For the most part, Amber and her mom got along really well. They texted each other several times a day and spoke on the phone at least twice a week. And these weren’t short calls, either. Once they got started, they could talk for an hour straight without coming up for air.
Unless there was something urgent to discuss, their conversations followed a well-worn path. They always began with an update about her brother—what he was eating, how he was sleeping, how things were going for him at school, how many new Matchbox cars he’d acquired—because Amber missed him a lot and still felt guilty about going away to college, leaving her mom to care for him as if she were a single parent, even though her father lived in the house. He’d never really bonded with Benjy; he acted like there was no point in even trying, and everybody let him get away with it, including Amber.
When they’d exhausted the topic of Benjy, her mom would ask a few questions about Amber’s schoolwork, and then Amber would reciprocate, giving her mom lots of room to ramble on about anything that occurred to her, no matter how trivial—the weather, a story in the news, the quality of the produce she’d bought at the supermarket. There was always some discussion of her mom’s allergies and a segment devoted to any unusual activity in the neighborhood: who got a new car, whose dog was in a clown collar, who had switched from oil heat to natural gas. Amber listened patiently, because she knew how lonely her mother was, and how small her world had become.
It was the least she could do.
At the same time, Amber dreaded these phone calls, because they inevitably drifted to the awkward subject of boyfriends—specifically, her mother’s inability to understand why Amber didn’t have one. It made no sense: Amber was pretty, she was smart, she had a big heart and a warm personality. Yes, her mother understood that she had a demanding schedule—academics, softball, the various clubs and organizations she belonged to—but young people could always make time for a little romance. Amber’s mother certainly had, when she was her daughter’s age. She’d been a very popular young lady, if she had to say so herself.
You should go on some dates, her mother would say, as if this were a brilliant idea that had just occurred to her, rather than a suggestion she’d made a hundred times before.
Trying to keep her frustration in check, Amber would explain, for the hundredth time, that no one went on dates anymore, that it wasn’t a thing people her age actually did.
I literally do not know a single person who’s been on a date, she would protest. This wasn’t literally true, but she didn’t want to muddy the waters of the argument with a more nuanced position.
And then came the Big Significant Pause. Every frigging time.
Amber, honey? Is there something you want to tell us? You know your father and I will support you no matter what.
It was all because she’d gone to her senior prom with Jocelyn Rodriguez, a softball teammate and one of the few out kids in her high school. Neither one of them had a date, so they decided to go as friends. Lots of girls did that. But they looked so good together, so totally plausible—Joss in a tux, with her short hair slicked back, Amber girly in a pink dress—that everyone simply assumed they were a couple, Amber’s parents included. Even Joss seemed to think so, because she was pretty disappointed when Amber wouldn’t make out with her during the slow dances.
Jesus, Mom. How many times do I have to tell you? I like guys. There just aren’t any good ones here.
Well, that’s your problem right there, honey. You’re going in with a bad attitude. You have to give them a chance.
At that point in the conversation, Amber was tempted to list all the guys she’d hooked up with during freshman year—eight or nine, depending on how you looked at it, and every one an asshole in his own special way—but she didn’t want to be slut-shamed by her own mother. And besides, she was done with all that. No more drunken hookups. No more getting naked with sexist jerks who had no interest in her as a human being.
Maybe if you dressed a little more feminine, her mother would say. You look really pretty in dresses. Those skinny jeans aren’t always so flattering.
It was like they were actors in a play that never ended, doomed to keep performing the same depressing scene over and over again. But that was about to change, Amber thought, as she took a deep breath and reached for her phone.
* * *
Becca was supposed to visit that weekend. It was all set. She’d arranged for a ride from Haddington with a girl in her class who had an open invitation to crash at the Sigma house, and Zack had agreed to sexile himself for a couple of days, not that it was much of a sacrifice on his part. His on-and-off relationship with the mystery girl (who was supposedly not fat, though that’s how I always thought of her) was back on again, and he hardly ever slept in our room anymore anyway. Most of the time it felt like I was living in a single, which would have been great, except that I missed having him around. Even when he was there, things weren’t the same. I mean, we got along fine, but we didn’t joke around or laugh as much as we used to. He seemed a little distant, way more interested in whatever text he’d just received than in anything I had to say. It was pretty fucking annoying.
