Something I am less eager to admit. Jennifer, for all her perfection, is not enough for him. But maybe I could be.
Around one in the morning, I put on my coat to go home, and Will surprises me by asking for a ride.
Jennifer, who has just lit a cigarette, looks at him as he stands.
“You’re not staying over?” It is a casual question, but I recognize the hint of worry in her voice. Maybe Jennifer isn’t as free as I thought. Maybe she sometimes feels like I do, waiting, always waiting for a boy to save her. Will shakes his head. He doesn’t hear her anxiety. Or else he doesn’t care. He reaches for his army jacket. “I have to get home,” he says.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I say to Jennifer as Will follows me to the door.
We listen to music as we drive through the dark streets. I am so tired my body aches. A few hours ago I started refusing lines, knowing I needed to give my body a rest. I love the way cocaine makes me feel. It’s the opposite of most every other drug I’ve tried, all of which made me feel out of control. Cocaine centers me. It tightens time, brings everything around me into sharp focus. Lots of people take drugs to loosen up. Not me. I want to be pulled together. I want to look around and feel that I know everything I see. Cocaine does this.
It erases the questions. I feel confident, resolved, so unlike the unsteadiness I usually feel. When the high wears off, everything is blurry again. Uncertain. Worse, the only thing you want to do is sleep, and you can’t. I had been unable to sleep until three or four in the morning each night, and then slept until noon. I was waking to have coffee and a bagel with Dad, then heading out to Jennifer’s again a few hours later. I was ready to take a day off, maybe go shopping with Dad. Will directs me through the streets of Englewood, my high school’s wealthy town, until he tells me to slow in front of a large, modern ranch.
“Thanks for the ride,” he says. He clicks off the seat belt.
“I guess I’ll see you back at Jennifer’s.”
He nods, but he doesn’t get out. I wait, the air growing thick between us.
“Well,” he says. “Good night.”
He leans toward me for what I assume is a good-bye kiss on the cheek, but his lips land on mine. I kiss back, and his hands go to my back, my waist, my legs. I put my hands in his hair, pulling him toward me. We pull apart and start to laugh.
“What the hell was that?” I ask.
“Oh, come on,” he says, reaching for me. “It was bound to happen.”
I smile.
“Take me home with you.”
On the drive to my apartment, he keeps his hands on my body. He finds the hole in my jeans again.
“You wore these purposely to make me crazy.”
“What are you talking about?” I laugh. I am high, no longer tired. I’m not thinking about Jennifer. No way. I’m not thinking at all.
We barely make it to my bed before our clothes are off. After sex, he falls asleep beside me, but I toss and turn, unable to drop fully into deep sleep. I am too energized, overwhelmed by what I’ve done.
Late morning we wake, and I drive him home. He kisses me on the mouth when we reach his house.
“What about Jennifer?” I ask.
“What about her?”
“Aren’t you guys sleeping together?”
He shrugs. “It was nothing. She won’t care.”
It was nothing. Sex with Jennifer was nothing. Maybe, after me, he doesn’t want to do it with Jennifer anymore. I think of Jennifer the night before, the way her voice went up just slightly when she asked if he was staying. “You can’t tell her. She’d hate me.”
He smiles, not bothered at all. “No problem.”
I call Jennifer later, just to force myself to be normal.
“You have to come back tonight,” she says when I tell her I’m staying in. “It won’t be the same without you.”
I light a cigarette, the guilt digging at me. Will most certainly will be back there tonight, and this frightens me. Regardless of his use of past tense, I don’t have any idea of his intentions, if he’ll have sex with Jennifer again now that we’ve had sex. I am smart enough to know it would be good for me to stay away, let Will wonder about me. But if I do, I know I’ll wind up pacing the apartment and smoking, frustrated I can’t control what’s happening over there. Plus, Jennifer’s words feel good. Maybe I matter to her, to all of them. I blow out a long stream of smoke.
“OK,” I say. “I’ll come for a little while.”
I don’t want to think too much about Jennifer after we hang up, so I wander out to the living room. Dad is there, smoking too, the TV on. I sit beside him.
“I haven’t seen you much since you’ve been home.” He stubs out his cigarette. The smoke sits in a hazy cloud above us. Someone is always smoking in this apartment.
When Tyler and I first moved here six years ago, I brought home a kitten from a friend’s house. I didn’t ask Dad. I knew not to. Dad had already made us give away our cat. Right after we moved her to a friend’s house, she ran away, traumatized, and no one ever saw her again. I hated him for that, for letting Tyler and me lose our cat on top of everything else we lost that year. And I figured if I didn’t ask, just let him see how cute it was and how much I loved it, he would let me keep it. But I was wrong. Dad didn’t want a cat he said he knew he’d wind up having to take care of eventually. I begged to keep it, but Dad refused and he drove us to the pound to give it away. I wouldn’t talk to him the whole way there. In the short time it had been living with us, it had developed a wheeze. I didn’t think much of it until the man at the pound asked whether it was the cat or me breathing like that. I could tell by the man’s expression he would have to put it to sleep. I screamed and cried, but Dad made me hand over the kitten. I figured the cat had gotten sick living with Dad’s constant smoke, and I hated him even more. Now that seems far away. I settle back into the couch, looking at the game he has on the television. “I’ve been busy,” I tell him. “With friends.”
“Why don’t you have your friends come over here?”
I light another cigarette. I don’t really want it, but I’m annoyed.
“Because,” I say, “we want to hang out somewhere else.”
He smiles, not catching my mood. “I like it when your friends come over. It’s fun.”
Dad thinks I’m proud when he hangs around my friends, trying to get laughs, telling me later which ones he thinks are cute, but it’s embarrassing. Once, after he sat with my friends while they passed around a joint in the living room, I told him to get out and he pouted. Another time he came crawling into the living room on his hands and knees, just to be silly. I wish he would just leave us alone like a normal parent. I want to say, “Get your own damn friends,” but what I say is, “Well, they’re not coming.”
His smile drops. “I’m just trying to have a normal conversation with you.”
“Is that what this is?” I ask, smart-mouthed.
“You’ve got quite an attitude for someone who prances through here just to eat and sleep.” When I don’t answer he says, “So glad you could come home for the holidays.” And he leaves me there alone.
At Jennifer’s that evening I try to act ordinary. Having Will near me, knowing there is something between us, something no one else knows, is electrifying. We pass each other to go to the bathroom or get a drink, and the movement of the air between us makes my throat flutter. Our knees touch when we’re on the couch. Our eyes meet every so often. The arousal is so strong, my guilt fizzles beneath it. I can’t wait to get him alone, and I don’t have to. I take him home again that night, and the next one as well.
“You’re not going to sleep with Jennifer again?” I ask a few nights later in my bed. I’m still amazed he’s chosen me over her.
“Nah.”
“Just me?”
He laughs, not at all bothered by the neediness I’m so bad at keeping hidden.
“Just you,” he says, and pushes my knee, opening my legs again. I spread them willingly, thrilled.
Back at school, I tell Zoe. She listens wide-eyed and laughs, and I tell her she cannot tell Jennifer C, no matter what.
“Why?” We are in her room, as usual, eating the chocolate-chip granola bars she and her roommate keep
