And that made the boys laugh once again.
“The mound of Venus, the thick meaty part under your thumb,” I said, finding it surprisingly hard to speak clearly, “is supposed to indicate a lover’s passion. A thicker pad at the base of the thumb is a sign of a good lover.”
All the boys felt their thumbs. Of course.
It was afternoon drunk talk. That’s all it was until Peter asked us if we wanted to smoke a joint. And when he said smoke a joint, what he meant was: Let’s get out of here, let’s go somewhere, let’s see what else this afternoon can become.
And maybe, probably, he meant his invitation chiefly for me.
*
“He’s way into you,” Amy said in the bathroom, inspecting herself in the mirror. “Peter, the cute one.”
“They’re all cute,” Constance said from the bathroom stall.
“They’re puppies,” I said, because they were.
“Puppies or not,” Amy said, digging in her purse for lip gloss, “they’re adorable. And they have nice bodies. And they don’t judge. They’re just out for fun.”
“So do we want to go smoke a joint?” I asked. “They said something about a hot tub.”
“I am not going in a hot tub!” Constance said, and she flushed her toilet and came out. “No way. They’re a bunch of boner boys, believe me.”
“Of course they’re boner boys,” Amy said. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
Without meaning to, we found ourselves standing in front of three different sinks and mirrors. We all became aware of it at the same instant, and our eyes went from one to the other, back and forth, our smiles broadening as we realized what fun we were having, how much we cared for each other, how the boys, one way or the other, were just diversions along the way—friendly, cute diversions, but mere diversions.
“I just want to hold one on my lap and pet him,” Amy said.
“Which one?” Constance asked.
“The little one. What do they call him?”
“Munchie, I think,” I said. “It was hard to tell.”
“I don’t remember boys being so innocent,” Constance said. “They have a lot to learn.”
“They’re young,” I said. “As young as we were not long ago.”
“We’re not much older now,” Amy said. “Don’t go freaking granny pants on me.”
“But we’ve been through a lot,” Constance said. “I get Heather’s point.”
Amy held out her hand, and we slid our hands on top of hers. We didn’t say our little ritual saying, but simply held our hands together. It was somewhere around five o’clock on a snowy day in Vermont.
47
I kissed Peter, and it was pretty good.
It was pretty strange, actually, because it had been six months since my last Jack kiss. Six months since my body felt tangled up in another person’s tangle, and I felt a little on guard, a lot drunk, and happy to have broken the spell.
“You’re like the prince who wakes Sleeping Beauty,” I said. “I’ve been asleep for a long, long time.”
“You’re not asleep now, are you?”
“No. I’m awake.”
“I’m into your eyebrows,” he said.
He kissed me again. It was a light, easy kiss, but underneath it a bunch of other impulses asked for consideration. Begged for it. And we sat in a hot tub, and I had smoked a joint, and Amy was due to arrive any second with another wave of ski puppies, but they hadn’t come into the pool area yet. Children played in the shallow end of the regular swimming pool. Their moms sat at a table and watched them, but the hot tub was far enough away, down at the other end entirely, to let Peter reach across, take the back of my neck gently, and pull me toward him for a kiss.
For a kiss in a bathing suit, which had to count for something extra.
He had a great body. He looked like a young British actor, one of those gallant lads who appear on the PBS dramas, a thin, tall scion of the ruling class, nice hair, nice teeth, and a gaze that suggested long walks with Labrador retrievers circling his legs and later, in the evening, a gallop and a cup of tea. He was handsome, in other words, but knew it, and that was a bit of a fatal flaw for him.
“This is a family pool,” I said after he had kissed me a second time.
His hand had roamed a little under the water. Not inappropriately, just exploring.
“We could go someplace where it isn’t so public.”
“Is that so?”
“It is so.”
“And what would we do in this not-so-public place?”
He kissed me again.
I didn’t stop it. But I didn’t encourage it exactly, either.
Several thoughts: How much had I had to drink? How drunk was I? How much did I trust this Peter character? Where was Amy?
And what about Jack?
Well, what about Jack? I asked myself. Jack wasn’t precisely in my calculations at the moment. He wasn’t in my calculations when Peter leaned forward and kissed me again, and this time his hands grew bolder, and I felt myself caving in a little, drunk, warm, and he was cute. Definitely cute, but full of himself, full of that young guy conceit that says he can get pretty much what he likes, and plenty of it, and I told myself I would not reward such a jerk, but then his hands brushed over me and the water was warm and I asked myself, Why not, why not, why not? What am I waiting for?
*
Amy arrived just in time.
“And what’s going on here, you little lovebirds?”
She had two boys in tow. She dropped her towel without ceremony and climbed into the hot tub. The two other boys, Jeff and Munchie, climbed in after her. Munchie smiled a druggie smile. He was the chief pot smoker, apparently, because most of the jokes surrounding him had been about weed. His smile was wifty.
Jeff, who was sharp featured and muscular, wiggled his eyebrows at us.
“Orgy,” he said. “Who’s in?”
“Definitely,” Munchie said. “Orgy for sure.”
“Dream, you little twits,” Amy said.
Munchie smiled at her. Jeff sank into the water up to his nostrils.
Peter’s hand brushed my thigh underwater.
“Heather and I were thinking about heading out,” Peter said. “Weren’t we, Heather?”
I tried to clear my head. Had we said anything like that? I understood how he could come to that conclusion, but I wasn’t sure that we had confirmed anything between us, not in the least, and I shook my head softly.
“Not sure we said that,” I said. “No promises made.”
Peter’s hand brushed my back and the side of my ass.
“You guys are going to go have sex,” Munchie said. “You lucky bastards.”
“Shut up, Munchie,” Jeff said.
“But they are. Look at them! They got that low eyelid thing going. Like they’re all smoky and ready and hot and bothered.”
Peter smiled. It was a guy-to-guy smile, and I didn’t particularly like it.
“Don’t count your eggs before your chickens,” I said.
Which was not the correct phrase. I tried to edit the comment, but I couldn’t remember how it went.
Peter smiled some more. Jeff popped higher in the water.
“We need more to drink,” he said.
“And more to smoke,” Munchie said.
Peter stood and reached for my hand.
He had an erection. He had folded it up under his waistband, but it was still obvious.
“Ready?” he asked.