My First Love and Other Disasters (12 page)

He kisses me again, and this time I feel more relaxed, like I know him better. I'm feeling really happy and good, and then I begin to get sort of lost in the kiss, in his closeness, and when his mouth opens against mine I let mine open too. He puts his tongue against my teeth and I don't know what's the matter with me, I never kiss this way with anyone. But I do with Jim, and then I even let him put his tongue inside my mouth and his hand runs down the side of my body, sort of over my hip and down the side of my leg and I don't do anything. I mean I don't stop him and I don't even want to.

The way he touched me doesn't feel like other guys who just want to grab you: It's like he's caressing me and it makes me want to caress him but of course I don't. No matter what, I don't think I ever could. My eyes are always closed
when I kiss, but now I open them a tiny bit just because I have to look at him. His eyes are closed, shut tight, and he's got blond eyelashes. I didn't know that. Suddenly I become tense because the hand that was caressing my side is moving up under my arm and I'm afraid he's going to try to touch my breast. Besides, I'm very ticklish. He feels me jump a little and his hand moves away, down my side again, and he pulls me closer and moves his face down to kiss my neck and that makes me really shiver. Nice shiver. I know this is too much but I can't stop it. I can, but I don't want to. It's the first time in my whole life I ever felt like this.

Now he brings his lips back to mine and we're kissing and I'm kissing just as hard as he is and my arms are around his back and I'm holding him tight and I feel like I don't care what happens.

His hand comes up under my arm again and he lets it brush lightly over my breasts, and my head is buzzing but I don't even stop him, and now his hand covers my whole breast and I can't think of anything else except what he's doing and that I'm letting him. How could I let him do this? What's the matter with me?

The awful thing is that it feels good. I won't let him go any farther, and I'm beginning to tense up waiting for him to try. But he doesn't and I kind of
let myself relax and he kisses me and I kiss him and our whole bodies are tight together and I'll worry about everything later.

We kiss like this for a long while, and then I feel him push his legs into mine and I feel something against my thigh and I know it isn't his keys and I feel kind of scared because maybe this is getting out of control. Maybe I won't be able to stop him. But I can because it's Jim and I know him, and besides, everyone says he's a terrific guy and he would never do anything like push himself on someone who didn't want him to. He's not like that, I just know it. But still I feel a little scared, so I pull back slightly and he pushes against me kind of hard, and I open my eyes and pull my face away from his, and he looks at me and sort of swallows hard and takes a couple of breaths and gives me an it's-all-right smile and goes back to gently kissing me.

But it doesn't stay that way long and we're back to holding each other tightly, and now his hand is working around my camisole straps and I should have worn the damned T-shirt underneath like father said. Oh, God, what a time to think of my father. That does it. I push his hand away and he puts it back the minute I push it away.

“Please . . .,” I say, “don't do that.”

He moves his hand away from my straps and
slides it down the side of my leg to the top of my thigh. Now I really push it away.

“Please . . . ,” I say again, and he starts to kiss my neck and my ear, and then his hand is on my breast again, but I already let him do that so I can't say no now. Besides, that's not so bad, I think. Sometimes his hand skips off the material and onto my bare skin and I get goose bumps. It slips off more and more and I know he's trying to put his hand under my camisole and I know I shouldn't let him, but it all happens so gradually, and by the time I put my hand on his to pull him away he's already holding my bare breast and it's too late. So I let him. And then he pushes off the shoulder strap and I keep my eyes tight shut because I don't want to see myself undressed like that. He lifts his head slightly and I know he's looking and I feel ashamed, but I think of the naked people on the beach and then it's not so bad. Now his hand starts to slide down across my stomach, and I grab it tight.

“No, please, I don't want you to do that,” I say, louder than I expected.

“Don't be afraid,” he says, and starts to kiss me more.

“Please . . .” His hand slips out of my grip, but I push it away again.

“It's okay,” he says.

No, it's not. But I don't say that. I just keep
pushing his hand away every time he puts it anywhere under my waistline.

He puts it.

I push it.

He puts it.

I push it. This goes on till I think I might start to laugh, except I'm beginning to get kind of angry. Now I pull up my shoulder strap and sit straight up. “I don't want you to do that,” I say, and it's really crazy because here it is, my body, and he's annoyed that he can't do what he wants to it. Unreal. And he really is annoyed, like it was his.

“I'm not doing anything. I'm just touching you.” He lies as if I don't know what he's trying to do.

“Then please don't touch me.”

“Don't be afraid.”

“I'm not afraid. I just don't want you to do that.”

“You mean this?” And he puts his hand on my waist.

“Not that.”

And he moves his hand further down my leg and says, “This?”

