He twisted, his eyes moved over my body still wrapped in the blanket, and he nodded. “Okay, let’s get back.”
Duane took a few steps, carrying him maybe ten feet, but then stopped. I hadn’t yet moved as I was more or less swimming in a sea of mental melancholy. He might be right, we might be suited, but so what? Nothing could ever come of it other than a few months—at best, years—of being together.
In my typical fashion of getting ahead of myself, my mind leapt to a time two years from now when I would be ready to leave Green Valley. What if Duane and I were extremely well suited? What if we became serious? What if I couldn’t leave him?
I glanced up just in time to sense then see him returning to where I stood. Instinctively, I took a step back; but he held me by my arms and halted my retreat.
“Tina, your cousin,” he said, his voice thick with both hesitation and ferocity.
“Yes, Tina is my cousin.”
“She dared me to kiss her.”
I pressed my lips together and swallowed, feeling again like I had heartburn. “You did kiss her, and she’s your ex-girlfriend.”
“She was never my girl.”
I didn’t want to argue semantics. “Right, you’ve been with Tina since before I left for college, but she was never your girl. What about her?”
He hesitated for a beat, then said, “You remember who I was with before you left for college?”
I responded through gritted teeth, “Duane, what about Tina?”
He seemed to shake himself before starting again. “Tina…” He nodded, then took another step, bringing him firmly inside my personal space. “When I kissed her earlier, it didn’t mean anything.”
“Well, it looked like something to me.”
“It wasn’t. Not with her. But with you, at the community center, I meant what I said. I’ve always wanted you. And I am sorry you didn’t know it was me, because…” His voice lost its fierce edge, but roughened, his next words emerged sounding like an aching confession. “I’d really like for there to be a next time.”
CHAPTER 5
“Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.”
― Judith Thurman
Jessica
I was distracted.
Not even Rick Steves’ Europe could hold my attention.
It was all Duane’s fault. His words and lips, and hands, and eyes, and his penis’ fault.
He had a nice one; at least it had felt nice in comparison to the only other penis of my acquaintance, thick and long and smooth and rock hard. I didn’t get a peek at it backstage or when he’d dared me to go skinny-dipping. However? I could recall with surprising clarity what it looked like when we were younger, when he’d been naked chasing me through the woods, or the time before that when a bunch of us went skinny-dipping in the waterfalls near Burgess. He was circumcised. I’d noted it as a teenager because I’d just finished eighth grade health class (also known as sex education).
I never expected to be fixating on Duane’s circumcised penis. Yet there I was, sitting at my desk at work, grading pop quizzes, trying to recall the glorious weight of him in my hand…
How irritating, because now I was having a lusty hot flash.
I groaned, letting my red pen drop as my face fell into my hands.
How had I even arrived here, in this purgatory? Yes, I was drooling over the memory of his sexual magnetism from afar. But it was more than that. So much more. And this more was beyond distressing. Duane’s admission—that our time backstage at the community center had been something he’d wanted for a long time and he wanted a repeat—felt overwhelming.
I’d known him forever. I knew all about him, or I thought I did.
His confession felt like finding out my cat—Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest—could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower…
Anyway, I decided I was cursed by the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien for my ironic sexy Gandalf blasphemy. That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about Duane Winston’s body parts and his perplexing suggestion we were suited.
Five days had passed since Halloween and my busy, bizarre night. Of course I’d avoided him since. What would I say? What could I say?
Hi, Duane. I don’t know whether I like you or not, and you confuse the hell out of me, but I’d like to buy you a piece of pie so we can argue about the color of the sky. Let’s schedule that.
Or how about,