Later, I call Heath.
“Why did you tell him?” I ask accusingly.
“I don’t know,” he says. “That’s what guys do. Haven’t you ever heard of the locker room?”
I take a deep breath, frustrated.
“You didn’t seem to care when my friend was outside that time and I let him know we were having sex,” he says. “I would say you even liked it.”
“Fuck you,” I blurt.
“Fuck you too.”
I close my eyes, wanting to get us back to how we were. I’m not really mad at him. I’m mad at myself, that I do these things and then pretend I don’t. I spend half my life lying about who I am and what I want. I don’t even know who I am most of the time.
“Listen,” I say. “Let’s just forget it, OK?”
“Whatever,” he says.
But I can tell he’s still annoyed.
The next time we talk, he tells me he wants to break up. I sit on the floor of my bedroom, my body empty, my heart wrung.
“Why?” I plead.
“It’s just not fun anymore,” he says.
“We can make it fun again.” I close my eyes, knowing I sound desperate.
“Kerry,” he says. I grip the phone, holding on to my name, his voice saying my name. “It’s over.” He wants to get off the phone, be done with it. He and his friends call having a girlfriend “dealing,”
and now he doesn’t want to deal anymore.
“Can we at least talk in person about this?” I ask. He sighs. “You can come here now, I guess.”
Twenty minutes later I park the Civic in front of his house. Before I have a chance to get out, he comes out the front door and slips into the passenger seat. Keeping me away from his home again. My heart is pounding, my mouth dry.
“What did I do?” I ask.
He leans his head back against the seat, revealing his pale neck, his Adam’s apple. I wish so much he would just gather me in his arms, but I know that isn’t going to happen.
“I just wanted to have some fun, you know?” he says.
“We were having fun.”
“Yeah. But things changed. You’re starting to sound like me, do you know that?”
I stare at him, confused. “I am not.”
“You are,” he says, a million miles from me in the next seat. “You say ‘dude’ and ‘baked.’ Those are things I say. And you make your voice do the same things mine does. I don’t like it. You just want too much.”
I lean back, that sick feeling spreading through my body. The feeling of being seen, exposed. My ugly needs giving me away once again.
“I’m over it.”
I nod. I get it. My wanting makes me unlovable. It’s something I already know.
“Let’s just say we had a nice time and move on,” he says, and smiles. This doesn’t bother him at all.
My throat is tight with despair, but I smile back. We hug and he gets out of the car. I watch him go up the stairs to his door and disappear inside. He doesn’t look back. At home, I put on Roxy Music and listen to the song “More Than This,” wanting the song to make me cry, but it doesn’t. The music only lodges the sorrow more deeply inside. I go to the bathroom, and on the counter are the pills I finally got from Planned Parenthood. I just started my first pack, and in a month Heath and I would have been able to have condom-free sex. Stupid me, thinking it would last that long. I look at myself in the mirror, my flat, brown hair, the freckles sprinkled across my nose. I have never hated myself more.
The next morning I stay in bed, not wanting to wake up. The morning turns to afternoon, and at some point, Dad knocks and opens my door.
“I’m sleeping,” I say, and turn over. I pull the covers over my head.
“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon,” he says. I listen as he walks to the bed. He pulls back the covers a bit and gets in beside me.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” I say. “I’m just sleeping.” I can smell his familiar scent so close. He puts his arms around my middle, like he used to when I was little, when we would cuddle together while watching TV. But I’m older now, and it feels weird, so I try to pull away. He holds tighter.
“Mmm. You’re so warm and nice.”
“Get out of my bed,” I say, kicking him off. A panicky feeling is making its way through my body. I’m only wearing a T-shirt and underwear. I don’t want him touching me like this, my father in my bed.
“What,” he says, “I can’t show my daughter a little affection?”
When I don’t say anything, he gets up.
“Jeez, you’re an ice cube.”
He shuts the door and I let out my breath.
Two weeks later, Rebecca, Jeff, and I go to a party. I know Heath will be there, so I dress as sexy as I can. A miniskirt, a tightfitting top. I take a curling iron to my hair. When we arrive, he’s flirting with one of the blond girls from my school. Jealousy seeps through my skin like water, but I try to act nonchalant, like I’m fine, like I don’t need him so much. But as the night wears on, and as he drinks more and more, I grow frantic. Finally, I approach him.
“Come home with me,” I whisper.
He winces. He can barely look at me. “I’m staying at Jeff’s tonight.” His breath is sharp from beer.
“Fuck Jeff’s,” I say. “Come with me.”
He looks around, stumbles.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” I say.
He turns back to me, his eyes blurry from the booze.
“Drive me to Jeff’s,” he says. “His parents are away.”
I scramble to find Rebecca and Jeff and convince them to leave. And soon, Heath is in my car. He pokes at the radio, looking for something he likes as we follow Jeff and Rebecca. I try to think of something to say, something that will endear me to him, get him back to who he was in the beginning. But when I look over at him, his eyes are rolling back in his head. I shake him awake when we get there.
Inside, he ignores me. He finds himself food, then turns on the oversize television to play a video game. I follow him from room to room, my throat tight, until finally he leads me upstairs to Jeff’s parents’ bedroom.
“Look at this fucking room,” Heath spits out. It is massive, with a king-size canopy bed. I know Heath struggles with this, with the fact that all his friends live in huge, luxurious houses while he lives in his simple home. He cares too much about it, like how I care too much about what people think of me, especially boys.
His mouth is tart and clumsy, and he yanks off my clothes in a hurry. He feels different, angry or annoyed. I don’t know what. But I let him keep going. He pushes himself inside me. I was going to tell him about the Pill, but he doesn’t get a condom anyway. He just pushes and pushes, jabbing and hammering, like I’m nothing beneath him. That blond girl, maybe. Or no one at all. Tears come to my eyes.
“Come on,” he yells when I don’t respond. “What’s the problem?”
I look away, tears streaming.
He pulls out of me quickly, not done, and runs into the bathroom where I hear him retch.
I roll over and wrap my arms around my bent knees. When he comes back, he lies on the other side of the bed and falls fast asleep. I sit up and see my clothes on the floor. Twisted shirt and crumpled skirt, my underwear rolled into a ball. I gather them up, my throat dry. I know I should leave. It is the only dignified thing to do. But then what? I’ll be home, alone in my room, unable to sleep there, either. I think about the next morning, waking up with this ugly night weighing on my mind. The thought is simply unbearable. So I settle back down and wait for sleep to come.
In the morning, I wake to the sound of Heath in the room. He has put on his jeans and he sits at the end of
