Heart of Glass (6 page)

“
Mmm. Better when I’m with
you. Did we really have to leave?”

We stood facing each other
in the semi-darkness, with the moonlight streaming down on us
through the window. There were no parents, no boys to flirt with;
nothing could save me now. Soon I would be melting in his arms and
he knew it.

“
You’re such a
flirt.”

“
What’ve I done
now?”

How could I be a flirt, I
was invisible to the male population, remember? The idea seemed as
improbable as to be laughable. It was only Ben and I. In the shed.
Alone. I wound my arms around his neck.

“
I watched you tonight. You
tease. You’re just like every Lucy in the world and I’m not sure I
like it.”

Reaching up to my tiptoes, I
placed a tiny peck in the crook of his neck. “I was only talking.
You were there the whole time. I wanted you to be proud of me, not
think I was some baby.”

“
But you’re doing it again.
Right now.”

“
I’m not.”

“
You don’t have to pretend
to be someone else to make me happy. Just be you.”

“
Oh.”

Well.

Pulling away, Ben sat on the
sofa. He looked up into my face. “If I wanted someone else I would
never have asked you out in the first place. Now get your butt over
here,” he grinned and patted a spot beside him. I sat down close.
The promise of his kisses invaded my head and swam in the longing
already there. His warmth radiated into me. The smell of the soap
from his body filled the air. Slowly, I reached across and touched
the smooth skin on the side of his jaw.  I could tell he’d
only just shaven. It felt so soft. This was what I had waited for.
The chance to be alone with him.

Then, holding my palm
against his cheek, he leant and kissed me, pressing his lips
against mine but not in that tender way I was used to. The kiss was
hard, bruising my lips, revealing more to me than he would ever say
in words. And in that moment, I was gone. With that one kiss, I was
his forever, as my senses exploded into a million pieces and flew
away, drifting upwards to the heavens.

“
You taste like cider,” he
said, as he ran the tip of his tongue across my mouth.

“
Is that a good thing or a
bad thing?”

“
Oh, it’s good. It’s doing
things to me that you’re far too young to know about.”

He placed my hand on his
jeans. “See...”

I stopped breathing. He was
right. My hand was on his penis and it was hard. Very hard. As
worldly as I wanted to be, I was way too young to know about
that.

The next second Ben’s lips
were on mine, again. His kiss was hot and fast. I felt feverish and
confused. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe but I didn’t want him
to stop, either. Every nerve in my body was alive with longing and
wrestling with utter confusion. He kissed me again and his hand
slid around from my back towards the edge of my breast. It rested
there, feeling my heart beating wildly, beneath it. I moaned, a
small husky sound, hardly audible, yet encouraging to him all the
same. He kissed me harder.

“
Slow down, Ben, please.
Please. You’re going too fast.”

His voice echoed into the
darkness. “I don’t want to slow down, I’ve waited all night. I want
to kiss you until the stars fall out of the sky.”

His lips were at my ear.
“You’re so beautiful…the most beautiful girl in the
world.”

Throwing my head down
against the back of the sofa, I closed my eyes. The feeling of his
lips upon the skin of my throat was intense. I have to stop him, I
thought. His hands were affecting me in a way I knew to be wrong.
Good Catholic girls didn’t enjoy making out. Sex was a sin. But how
could I refuse him when I didn’t want to? How could I tell him he
should respect me, when his hand was sliding over my body like a
sensual snake?

His hand fluttered across my
breast and moved to unbutton my shirt. I sighed again. Could I be
allowed to enjoy this small pleasure without the Catholic alarm
bells sounding inside my head? It appeared not for they were
ringing as if evacuation was imperative to survival and my
conscience had no intention of jumping ship without me. As if by
remote, I sprang from his embrace.

“
God. Stop. What are you
doing?”

“
I thought it was obvious,”
he said, his hands falling away. He sat up straight. “Do you want
me to stop? Really? I won’t do anything you don’t want me
to.”

“
No. No. Oh God, I don’t
know. It was a surprise, that’s all.” I couldn’t let him know he
was doing things to me I had no experience of. I had to be mature.
So, I looked up into his eyes and smiled, willing him to kiss me
again. And he did.

This time his kiss was
insistent, as he edged my body across the sofa until I was almost
lying flat, partially pinned beneath him. He searched my face for
any sign of anxiety, and finding none began again to tease me with
his lips upon my face and throat and his hands up and down my
body.

“
Please, let me touch
you.”

I lay still.

Tentatively, he nudged my
shirt open, exposing my chest, it’s flesh dotted with goosebumps
from the cold night air. His fingers played across my skin, leaving
an imprint that made me tremble and I sucked in a
breath.

He smiled, blowing his hot
breath along my neck and my collarbone until he reached the small
indentation where his hand lay. He teased me unsparingly, never
touching me with his lips because his breath alone, against my
skin, was enough to drive me crazy.

“
You’re an angel, Bella, a
beautiful angel.”

And I shimmered in his arms,
a glittering angel, never to belong to another.

***

For the remainder of the
weekend I walked on the clouds. My heart was bursting with
happiness. Mum and Dad watched, dumbstruck, as I mooned around the
house with a look of utter bliss all over my face, humming ‘Loving
You’, a song I loathed with a passion.

My rapturous state continued
well into Monday morning as I leapt out of bed, showered and
dressed quickly for school. I rushed down a coffee and a couple of
pieces of toast with vegemite, humming dreamily all the while.
Minnie Ripperton was still messing with my brain, turning it to
mush, and I didn’t even care. Makin’ love with Ben was all I wanted
to do.

