“Hello?”
I open the front door. The lights inside the house are dimmed. Gloria Estefan is playing on the stereo. I close the door behind me.
“I’m in here, Hank.”
Although we mutually agreed we could see other people, Laura and I have talked on the phone almost every night. Within days of leaving Empire Ridge, the tone in her voice changed. After a few weeks, she was being suggestive, playful even, teasing me over the phone. She started sending me photographs—one of her in her dorm room wearing a miniskirt, one of her posing at a Halloween Party dressed like Susanna Hoffs, lead singer of The Bangles—an eternal object of my self-stimulation—and one of her dressed up like Santa Claus at a Christmas Party. I could see the color and the fullness coming back into Laura’s face. With each successive round of photos, I thanked the starch-filled menu of the Bucknell cafeteria for resurrecting the girl I fell in love with.
Laura came home from school today. I haven’t seen her since we said goodbye in August, more than eight months ago. Her parents are out of town for the weekend, so she invited me over. I know going to see Laura will lead to trouble.
So I go to see Laura.
She’s in her room. I can smell the Obsession perfume from the front doorway. I walk down the hall and open the door.
Beneath the mottled glow of candlelight, Laura is lying on the bed in nothing but her bra and panties. This night is poised to be fantastic.
Or not.
“Hello, stranger.”
“Wow,” I say. Laura is as close to buff as I’ve ever seen her. She’s never carried her weight quite like this. She looks maybe five pounds heavier, but it’s all muscle.
“Really?” Laura says.
Stop staring, Hank. I shake my head, trying to break the hypnosis. “Laura, we…we can’t do this. Not right now.”
“Then when?” Her tone is desperate. “Do you know how long I’ve been picturing this night?”
“Eight months?”
“Longer than that.”
“Well, if you’ve waited this long…” I say this because at this point sarcasm is all I have to offer.
“Hank, come on.”
“I haven’t seen you for eight months, Laura. How about getting through first and second gear before we go straight to fifth?”
“I’m in a happy place now. I’m ready. We’re ready, Hank.” Laura jumps off the bed and grabs me. Her kisses are rough. I wish I didn’t kiss her back, but I do. I feel guilty. Stopping the kiss—stopping us—is harder than I thought it would be.
“Laura.” I push her away. “I said we can’t do this, and I meant it.”
She starts to cry. “What’s your problem, Hank?”
I cross to the other side of the room, desperate to put some distance between me and the bare skin of a girl I would kill to make love to just one more time.
“There’s no easy way for me to say this, Laura.”
“Just say it.”
“I think I’m breaking up with you.”
Laura snatches her robe hanging off the back of her bedroom door. She opens the door and points me into the hallway. “Leave!”
“Wait a second.”
“I said get out!”
“Not until you let me explain.”
“Explain?” Laura shuts the door again. She folds her arms, glaring at me. She’s reading my eyes, my standoffishness. She knows. She fucking knows! She opens her mouth. “It’s Beth.”
“Laura, I wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else.”
“Beth?”
“I don’t even know how serious it is at this point.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
Laura sits on her bed. I sit down beside her. We listen to B-side Gloria Estefan, not saying anything.
“Laura, I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but I am very, very sorry.”
She closes her eyes, rests her head on my shoulder and sighs. “It’s my own fault.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth. I drove you away months ago. I guess, after we really started talking on the phone, I thought you wanted to make this work.”
“Maybe a part of me does…uh, I mean did. I’ve enjoyed our phone calls, too. And I love getting your letters. But you were so far away, and I just—”
“You just fell out of love with me?”
“No, Laura. You’re my first love. A part of me will always love you.”
She props her chin on my shoulder and gives me a smile. She wipes her eyes. “I hate that fucking line, just so you know.”
“It’s not a line. You were my first love. You were the first girl who broke my heart…”
“And the first girl you got pregnant.”
“Well, uh…yeah, that too.”
An awkward silence, which Laura recognizes. “Too soon for jokes?”
“Yeah, probably.” I’m smiling now. “My point is, aside from my family, you’re the first real thing I’ve ever had in my life. A real love. A real breakup. A real make up. Twenty years from now, Patrick Swayze’s ‘She’s Like the Wind’ will come on the radio, and it’ll take me right back to that sixteen-year-old boy crying himself to sleep because he can’t imagine life without this one particular girl and because picturing her in the arms of another guy breaks his heart…over and over again.”
Laura’s eyes lock onto mine. She reaches up to my face. She puts her fingers on my mouth, tracing my lips. “Patrick Swayze?”
“The one and only,” I say.
“Thank you for saying that,” Laura says, kissing me.
I kiss her back, and I don’t feel guilty about it. We kiss for a while. Her robe stays on. My hands behave. The moment is very sweet—nothing more, but nothing less either.
Laura shows me to the door. We hold hands as we walk through her house. “How are your parents doing?”
“Great.”
“They still hate me?”
“No, they turned the corner with you a while ago.”
“At least somebody did.”
Her tone breaks my heart. “Most of their scorn pretty much gravitates around yours truly these days,” I say.
Laura bites on the misdirection. “Don’t tell me they’re still pissed about you getting arrested.”
“No, at least not as much as they were six months ago. My dad saw it in his heart to reduce my sentence from ‘as I live and breathe, you will not have a social life’ to a couple months.”
“Your parents are realistic. They know the difference between having a couple beers at a party and killing somebody.”
I think we both register the unintentional allusion to the abortion, if only for a split second. I wonder if it will always be in the back of our minds? Will it always hurt? Or will the pain be ephemeral and then linger on as a harmless but permanent scratch?
I have a couple of these scratches, some more visible than others.
“I think the fact I’m a minor is what really minimized the damage. It’s off my record once I turn eighteen.”
“And they can’t print your name in the paper, can they?”
“Nope,” I say. “My byline read something like, ‘Minor, seventeen, Empire Ridge, illegal consumption, one-oh-seven a.m., three-eight-oh-nine Skipjack Road, by Empire Ridge Police Department, released to parents.’”
“Something like that?” Laura asks. “You saved that paper, didn’t you?”
“Saved it?” I say. “I fucking framed it.”
“People will still talk, you know.” This time Laura’s allusion is intentional. A final nod to our shared love. Our shared tragedy.
“Yeah, but we can deal with that.” I say we for Laura’s benefit. She smiles again.
“And how’s little Jack doing?”
“Still the greatest gift this world has ever given me.”
Laura reaches over with her free hand and rubs my arm. She opens the front door, leans in, and kisses me one more time. “Give one of those kisses to Jack for me, okay?”
I smile; Laura’s taste still on my lips. I don’t know what it is about this request that hits me so hard. With everything going through her head, with everything we’ve been through, she asks me to give my little brother a kiss? Did that really just fucking happen? It might be the most selfless thing she’s ever said.
“Goodbye, Laura,” is all I can muster at this point.
She runs her hand down my arm and squeezes my hand. “Bye, Hank.”
I sit in my Subie. I struggle to put the key in the ignition. I start the car, pull out of Laura’s driveway.
A part of me wants to turn around. Wants to put down the fishing pole, walk into her bedroom, and scoop her up in my arms. We’ll cry each other to sleep and start locking her bedroom door again, even when her parents are home, and they’ll still pretend they don’t notice.
I keep thinking about that last kiss, wondering if I’ve done the right thing.