Dude, I asked him one night. Are you in love or something?
What? he said, chuckling to himself as he tapped out a reply.
Forget it, I told him. It’s not important
I was excited about seeing Becca after all this time, but also kinda nervous. She was the one who’d been pushing for a weekend visit—I was fine with waiting until Thanksgiving—but now that it was a done deal I figured I’d make the best of it. I was juiced about getting laid, because after almost two months at BSU, I’d had exactly zero sex (except solo), which did not seem like an auspicious start to my college career.
But fucking a girl is one thing, and spending a whole weekend with her is another, and Becca and I had never been one of those couples that hung out together very much, or had a lot to talk about when we did. So I can’t say I was all that crushed when she Skyped me on Wednesday with her eye makeup smeared from crying and told me that the visit was off. Her parents had talked it over and decided that she was too young to be spending the weekend with a college guy—even if the college guy was actually her high school boyfriend—and wanted to know why, if I was so keen on seeing their daughter, I didn’t just come home for the weekend and hang out with her there.
“Damn,” I said. “That really sucks.”
“I know. I wanted to sleep with you so bad.”
“Yeah, me too.”
She sniffled and wiped her nose, staring at me with this wounded bird expression.
“It’s not such a terrible idea,” she said.
“What?”
“You could take the bus, right? And your mom would be really happy to see you.”
“You want me to come home?”
“Why not? I’ll split the cost with you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not the money.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I knew I was in dangerous territory. There was no non-asshole way to tell her the truth, which was that I was happy enough to see her if I didn’t have a choice, but even happier not to if I did.
“Let me think about it,” I said. “I’ll text you tomorrow.”
And then, like ten minutes after we hung up, Amber called. I hadn’t heard from her since the meeting of the Autism Awareness Network, where I’d humiliated myself by crying like a little bitch.
“What are you doing on Saturday night?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
She made a sound like the buzzer on a game show.
“Wrong,” she said. “We’re going on a date.”
* * *
Amber was painfully aware of the mismatch between her politics and her desires. She was an intersectional feminist, an advocate for people with disabilities, and a wholehearted ally of the LGBT community in all its glorious diversity. As a straight, cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical, first-world, middle-class white woman, she struggled to maintain a constant awareness of her privilege, and to avoid using it to silence or ignore the voices of those without the same unearned advantages, who had more of a right to speak on many, many subjects than she did. It went without saying that she was a passionate opponent of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape culture, bullying, and microaggression in all its forms.
But when it came to boys, for some reason, she only ever liked jocks.
It kind of sucked. She wished she were more attracted to men who shared her political convictions—the tree-huggers, the gender nonconformists, the vegan activists, the occupiers and boycotters, the Whiteness Studies majors, intellectual black dudes with Malcolm X eyeglasses—but it never seemed to work that way. She always fell for athletes—football players, shotputters, rugby forwards, heavyweight wrestlers, even an obnoxious golfer, though he was definitely an outlier—almost all of them hard-drinking white guys with buff, hairless chests, marinated in privilege, unable to see beyond their own dicks. And of course they used her like a disposable object, without regret or apology, because that’s what privilege is—the license to treat other people like shit while still getting to believe that you’re a good person.
What was it her father always said? The definition of crazy was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Well, that was the story of Amber’s love life so far, and she’d had enough. She’d vowed over the summer to stop the madness, to either start choosing her partners more wisely or, if need be, to opt for celibacy and self-respect over empty sex and the self-hating sadness that came with it.
And then, as if the universe were testing her resolve, she met Brendan at the Activities Fair on the very first day of her sophomore year. He was a bouquet of red flags—a handsome, self-confident, broad-shouldered, inarticulate, politically oblivious lacrosse player—the exact type of guy she’d sworn to avoid. But it didn’t matter: her heart did its usual, incorrigible somersault and gave the middle finger to her brain. It amazed her how weak she was, like a smoker who’d vowed to quit, but couldn’t get through a single day without lighting up.
