Cut Both Ways (25 page)

“Another girlfriend?” I ask. It's the first time I've ever acknowledged that part of his life.

He kind of smirks.

“Sex and cigarettes,” he says, shoving the phone in his pocket. “My last vices.” He slaps my shoulder and lights another cigarette and then I get back into the car.

I'm wishing I had a shift, but I normally have weekdays off. The sky is the color of cement; there's snow and dirt and slush everywhere. It'll be spring in a couple months, at least according to the calendar. The last day of school is May 30 and graduation is two days after that. I'm passing all my classes, nothing great, but I've got
C
's and some
B
's. My mom has all these things for college for me to look at, though; it's like she
won't acknowledge that I've done nothing to apply for school in the fall.

There are a lot of good things happening in my life now, but they're all happening to other people. Angus is leaving for spring break to go tour around Chicago. Kinney and Taylor's snowboard team is going to some championship. Jay just got a raise at work. Kristin's goat is pregnant. Garrett just bought a new car. And my dad is building the house up, as a present. For me. I should feel better. I should be happy Roy's there, with my dad. I should feel good that I can stay with my mom. That I have Brandy. That I have Angus. I should feel good about these things. I should.

But I just feel cold and hard inside. Like, I'm a million years older again. It makes me want to check the mirror for gray hair. Because hearing Roy talk about the house being finished, for me, like he believes it? It just makes me tired. It's exhausting, hoping for the best.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THE SNOW FINALLY
fucking stops. But not until the end of April. Then, the days suddenly get hotter and sunnier and being in school is torture. One day they call off school because Franklin isn't air-conditioned and the temperatures in the classrooms, even with the windows open, is over ninety-eight degrees. I don't know why they even bother. Most of the seniors don't give a shit anymore and with all the fans the teachers constantly have running, you can't hear anything anyone says.

Now that the sun's out, Jack Telios has taken to unbuttoning his shirts even more. DeKalb and him have some game going with Isabella and Loretta, the cousins. And now Jack's the main roadie for Angus and DeKalb's band, because they're playing more shows—that same first coffee shop has them regularly on Saturdays now, along with a couple more places like it. Little gigs, but Angus is very proud of them. I usually have to work Saturdays so I don't see them all. Plus Brandy likes the band and she
wants to go with Shania, but I can't deal with her and Angus in the same zip code so I always say I'm busy. Even if I'm just staying up late at my mom's, waiting for him to call me when he gets home. Which he always does. He's always in the mood to hook up with me after he plays a show.

Except for the weather, everything's the same. Work, me picking up some extra shifts for Carl. Me, with Angus, stolen minutes in his garage practice room here and there; once in his basement on the couch after everyone was asleep. Me, with Brandy, at her house after school when her nana's asleep and her aunt's still at work. There is something about getting sex all the time that just makes you crazy. It's like you're sick. And the only cure for it is more sex. My dial is stuck at
go go go yes yes yes
all the time. It freaks me out to admit this, but I like it like that.

I don't want to like it, though. I never thought of myself as a cheater. Cheating at first seemed mainly like lying. Which is nothing great. But why do liars lie? Because they're greedy. They want everything without admitting it.

But when you're greedy, everyone can see how desperate you are. There's no dignity in it. That's why I can only stand it when no one can see. I can't think about it too much or I'll fucking go crazy myself.

I think I'm going to end up like my mom.

“Tess settled for the suburbs,” my dad would tell his friends, when he was drunk and thought I was asleep. Or “Tess can't sit still. Always striving for something.” I think they both sound right. But it seems wrong. How can she be both those things, even?

My eighteenth birthday is May 9, but it's on a Monday. Brandy does nice things for me all week: brings me lunch, gives me presents (a new watch, a pair of flip-flops, since I don't own any and always wear my boots, even with my shorts, which she says is weird). Then, after school, she gives me a blow job in the bathroom at her house while her nana's downstairs in front of her afternoon talk show.

Afterward, I tell her it's not the kind of birthday stuff I'm used to. For her birthday, all I did was buy her a gift card for Target and a new bracelet Shania helped me pick out.

