Truth or Dare, page 8
She had this way of sulking that begged for attention. Anyone’s really, but it always got mine. She’d rest her elbow and chin on the armrest and pretend she was unbreakable.
“No really, what’s wrong,” I asked.
“I said nothing. Why?”
“You just seem distant, that’s all.”
Every night, her roommate would go off for a run. She slipped headphones on, strapped music around her bicep, and laced up. She’d just taken off.
“My aunt’s coming up,” I hear. “I probably won’t have any time to see you.”
I wanted to know how long. She said a week. It was a family thing.
She was nudging the swing with her toe on the rail and, once in a while, she’d glance at me with those sullen eyes. I’d study her lips, her unshaped yet perfectly shaped brows, that bush of hair that curled over her forehead, and the straggles near her ear. She had the face of a schoolgirl and a body that was far from curvaceous. She wore jeans even in the summertime. They were loose and cut for men; she had no hips to fill them. Her T-shirt was always well fitted, white.
I kicked feet over her lap. She reached around and pulled my knees against her chest, running short fingernails up and down my shins. I tried to kiss that pout but she wouldn’t budge. I heard, “I don’t want you to go.”
“I want you to come,” I said.
“I can’t.” She wasn’t happy. “You’ve been gone. You’re always gone. Why do we do this?”
“I don’t like when you get this way,” I said.
“As soon as you get there, you’ll forget all about this.”
Of course I won’t, I thought. But I didn’t say that aloud. I couldn’t exactly quit at that point and work retail for the rest of my life, nor did I want to. It was just our summer.
While I stewed in frustration, she was tugging my hand around her. I couldn’t look up though I tried. When I did, she wouldn’t look away. She was somber and now I was, too. I felt sad lips on mine and then adoring hands down my shoulders. It was a gloomy kiss that turned away. She lifted a knee, clearly withdrawn. It felt like she was leaving.
I asked if she’d wait for me, just a year and then I’d be done. She didn’t want to answer. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe I shouldn’t have come that day. But she kissed me again, this time sweetly, but it was deeper than that. It was the kind of kiss that weakens you and strengthens you at the same time. My hands were over her shirt but hers were beneath mine. Her touch made my heart race. She leaned for me as if I were backing away, but I wasn’t. She needed me more than I understood her. And our sounds were so heavy yet achingly silent and secretive.
The swing was gentle and then stopped as she steadied me; I was dipping, touching without knowing. She was at my ear when I heard, “Let’s go,” and she lifted me. Her voice tickled. We were outside and then inside and I was falling onto the bed and she was sinking over me on a knee the way she always did. That kiss was inexperienced, but I inhaled her. I felt my shirt hike up and her hair prickle my flesh. Her tongue at my breasts made me swell, made me whimper, made my knees rise above her.
Until she rose at the edge of her bed, tugging my shorts off lifted hips, and elastic clung to my ankles before they slid off. I spread my elbows and lifted a knee as her arms made an X and pulled over her head. She sank down over me, pushed me apart, and wet me. She was teasing me, fucking me until I moaned in her mouth and again. And she crawled down me.
I was gripping shoulders as hair brushed against my thigh and her breath felt heated and damp. It was an ache and a throb and then sublime and she held me apart and down and consumed me while restraining me. And I listened to myself, to those birds, to her muffled and moaning against me as she came.
My thighs like a vise trembling when I did.
When she fell beside me, we didn’t speak. We glistened. The sun was still with us. The screen slapping and the shower surging through the old pipes as the house became inhabited again but our door remained shut. I crawled over her and kissed her until the sun fell asleep.
The following day, it was over. “I can’t miss you again,” she told me. And that was that.
* * *
“Yes, you can…Brie Hamilton…It’s our power. It’s out…Account number? To tell you the truth, I have no idea. I’m so sorry. This would be under Gabriella Ryan, my partner…Okay, but can you be more specific? I mean, are we talking a few minutes, hours…Days?…I understand…No, that’s all…Yeah. Thanks.”
