The ancient throb in her foot, that foot, blood surging, pressing down on the gas.
There’s a hundred ways sex can ruin you. The words came to her in that moment, a thunderclap in her head.
Her mouth made a funny noise, and she felt a twinge over her heart. But not enough to stop her. At least not in time.
Her arms jerked, the wheel seized, he was there in front of her, waving and smiling.
For a second, the white tail of his shirt, like a bird flying, and she shut her eyes.
Her right foot throbbing, she plunged it downward onto the pedal.
He was there, and then he was gone.
Then there was the third thing she’d never tell.
Which is how it really began, with Ryan. What had started it, for her.
It was back in January, the night after regionals, a big booster party. Tiki torches. Some of the girls sneaking sips of coconut rum from white bottles smooth as milk.
Her head doing starbursts when she closed her eyes.
Air, air, air, she thought.
I am, I am, I am. Which is what she always said when she was on the vault runaway. It cleared her.
The flowers tickled her neck and smelled like the inside of Mrs. Weaver’s car.
The all-around gold medal beneath it, cold against her hot chest, her hand pressed there.
You made us so proud, her dad told her. But you always do, kissing the top of her head.
And a song came on through the popping speakers, something about a girl with a blister on her hand, that felt like it was just for her. A girl and her brother and her mother. And I think she likes me…
It will be like this forever, she was saying in her head, I will feel this way forever.
That’s when she saw it. The dance floor crushed and impossible and in a far corner, by the swinging doors to the kitchen, a ponytailed woman with her hand on a man’s hip.
She blinked once, then twice, because it had to be the coconut rum swirling. Except it wasn’t, because the woman with the ponytail was Mom and the man was Ryan Beck, Hailey’s boyfriend.
Ryan, the one all the girls always talked about. And she’d never really looked at him. Even the time he found her retainer, held it right in his hand. She’d never looked because it felt like she shouldn’t, like staring into the sun.
Her mom did, sometimes. At the booster events, at Weaver’s Wagon, where he worked. The night they’d all stayed at the Ramada, the way she’d watched him down at the pool.
“Oh my God,” her mom was saying, her eyes wide, her hand jumping to her mouth, “I thought you were my husband.”
Ryan Beck’s smile, easy and loose, and open.
“I bet that’s what they all say to you,” her mom said, and then both of them were laughing and it didn’t seem like her mom at all, one strap on her dress slipping down her shoulder, golden under the grease-slicked light fixture, a glass bowl glowing over their heads.
Her mom looked so young, which was strange, because she wasn’t.
Something—and not just the mai tais because she’d seen her mom like that before—was making her cheeks look brighter, making her body move differently, fluidly, fleshily. Everything different from the ordered, slunk-shouldered, hank-haired mother her mother was. That something was in her mom.
Was it the thing she saw in the girls at school? The ones who showed off mesh bras and metallic thongs, whispering to one another of feelings and mysteries, belt buckles under blankets and the tastes of things and that look on their faces, and when they saw the boy from the night before, or the one who just might be that night.
It felt like a secret kept from her her whole life. Like: You’re adopted. You have a brother you’ve never met. Your father isn’t dead, he’s in prison.
How come no one told me?
Your mom, secretly, at night, turns into this. And so do other women, other girls. Just not you. All of them except you.
How come everyone hid it from me? How come Mom did?
She watched them.
Their faces pressed close because of the swinging door behind them or because of this thing, this conspicuous energy, practically glowing, and she could have sworn that, when her mother was laughing and leaning close, her mouth pushed against Ryan Beck’s cheek, even his tanned neck, and the kitchen door swinging and pressing them close.
And then her mom asking for a cigarette, but she never smoked, not ever, and as he went to light it for her, her hand leaped out, grabbing for something, the paperback with the red cover shoved in his back pocket.
Ryan’s eyes went wide with surprise. A grin there.
Devon couldn’t believe she’d seen it. Her mom’s hand in his pocket!
And both of them laughing and the song ending and then she saw her mom leap back, as if touching a flame.
Oh! Covering her mouth again. Repeating, with a wink this time, I thought you were my husband.
In the ladies’ room, Dominique Plonski heaved coconut pudding, slippery tongues of guava, spattering Devon’s brand-new metallic open-toe pumps for which Dad had paid forty dollars.