Patrick was the half. It happened at a party in Millertown late last spring, the one Julia decided we should go to because she was fighting with Kevin and hoped he’d be there.
He wasn’t and so she had some acid and then got pissed at me because I wouldn’t, waved me away when I reminded her that acid always freaked me out and that I was fine, I had the vodka we’d picked up beforehand.
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“You won’t even drink unless you get to open the bottle,” she said, her voice soft but her words sharp, slicing me open in the way only she could. “You’re such a control freak.”
I stumbled back, hurt by the anger in her voice, and she sighed and threw her arms around me, said, “God, Amy, come on, have some fun. Let go a little! Live!”
And then she whirled away, caught up in the party. She didn’t look back.
I drank my vodka, trying to get up the nerve to fi nd her, but it didn’t work. The world was blurred the way I liked, but I didn’t feel relaxed and safe. I felt too tall and stupid, out of place. Everyone around me was having fun, but I wasn’t.
I felt like I should have been having fun but I knew, deep down, that I never would. Not the way Julia could. I could never just let go. It sucked, but it’s how things were for me. Plus I hated knowing Julia was mad at me. So I left the party and went outside to wait in her car.
I tripped over someone as I was walking down the porch steps. A guy, sitting there with a mostly full cup of beer by his side. He was staring off into the distance, arms wrapped around his legs. He looked as unhappy as I felt.
“Sorry,” I said automatically.
“My fault,” he said, and then, “Are you all right?”
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“I’m fine,” I said, another automatic response, and he said, “Okay,” and stood up. When he did, his hand touched mine, and I felt something, a strange, sudden jolt inside me.
I used to act annoyed whenever Julia talked about Kevin and how she felt a spark every time he touched her, but the truth was I knew exactly what she meant after that night. I just never told her.
He must have felt that jolt too because he said, “Oh,”
quietly. Almost startled.
We ended up in the basement, jimmied open a sliding glass door and went inside. It was dark and unfi nished, a single bare lightbulb shedding a tiny ring of light onto the sagging sofa we sat on. We didn’t talk much. His name was Patrick. I said, “I’m Amy,” and waited for the usual crap about how he’d seen me around before. Instead he looked at the floor and said, “You hang out with that girl, Julia, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so. I don’t go to many parties.”
“Yeah? I go to a lot.”
He nodded and then looked at me. There was something almost frightened in his eyes. It was weird, but it . . .
I don’t know. It made me really look at him, not just as some random guy, but as a person.
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“It’s lonely, don’t you think?” he said, gesturing around the room. It was all bare walls and exposed beams. Even the spiderwebs in the corners of the ceiling were dusty, like they’d been abandoned. One of his fingers brushed against my arm and I felt that spark again. It was like part of me had been asleep until that moment. Like somehow, I’d been waiting for something I hadn’t even known about.
“It looks safe,” I said, honest like I never was with guys, spinning on that spark, and the fright in his eyes melted into something else, something like understanding. If he’d tried to kiss me then, nothing important would have happened. We would have had sex and that would have been it. But he didn’t try to kiss me. He just leaned over and pushed my hair back with one hand, tucking it behind my ears. Guys did that to Julia all the time because her hair was long and honey-colored, beautiful. Mine is short and the color red leaves are right before they rot.
“Why did you do that?” I said.
“I wanted to,” he said, and looked so surprised, like wanting was brand new to him, that I kissed him.
I’d kissed guys before that, kissed guys after that. They were all the same. They were nothing. But I remember that kiss; the strange rightness of it, the taste of his mouth, shockingly raw without the layers of smoke and alcohol I was used to.
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He touched me like I expected, which was fi ne, the clumsy peeling away of my clothes and the hitch in his breathing when I tucked my hands in his shirt and pushed it up over his head. It felt better than usual though, touching him and having him touch me, and that made me feel strange. Anxious. But I didn’t pull away. That damn spark, that pull I felt when our hands had touched—it kept me there.
I’d always picked skinny guys before, guys who were all bones and angles. Guys who were small in my arms, guys I could see around. Patrick was solid, and instead of ribs and shoulder blades, I felt muscle rippling under his skin. It should have felt strange, but it didn’t. I couldn’t even see around him, but I didn’t care. He was rubbing against me, still in his jeans, and it felt so good I couldn’t bring myself to reach for his zipper and move things along. My skin felt too hot and too tight in a way it hadn’t ever before, and I dug my fingernails into his shoulders, unable to really think but somehow sure something was going to happen. And then it did.
It’s the only time it has, despite what I said to Julia when she got pissed at me after I told her there was no way the orgasms she had with Kevin were worth putting up with walking in on some girl blowing him. She said I’d never understand, and how could I since I only 38