As I hang up, I’m shivering.
My hair’s damp from the shower, and I can hear Ryan on the phone with her sister, cackling. I used some of her paste on the front of my hair to get it up and out of my eyes for once. I don’t know how it’ll turn out. I’ve never tried it. It smells nice enough, like her.
She wears her hair up, short on the sides. It’s way thick, unlike mine. She’s got her denim shirt on with the sleeves cuffed up, untucked. She grins at me occasionally around the corner, pacing.
That’s when I start to wonder—am I one of those leap first, look later types? I keep asking myself that. I try not to be. I like to plan, ponder, weigh it all out—to a fault usually. I’d like to get through life without one stitch of regret. But I’ve already fallen short of that goal, haven’t I? I have regrets, the biggest of which being this right here.
That small part in me, that part that was just a little too enamored, the part that was regrettably drawn in to the allure that is Ryan, kicked my rational side’s butt. Because in reality, she and I are completely incompatible. She’s obnoxious. Hard. Embarrassing. Insecure. Awkward. Stocky. Possessive. Gruff. Stubborn. Set in her ways. Controlling. Insensitive. And self-centered. Why did I not see this?
In stark contrast, I’m a pretty upbeat person. I’m a big-time problem solver. A great negotiator. And persuasive. I know how to work people when I need to. I’m excessively organized. And I think shit through, like I said. I find the problem, weigh solutions, reach a conclusion. Case closed.
At the comfortable age of forty-two, Ryan’s proudest accomplishment in life is this house, and I’ll bet you anything she plans to stay in it for the rest of her God-given life. Seducing one woman after another after another. Probably two at the same time, you know—that’s how she lost her last girlfriend.
I will admit, she has a certain allure. A charm, at least in the beginning. And beyond the chemistry (which is indisputable), she offers a home that’s already made—complete with a comfortable savings, a stable job, it’s nice. Who isn’t impressed with that?
It’s a lot like home.
Were it up to me, I’d prefer to live downtown. A townie, she calls me. I like background noise. I need civilization and little comforts. The spa. The gym. The pub on Saturday night. And townies, I guarantee you, are enjoying just that. Shops are open. Food roasting and sautéing and simmering. Folks chatting over the brims of steaming mugs filled with Sumatra plus nonfat milk in cozy café that have condensation across their bright frontages. Happy people smiling as they pass one another on bustling sidewalks that are cleared and shoveled and crusted with salt. College kids pecking at their keyboards and hidden behind textbooks, moms strolling through racks and racks of crisp new trousers for the office, road rage and traffic jams and hordes of pedestrians wrapped in fur-lined hoods amid this milky landscape. Towns are open and lit, laborers are laboring, and plows are grinding trails for cars like mamas guiding their little ducklings. Sigh.
Meanwhile, out here in farmland, I can’t even get two bars. The television’s out. Internet’s down. Heater’s dead. There are no neighbors to even check up on us should something seriously go wrong, which makes me more than a little uncomfortable, and I don’t even want to think about the predicament we’d be in if we ever needed an ambulance. We’re cold, buried, disconnected. Isolated. And she’s happy about that. She’s actually happy. This is a good time for her. I know because she’s loudly conversing and cackling about that right now with her sister.
So what’s kept me with Ryan this long? That’s the question of the day. Mom definitely wasn’t on board with my decision to truck my meager belongings into this place. She wanted me to settle in and live a little. Not jump, essentially, from one relationship to the next. One long, heartbreaking, absolutely idyllic relationship to, well, someone I met in a porn shop. And, no, I didn’t tell Mom that part.
I’m not jumping, I told her. I need roots. Stability. To the contrary, Ryan was so low pressure and, quite honestly, the most stand-offish woman I’ve ever known. That right there got me. It’s all I needed. A distraction, someone to get my mind off this constant ache in my chest. Live a little, cut loose. And I could leave at any time and she wouldn’t blink an eye. She didn’t even have my number. She let the chips fall as they may. I liked that. I liked that a lot.
