Dylan came around the corner while the dude had his hand on my ass, and he lost his shit. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” He slapped his friend’s hand away. “She’s a kid.”
Dude laughed drunkenly, backing off with his hands in the air. “All right, all right. But, buddy, she’s no kid. Have you looked at her lately?”
In my very inebriated condition, my ears buzzed, and I wanted, suddenly, for Dylan to see me that way. See me as a girl.
And when I looked up, I saw that he was looking at me. It was the two of us, drunk and high off our asses. He didn’t have a shirt on, only a pair of low-riding jean shorts. He leaned on a crutch, just looking at me. I felt it. On my shoulders. My hair. My bare belly beneath the crop top I wore. I was as tan as I ever got, dark as pecans, and my hair was loose, trailing over my shoulders and arms and my braless boobs. For one second, I thought about how easy it would be to take off my top and show myself to him, to that expression that really did, to me, look like the same one I saw on other guys’ faces.
“You’re so pretty, Grasshopper, but you’re still just a kid. You’ve gotta be careful around guys like that.”
He turned around and left the hallway, leaving me with a crystal-clear understanding that the only guy I wanted then or ever was Dylan. It had always been that way. It would always be that way.
I also knew, in some gut-deep place, that it was the same for him.
My parents would be home in five days, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I thought of a thousand ways to seduce him, and some of them I actually employed—I didn’t tie my halter top quite tight enough, so that when I helped him get into bed, a lot of side boob showed. He didn’t seem to notice. I wore a thin blouse without a bra under it, and when I looked in the mirror, I was pretty sure I could see actual nipples, accented by the triangle of white skin that didn’t get tanned. I wore it the whole day, and he never saw me at all.
I read a Johanna Lindsey to him, but he stopped me when we got to the really juicy part, covering his ears with a laugh.
One evening, crickets were whirring and the ocean was singing on the beach. Overhead, stars gleamed like diamonds. “Let’s go to the cove,” I said. “You can make it with a crutch now, can’t you?”
He inclined his head, passing me the bong. “Maybe. You want to grab some tequila out of the storeroom, maybe?”
“Yes!” I took a hit, gave him the bong, and said, “I’ll be right back.”
I gathered up a bottle of tequila, limes, and my secret weapon—a tiny cellophane packet of cocaine I’d found in my mom’s nightstand—and stashed them all in my pack, along with a blanket we could sit on and four sodas to keep us from drying out completely.
“Let’s go.”
He gave me his half smile, and I was so happy to see him being something close to himself. “Wow, dude. It’s good to see you again.”
He laughed, and we made our way down the wooden steps to the cove precariously, me in front in case he stumbled. When we reached the sand, I whooped.
He threw an arm around my shoulders. “Whoo! Whoo!”
We spread out the goods—the tequila and limes and salt, the bong and a bag of weed, and then I produced the tiny envelope of cocaine and lifted an eyebrow.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said.
“Nope. The real thing. Mom’s cocaine.”
“She’ll kill you when she finds out it’s gone.”
I rolled my eyes. “She’ll never know it was me.” Ceremoniously, I gave him the packet. “You do the honors.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
I lied and said, “Couple of times, but only a little.”
He set up the lines, and we snorted them, and it was in ten seconds the best high I ever had. I leaped to my feet and started dancing in the sea breeze, arms over my head. “Wow!” I cried breathily. “Wow.”
He grinned, watching me spin. All my inhibitions were gone. I became my little-girl self, dancing for all the customers in the bar, my hair swinging around me, my head full of songs. Music from the patio reached us, and I embroidered on it. I was wearing a blouse with swinging sleeves and hem, and I could feel the breeze swirling over my middle. It made me horny. On a wave of heat and delight, I fell on my knees, pulled my shirt over my head, and kissed Dylan, all in one movement.
He tumbled backward, driven by the force of my body, and his hands fell on my bare back, on my arms. For a time, a long time it seemed to me, he kissed me back, our bodies rubbing against each other’s. I could feel that he was hard under me, which made me bolder. I sat up, my crotch against his, and pulled his hands to my breasts.
He started to resist, to protest, but I moved against him. “Show me what it’s supposed to be like, Dylan. Just this one time. We never have to tell anybody, ever.”
“Josie—”
I pressed my hands to his face. “Please,” I whispered over his mouth. “What we have is special. Real. Please.” I kissed him again.
And in the darkness of the beach, high on cocaine, he gave in.
In my fantasies before that night, we had sex like in a movie, all soft focus and music playing a romantic score. In real life, it was both better and worse. Touching him and kissing him was a million times more charged than I’d ever expected. It was like we melted together, and I slid under his scarred, wrecked skin and into the blood that still flowed in his body. He swam into my blood, into my soul, and I became something else, someone else. He showed me, gently and slowly, what it should feel like when somebody who loved you touched you in just the right way. I learned to have an orgasm for the first time, and it blew the pieces of my body out into the stars, bringing starlight back when they settled into my flesh again. I learned to please him too, and at that I’d had some practice.
But the actual sex hurt. A lot. I pretended it didn’t, but it wasn’t easy, and he took some time making it work. Finally it did, and I pretended to like it, but I didn’t. At all. There was a lot of blood after, which I hid from him.
We fell asleep on the beach, drunk and high and also sated, wrapped up together like puppies.
One night. That one night.
The end of everything.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kit
When I get off the ferry after meeting Mari, I stop for ice cream and sit on a bench to watch people streaming past. Ice cream is a weakness, the creamy sweetness, the cold, the depth of satisfaction. As a child, I would eat as much ice cream as my parents would let me have—giant bowls of it, triple-decker cones in three flavors. Today I’ve chosen vanilla bean and a local favorite called hokeypokey with chips of honeycomb toffee that is so good I find myself wishing I’d ordered both scoops in that flavor.
With adulthood comes discipline, however, so I give the ice cream my full attention, aware that I’m using food to soothe my aching heart and not caring a bit. Sugar and cream ease my nerves, and the flow of humanity passing by reminds me that my problems, however big they might seem at the moment, are dew in an ocean.
But damn, I feel unmoored.
After Josie “died,” my mom got serious about getting sober. She detoxed in a thirty-day residential program, then dedicated herself to AA, going to meetings every day, sometimes twice or three times. She worked the steps, found a sponsor, and became the mother I wanted so badly when I was five and nine and sixteen—present and able to listen.