Howie

All I could think about, all day, was Stella. I couldn’t focus in class at all. It didn’t help, either, that she was feeling especially good that day. Stella’s emotions are powerful, and whenever she felt anything strongly could I sense her from kilometres away. She often called my ability to sense her ‘creepy’ and she was absolutely right. But I was tuned in to her. She was my compass, my guiding light. I leaned into the feel of her, the lure of her. But like most of my urges, I didn’t act on it. I attended my classes and when school let out, instead of hunting her down instantly and greedily tasting her lips, I leaned against the wall by the main doors and distracted myself with my book of John Donne poems. Poetry and music have always been my escape.

I lost myself in the book and didn’t even notice that Stella’s mind was getting stronger. I was vibrating with the feel of her, but still reading, when I felt a hand on my groin. It was like an electric shock passing through me, and I looked up to see Stella smiling at me.

“Hello, handsome,” she said, removing her hand. “Care to come home with me today?”

I pulled her to me — much more forceful than usual — and covered her lips with mine. I had to taste her, drink her in. It caught Stella by surprise, but she responded by opening herself to me, kissing me deeper. People began to shout and jeer and she waved her middle finger, which now had the added fire of my ring, and pulled away.

“What is this book that I see you reading so much anyway?” she asked, playfully tugging at the book in my hand.

“John Donne. One of the best metaphysical poets.”

Stella frowned as she flipped through the pages. “Wasn’t John Donne the guy who wrote the poem about the flea?”

“Yes.”

“I never understood that poem,” she said. “I know it’s like, the big famous Donne poem, but I’m sorry, fleas just aren’t sexy.”

I laughed. God, I loved her. “It’s not my favourite either.”

“Which is your favourite?”

I thought hard for a moment. “I guess it depends on my mood. When I’m upset or unhappy, I’ve always really liked his Holy Sonnets. Batter my Heart always made me feel better when I was finding it hard to... to live with things. But other times, like when I’m thinking about you, I like his earlier works, like Love’s Progress, or To His Mistress Going to Bed.”

Stella flipped through the book, looking for the poems I mentioned. “Licence my roving hands, and let them go, Before, behind, between, above, below...” She looked up. “Howie! Is this your version of porn?”

I couldn’t help but grin. “More like erotica than porn, surely,” I argued.

Stella turned some more pages, then glanced at me with mischief dancing in her eyes. “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”

I just smiled.

“Well,” said Stella. “Now I want to get you alone more than ever.”

I felt a surge of desire. “Is it so I can read you metaphysical poetry?”

“You got me,” Stella said, raising her eyebrow in arch way that I always found so alluring. “That’s totally it.”

“Well, then. Let’s get you home post-haste.”

“Good. Because I was thinking that maybe we should look at some more universities, see where else we could apply. You know, sexy, romantic stuff like that.”

I entwined her fingers in mine as we walked to my car. “Talking about a future together is definitely romantic. And sexy.”

******

STELLA PLUNKED ME DOWN on her couch and pulled up a bunch of bookmarked sites on her laptop. Our heads touched as we looked at the screen together, like a couple sharing a milkshake.

“Okay, so, I know you applied to the local schools last year before you got around to telling me that you had no intention of actually attending.” She cast me a dark look. “But the schools I’m really interested have later deadlines. This is Dalhousie. It’s right in Halifax, so we’d be right in the city with lots to do. The tuition is really high, though. There are a lot of universities in Halifax, actually. St. Mary’s, King’s, Mount St. Vincent...”

I listened quietly, but I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Then there’s Acadia — it’s also mostly undergraduate but they do have some masters programs — and it’s in a small town, which I kind of like. I have an aunt who lives there; she’d probably have us over for dinner all the time. Of course, it kind of depends on what courses we want to take. Do you think you’d do better at a science program or an arts program?”

I thought carefully before I responded.

“Stella — these universities are all on the East Coast.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s where I’m from.”

“And you want to go back.”

“Of course. You’d be able to meet my old friends, and we’d get free meals from my relatives all the time. It’ll be great.”

I rubbed my face under my glasses. “Stella, if you want to go back to Nova Scotia, then that’s what you should do. But...”

“Is this about money again?” Her voice was rising. “Because Howie, maybe you should cut out the martyrdom for a minute and fucking consider a bursary or something.”

I massaged her hands in mine. “We’ve already talked about that. I’ll find the money, somehow, if that’s what you need. I’ll get a summer job. I just... I’m just thinking of practicalities.”

“Like what?”

“Like... my food? I’m sure dinner with your relatives will be very nice, and I’d be happy to meet your family and Liz and Jeremy, but where am I supposed to get pig brains in Nova Scotia? Dad orders ours through the science department of SFU, but if I were that far away...”

