I feel new. Like maybe how those kids feel when Dr. Phil sends them to Outward Bound and they complete all the crazy tasks. My legs feel like they won’t ever hold me up again, but I lifted ninety pounds. With a rubber band to make it harder. I can’t believe it.
We stare into each other’s eyes for a bit, and I laugh, and he laughs, and I am utterly turned on, and I don’t know if he is, but I am like, wow. Pumped, I guess. He lifts me to my feet, and I say to him, “Bathroom,” and he helps me walk my wobbly legs to the bathroom, his strong arm behind my back and draped over my shoulder. Our bodies are so close and I smell his sweat and I want this moment never to end, ever.
He stops at the door. I am the one who drags him in with me.
“What?” he says, and I don’t answer. I slam the door behind me and pull him toward me and mash my mouth into his and now it’s his turn to whimper.
I’ve never felt so sure about anything in my life before. Like I’m possessed with some boy demon, and I decide, then and there, that if this is working out, I will do it every minute of every day of my life.
I push my chest against his and lick his lips and he groans and he pulls me closer in to him, and our sweat mingles into something funky and beautiful that I want to taste. I pull my mouth from his and lick his chin and his jaw and he squeezes my butt and I knead his shoulders and I need him in a new way.
“Not here,” he says, pulling slightly away. “We’ll get arrested.”
I pull him closer. “Don’t care,” I mumble.
He laughs. “Okay now, tiger,” he says. “I have a better idea.”
“Definitely call me that,” I say, still breathless, and he takes my hand, and even though the workout just started, he walks me out into the brilliantly scathing early morning Mesa air.
Mom is fast asleep when I bring Jordan in the front door. I can hear her snores coming from her bedroom, all the way out in the family room. For a little lady, she snores loud.
I open the patio door, take Jordan’s hand, and lead him out to the pool.
“Is this okay with your mom?”
I nod. It basically is. Not that she’d want to walk out and see us, but like she said: There’s lots of users and abusers out there, and Jordan is neither. He’s my boyfriend, and having sex with your boyfriend is nothing to be ashamed about.
If only my body agreed. I’m shaking. I hope Jordan can’t feel it through my hand.
I decide I’ll tell her in the morning, and I hope she won’t be mad.
Facing away from Jordan, I strip off my gym clothes. Part of me wants to watch him watch me strip, and wants to watch him take his clothes off too. But another part is feeling shy and tentative, very un–Super Max, and if I look at him, I’m afraid he’ll see it in my eyes.
When I’m naked, I turn toward him and dare to look in his eyes.
They are … alive. I’ve never seen Jordan like this. A little wild. It scares me a little even. I like it.
He pulls off his shirt. I’ve seen this before, in the desert that day. No definition yet. I don’t need definition. He’s perfect. His nipples, small, perky, and brown, stand out against his lily-white skin. He’s got a basic farmer’s tan, which is adorable on him, like his arms and lower legs belong to a different person than his trunk.
Normally I’d jump in, but it’s almost two in the morning and I don’t want to wake up Mom. I take his hand and lead him to the steps. We walk down into the water together. The cicadas are buzzing loud, which makes it sound like the nighttime is sizzling. The water is warmer than the air, which is to say it’s like a hot bathtub.
The moon gives me his basic shape, and I run my hands down his beautiful, alive body. He does the same to mine. I pull him close and sit him on my legs with him facing me. We kiss hard, like something on Animal Planet when two male animals are fighting for dominance. I kiss and then lick his bony shoulders, I bite his neck lightly and he whimpers. His hands are all over my chest, and then around my back, pulling me closer. I feel like laughing, and a little relieved, maybe, because the last time I did this it wasn’t anything like this, and maybe I’ve been scared that I’d never feel this kind of good. Like Kevin took something from me, because it was my first anything.
I had no idea that working out would awaken this whatever in Jordan. It’s scary and sexy and I want to be inside him, and I think we’re finally going to do that, and my heart pulses with excitement and my chest shivers with fear.
The unknown. What if it’s not good? What if it’s really, really good? What if it’s perfect? The thing moms don’t tell you when they give you the talk, and the things dads definitely don’t tell you, when they’re telling you about stuff, is how scary sex is. When I talk about it with Betts and Zay-Rod, we definitely don’t talk about what it feels like to be, like all out there, with your desires as uncovered and obvious as possible. Every inch of my body feels chilly and alive.
Jordan jumps off my lap and picks me up so that my legs are on his. He reaches for my butt and squeezes and I freeze just like that night with Kevin.
I dry heave.
Without even meaning to I push backward and do a dolphin jump, my chest and then my midsection above the water.
He jumps up and down, bounding toward me.
I submerge until my feet touch the bottom.
I scream water.
I scream out something that I didn’t know was in me.
When I’m all out of air, I burst to the surface, wipe my eyes, and Jordan is watching me, a concerned expression on his face. That just makes it worse. I want to scream again. My body is shaking and shivering despite the hot water, and I gasp and leap toward the side of the pool. I pull myself half out of the pool, I lean forward, and I punch down. Onto tile.
The pain explodes in my knuckles. White-hot fire that reverberates up my shocked arm.
I yell in agony.
Jordan is up and out of the pool in like three seconds. I hear the screen door open fast and slam shut, and I put my head in my hands and sob. I cannot control the tears. I can’t control anything. I can’t I can’t I can’t.
I don’t know how long later it is when the patio door opens again, and my mom’s voice belts out, “Max? Max? Mijo, what happened?”
Her hand is on the back of my neck. I am led, naked, to an Adirondack chair. I am dried off a bit with a towel. A cloth is wrapped around my bloody fingers. Shorts are slipped on me without my doing anything. And I know as certain as anything I’ve ever known that I need to talk about this.
“I think I was raped,” Max says.
“What?” I yell.
“What?” his mom yells.
She puts her arms around his shoulders and rubs. I sit on the concrete. I’m in my gym shorts but I didn’t have time to put on my shirt. Max is shirtless too, and there’s something especially naked about him, like I’ve never even close to seen before, with tears rushing down cheeks that are always so dry and typically raised in a wide, blissful smile.
“I think I was raped,” he says again, and then his mom is leading him inside, and I’m following, and part of me wonders if I should give them privacy, and the other part? No way. I’m his boyfriend. I should be here.
She sits him on the same part of the couch where he sat a few weeks back, when his mom talked to us about making the truck legal. I sit on the love seat again and make sure I’m fully facing Max.
He hugs his arms to his chest. He’s about to start speaking when his mom does the strangest thing. She pries his tight fingers off his biceps, first on one side, then reaches over him and does the other side too. His arms fall to his sides.
“Defensive, closed posture,” she says. “When you need to do the opposite right now, mijo.”
Max takes a deep breath.
“It was the night I didn’t come home,” he says to her. Then he turns to me. “The night before I met you at the farmers’ market. I met this boy online. He invited me to a party. I went. Went back to his dorm room.”
“This at ASU?” she asks, her tone sharp.