Still, what possessed me to tote my life here in that dinged-up old truck just because some woman happened to be great in the sack? Well, amazing, I’ll give her that. But that’s not enough. It’s not.
So case closed, right? I need to get out. Get on with my life.
I pour myself a glass of cold water from the sink, still starstruck by this groovy kitchen. White marble up half the wall. Cracked plaster’s freshly painted white by yours truly. Open shelving over the counters where plates and cups and that shabby teapot pile atop one another. The purple flowers I set out just a few days ago are wide open now.
I’ve paid my dues. I deserve this much.
As I listen to her conversation wrap up, I marvel at how communal it feels in here, the long island down the center and backless metal stools where we’ve chatted and feasted before work on scones and waffles. The ceiling’s low exposed beams. And her rows and rows of spices, so colorful and symmetrical on small wall shelves under a large clock, which tells the accurate battery-powered time. It’s the only timepiece in this house currently working. I marvel as if it’s the last time I’m ever going to see it.
I wonder if her next girlfriend will be equally impressed. If she’ll even deserve it.
I rehearse.
I’m sorry, Ryan, I’m so sorry. I, uh, I…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I’m wondering if we went too fast.
No, no, no, that’s not it. That’s just patronizing.
“Ryan,” I yell, not at all gracefully. Yet the minute it clicks that my thoughts have found a voice, I freeze up. She tells her sister she has to go.
They’re such a close family. I’ve met her father. Not her sister, but at least her father. He looked me over as if I were disingenuous, yet he knew nothing about me. There’s one who’ll be pleased I’m out of the picture.
Soon her reply rounds the corner and walks down the hall. I see no backing out now. I could do without this dreaded anxiety nonetheless. I was hoping more along the lines of relief or even happy.
Ryan. We need to talk.
I pace the length of the kitchen nervously from stove to sink and back again, leaning against the island for a drink because I’m completely parched.
She asks how the call went. What call? She just looks at me puzzled as I ponder the question. And that’s when it dawns on me—the electric company. And I tell her in a long-winded sort of way.
“Okay.”
I notice the way she’s now concentrating on me. Her fist is supporting her chin. She nods. I rant some more. She listens, though slightly less engaged and a bit more glassy-eyed and drifting into disinterested.
“We need to talk.” My words fall through the air like ash—unbearably slow. Here I am in the spotlight, and it’s too much. As I heat up, I take another drink.
“What about?” She’s nonchalant, digging around in the drawer for something. Then her attention shifts to the sink and the few dishes piled in it. I study her thighs as she walks over.
After some clatter, she turns on the faucet only to realize that we have but a few drops of hot left and she just used those up. She needs a haircut. It’s scruffy. She washes a cup and a small pastry plate, setting them on the rack to dry.
“About this,” I tell her.
She turns around, fingers curled under the counter just behind. “This?” She’s small eyed now with a crinkled forehead. Haven’t I tried for months to get her to listen to me, pay attention to me, hear me out—even support me? Now that I have her undivided attention, I don’t think I like it. I don’t want it. Brush me off again and give me a reason to fume. That would make this so much easier. But instead she listens, appearing confused.
I drop my gaze to the thick floorboards. “Yes,” I say.
This is difficult.
I think my mouth opens a few times, but nothing comes of it. Then I’m telling her, “Maybe not so much this but…” I lose the flow, but do find two words. “I’m unhappy.”
She jumps in to blame the job, concluding with “That’s expected.” I hear “I know” and something about hope. But she knows it’s not about that job, and I tell her as much.
She looks confused again, making her eyebrows more pronounced. I notice the gray in her hair, which I like. She doesn’t, but I do.
“It’s so much more than that.” I’m rubbing my eye. I’m just exhausted. “It’s being away from everything—from family,” I tell her. “I don’t like that.”
