had a lot of problems. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

She was such a freaking hypocrite. She was tripping over herself with glee when I agreed to go to the dance with him. He was an acceptable date as long as it was in the name of charity. I felt defensive all of a sudden.

“Yeah, he’s had a few problems, but seriously, everyone made a much bigger deal over it than it really was. He’s doing really well now,” I insisted. Sean
was
doing well. Sure, he played OwlBane, but at least he stayed away from Tales of Andrometis. Since I’d been spending a lot of time with him, he said he hardly ever played his online game. In fact, he was doing so well, he’d stopped taking all his medication.

By eight o’clock
on Wednesday morning, I was naked in his bed. He approached me with a joyful passion he’d never before displayed. It
was
better that time. I strongly suspected he’d been up half the night watching online videos of questionable content in an attempt to get some pointers. I wasn’t quite ready to shed my insecurities enough to approach our lovemaking with reckless abandon, but there were parts I enjoyed. His roving tongue, his kneading hands, probing fingers, gasping cries of release, were not nearly as repulsive as they’d been the day before.

W
hen it was over, when he nuzzled his sweaty forehead into the hollow of my neck, when he told me how much he loved me, it was worth it. “Was it better this time?” he asked. 

“Yes,” I replied
. “It’ll be better each time.” I’d come to terms with the fact that this would indeed occur on a regular basis and I was okay with it. I loved him more each time we came together. I felt a closeness I’d never experienced with anyone. 

We slept for a while and awoke to the sound of the front door opening. Rattling keys, a sigh of exhaustion, and his mother’s voice, “Sean, are you home?” sent terror straight to my heart. 

I grasped the covers tightly to my chest as Sean whispered, “Oh, shit. I don’t know if I locked my door.”

He didn’t. His bedroom door flew open and his mother’s shocked gaze collided with mine. Her expression morphed from disbelief to resignation.

“If her parents find out, I knew nothing about it,” she said softly. She turned away and shut the door behind her.

“Oh, my God. I gotta get out of here,” I hissed. I’d never felt such humiliation in all my life. 

“You heard her. She’s fine with it,” Sean insisted, pulling me against him. “She just doesn’t want your parents to think she condones it. If they find out, she’ll say she had no idea.”

“I’ll never be able to look her in the eyes again,” I whispered.

“Seriously. She doesn’t care. She’s probably happy I have a girlfriend. She wanted me to participate in normal teenage activities, right?” he joked trying to lighten the mood. “Hey, we’re both eighteen. We’re technically adults. Adults have sex. No big deal.”

“I just want to go home
.”

“O
kay.” He kissed my forehead. “Whatever you say.” 

“Turn around,” I demanded. Getting dressed was way more uncomfortable than getting undressed. Maybe because the undressing occurred in the heat of passion. His
desperation to get laid would cause him to overlook some of my more obvious flaws. The re-dressing was done under the cold, harsh light of sobriety—no lust to take the edge off my extra weight. 

“Why? I’ve already seen everything,” he reminded me, turning away to allow me to retrieve my discarded clothing. He sounded smug and victorious while making that observation.

“Then you don’t need to see it again, do you?” I snapped, anxious to get my clothes on and get the hell out. I dressed rapidly while he pulled on a pair of rumpled jeans. 

“Please don’t leave,” he begged.
“I can’t be without you all day. I won’t see you tomorrow. Stay.” 

“Your mom thinks I’m a whore. She’ll know what we’re doing in here. She’s probably expecting me to leave.” My cheeks burned at the idea of facing his mother.

“No she’s not. Come on. We’ll go out to the kitchen and talk to her. She likes you. You’ll see.” He turned to face me, kissed me gently, and took my hand. I followed him out to the kitchen where his mother sat at the table sipping a cup of coffee. She glanced up and smiled.

“Hi,
Mom.”

“Hi
, honey. Alex, do you have big plans this weekend?” Her tone held no hint of the fact that she’d just seen me naked in bed with her son.

“We’re having Thanksgiving at my house this year,” I said
softly. “You’re going to Belleville?”

“Yep. We’ll be back around six if you want to stop by. We can have dessert,” she offered.

“Thanks. That sounds nice,” I said.

Sean gave me
a look that said, “I told you so.” I said my hasty goodbyes and followed Sean outside. He kissed me on his front porch and watched as I crossed the yard to go home. I thought about the long weekend ahead of me—four whole days that my dad would be home from work—and missed Sean’s house already.