To her credit, she put up more resistance than usual. Freshman year, she would have texted him right away, inviting him to hang out, maybe smoke some weed and watch a movie. At the time, it had seemed like the feminist thing to do—why shouldn’t a woman pursue sex as freely as a man?—but for some reason it always ended up with her staring pathetically at her phone, wondering why Trent or Mason or Royce (the asshole golfer) hadn’t even sent her a thanks for the blowjob! text, as if that would have made her feel any better.
With Brendan, she hung back, playing hard to get, as her mother would have quaintly put it, waiting for him to make the first move. She didn’t text him, didn’t orchestrate a “chance” meeting in the Higg, didn’t even friend him on Facebook, though she did do a fair amount of stalking. He posted lots of shirtless pictures of himself, and, she had to admit, he looked really good without a shirt.
It turned out to be an effective strategy for not hooking up, especially since Brendan made no attempt to contact her, either. But even at a big school like BSU, they couldn’t avoid each other forever. About a month into the semester, she’d walked into the library with the newly formed Student Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality, and there he was, cute as ever, reading a book about climate change.
He’d surprised her in the best possible way. She couldn’t imagine any of her former hookups joining her to protest the shooting of Michael Brown, or weeping in front of a roomful of strangers at a meeting for people with autistic siblings. He seemed like a decent guy, and maybe even boyfriend material, definitely worth taking a chance on.
What are you going to do on your date? her mother had asked.
We’re going to a movie. After that we’ll probably go to a party where everyone gets naked.
Ha ha, her mother said. Very funny.
* * *
I didn’t hate the movie. It just wasn’t the kind of movie you were meant to like, and not the kind you normally went to on a date. But Amber was really into feminism, and one of her good friends, a Vietnamese girl named Gloria, was in charge of the Women’s International Documentary Film Festival, so there we were.
It was an eye-opener, that’s for sure. The movie focused on a bunch of depressing third-world hellholes where women were treated like garbage. In one African country, young girls got raped all the time and nothing ever happened to the men who did it. There was this one victim—she was twelve, but looked older—who was raped by her “uncle” who was not actually her uncle. He was a family friend, and a very important man in the village. The white people who were making the film convinced her to press charges, but it backfired. She and her mom ended up getting kicked out of their house and the rapist denied everything.
I am not that kind of person, he said, like the accusation had hurt his feelings.
There were other stories—girls sold into prostitution by their own parents, girls forced into sweatshops to support their families, girls who were “engaged” to be married to disgusting old men before they’d even reached puberty, girls who were genitally mutilated while their own mothers held them down. I could hear Amber sniffling next to me and I reached for her hand. She turned and gave me this sad little smile.
After a while I just kinda zoned out. There’s only so much misery you can take in one sitting. Normally, in a situation like that, I would’ve checked my texts or played a game of Hitman, but the girl who introduced the film had made a big deal about asking everybody to turn off their phones and devote their full attention to the screen.
Please, she said. This is important. Please don’t look away.
The movie was long, which meant I had a lot of time to think. I thought about my mom, and how happy she would’ve been to know that I was watching a serious documentary like this, getting educated about the world, which to her was the whole point of being in college. And I thought about Becca, who wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in that theater, because why should she pretend to care about stuff that happened to people she didn’t know in places she’d never heard of? I understood why she felt that way—part of me even agreed with her—though I knew it was selfish, and not the kind of thing you were allowed to say out loud, especially not at the Women’s International Documentary Film Festival.
Amber was quiet after the movie ended. We left the lecture hall and headed outside. It was a chilly night with a light drizzle coming down, but I think she was as grateful as I was for the fresh air. We were still holding hands, and I wondered if I should try to kiss her. But then I looked at her puffy eyes and stunned expression and realized that it probably wasn’t such a good idea.
“What did you think?” she asked.
“About the movie?”
That made her laugh just a little.
“Yeah,” she said. “About the movie.”