Stella looked stunned, then ashamed, and I felt a wave of devastation washing through her mind.

“Shit,” she said quietly. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t even think...”

I cupped her chin in my hand and looked into her lovely face. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll figure something out.”

Stella smiled, but I could feel her anxiety ripping through me. I’d done it again — I’d made her see how hopeless things were. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have kept my mouth shut. Frantic to undo the damage, I took her in my arms and kissed her until she broke open and all her love came pouring out. It filled me up until I felt I would burst with joy.

******

STELLA WAS UNBUTTONING my shirt while telling me how safe my smell makes her feel when the front door opened and closed.

“Hello?” Mr. Blunt called. “Anyone home?”

“No!” Stella called. “Fuck,” she muttered to me under her breath as she helped me frantically button my shirt back up, “I can’t wait until we get our own place.”

I twitched with longing at the thought. Stella, in private, every night? There was no way I could ever be so lucky.

“Ah, you are home,” Mr. Blunt said, kicking off his shoes. “There goes my plan to meet your mother at the door wearing nothing but a bow tie.”

“Dad!”

“When are you moving out, again?”

“Not soon enough, clearly!” Stella said, straightening my shirt while I smoothed down her hair. You can’t see into the living room from their front door so we always had a few seconds to jump apart and rearrange ourselves when her father came home. I suppose we could have gone up to Stella’s room — we did sometimes on weekend evenings while her parents were watching TV downstairs — but I felt uncomfortable doing so when they weren’t home. It wasn’t because of anything they said about it. It just didn’t jive with the way I was raised.

Stella’s parents were very progressive about sex. They put her on birth control as soon as we started dating, gave her repeated lectures about condoms, and left her to make her own decisions. As far as I knew, their only two hard and fast rules for their daughter’s conduct was ‘no unprotected sex’ and ‘no drinking and driving’. They were cool parents, even by modern standards, although Stella insisted that it was impossible to apply the word ‘cool’ anywhere near her father. But no matter how progressive they were, I simply couldn’t bring myself to risk being discovered in bed with their daughter.

Even if I weren’t burdened with the moralities of a bygone era, her father adored any chance to make me uncomfortable and he would never have let me live it down.

Mr. Blunt stuck his head into the living room. “Hi, Howie.”

“Hello Mr... uh... Tim.”

He wagged a finger at me. “You’re getting better. Someday you’ll call me Tim right from the start.”

“We can but dream,” I said.

“So,” said Tim, turning to Stella. “Any ideas for supper? I’ve got...” he stopped and pointed at her hand. “What in the name of God is that?”

“Oh,” she said, looking down and fanning out her fingers. “You mean the ring.”

“Is that what it is? I thought maybe you’d found the philosopher’s stone.”

“Come on, Dad, it isn’t that big. It’s quite tasteful.”

“But how did you...” Tim stared at me. “Where did you...” Then he looked at Stella and held up a finger. “Wait, you’re not engaged, are you?”

“Of COURSE we aren’t engaged!”

Reassured, he turned back to me. “How did you... where did you...?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said heavily as reality seeped in. “She’s not keeping it.”

“Howie,” said Stella, “you know I love it, it’s just...”

I put my hand on hers. “I know. It’s okay.”

Tim edged out of the room. “I think I’m going to stay out of this one. I’ll be changing into my at-home clothes if you guys need to uh... talk.”

Stella was avoiding my eyes. I wrapped my arm around her, rested her head on my chest, and we just lay there for a while in miserable silence. I could feel her worrying.

“Psst,” I whispered into her ear after several long minutes of silence. She shifted her head to look at me. “If your entire left side were cut off, you could still tell people that you were all right. All right. Get it?”

She raised her head off of my chest. “You’re telling me terrible jokes? NOW?”

“Yes. A parasite walks into a bar and asks for a drink.”

“Oh, God.”

“The bartender says, ‘I’m not serving you — get out.’ So the parasite says, ‘well, you’re not a very good host.’”

“I’m not laughing at that,” she said, pursing her supremely kissable lips.

“What does a subatomic duck say?” I continued doggedly.

“What is a subatomic duck?”

“Wrong answer. It says ‘quark’.”

Stella groaned loudly.

“Why did the bear dissolve in water?”

“Tell me.”

“It was polar.”

“I’m not sure I love you anymore.”

“Except you do,” I said quietly. “And I’m so lucky.”

“I can think of a lot of words to apply to us right now that are less cheerful than ‘lucky’,” she said, turning away.

“You didn’t have to love me back. I could have spent the last year in a constant state of tortured, unrequited love from afar. If you had told me to leave you alone, I would have listened. I wouldn’t have spoken to you again, unless you spoke to me first. But I would have fallen in love with you all the same.”