***

My sister came home from college to spend Thanksgiving. She was a shining example of everything I wasn’t and would never be. She had a full-ride academic scholarship to Columbia and was working on a dual major in architecture and mathematics. People said my sister and I looked a lot alike, but I knew that wasn’t true. She was beautiful and glamorous. I was a great big hulking clod. She was a size eight. I was a twelve. She had long, luxurious, dark hair. I had a tangled mane which was usually confined to a pony-tail. She drew a host of intelligent, sophisticated people. I attracted the damaged or disturbed. 

Claire didn’t want to come home for Thanksgiving. She said she was swamped with some huge project she was working on. She hadn’t come home since summer, and even then, she was hardly at home. I couldn’t blame her for staying away, but my dad threw a fit, threatening to
cancel her car insurance if she didn’t show up for the big family get-together. She drove home late Thursday morning, arriving in time to eat dinner, but not in enough time to help with the preparations.

“So, what colleges have you applied to?” Claire asked over
turkey dinner. All my relatives turned to stare. 

“Um…just, you know, UMSL and S
aint Louis Community College,” I stammered. I hadn’t actually applied to any college yet—those were just the two that came to mind first.

“Community College? Oh, come on, Alex. You can do be
tter than that. It’s time to get serious. I know it’s hard with all the other distractions. Senior year is so busy,” she reflected. “So, do you have a boyfriend this year?”

I blushed as all eyes turned to me yet again. “Well, I, uh…”

“She’s been hanging out with that nut-job from next door,” my father interrupted. He fixed me with an angry stare.

“Sean?
” Claire’s eyes grew wide. “Seriously?”

“He’s my best friend,” I said
, feeling defensive. Why did everyone judge him? He wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t on drugs. He was just…different. I took my cell phone from my pocket and glanced at the time. It was four. I was supposed to see Sean at six and I didn’t want to be late.

“Some friend. I heard about what happened,” she said as the thirst for gossip overtook her. I remained silent and looked down at my plate. “Didn’t he try to kill himself over his computer character?”

“What?” This was from Aunt Carrie. “He tried to kill himself over
what
?”

“You know those online fantasy games? When his avatar died, he tried to kill himself,” my sister explained. “He has serious mental issues and has to take a bunch of anti-depressants and stuff.”

“That’s crazy,” Aunt Carrie said, rolling her eyes. “And this boy is your friend?” she asked, turning to me. “You’d better be careful. That’s the kind of boy who’ll be on the news one day—on top of a watchtower, shooting a bunch of college students…”

“He isn’t dangerous,” I said. Not in the way they thought, anyway. I thought about the way he could override my will and commonsense. The way he pressed me to the bed and took my breath away with his thrusts. The way his hands could make me dizzy. Perhaps he was just a little dangerous.

***

I cleaned the kitchen at lightning speed and prayed the majority of my relatives would leave quickly. A glance at the clock on the stove had my heart racing. It was five-fifty-seven. Sean would be calling me any moment. He would expect me to come over. I couldn’t bear to
disappoint him, but I could hardly walk out on all my relatives to go to his house. My phone vibrated, making me jump.

“Hey,” I sighed into the phone.

“Hey, beautiful. We’re running late. Can you come over at seven?” he asked. I almost collapsed with relief. There was still time to clear the house. 

“Yeah. Just call me when you’re
ready.”

“Is that a one-time invitation? Cause if it’s a standing invite, I’ll be calling you all the time,” he laughed. It was really good to hear him laugh like that. He sounded so normal
—almost like a real boyfriend.

“Let’s just say it’s on a case-by-case basis,” I replied. “Are you having fun?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” I lowered my voice to a near whisper. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. How long will your parents let you stay over? Maybe my mom will do us a favor and go to bed early,” he said hopefully.

I hadn’t said anything to my parents about going over there, so I had no idea how long they’d let me stay. Curfew had never been an issue because I rarely went anywhere. And though I was tec
hnically an adult, I was a high school student who lived at home and I was expected to abide by my parents’ wishes—or face my dad’s wrath. 

It was just after seven when
Sean called me. All my relatives had finally gone home. Claire had long since left to hang out with friends, and my parents were in the living room watching TV.

“Hey
, I’m just gonna pop over next door real quick. I’ll be back in a little while. I’ll have my phone.”

My father barely looked at me when he
asked, “Why?”

“
His mother invited me over to have some pie and coffee,” I replied, fighting back the urge to beg.

“Be home by ten,” he
said through gritted teeth. I guessed he could find nothing sinister or dangerous about coffee and dessert.

I skipped out
the front door and across the yard to Sean’s house. He met me on the porch and kissed me before leading me inside.