“You’re drunk, Jack,” she said when he pulled back. But then she smiled as if to say she didn’t mind.
“I’ve been wanting to fuck you for days,” he whispered into her ear, then licked it.
“This is interesting,” she said.
He slid his hand up her dress and between her legs, and she fell into the touch. He worked furiously, panting. At the end, she let out a sigh and then stood straighter, as if suddenly remembering where she was.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, putting his arms around her and nuzzling his nose into the side of her face.
“Stop, Jack,” she said, straightening out her dress.
“I’m serious,” he said, using one hand to move her chin so she faced him. “Watching you just then was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like a line. In that moment, he meant it.
She moved the hand away and walked to the mirror above the sink to check her reflection. She ran cool water from the faucet and splashed it onto her face.
“Am I missing something?” he said from the door while she cleaned off her eye makeup with a paper towel. She stopped with the towel between her fingers and looked at him in the mirror. “What the hell is your problem all of a sudden?”
When she turned around to face him, he saw her sad, pitying face—still pink from the orgasm or maybe from the heat. Right then, he knew it had ended, that he had ruined it at the very moment he had shown he was angry, and hurt. He wanted to believe that this had to do with her age and nothing to do with him, but he knew that wanting what you couldn’t have and not wanting what you could never really stopped. He’d taken it that one step too far, and now he was no longer a confident older man but a lonely one.
“I just…” She bit her lower lip and shifted her weight unsteadily. “I can’t sleep at your house every night, Jack. I don’t want anything serious. I’m nineteen.”
He stood against the door.
“Jack, I’m really drunk.”
“What makes you think I do?” he said, feeling his body shaking.
She shook her head. “I have to pee.” She watched him until he had no choice but to leave.
—
He walked out of the bathroom, got back to the table, and drank another Natty Light. The game had ended, so he sat there drinking while the others were laughing with their heads back and jaws hanging loose. A few were leaving, and he mumbled good nights as they passed him, offering quick, shifty nods. Rachel appeared who knew how much later from the bathroom and walked upstairs. Chad got up from the poker table and dutifully followed.
Soon after, Jack followed too, bringing his case of beer with him and splaying himself out on one of the lounge chairs. Chad and Rachel were sitting next to each other on one of the couches.
Jack slurped from can after can, wiping his brow with the back of his hand and pretending not to watch Chad and Rachel talk and inch closer to each other. Soon it was only the three of them in the upstairs lounge. Rachel looked distraught and wasted, and started falling asleep on Chad’s shoulder.
“You all right, Jack?” Chad said at one point.
“Fine,” he said.
“All right.” He jerked his head toward a dozing Rachel. “I’m gonna walk this one back. I think we’re the only ones left.”
Jack belched. Chad shook Rachel awake, took her arm, and led her out. Jack counted to twenty and followed, taking a beer with him.
“I need to go to bed,” Jack heard Rachel whine.
Chad said, “I’m taking you there,” but he was leading her toward the woods behind the performing arts building. Jack started to walk down the slope toward his cabin but stopped at the edge of the forest. He hid behind a giant sycamore and watched Chad and Rachel move into the woods.
They walked ahead a little longer, and Jack kept a close but respectable distance, fifty feet or so, just close enough to make out the outlines of their bodies under what he figured had to be a full moon ahead.
Soon the crunching of leaves beneath their feet stopped, and he could make out their two bodies against the base of a tree. He stood still, his breathing shallow and almost silent. He could see the silhouettes of their writhing bodies: Rachel’s head moving left and right against the tree, her entire figure anchored to the trunk save for the arched small of her back, which Chad held with one hand. His other arm was outstretched and steadied against the tree’s base, the hand landing just next to her lolling head. Her hands roamed from Chad’s head to his neck to his shoulders and lower back and ass, and her hips moved forward and back as Chad held up the folds of her dress.
Jack could hear Rachel whimpering and Chad grunting. Soon the grunts began to quicken as he thrust into her faster and faster until finally he let out a low, drunken moan.
Afterward, Chad moved his face into Rachel’s neck, but she pushed him away. She tucked her hair behind her ears and brushed dirt off the back of her dress. She said something to Chad and began to walk ahead of him, toward the edge of the woods. Chad buttoned his pants and followed.
And then, Rachel stopped. She held herself still, and Chad, probably thinking she was waiting for him, put his arms on her shoulders from behind. She shrugged them off and said something else, and then he dropped his hands at his side and stood like a soldier at attention.
Jack savored the moment. He walked toward them slowly, deliberately, suddenly sober. He was breathing heavy now, filled with purpose, an old man in charge.
He looked into Chad’s eyes and then Rachel’s.
“You’re both fired,” he said, and he let those words hang in the air. He watched them fall onto Chad’s and Rachel’s stunned faces—Rachel’s incredulous, crestfallen, beautiful face. Chad began to open his mouth, but Jack did not let him speak.
“Pack your things,” Jack said, already walking away.
—
Jack got back to his cabin and surveyed it, austere and modest and his. He turned on his fan, dropped onto his bed, and immediately fell asleep, sound and alone, on top of his sheets.
In the morning he found himself in the previous night’s clothes, the sheets soaked with sweat. He turned on his transistor radio—today, the heat would break, the man said—and put on clean boxers, made himself coffee, and looked out onto the still-quiet camp. Today he took his coffee cup and walked around the back porch, which faced his vegetable garden.
His garden. He had somehow forgotten about it, neglected it over the last week. For a moment, he worried the heat had killed everything.