As I walked into the
kitchen, Dad glanced up is from his newspaper and frowned. His face
looked bewildered, as if he had no idea what was occurring in his
house, or who the amiable young girl was. His own daughter
Annabelle was never chirpy on a Monday morning. Shaking his head,
he went back to his newspaper, probably thinking that he would
never understand women.

“
Bye, Dad,” I said, kissing
him on the cheek and running out the door with a grin from ear to
ear.

***

At lunchtime I lolled, legs
crossed, on the ghastly coloured lounge in the corner of the common
room. I’d arrived fifteen minutes earlier to find Lucy holding
court, the group’s attention riveted by her latest exploits from a
disco she had been to on Friday night using her fake ID. It didn’t
take a great deal of imagination to picture her in the pink and
mirrored den of iniquity she had been frequenting of late, doing
her best impression of Stefanie Mangano in ‘Saturday Night Fever’.
I wondered if her parents had any idea where she was or who she was
doing ‘The Hustle’ with.

“
So, his name’s Damien and
he’s twenty-two and drives a red sports car,” she said. “He’s going
to take me out for dinner soon.”

The other girls ‘oohed’ and
‘aahed’ but I was unconvinced. I turned to Prue. “Any normal man
wouldn’t be seen dead with a sixteen-year-old, even if she does
have big boobs and a great smile.”

Prue shrugged, “Maybe she
didn’t tell him she was sixteen. It smells a bit fishy to
me.”

“
That would be the anchovy.
Girls apparently smell like that after lots of sex!”

Prue choked on her sandwich.
“You’ve become quite bawdy of late. That Ben is a bad influence on
you.”

And he was. I was learning
so much more than naughty jokes. The only trouble was, I was a shit
of a student, or so he said. I could have taught stubbornness to
donkeys, he’d said. He was getting so frustrated he’d have to start
wanking again, he’d said. I’d just laughed. Sex wasn’t
everything.

“
What was the party like?”
Prue asked.

“
Excellent. My clothes were
just right. Thank your mum for the shirt, by the way. It was
perfect. You know, some kids at the party were smoking
dope.”

Jen went goggle eyed. There
was a high probability that neither her nor Prue had smelt or even
seen marijuana. Before the party, I certainly hadn’t.

“
You didn’t, did
you?”

“
Don’t be silly, I would
never do drugs.”

“
But I don’t understand?
Weren’t there any parents?”

“
Nope. It was an adult
party. And there were people everywhere drinking and throwing up
into bushes in the garden.”

“
Our parties sound pathetic
compared to that,” Jen said.

I lowered my voice further.
“I was going to the toilet at one stage and got a wrong door. Oh
God, I don’t know if I can tell you it’s too gross…” I paused,
trying to clear the image from my mind. It was revolting but I knew
I had to share. We had made a pact to tell each other
everything.

Lucy coughed. Having
finished her story she had one ear on what I’d been up to. “Oh for
God’s sake, it can’t be that bad. Were people doing it on the lawn
or something? Come on.”

“
Well, there was a boy
sitting on the bed with his pants down. A girl was kneeling on the
floor between his knees and…and she was sucking on his
penis.”

A collective gasp went
through the group as they screwed up their faces in
repulsion.

Jen covered her mouth with
her hand, “That’s disgusting. Are you sure?”

“
Saw it with my own eyes,
Jen.”

“
But that’s gross. How
could anybody do that?” Prue said. It was mind-boggling enough to
think that her parents had sex, she had interrupted them once, but
that was too much.

“
I asked Ben and he said
that everybody does it and it’s called a head job or something. He
said it’s fun and he ALSO said that boys do it to girls too. It’s
meant to be very exciting.” Jen’s face dropped as she flopped
against the back of the lounge. “You must be kidding. No boy will
ever be putting his head between my legs. He didn’t make you do it,
did he?”

“
Of course not. I couldn’t
do it, it’s gross.”

Lucy stood up, towering over
us in her domineering way and shaking her head as if we were the
saddest, most pathetic cases in the world. “Well, it sounds as if
you had a very informative evening, Annabelle. Of course, I could
have told you all about those things if you had asked me. I thought
you were too immature. It appears I was correct.”

“
I don’t believe you Lucy.
If you had known, you wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself from
telling us. You know it as well as I do. You’re just jealous
because I went to a party you weren’t invited to. I don’t know why
you have to be mean all the time. You should be pleased for me, now
that I have a boyfriend.”

“
You think Ben is your
boyfriend? You are such a loser. He’s only interested in you
because you’re a virgin? He wants to see how far he can get. Dan
told me.”

“
That’s not true. He
wouldn’t talk about me to his mates. Why would he say I was
beautiful if he only wanted sex?”

“
He’s doing it so you’ll
trust him and one night he’ll put the pressure on you and you won’t
be able to say no. He’s waiting till he has you trapped, you
idiot.”

“
Well, you’d know, you’ve
been with more boys than the whole school put together.” I was
openly weeping now, the tears streaming down my face. Inside my
heart felt as if it had been ripped in two. It couldn’t be possible
that Ben was only using me. It couldn’t.

“
Are you saying I’m a
slut?” Lucy asked.

“
If the cap
fits….”

“
Fair enough,” Lucy spat,
as she picked up her books and stood to leave.

“
I still think you’re
lying. You don’t know Ben, he’s not like that.”

“
That’s what you
think.  I’ve met boys like him before and believe me, they’re
all the same.”

“
Ben’s not. He’s
different.”

“
You watch, he’ll dump you
for someone who puts out before too long. Then you’ll be
sorry.”

I watched her retreating
figure, her entourage of fawning ninnies already sympathising as
they scuttled down the hall behind her like little cockroaches. It
didn’t matter what I said now. The damage was done. I had dug the
grave and thrown the shovel in for good measure.

Chapter 6

LONELY PEOPLE