Doze off after, wake up, and Adrienne’s mad I was asleep. I’m supposed to, I guess, be staring into her eyes and saying something. But I’m so comfortable with you, is what I tell her instead. She’s halfway OK with it. I lean against her and perform a big snore. She’s still halfway. I kiss her harder than she thinks will happen right then. She curves one leg over mine. More than halfway now, but I still don’t know what I did or how I got out of it.
—Why do you always take your shoes off right when we get inside?
I read their messages too much for clues. My sister’s watching TV, Amelie sends me, and it means what? She’ll be home all night? She’s snoopy? Snitching? Doesn’t like me?
We fed the ducks together, but they ruined it all, so aggressive it wasn’t fun, surrounding us and squawking so loud we just ended up dumping it all on the ground, OK OK, take it, asshole birds. So I get that, if you act too hungry it’s not fun anymore. Calm down, sit and wait, you’ll get something. But you know, sometimes you’re just really really fucking hungry.
Need to find somewhere. My parents are home. Her mom’s home. It’s cold out. Cars are cramped, and we don’t have the car anyway. Dory’s having a party, but we can’t go upstairs. Fool around a little at the bus stop, in a thing that used to be a payphone. My hands cold. Give up, or try to sneak me through the window. C’mon c’mon. That hotel there, it can’t be full, those empty beds no one is using. Fuck.
I say to Kristen, —OK, can I ask you something?
She closes her eyes. —I’m afraid already.
—Stop. Tell me. Uncode it for me.
—It’s decode, Cole. What?
—OK, if a girl—
—I knew it. I’m scared.
—If she says, nothing the first month. Like for the first month we go out, she doesn’t want—
—I get it, Cole.
—OK. Which is cool, right? I mean, it’s fine.
—A girl making a choice about her own body, yes. That’s cool, Cole. I’m sooo glad you’re fine with that.
—I am. But. Second date, we’re kissing and she moves my hand to her shirt.
—Ew. Jesus, why are you even—
—OK, but just tell me, decode it, does that mean—
She’s trying to cover her eyes and ears at once. —Shut up shut up shut up—
—Kristen, how am I going to learn—
—Shut up.
—C’mon.
—You c’mon. Where were your hands, anyway, before, in this story, she moved them—
—They were, you know, like on her waist or whatever.
—Or whatever. You make me not want to be on Planet Earth, Cole. You force it.
—What?
—Don’t what. You do. You force it, Cole.
—I don’t force people.
—What do you do then?
Now she sounds interested. She is looking at me scientifically, like a professional in her stupid sweater, like I’m the lab animal she might not have to cut open after all. She says it again. —What do you do then?
—Well, like I said. She says nothing for the first month, so nothing’s happening.
—But you want it to.
—Yeah, I will admit that. I want it to happen, but I’m not going to force it to happen, no. I mean, I think we both want it. I think. It feels like it.
—Aha.
—What aha? She’s the one who moved my hands on her. It happens to her. It happens to both of us.
—Bullshit.
She looks around and lowers her voice. —You forced it.
—I helped it along, I guess. I made, I don’t know, the space where it could—
—You forced it.
—Stop saying that! What does it mean when she has me touch her? And if I move my hands down? Clamping her legs shut, that means stop, that’s rapey? Or it means, —Don’t say anything,
—yes right there that spot? If her legs are so tight together that I can’t move my legs?
—You could ask her, Cole. You could open your mouth.
But our mouths, I can’t tell her, are pressed so together then. Kissing the whole time, and then, and it hasn’t been a month, her legs just slip open like an exhale.
—Give me the details.
—I’m not your fucking porn, Alec.
—C’mon c’mon. You love telling me.
I do and I don’t, but I tell him. —She held my hand still when I put my finger inside her. Wait, wait, she said, and then I felt it. Her moving around me, like a glove, a shy creature. She moved more. It was like a party trick but it made her come so hard to do it.
—Jesus. That’s hot.
—I know.
—I’m hard just hearing about it.
I am too, of course. —Hey don’t tell me that, dude. That’s private.
She was the one who taught me how to do it, gently gently running my hands on the sides of her breasts. Thank you, Amelie. I use that on everybody and everybody loves it.
Moving up her body so my cock is between her breasts and Antoinette half laughs half frowns. —Every guy wants this.
—Well, it’s kind of a natural idea.
—I wish I wasn’t a C.
—I like them.
—Well, duh.
She’s looking out the window now. Her trophies on the windowsill, Antoinette almost made nationals last year. Still straddling her I feel shitty. —But Cole, that’s not what they’re there for.
Antoinette liked her nipples really sucked on. Allison liked them almost pinched. Abby, don’t touch them. Arya, bite them, but I could never bite them the right way. Always hot, and of course whatever floats the boat, but sometimes, my hand slapped or my ear tugged on, it’s, ladies, have a conference and decide. Boys did. We like our cocks sucked, ask anyone.
—You found it right away.
They always say guys can never find it, that it’s hard to find. The clitoris is not hard to find. I mean, it’s not like sometimes it’s behind her heel or in your desk drawer. Go to where you think it is and root around and you will for sure know when you’re right. And porn helps. Find a shaved girl saying “lick my clit” and where he licks, that’s the clit. It’s educational.
I’m seventeen now, and no real girl has really told me to ejaculate on her face. Maybe it’ll never happen, I told Alec. We’ve watched a couple blowjobs together, or not together but at the same time, me in my room and he in his, always slightly weird.
—Pornography lied to us.
—I’m writing my congressman.
—OK but let’s watch another one first.
—That guy.
—Yeah.
—I mean, that seriously fucking asshole guy.
I am just around the corner when I hear this. It’s Abby talking with a friend of hers who’s just brought the news that I’m seeing someone now. They’re leaning against the school right where the brick is painted to cover graffiti. I am by the garbage cans, frozen listening.
Abby’s friend says it again. —Yeah.