I’m accustomed to hearing appliances hum, the television, water streaming through pipes. But it’s stagnant, and that clock is ticking persistently. “You know Mom’s always saying she wants me to come back, that my room’s—”
“Brie, you’re not a kid anymore. You’re a grown woman.”
She makes my anger swell. Must she be condescending?
“What exactly are you saying? That you’re moving back to Portland?”
“It’s something like that, something I’ve thought about,” I say.
“Since when?”
“Since…I don’t know,” I say. When she looks at me, I can only shrug my shoulders. “I don’t have a job.”
“But I do.” Why does she have to be this way? I want her to understand what I’m saying without my saying it. I wish she’d be happy for me.
“We don’t have that kind of…relationship. That kind of situation.”
“What do you mean, that kind of relationship?” she asks.
I just roll my eyes. I don’t even know what to say. This should be evident. This is not a question.
“Honey,” she says, “I’m sorry I haven’t been…Look, it’s hard. I know you need time.”
But it’s not time I need.
“I don’t know if this, this us, is what I really want right now. And I’m not sure…” I so don’t want to say this. I can think of a million other things I’d rather be doing right now besides breaking up with my girlfriend. But I do—eventually—just say it. “If this is going to work.”
“I don’t understand,” she says. “What are you saying?”
My hands are in a prayer over my mouth.
“No—why are you saying this? We get on about things, I know that. That’s not how I am.”
She’s waiting to hear something different.
“You don’t want to do this. Can we just get through?”
“I need to slow down, doll, figure things out.” My throat closes when I say that. It feels final, and that final, for some reason, is feeling sort of sad. She looks sad. She must get what I’m saying now.
I didn’t expect to feel so awful. I don’t like who I am right now.
“I’ll help you figure things out,” she says.
“No, I need to do this on my own.”
“You can’t leave everything here.”
“I’ve pondered it.”
I’m watching reality sink in.
Then she says, “Don’t do this to me.”
There’s anger in her words. She leaves the room.
Which means I need to leave. I know my 4x4 can get me through this, and that sure beats feeling this right here. It’s claustrophobic, stifling. I guess I hadn’t thought this through. Now I’m scrambling to find an out.
If I could just be alone. Once I reach the main drag, the roads will clear up. The plows are out. I can hear them. I have no choice.
I make a call to Hops and order a Caesar salad for pickup.
When I hang up, she comes back and rests on the counter. She’s just watching me from across the room. I can’t decide if she’s livid or what. I notice her fingers, though, thick and creased.
She knows now. She’s covering her eyes. My heart breaks.
“Tell me what I did wrong,” she says.
I can’t let a girl cry, I just can’t. I go over and do this thing with my finger to lift up her chin and I say, “Ryan, Ryan…” I pull her in, but she’s holding me tighter than I am her. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I don’t want to do this again,” she says.
I don’t know what to say back. She stopped breathing. Her nose is brushing my collarbone.
I hear, “I love you.”
“It’s okay—we’re going to be okay.” But it’s not okay. She’s breathing into me. Her eyes aren’t angry. Something settles, or does it?
And she’s pressing her thumb across my lips. I feel the pressure on my teeth. She’s so lost, yet she’s never been this focused. I wonder how it would feel if she kissed me. I feel her pulse. I want her to. Maybe this will be our good-bye. I’m still ashamed that I’m not at all shying away. It’s paralyzing.
Why think about it? I meet there, right in the middle of us. I don’t understand why. But I want to help her. When I don’t push her chest, when my lungs swell against hers, her lips take a part of me. I don’t know what to do.
They feel like Chris and then they don’t anymore. That’s when my palms shove her chest away. That’s when she falls into me.
I take a step back and wonder, why did I do that? She won’t even look at me.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “We can’t.”
I do want you.
“Why?”
“I’m not sure,” I say.
“I don’t understand.”