If I’d been totally honest, I would have told her that the movie had made me realize just how lucky I was. To be a guy. To be an American. To have a healthy body and enough money that I never had to wonder where my next meal was coming from, and to know that I would never have to sacrifice my own happiness and freedom for anyone else’s. To wake up every morning knowing that something fun could happen. The movie made me want to get down on all fours and kiss the ground. But I knew that was the wrong way to go.
“It fucking broke my heart,” I told her.
* * *
Amber had been looking forward to the party all week. A lot of her friends from the Feminist Alliance were going to be there, and everybody was excited. It was one of those rare situations where you could have fun and make an important point at the same time, at least that’s what they were all telling themselves. But now, after the movie she’d just seen, the party suddenly seemed ridiculous, a bunch of privileged college kids pretending that they were making a political statement, fighting the patriarchy by getting drunk and taking their clothes off.
“You okay?” Brendan asked, laying his hand gently on her shoulder. They were standing out on the quad, getting rained on.
“Just sad,” she said, touched by his concern. He’d sat through the grueling film without a single complaint, and had held her hand through the worst of it. “The world’s so fucked up.”
“Tell me about it.”
Amber didn’t regret watching the movie. You couldn’t turn away from the truth just because it ripped your guts out. You had to look cruelty and injustice in the eye, to acknowledge the humanity of people less fortunate than you, and accept your obligation to help improve their lives. It was the least you could do.
But it was so little. It was almost nothing.
Some part of her just wanted to say Fuck it—drop out of school, say goodbye to softball and Women’s Studies and Autism Awareness and Slut Walk and her hilarious roommate, Willa—say goodbye to America—and get a job with some NGO that built schools for girls in Afghanistan, or fought human trafficking in Thailand, or provided free surgery for African women with obstetrical fistula. Do something useful, instead of wasting her time reading books and watching movies and liking meaningless shit on Facebook. It would be hard on her mother, though, and she’d really miss Benjy, who would only understand that she was far away, not why she’d gone. Her generous motives would be lost on him.
“You want to get a drink or something?” Brendan asked.
Before she could answer, her phone buzzed. It was Cat again. She’d texted three times during the movie.
Where rrrrrr uuuuu???? You better get that big fat booty over here so I can spank it bitch!!!!
Amber smiled in spite of herself. Cat was the only person in the world who could talk to her like that and get away with it. And besides, it was ten thirty on a rainy Saturday night, and she had to accept the fact that, right now, there was nothing she could do to help anyone but herself lead a better and happier life.
“I know where we could get a drink,” she told him.
* * *
The party Amber took me to wasn’t a full-blown naked party. It was an underwear party, sponsored by the Feminist Alliance, so of course it had an uplifting name, which in this case was EVERY BODY IS BEAUTIFUL!—a statement that is totally not true.
When we arrived, a feminist at the door handed us nametag lanyards. Instead of your name, you were supposed to write down something about your body that you didn’t like. The idea was that you were supposed to celebrate your flaws and not be ashamed of them. Just get it out in the open, so people could tell you you were beautiful anyway.
Amber didn’t hesitate. She uncapped the Sharpie and wrote DISTURBINGLY LARGE SHOULDERS on the card as easily as if she were signing her name. Then she handed the marker to me. I was stumped for a second, because I’d been working out and felt pretty good about my body. All I could think to write was CALVES COULD BE BIGGER, even though they were perfectly fine, too. Amber laughed when she saw what I’d written.
“That’s it?” she said. “Your calves could be bigger?”
I shrugged. The only other thing I could have gone with was SMELLY FEET, because I did have an occasional problem in that direction, though I didn’t really think it qualified as a physical flaw.
“Mine’s not that different from yours,” I pointed out.
I could tell she didn’t agree, but she nodded anyway and pulled her dress over her head in this totally matter-of-fact way, which gave me an instant half-boner. I had to turn away and stare at a chubby dude in tightey whities until it was safe to start undressing. Weirdly, the chubby dude had listed his flaw as TWITCHY EYELID, which seemed a little beside the point. When I was done, we put our shoes and clothes into a trash bag and shoved it behind a couch.
“You think it’s okay there?” I asked. “I don’t want to walk home in my underwear.”
