Alison made her way carefully down the steep embankment. At the water’s edge, she noticed a familiar, flat-topped rock. During her years in Clinton, especially when she’d been a freshman and an emotional wreck, she had spent a lot of time on this very rock. Standing on it, sitting on it, sometimes with her bare feet in the water. She used to think of it as Solitary Rock. It was where she always came to be alone when she was feeling low.
She had forgotten about it. She had been down here several times over the past few months, had probably seen Solitary Rock and maybe even stood on it without remembering that it used to be so special.
Now she remembered. She stepped onto it and sat down, drawing her knees up and hugging them against her body.
This is nice, she thought. No wonder I used to come here all the time.
She heard a car cross the bridge, a sound much like that of the rushing water. She looked toward the bridge, but it was hidden by trees beyond the bend in the stream. She looked the other way and saw only the stream sluicing around a rocky curve. The slopes on both sides were heavy with bushes and trees. She saw no one, but wondered if there were couples concealed in nooks among the foliage or rocks, making love.
It was just around that bend where she and Evan…
It was a secluded, sunlit pocket with waist-high rocks on both sides and the stream at one end. A dense bramble at the other end sheltered them from anyone who might be looking down the slope. They could’ve been seen from the opposite embankment, but nobody ever went over there. They sat on the blanket that Evan always kept in the trunk of his car. They ate sharp cheddar on crackers and drank white wine from Alison’s bota, squeezing the bag to squirt it into their mouths, into each other’s mouths, laughing when they missed. When her blouse was soaked, she took it off and lay back on the blanket. Evan, kneeling between her legs, spurted the cool wine onto her neck and chest and breasts. It trickled down her skin, tickling. The laughter had stopped. He aimed at her nipples, the thin stream of wine hitting and splashing off one, then the other. Then he licked her. He made a puddle of wine in the hollow of her navel, and as he lapped at that he opened her jeans.
That had been Sunday afternoon. A week ago, tomorrow.
How could things have gone wrong so fast?
Don’t idealize it, she told herself. It had been great—fun and thrilling and then incredible. But not quite right. You only planned on a picnic by the stream. You never intended to have sex with him, not there where anyone could show up and find you at it. But when he soaked your blouse with wine, you knew what he wanted and you went along with it. For Evan, not for yourself. Because you didn’t want to disappoint him. And that is not the best of all possible reasons.
Hell, she thought, it sure didn’t bother you much at the time.
Shortly afterward, though.
If there
Jimmy. It was missing him, more than anything else, that had brought her so often to Solitary Rock during her freshman year. Especially after the letter that began, “I will always cherish the memories of what we shared together, but…” But she was eight hundred miles from Jimmy and he’d fallen for Cynthia Younger in his world civ class.
Sitting on Solitary Rock with the sun warm on her head and back, Alison didn’t feel the loss of Jimmy. She had finished with the pain and bitterness a long time ago. Instead, she inspected the memories of Jimmy and the way her life had gone since then.
The guys she had dated. The guys she had been serious about. The ones she had slept with.
Four of those, she thought, but only three if you don’t count Tom and you shouldn’t count Tom because that was only once and we were drunk. So three after Jimmy—Dave, Larry, and Evan. And it hadn’t been really right with any of them.
Good, but not right. Not wonderful. Not without those regrets sneaking in.
She wondered how she would feel about Nick Winston, the guy she’d met last night at Wally’s. Thinking about Nick, she felt no eagerness to see him again. Probably a nice guy, but…
Her rump was starting to hurt. She changed positions, lowering her legs and crossing them. Leaning back, she pressed her palms against the rock and braced herself up. She lifted her face into the sunlight. The heat felt wonderful. She imagined going now to the secluded place where she had been with Evan, taking off her clothes, and feeling the sun all over her body.
No way, she thought.
But she leaned forward and pulled her skirt up high on her legs. She unbuttoned her blouse, lifted its front, and tied it around her ribs. Then she leaned back again, bracing herself on stiff arms. That was better—feeling the sun on her chest and belly and thighs. The sun, and the mild breeze.
So I’ve struck out a few times in the man department, she thought. It’s not the end of the world. I’m twenty-one, not bad to look at. No reason to let this stuff get me down. I’m better off without Evan, better off alone than getting stuck with a guy who isn’t exactly right. Hold out for the one who
Later, when Alison left, she didn’t return to Summer Street. She felt peaceful, and had no need to tease or punish herself by walking past Evan’s apartment. She walked the length of the wooded park, saw a few strolling couples. She spotted lovers leaning against a tree deep in the shadows, and felt only a moment of sorrow.
At the house, she found Celia asleep on the sofa with her headphones on. The quiet tapping of a typewriter came from beyond the closed door of Helen’s room. Alison stepped to the door and knocked. “Yo,” Helen said.
She opened it. Helen scooted her chair back, turned it around, and looked at Alison from under a transparent green visor.
“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”
“Just Celia bitching about her aches and pains, though I don’t believe I would call that exciting.”
“Any calls?” she asked. Why do I care? she wondered. I don’t. But she felt a letdown when Helen shook her head.
“Nary a one. Your public must be otherwise occupied.”
“Just as well.”
“I thought you were finished with Evan.”
“I am. I was just curious, that’s all.”
“Celia got a call from Danny Gard, wanted to go out romping with her tonight. You should’ve heard her pissing and moaning.” Helen scrunched her face. “‘No, I can’t. No, I wasn’t just fine last night, I was in aaaagony. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. No, it’s not you, it’s meeee. I’m in pain. I can hardly moooove.’”
“Celia isn’t really going to stay home on a Saturday night,” Alison said.
“Nah. She’s just waiting for a better offer. I guess she didn’t have a great time with him last night.”
“He’s a gross character. Last time I saw him, he was at Wally’s engaged in a belching contest with Lisa Ball.”
“He’s a Sig,” Helen said, as if that explained it.
Alison nodded. “His idea of a high time is lighting farts.”
Grinning, Helen asked, “You know that from personal experience?”
“I’ve heard him pontificate on—” The sudden jangle of the telephone stopped her words. She felt herself go tight. “I’ll get it,” she muttered, and hurried into the living room.
Don’t let it be Evan, she thought.
Her hand trembled as she picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Celia?”
Thank God. “Just a moment, please,” she said. Celia, still on the sofa, had her eyes closed. The music from the headset had probably covered the blare of the ringing phone. Alison wondered if she was asleep.
Helen appeared in the doorway of her room. She raised her bushy eyebrows.
Alison covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “It’s for Celia.”
“A guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Find out who it is.”
