If I’d been looking for a specific cue to tell me the time was right, you know, random fireworks lighting up the night sky, a Barry White tune crooning from the radio, or even a simple, undeniable rush of pure lust…
This definitely wasn’t it.
Tyler’s hand worked my boob like he expected milk.
“Sweet Jesus,” I gasped, pulling away from his slick lips, “there’s foreplay, and then there’s unnecessary roughness.” Sometimes I had to dumb things down for Ty, use his native tongue – footballian. Plus, I could barely breathe with him pressing me down into worn leather.
Minutes ago his body had seemed all mysterious angles and subtle warmth, but now his closeness was overwhelming. Oppressive. I resisted the urge to push against those strong shoulders instead of pulling them closer.
My cell phone rang. I mean it literally sounded like a good old-fashioned telephone ringer. So I knew it was her. Just the distraction I secretly craved and yet…I scrambled into a near-seated position, Ty wedged between my aching legs. For a linebacker, he sure forgot to utilize his other muscles when his dick was in charge.
The phone rang again, loud even muffled by my ass. “Get off!” I bucked my hips. One thing was certain; supporting two hundred pounds of randy boy in the narrow cab of a truck gave you quite the inner thigh workout. “I’m sitting on it. You know what she’ll do if I don’t answer…”
“Come on, Charlie.” Ty crawled off me and sprawled out along my side. He cupped the hard-on straining against his jeans. “You can’t leave me like this.”
“Ah, the plea women have heard since the dawn of time.” Seriously? He was really going there? Next he’d be telling me his junk would fall off if he didn’t get off. I grabbed my phone. “A girl’s rite of passage.” I flipped it open. “Thanks for that.”
“Thanks for what?” my mother said in a flat tone, which had nothing to do with lousy reception behind the abandoned wheat pool elevator, and everything to do with her charming personality. Plus the fact that she popped an anti-anxiety pill the moment she felt a genuine emotion coming on.
“Who’re you with this time?” she asked. “I hope it’s not Tyler Gribbons. The only thing you should thank him for is a life lesson. And it goes like this…Boys who play with balls in school can’t keep their hands out of their pants.”
I turned my back to Ty, whose hand had, indeed, slid down the front of his jeans.
“What’s up?” I leaned over the front seat, turned down the radio, and checked the time on the dashboard. “It’s only nine fifty. You said I could stay out till ten.” The curfew was yet another way my mother attempted to de-stress her life and wreak havoc with mine. She didn’t like having to worry about me staying out late, parting with friends, and being out on the streets in the wee morning hours. Since Dad died, she’d become hyper vigilant, pulling double duty in the parenting department. It was maddening. I mean, even Cinderella had until midnight.
But in this instance, I was kind of relieved to have an excuse to bail.
Not that I was chickening out. But the backseat?
I could do better.
Ty tugged at a belt loop on my jeans.
“Are you wearing a thong?” he whispered. He tugged harder. “Shit! Standard white cotton.”
I smacked his hand, plunked down into the seat.
“You’re with Tyler, aren’t you? Don’t lie to me. I heard his voice. Besides, Rachel just called looking for you.”
Crapola. I made a gun with my fingers, put them to my temple and fired. “Really?” I tried to play the scene as innocently as possible. Tried to channel my inner method actor. I’m innocent. Innocent. “Isn’t that strange.”
“Uh huh, strange. You should have told her the plan more than once. You know how forgetful that girl is.”
Why did I bother with Rachel? She was always screwing up. I gave her the perfect plotline before we left school. “If anyone asks, I’m at your house watching movies. If my mom calls and wants to speak to me, tell her I’m in the ladies, and then call me - so I can call her back on my cell. Got it?” And then Roach goes and calls my house looking for me?
“You have eight minutes,” Mom said. “If I don’t see Gribbons’ sorry excuse for a truck pulling into our driveway…”
Another failed attempt, but it wasn’t disappointment that made it easier to breathe as Ty revved the engine and fishtailed down the back road, skiffs of snow billowing in our wake.
I thought about the many books on screenwriting I’d borrowed from the public library over the last year, the ones I practically inhaled in order to teach myself to write scripts. Great scripts that might just get me out of this town someday.
They all talked about it. The inciting incident. The one thing that changes the main character’s life has to happen in the first few minutes and yet here I was three weeks into focused, plotted, storyboarded dating – and I was still a virgin.
Life really was stranger than fiction.
You couldn’t make this shit up.
“Mom, I’m home,” I called out from the mudroom. I waited a moment, but when there was only silence, I sighed and set about de-weatherizing. She was probably pissed. Heavy winter boots dangled from my hands as I knocked them together, sending chunks of snow flying. When the worst was gone, I dumped the boots upside down overtop a copper grate in the floor.
I tried again, louder. “Don’t pout. I’m fifteen minutes late, so sue me.” I hung my coat on one of the iron nails jutting from the wall and pushed the screen door open into the kitchen. I expected Mom to be sitting at the table, waiting to ream me out.
But she wasn’t there.
“Mom, I’m home. Just like I promised. Where are you?” A niggling of unease had my voice higher pitched, sounding young and panicked even to my own ears.
Stupid. Should have stayed home and kept her busy lecturing me about school, or telling me those same old stories about when she first met Dad and how they’d been so in love.
But I’d decided to go out with Ty and get away from the house. Leaving Mom with nothing to take her mind off things.
I found her asleep in the den, sitting upright in her favorite wingback chair, an open book about to fall from her lap. Just like the good old days.
I used to find her in Dad’s favorite recliner, before we’d had that yard sale where we got rid of a lot of his stuff. She’d sit in that beast of a chair for hours, watching our old family vacation videos, watching us laugh across the screen, rewinding the bit where dad pretended to be a bear and attacked my tent, snuffling and growling until I tore out and ran shrieking to the car. She’d been holding the camera and my outraged face shook with her laughter. Then I’d buckle and start laughing too.
We hadn’t always been like this. Snarking at each other. Fighting over every little thing. Bitter. Sad.
Those videos proved it.
Mom would wait for a close up, punch a button with her knuckle, and stare at him, alternately crying out his name, and then bitching about the crazy pause lines cutting the screen in half. I kept telling her she should get them transferred to DVD. Maybe it was better that she never got around to it.
How long would she have cried if his image, at least, had been flawless?
It took a few tries to wake her, then more coaxing to guide her down the hall. She shrugged my arm from her shoulder and slipped into her room.
I stared at the door she’d shut behind her.
“Night.” I listened hard, but couldn’t tell if she offered a response. I moved further down the hall to my room, scuffing my sock feet on the cold wood floor– all the while renewing my vow to never end up like her.
And I wouldn’t.
As long as I stuck to the script.