Instead of answering, Amber grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the crowd. She was wearing regular cotton panties, black with a white border, and a V-neck black top that looked like a sports bra but was lacier in the front. Her body was just like I’d imagined it, strong and sleek, no hourglass but a nice round ass I was happy to follow wherever it led.
*
The house was pretty dark. Some rooms were lit by candles, others had lava lamps, and the dance floor had these swirling disco lights and flashing strobes. It made being half-naked a lot less problematic than it otherwise would have been. In a funny way, you ended up paying more attention to people’s lanyards than their actual bodies. It was really interesting to see what people were ashamed of—MUFFIN TOP, UNIBROW, HUGE NOSE, MAN BOOBS, ASS ACNE—and then kind of casually try to check out whatever flaw they were talking about. Sometimes you could spot the problem right away, and other times you had to take their word for it.
Amber knew a lot of the people there, so mostly I just nodded and smiled while she introduced me to her friends—ECZEMA, TOENAIL FUNGUS, and RIGHT ONE WAY BIGGER, among others. Most of the people I met were nice enough, though a bunch of them seemed skeptical that my non-bulging calves qualified as a bona fide problem. The only person I’d met before was Cat from the Autism Awareness Network, who was alarmingly skinny with her clothes off—all ribs and elbows and hip bones—though, I had to admit, kind of sexy in her leopard-print bra and panties. She was also wearing blue flip-flops and white surgical gloves, all of which added up to an eye-catching package.
“Hey Brendan.” The sign around her neck read, FURRY ARM HAIR. “Good to see you again.”
“You too,” I said, squinting at her completely hairless forearms.
“I wax,” she explained. “A lot. Otherwise I’d look like an orangutan.”
“What’s with the gloves?”
She shrugged and drank some jungle juice from a solo cup.
“Too many bodies.” She gave a small shudder of revulsion. “Way too much skin and sweat and . . . ugh.”
We smiled at each other for a couple of seconds, stumped for conversation. She turned and looked at Amber, who was talking to a black girl who had amazing abs and suffered from ASHY SKIN. The black girl was wearing gym shorts and a bikini top, which seemed like cheating to me, since neither one qualified as actual underwear.
“Amber really likes you,” Cat told me.
“I like her, too.”
“You better not hurt her,” she said, poking her latex-covered finger into my sternum. “Otherwise you’ll have to answer to me.”
* * *
Amber’s room was on the sixth floor of Thoreau Hall. It was even smaller than her first-year double in Longfellow, but at least it wasn’t in the basement.
“We’re in luck,” she told Brendan. “Willa’s away for the weekend.”
“Cool.” He was busy checking out the posters on the pale green walls: Malala, the Dalai Lama, Andy Samberg. “Nice place.”
She hadn’t planned on bringing him home after the party. She’d meant to take it slow, maybe just make out a little, plant a seed for the future, but dancing with someone in your underwear turns out not to be the best strategy for taking it slow. They’d gotten into some pretty heavy grinding toward the end, and it had been an amazing feeling, to be that close to fucking with so many people around.
She dumped her coat on Willa’s bed and then took off her dress, because why not? She’d already undressed in front of him, and he’d clearly liked what he saw. The party had done wonders for her mood—totally turned the night around—and given a welcome boost to her self-esteem. It had been so moving to be part of that community, one imperfect human among many, all those people admitting to their vulnerabilities, making one another feel safe and loved and beautiful. She took her bra off, and tossed it to Brendan.
“Heads up!”
His reflexes were a little slow—it must have been the weed they’d smoked on the upstairs balcony, their bare skin steaming in the night air—but he managed to make a one-handed grab after it bounced off his chest. Then he just stood there for a second, staring at the bra like it was an object he’d never encountered before.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Awesome.”
He was such a boy, she thought—sweet and clueless and weirdly passive. Amber was only a year older, but she was a woman, and had been one for a long time. She didn’t mind the imbalance. She liked being in charge, the only adult in the room.
“I have one question,” she said. “Why are your pants still on?”