“Just think, Howie... if we could live together... it could be like this all the time... and like last night...”

My chest heaved at the sound of her words. “I would give anything for that, Stella. Anything.” I tilted her chin with my finger, so that I could look her in her beautiful brown eyes. “So it’s going to be okay. Okay?”

She kissed me. “Okay.”

“Okay,” said her father loudly, coming down the stairs in his tee shirt and shorts. “You two are very cute and all, but Howie — I have a pork tenderloin and no idea what to do with it.”

“You can’t have him,” protested Stella. “I need him. I need help with Physics.”

Tim looked at me. “Can you help me make an edible meal while also helping Stella with Physics?”

“I don’t know, sir. But I’m going to try.”

“Sir? SIR?” He approached me aggressively and stuck a finger in my face. “What is my name? Say it!”

“Tim,” I said contritely.

“And don’t forget it, either.” He shook his head. “Sir. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Howie. I just don’t know.”

******

PHYSICS WAS THE CLASS that Stella had the most difficulty with. And by “most difficulty”, I really mean “any difficulty at all”, since most things seemed to come to her effortlessly. The slightest amount of puzzlement made her panic, because she wasn’t used to it.

“You must think I’m really dumb,” she said, after I talked her through an equation that caused me to fail Physics three years running in the seventies.

“Stella, you do realize that experience is not the same as intelligence and vice versa? You aren’t stupid for not knowing something you haven’t learned before.”

“But I did learn it before. Mr. Roeper went over it in class yesterday.”

“Oh, well then. What an idiot you must be.”

She gave me a playful slap on the shoulder and I smiled at her. God, I wanted to kiss her. But if I kissed her every time I wanted to kiss her, we’d never get anything done. Fortunately, I was an expert at not doing the things that I thought about doing.

“Just remember to sort out all the information you have from the problem, and label it, and then you can figure out the equation easier,” I told her. “Like this — you make a list of horizontal information, and vertical information. And remember that you always know the vertical acceleration because it’s going to be 9.8m/s^2.”

“Yeah, I know that, obviously...” She sighed and took a deep breath. “Okay. Organizing the information. That makes sense.”

“And then once you know what you know, it’s easier to figure out what equation to use based on what you do know. Does that make sense?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Let me run to the bathroom and then I’ll give this problem a try.”

“I’ll be right here.”

I stared at the Physics text book as I listened to the sound of her footsteps going up the stairs.

“Psst, Howie,” said Tim quietly, slipping into the kitchen and turning over the meat that was browning in the skillet. “While Stella’s out of the room, there’s something I want to ask you.”

I gave him my full attention.

“Stella said you didn’t want to go to university. Is she bullying you into this?”

I looked down again. “Stella wants me to at least try. That seems fair. The oven is pre-heated, by the way. I set it to four hundred.”

“I don’t know what you rubbed on this meat, but it smells great already.” Tim opened the oven and tossed the skillet in. “Have you heard of MIT Open Courseware?”

“No.”

“You know MIT, the university.”

“Yes.” Know it? I had longed to attend it during my father’s brief stint working there in the seventies. Disjointed memories clattered in my brain. It had been an unhappy time for all of us, but the university itself had sparkled with promise.

“They put all of their courses online. All the subjects. Lecture notes. Sample exams. I thought it might help. You could sort of... prepare.” He frowned at the timer. “How long until I turn it over?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes,” I said. “Thank you, Tim, I’ll look into the MIT thing.” It felt strange to know that I could finally attend MIT, if only in spirit, with the mere click of a computer mouse. But the more I thought about it, the more hope I felt. After all, I could learn new things. It just took me longer. So if I could study before I even attended my first class...

Tim set the timer on the stove for ten minutes. “I wanted to suggest it when Stella wasn’t in the room so you wouldn’t feel any more pressure.”

I smiled wryly. “Thank you.”

We heard the sound of the upstairs bathroom door opening. Tim ducked.

“The Eagle is landing!” he whispered. “Remember, the buffalo flies at midnight!” and he darted out of the kitchen in a half-crouch.

“What are you doing, Dad?” Stella asked.

“The lemming has gone over the cliff!” he shouted loudly.

“I’m sorry I asked.” She walked into the kitchen and plunked down next to me. “Where were we?”

But I was already gathering my papers.

“I have to get going, Beautiful. I told Dad I’d be home for dinner tonight.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Okay.”

I gave her a swift kiss, zipped up my book bag, and banged out the door. I nearly stumbled over my own feet in my eagerness to get home. I had to look up that MIT website. Maybe I could pass university after all.

Maybe Stella and I had a chance.