“I'm not used to it, either,” she says as I'm buttoning up and feeling a little light-headed. I can hear the TV downstairs; Nana keeps the volume jacked, even with the closed captions on, for some unknown reason. “But I think it's how birthdays should be. We have a lot to celebrate, I think.”

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and flips her hair out of her face.

I kiss her a bunch. I swear, I cannot even taste myself on her mouth. She must have some magic trick, something in the magazines she and Shania always pass back and forth. Because I always taste it in Angus's mouth. Maybe there's some difference in saliva for girls and guys? I feel guiltier than usual when she gives me head because that is a thing with Angus that I always give back to him. It's impossible not to think of him while she's doing it, actually. For my birthday, my mom bought an ice-cream cake from Dairy Queen and we're going to have steak—that was my request—and she even invited Angus. But Angus is gone overnight for his class
campout, so he'll miss it. So I won't see him at all on my birthday, which would have been a good gift in itself. Not that I expected a blow job. Though, lately, when we manage to hang out, that's usually what happens, anyway. Birthday or not.

The next Thursday, I'm at the Laundromat with Brandy and I'm not doing homework but I'm looking over college-application stuff. Brandy keeps looking up at me from her yellowy copy of
Jane Eyre.

“I hated that book,” I say.

She doesn't say anything. Just gets up to go to the coffee shop. She doesn't ask if I want anything, either, which is also weird. She comes back a minute later with a Snapple and sits back down with her book. I don't want to make this into a big deal, like the other times we've fought, which seemed like fighting about air or wind or something invisible. So I take off my glasses and clean them on my shirt and act like nothing's wrong.

Until my dad walks in.

I know it's him, even not wearing glasses. Can tell, just by how he moves.

I put my glasses on. The three of us all stare at each other. It feels like everything's completely transparent between us, and I'm embarrassed. I know he knows I've told Brandy everything. And I know this is why he's mad.

My mom has been emailing him. Texting. Calling. All about the graduation party. We have invitations with my senior picture—I made her pick the picture where I'm wearing glasses,
even though she and Brandy both liked the ones without them better—but the time and place are blank. She's trying to work with him, she says. He's stopped calling her back. Answering.

Now I'm here. In his place of business. Which is as dirty and unloved as ever. I wonder if he's going to throw us out. Or just me.

“Hello,” he says. He says it to Brandy. She says hi back in the softest voice ever.

“Hi, Dad,” I say. My voice sounds like I scraped it up from my guts.

“Everything working okay?” he asks, nodding toward the bank of washers and dryers.

“Yeah, great,” Brandy says.

“Good, good,” he says, nodding, like we're customers and nothing more. He gets out his keys and goes into his office. I can hear the lock click after he shuts the door.

I go back to looking at the college stuff. Brandy is staring at me now in a way that annoys me. I don't want to talk about any of this.

“Should we leave?” Brandy whispers.

God. Like he can hear her, from inside his office, with all the fucking racket of the washing and drying!

“No,” I say. “All your stuff isn't done.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No,” I say. “You paid and you get to finish what you paid for.”

“Maybe we should leave once everything's done in the washers. Go somewhere else and dry them?”

I try to stay calm. I do. I stack all the college crap into a pile. Breathe in, out.

“Brandy,” I say, leaning toward her. “Just because he's my dad doesn't mean you don't have the right to wash and dry your clothes. I mean, fuck. You have nothing to do with me and him. And there's no fucking way I'm going to make you haul all your wet shit out—”

“We could line dry it,” she says. “My aunt has a thing in the backyard—”

“No,” I say. “That's ridiculous. He's ridiculous. You have every fucking right to be here. And I'm going to be here, too. If he wants me to leave, he can call the fucking cops. Neither of us is doing anything wrong.”

“Okay.”

She blinks. Smiles. I can't help it; there's something about seeing her face soften like it does right now; it kills me. I lean over and kiss her, quick.

I think that'll be it, but then she leans back and we kiss some more. I take off my glasses and I'm hard and we're kissing in a goddamn Laundromat. What the hell, I think. How long do we have together, Brandy and me? As long as Angus and me have, probably. Which is to say, a couple more months. If I go anywhere. And my ticket to going somewhere is sitting in a pile between us while we kiss like idiots.