* * *
It should be a big deal the first time you hook up with someone new. A momentous occasion. I remember it felt like that the first time I fucked Becca. My hands were literally shaking when I put on the condom.
What you don’t want is for your mind to be elsewhere, stuck on something stupid that has nothing to do with the girl you’re with, especially if she’s down on her knees, giving you a blowjob that you didn’t expect, and didn’t even have to ask for.
What you don’t want to be thinking about just then is your asshole roommate, and the way he’d dissed you at the party.
In a funny way it was Amber’s fault. She’d been grinding on me so hard on the dance floor, I thought I was gonna bust a nut right there. I told her I needed to pee, but she knew exactly what the problem was and thought it was pretty funny.
“You do what you have to do,” she told me. “I’ll be right here.”
To calm myself, I took a solo lap around the house, upstairs and down, with my hands crossed—casually, I hoped—in front of my crotch. It was a pretty big place, with a balcony on the second floor and a rickety deck off the kitchen. There was also a small sunporch off the living room, and that was where I found Zack, playing quarters with two people I didn’t know. One of them was a girl in a wheelchair.
“Yo, dude,” I said. “Didn’t know you were coming to this.”
“Oh, hey.” Judging from the look on his face, he didn’t expect to see me there, either. “Brendan, wow.”
He put his hand on the wheelchair girl’s arm—she was sitting right next to him—and whispered something in her ear. She turned to me, a funny little smile forming on her face.
“Holy shit.” She sounded pretty drunk. “The famous roommate.”
“That’s me,” I said. “The famous roommate.”
“I’m Lexa.” She had straight dark hair and a cute face, though one eye seemed kinda squinty or something, like it had frozen mid-wink. The sign around her neck read, LEGS DON’T WORK.
“I’m Brendan.”
“Riley,” said the other dude at the table. He was short and angry-looking, with ridiculously big biceps, pimply shoulders, and a tag that read, VERY SMALL BLADDER.
“Riley and I went to high school together,” Lexa explained. Her skin was golden-bronze all over, like she’d just gotten a spray tan. “Up in North Ledham.”
“Go Raiders,” said Riley, without much enthusiasm.
We all shook hands, and then I turned to Zack, whose nametag read, UNCONTROLLABLE FARTING.
“At least you’re honest,” I told him.
“Tell me about it,” said Lexa, who was wearing a shiny maroon bra and matching panties. She had a nice body—big boobs and a tiny waist—though I was distracted by the clear plastic tube that snaked out of her underwear and around her back. I couldn’t tell where it went and didn’t want to look too hard.
“You love it,” Zack told her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Your uncontrollable farting is a huge turn-on.”
“It’s a popular fetish,” he said. “You should google it sometime.”
“Already have,” she told him. “You take a nice picture.”
Zack high-fived her—Good one!—then looked at me. “Where’s Becca?”
“She couldn’t come. I’m here with that other girl, Amber?”
“The softball player?”
“Yeah, we went to a movie and—”
“We playing or bullshitting?” Riley grumbled.
“Shut up,” Lexa told him. She smiled at me and pointed at the shot glass on the table. “Wanna join us?”
Her invitation was totally sincere, and I would have been happy to play a round or two. But I could tell Zack didn’t want me there. He didn’t shake his head or give a warning glance, nothing that obvious. He just kind of looked down and away, like there was something on the floor that required his full attention, a dead bug or a speck of dirt.
“Not tonight,” I told her. “Maybe next time.”
* * *
Amber felt a familiar vacancy taking shape in the pit of her stomach, an empty space that, if something didn’t change, would soon be filled with regret.
It didn’t make sense. Things had been so hot on the dance floor. Their hands all over each other, the easy way they’d moved to the music, the sweet dirty things he’d whispered in her ear.
And now . . . this. No connection at all. Just a strange dick in her mouth and fingers drumming impatiently on the top of her head, like he wanted to get it over with. She glanced up at him, checking in, hoping for a little guidance, but he didn’t notice. He was lost in thought, staring straight ahead at nothing, his expression frozen somewhere between confusion and anger.
