—Both? It can’t be both, Cole. Either you love a girl, a person, or you don’t, and you’re just trying to stay, I don’t know. Coupled. Laid.
—You’re going to call me perv if I answer this,
Kristen laughs. —Probably.
—or worse. But coupled and laid, this is love, right?
—It’s just a part of it.
—OK, but a big part.
—For guys maybe.
—Yeah, but Kristen, that’s like half the world.
—What about my half?
—You don’t like coupled and laid? I’ve known you for what, we met the first day of school. You are happiest now. With that guy. Coupled and laid. It’s a very big happiness. So, yes, we say things. To keep happiness going.
She’s chewing on her sleeve. —You don’t mean them.
—Of course we absolutely mean it. You don’t accidentally buy a girl a ring. You mean to do it. You go to the store, you open your stupid wallet. Believe me, he means it, your boyfriend. He wants you both to be happy. And, yes, sorry but not really, not really sorry, laid.
She’s looking at me, this girl, and boy do I know this look. There are nicer ways to put it, what this look is, the way buying a shiny ring could be called generosity instead of keeping Mark laid. The look is disillusioned, maybe. Disappointed. Kind of very sad but just a little. But the way I think of this look, and it’s dirty, is that she’s sorry she ever opened her legs.
—But you’re leaving at the end of the year, right?
—Cole. This is February.
—But you’re leaving then. Going back.
—Cole, you’re pouting.
—I’m not …
—How many girls are you with in what, five months?
—This is different.
—Maybe, maybe it is. Five weeks.
—I’m just asking.
—Don’t miss me already when I’m right here. Next year when you’re lonely you can find me and we’ll wave to our little cameras.
Another girl on a screen. I’m glad she can’t see me freak out a little.
Umpteenth rainish day. Water from a branch drips slow and hits my cheek as I run, quick and cold like thinking about something suddenly. Alec.
I prep myself. You’re not supposed to ask. You’re supposed to plan it out. I walk up and tell her. —Valentine’s Day.
She wrinkles up. —Oh, Cole, do we have to? Could you just come over and we’ll roll around or something? What are you doing? You’re on the ground.
—I’m thanking the universe for the perfect girlfriend.
We snap out of it together, a warm drooly doze in her room. She reaches up and slides the window shut, very beautiful. Right there, on her arm, the sort of beautiful spot like what made pioneers think, let’s put a town here.
—I want to tell you something important.
My stomach dips into an uh-oh. I try to keep my eyes, my whole mind, just on the angle of skin across sky in my view of her arm and the window. Finally: —What is it?
It’s a soft sigh she sighs, but substantial. —I just wish I had something, more or important, to say. Sometimes, you know? After the sex it’s just nothing in my head with you.
Her arm moves and the sky is all I can see. But I have to say something. —A good nothing?
—Yeah.
If I moved my head maybe I could read it better, see where I am and where this is going. But it’s so calm in my eyes, the blue so vacant, for once not a cloud in the sky. A good nothing.
—What does it taste like?
We’re talking in the dark, a lot lately, easier and sexy.
—You know what it tastes like, Cole. Your body squirts it out all the time and you can’t tell me you haven’t been curious.
I decide not to think about Alec.
Her mom had a tea going, some sweet flowers she got sent from a town with a market in wherever they used to live. Rosy but not roses, some old wives’ remedy tonic, poured into a jar with a tight metal lid to carry with you.
—Can I have some too?
Grisaille laughed. —It’s for cramps.
—It smells good, though.
—Well, sure. I mean, it’ll definitely work on you.
We sat on the drizzly steps a bit and I listened to her through a gossipy tangle she was having with two friends miles away onscreen. The steam steamed. The taste made my stomach noisy. I did not in fact have cramps all afternoon. She kicked her flats off talking, bare feet getting dirty and cute in the mess of leaves and weeds unmowed. Something stupid was on in the living room, and maybe it was the tea mixture, but we fell deep truly asleep for an hour and woke up in magic dusky light when it was over. We’d both dreamed something we couldn’t remember all of, and we got giggly over how boring it was to hear the other one’s dumb drony dream summary, all the spacey sentences reaching toward nothing. We made up better endings. Her mom came back home, ravioli with butter, red wine with don’t tell your mother, Cole. Grisaille’s sleepy face, one kiss on the mouth and a pat on the hair, not sorry to go, just sorry to see it over. So, that day. That was as good as fucking, for sure I guess.
Halfway through the movie, Grisaille says it’s boring. We make out a little and lose the thread of the plot. She pulls her jeans down, underwear, but keeps them around her ankles, lifts her legs up so my head just fits. I do my new trick of holding her ass, pressing her against my mouth when she comes, until she can’t stand it and almost kicks me away. She says no when I unbuckle for my turn. —That wore me out. You can do it yourself and I’ll watch you.
I do it quick, my mouth full of her and my chin sticky like I’m done with a peach. Did this with other girls but it was a show, slow to let them see. Here I just do it, come hard into my own hand grunting like it’s happening, which it is, for real.
You’re making me, Grisaille, into myself with you.
OK, we tried it, and now we know. It’s not a good way to have sex. And also it’s a bad way to eat hummus.
We have lunch, real lunch in a restaurant, and I tell her I love her. She doesn’t talk for a bit. The waiter already hates us; she ordered red wine forgetting we weren’t in Europe. I think some other guy, maybe at some European place with a bottle of wine between them, must have said it to her better.
—I don’t know, Cole. I think you have said this to a lot of girls.
—I mean it.
—I know. That’s what I mean. Every time, don’t you, Cole, you mean it.
The songs where they say you drive me crazy I’m finally really getting. Her hips rising on the floor and her hands so busy there.
—Wait. No.
—I can’t stay on my knees like this. She keeps pulsing.
—This one isn’t. For you. Cole.
My head in her armpit almost, half asleep, looking at the hairs there and when I inhale the smell for a second I think I’m with Alec and startle straight up like a nightmare.
—What?
—Nothing,
And I shake, make something up. —Foot fell asleep.
That was a very short game of Truth or Dare we just did.
She is laughing. My face is buried in her. It’s not tickling and it’s not eating her out. It’s a thing I am inventing, so happy, talking right to her beautiful cunt. Goddamn delicious, I say, or something, out loud. C’mon juicy, so wet I love you, love everything, pucker up inside fuck.