June 1987
Alice sat on a wooden bench in Mary Ann’s backyard, picked at the label on an empty beer bottle, and checked her watch for the tenth time since she’d arrived. It was only eleven o’clock, and she’d promised she’d stay at Mary Ann’s grad party — “the last party of our high school lives!” Mary Ann had billed it, “the last chance to see everybody before you go to England!” — till midnight, at least. Make that till midnight at the latest.
Mary Ann had invited various athletic teams, most of the marching band, her student council buddies, and anyone else she’d run into during the last week of school, so the large crowd making too much noise around Alice was a strange mix of cool kids and misfits. When two of her nerdy pals from the history club drifted over, she chatted with them, asked about their summer plans and where they were going for college, and falsely promised to keep in touch.
She peeled the beer label off in one piece, crumpled it in her hand, and stood up on the bench, looking for Mary Ann. There she was, across the yard, with Davey and some tall guys who must be basketball players. Alice would go over there, say her goodbyes, slip out the side gate, and head home.
She navigated her way through several groupings of people engaged in raucous conversation, and successfully avoided contact of the spilling or burning variety with the various drinks and spliffs that were waved around. She was halfway to Mary Ann when Jake Stewart loomed up in front of her and declaimed her name: “Alice Maeda!”
He stood very close to her and grinned drunkenly. He smelled of beer and smoke and aftershave and a primal maleness that the arty, intellectually inclined guys Alice usually gravitated toward did not tend to emanate. His good bone structure — he had a strong, straight nose, wide-set eyes, and a firm jaw — framed by his long hair, gone wavy in the summer heat, made him look roguishly handsome. If you liked that sort of thing.
“Hi,” she shouted back. “And bye. I’m leaving.” She tried to move past him but he didn’t give way.
“Don’t go yet,” he said. He didn’t sound too drunk. “I want to talk to you. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Some other time, maybe.”
“No, now. Please? Come.” He reached for her hand and she let him take it — out of curiosity — and lead her through the press of people. What he could possibly want to say to her? She had known him since kindergarten, but they rarely spoke.
He led her in the back door of the house, through the crowded kitchen and dark dining room, to the empty living room. When they’d sat down on a sofa, side by side, she said, “So here we are. What’s up?”
The sofa sagged slightly in the middle, and they were seated so close together on it that her thigh, under a thin cotton skirt, touched his shorts-clad one. But the novelty of the situation — that she was practically sitting in the lap of a species of male (genus golden boy) with which she was unfamiliar — intrigued her. So she did not inch away. She stayed put, curious to see what would happen next.
He turned toward her, reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear with his finger, traced the hoop of her earring. “Oh, Alice.” He’d dropped his voice into a lower register. “Where have you been all my life?”
Alice laughed out loud. And said, “That was so cheesy it was funny.”
He didn’t smile.
“You meant it to be funny, right?”
“Yeah, of course. But hear me out.” His right arm had somehow come to rest along the sofa back behind her, the soft hairs on his forearm tickled the nape of Alice’s neck, and his hand cupped her shoulder. He was such a smooth operator, he seemed to invite her ridicule. Yet she found herself staring at his mouth, and wondering what he could do with it, wondering if he could tie a cherry stem in a knot with
his tongue.
He said, “Do you realize that this is the last day of this stage of our lives, the last night before everything changes?”
He must have been talking to Mary Ann. Or he was the kind of guy who liked to express deep thoughts when he’d had a few.
“Nothing will ever be the same after this. We’re all going to scatter, and go out in the world in search of adventure, and new horizons, and whatever the fuck else we find. But what if what we’re looking for turns out to have been right here, under our noses, the whole time?”
Such bullshit he was spouting, and familiar-sounding bullshit, too — Alice had heard some of the same phrases in the valedictorian’s speech at the graduation ceremony. Or maybe in the principal’s remarks. “So what are you saying?” she said. “That we should seize the day?”
“Yes! You get it! That’s totally what we should do.”
“Like, seize the day and make out?”
He hesitated for a second, smiled, and said, “Exactly! Exactly.” And he leaned toward her, his head tilted to one side, his eyes half-closed.
She was still amused, but she was turned on, too — yes, she was. His nearness, his rogue look, the attention he was paying her, his corny seduction techniques — her body responded to them all. The crotch of her underwear was wet, and her breathing had turned shallow.
She opened her mouth, loosened her tongue, and felt Jake’s cheek against hers. When he pressed his lips against the tender skin below her earlobe, she gave in, let out a rapturous sigh, reached for his thick, rapidly hardening dick, and copped a feel through his shorts.
He moaned quietly in her ear, and said, “Let’s get out of here, go over to my place. My parents are away, I’ve got the house to myself.”
Hold on. That was a bad idea. A terrible idea. No matter how much she wanted to, she should not now go sleep with Jake Stewart. She did not want to become the latest notch on his belt, the last holdout at Five Oaks to succumb to his charms, the tawdry topic of conversation the next day among his friends.
From the back of the house, a male voice called, “Jake! Where are you, man?” And another voice, closer, yelled, “Yo, Jake!”
Jake muttered “fuck,” removed his arm from the sofa back, and slid along the seat cushions just far enough away from her that when his buddies walked in a few seconds later they might not realize he’d been playing her like a goddamned violin, heavy on the vibrato. A casual observer might think they’d just been sitting and talking in the dark room, maybe reminiscing about their emotional elementary school music teacher, Ms. DaSilva, who had taught the fourth graders to sing “Both Sides Now,” and wept when they performed it.
Two guys stopped in the doorway of the living room, their hulking bodies silhouetted in the light that spilled out from the kitchen behind them. “Jake, you coming?” one of them said.
“Give me five minutes.”
The posse went outside, and Jake said, “I have to go out for a bit, but why don’t you meet me at my house later?” He’d slid back close to her and his hands were on her again — one stroked the back of her neck, and the other rubbed her bare knee. It was an impressive display of ambidexterity, but the spell was broken. She’d remembered who she was, and how she didn’t belong there, and where she was going.
“Thanks, but I don’t think so.” She smiled — no hard feelings. And no hard dick for her to play with either, unfortunately.
Jake stood up, and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ll leave the side door unlocked. If you want a night you’ll never forget, come by.”
She said, “You know what kills me? That your cheesy lines actually work most of the time. They do, don’t they?”
He was at the door, on his way out. He pointed at her. “You know where I live? At 5 Forest Lane. I’ll ditch the boys and meet you there in an hour. Hour and a half, tops.”
“Goodnight Jake,” she’d said. “Have a good life.” And she’d gone home to lie in her bed, and toss and turn, and think for far too long about what might have been.