She wondered if maybe she’d moved too fast. They’d only made out for a minute or two before she’d decided to go down on him. The kisses had been uninspiring—stiff and distant—and she thought she needed to try something a little more drastic to change the energy.
She was just about to call for a time-out when his fingertips tightened suddenly on her scalp. He pushed into her and gave a soft grunt of approval, his first real sign of life.
Finally, she thought.
She picked up the pace and he responded to the new rhythm, thrusting to meet her. It was encouraging, but also a little worrisome, because she didn’t want him to come just yet. She wouldn’t have minded if she’d thought he might reciprocate with any degree of skill or patience, but Brendan didn’t seem like the type. She’d only ever been with one guy who gave decent oral, and that had been a one-time deal. When it was over, the guy—a wrestler named Angus—never responded to any of her texts, and acted like he didn’t know her when they bumped into each other on campus.
“You like that, don’t you?” Brendan asked in a soft, dreamy voice.
Amber made an affirmative noise, the best she could do under the circumstances.
“You like that big cock in your mouth?”
Ugh. She ignored the question. For some reason, she detested the word cock.
“Suck that cock, slut.”
Whoa, she thought. That was not okay. She tried to tell him, but his hand had slid down the back of her head, and his grip had tightened.
“Suck it, bitch.”
She couldn’t move, couldn’t pull away. Couldn’t even breathe. He thrust forward again, and Amber started to gag.
* * *
I mean, I would have understood if it was just Zack and Lexa on the sunporch, but that kid Riley was already there, so it wasn’t like I was spoiling some big romantic moment. I tried to tell myself that Zack was embarrassed by Lexa, but that didn’t make any sense, either. They were at a party together, out in public in their fucking underwear, and they looked like they were having a great time. No, the only person Zack was embarrassed by was me, and I’d done nothing to deserve it, not a damn thing.
Fuck him, I thought.
It wasn’t fair to me, and it wasn’t fair to Amber. She’d been down on her knees for quite a while, giving it a hundred and ten percent, and I could see that she was starting to sweat a little.
Focus, I told myself. Get your head in the game.
Amber was doing a great job, don’t get me wrong, but for some reason I wasn’t feeling it, not the way I had with Becca on the day I left for college. I could almost hear her voice, the way she looked up at me and said, This is your going-away present, and we just kept talking like that the whole time, saying whatever crazy shit popped into our heads.
I know it’s a little sketchy, thinking about one girl while you’re with another, but you can’t control what goes through your head at a time like that. And it worked, you know? I went from zero to sixty in a couple of seconds, and there was no stopping after that. I kept my foot on the gas, the highway wide open in front of me, not a car in sight.
And then Amber punched me in the nuts.
*
It was no accident. She hammered me in the scrotum—a short, brutal uppercut—when I was about ten seconds away from the finish line.
My knees buckled and I hit the floor, curling into the fetal position, waiting for the agony to subside.
“What the fuck?” I said, when I was finally able to talk. “Are you crazy?”
Amber was standing now, hugging herself so I couldn’t see her chest.
“You were choking me,” she said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I couldn’t breathe, Brendan. I couldn’t even move my head.”
The pain had faded a little, but it returned in a sickening wave. I looked around for a wastebasket in case I had to puke.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And don’t you ever call me a slut.” She lifted her foot like she was gonna kick me, but then she put it back on the floor. “I don’t know who you think you are.”
“I was just talking dirty. I thought you liked it.”
“Why would you think that?” Her face was really pink. “You have no idea what I like.”
I forced myself to sit up.
“I’m sorry. I just got carried away.”
“Get the fuck out,” she told me.
“Come on, Amber. Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” She grabbed my pants off the floor and threw them at me. “Like a person with self-respect?”
She’d been pretty calm up to that point, but then her mouth stretched out and she started to cry. I could tell she didn’t want to do it—didn’t want to show that weakness in front of me—and she just kind of sniffled really hard and pulled herself together. The tears just stopped. I’d never seen anyone do that before.
“Can’t we talk about this?” I said.
But Amber was done talking. She stood there in her black-and-white panties, hugging herself and shaking her head no, like there was no point in discussing anything with me, like I wasn’t worth the effort.