Later, after we bring back all the washed and dried laundry (and my father never once leaves his office, the door stays tightly shut, almost self-consciously closed), I help her put it away while Megan makes dinner, which we all eat on the patio, even Brandy's nana,
whose eyes seem wrong. I guess she's got some eye problems, too, in addition to being deaf. God, if she goes blind, what the hell will she have left?

But Nana chews and smiles and occasionally yells some comment that's way off track of the main dinner conversation. It's bright and sunny out. Megan is being normal, like she always is, polite and nice to me, but I still feel dumb around her. Like all she sees when she sees me is that picture of me naked in her niece's bed.

We sit out on the patio after Megan brings Nana inside to watch her evening shows. I ask Brandy about her eyes—is she going blind—and Brandy blinks, shrugs. She seems to think of her nana as a quirky pet more than an actual person.

The wind kicks up and she comes to sit closer to me and I can't keep my hands off her. I am feeling her up, everywhere. Tits and ass and even trying to stick my hand down her shorts. She twists away.

“Not here,” she says. “Let's go for a walk.”

Brandy's house isn't cruddy but there's not a lot around it in terms of places to go. So we walk for a while, holding hands. I feel like I could run; I'm practically dragging her behind me. She doesn't complain, just scrambles to keep up.

“There,” she says. Points. A little brown building that says
PUBLIC WATER WORKS
#7 on the outside. It's got a door and weeds growing out of the sidewalk, and I don't know what she's thinking but then we're behind the building, between two bushes and there's nothing behind us but the back of a tires place and there's no going back to where we were. I barely kiss her. I just undo her
shorts and kneel down and pull her pussy into my face and she says, “Jesus, Will,” but leans back against the brick wall and lets me lick her there. Everywhere.

I've done this before but never like this. Never with the sun still up, though it's fading. Never outside. Never standing up. Never like this.

I expect her to stop me. To say no. To say, “Not here.” But she never does. She holds my head between her legs, her hands in my hair. She sighs. I never take my glasses off but I'm closing my eyes. I imagine her face, flashed with happy. I'm grinning myself. All over her. She's wet so I know it's okay.

She doesn't even have her purse, we don't have condoms, and I don't even take off her clothes or my clothes. It doesn't matter; I undo my belt and jeans and we fuck, right there, standing up against the wall. It happens quick, and she never stops me. She's making perfect sounds, even. Brilliant sounds. I'm lifting her up to get a better angle, to get deeper, to keep the branches of the bushes from scratching her skin where I've pushed up her shirt. Knocking straight into her, fast, then slow, then all over, in and out, no rhythm. With no condom, it's unbelievable. Over faster than normal, though.

Just as I'm pulling out, it hits me what we've done. What I've done. I expect her to get mad. Start crying. Yell at me. Hit me, even.

And I'll take all of that. I totally deserve it. I didn't even ask. I didn't even stop. She should be so fucking mad.

Instead, what she does is kiss me. Kiss me with her shorts and panties still at her ankles. Kiss me and run her fingertips along
my shoulders and collarbone, dipping her hands in and out of the collar of my T-shirt. Kiss me and kiss me, like we didn't just fuck, like we're leading up to it instead. Like she didn't get what she wanted yet. Like she thinks there's still a chance I could give it to her.

“Come on,” I say, pulling up my jeans. “Let's get out of here.”

She is dazed, and I am guilty. I don't think she came or anything, but maybe? I never know with her. It's the one thing about sex with Brandy that I don't like. At least with Angus I always know for sure. With Angus, it's always clear; we're always heading to the same destination and we both know, by sound, by sight, by feel, how close the other is to arriving there.

Brandy, I don't know. It's not that she's silent or apathetic. I know it feels good. But that's not the same.

This time? If she didn't come, I think she might have come close, at least. She's definitely acting different than usual. Which could also be the other fact of what we've just done, too.

I pull up her clothes up. Button her shorts. Feel a little sorry for how this leaves her—the puddle in her panties, the panic of what we have done burning in me now, that same zinging feeling but worse, because it's such a steep drop from how good it just felt—and that's when she puts her hand in mine and says it.

“I love you, Will,” she says. “I love you so much.”