And I say, “You know where,” and he says, “No, show me,” and I say, “I'm not going to because you know,” and he says, no, really he doesn't, and this stupid conversation goes on and we discuss my body like it was a map and he can touch here and he can't touch there and it turns out that he owns
the entire northern half down to somewhere around Tennessee and I own the rest. For now, anyway. And it turns into a sort of cute conversation and I don't know why but I don't even really feel embarrassed.

Then I say I have to go, and he pushes me back down and starts to kiss me again and we neck for a while longer, but he tries all the same stuff I told him not to again and finally I get up and say I really have to get back.

He sort of pulls himself together, facing the water, and shoves his hands into his pockets. Steffi and I have discussed this a million times about how boys put their hands in their pockets so you can't see they have an erection.

I sort of sneak a peek, but it works—the hands in the pockets, I mean—I don't see a thing.

We start walking up the dock toward the shore, and I'm hoping Jim will want to walk me home, and lucky me, he does. Except all the way home he keeps stopping to pull me to the side of the walkway to kiss me. A couple of times people come by and he doesn't even stop, and I can hear them giggling about us. If only someone from school could see us. Someone like Gloria.

I try to keep away from the lights because I must look a mess. My hair is a horror and my face feels like somebody walked on it. We kiss good
night in front of the house, and then he says he'll call me tomorrow night. Isn't that the most fabulous thing in the whole world? Jim wants to see me again. I think he must really like me. He writes down my phone number and then he goes.

I watch him until he's out of sight, which only takes half a second because the street is pitch-black. It's got to be at least two in the morning, and I'm probably the only person awake on the whole block. It's dead quiet. Not a light on.

Up till now I haven't let myself think too much about what a disgusting awful underhanded thing I was doing—sneaking out, I mean—because if I really thought about it I know I wouldn't have done it. And I know I absolutely
had
to because it was crucial—I mean, not even just for my whole summer but maybe even for my whole life. I guess that sounds a little much, but still it
was
very important to me. Suddenly all my reasons sound crummy. How come it's all falling apart now just because I'm scared? And I am, too. In fact I'm having a fit at the thought of trying to get back into my room, especially since it means tiptoeing up two flights of creaky stairs.

I take off my sandals and gently, very gently, turn the handle on the screen door. Again I gently squeeze down on the handle, turning it quietly all the way to the left and push. Nothing. Wrong way,
dummy. I wipe my sweaty palm on my jeans and grab the handle again and this time turn it all the way to the right and push. Still nothing. I'm not in a panic because no one locks their doors on Fire Island. So it must be just a little stuck. Probably because of the heat and the dampness and all.

It's going to be tough shoving it hard enough without making any noise. I put my shoulder against the door and start pushing with my whole weight. It doesn't move. Now I wedge my feet under the porch railing and with both hands, using the railing for leverage, push the door. Nothing happens. If I didn't have to worry about making a noise I could just get back and ram it the way they do in the movies. Even though I'm getting very sweaty and very nervous I calm myself enough to try thinking straight. First thing I've got to find out is exactly where the door is actually stuck, top or bottom.

I check the top first. No problem there. And the bottom seems pretty free, so that means it must be caught in the middle, which is a funny place for a door to be stuck . . . unless what's sticking it isn't just sticking . . . it's locked. Help! I can't believe it. They absolutely never lock their door. Unless . . . oh, no! I did it myself when I turned the door latch sneaking out. I wasn't opening it, I was locking it!

Suddenly I'm so panicked that I have to sit
down just to catch my breath. It's horrendous. I can't believe that I'm actually stuck out here and there's no way I can open that door.

Then it hits me.

The windows!

I jump up and run around to the kitchen window, which I know was open all day long. I'm right, it's still open, except that I can't get to the stupid thing because the goddamn screen is on and the only way to get past the screen is to take the whole thing off and there are some dumb things holding it from the inside. It's hopeless. I'm finished. It's all over.

The almost summer of Victoria Martin.

Fired after three brilliant days.

And shamed.

The whole thing is so grotesquely embarrassing. And then, on top of everything else, my parents will have to know. How could I do such a dumb thing? And then be jerky enough to get caught.

I'm crying. Well, naturally, what else am I going to do?

All I figure I've got are two choices and they both stink. First one is I can stay here until the morning. But that's no good because it's going to be a mess when DeeDee comes in to wake me up and I'm not there. Besides, then they'll think I stayed out all night long, which is worse than waking
Cynthia up now—and what difference does it really make? Either way I've had it. So I take choice Number Two. I ring the bell.

Do you know what it's like to ring a doorbell at two in the morning when the whole world is sleeping? It sounds like a nine-alarm fire.

I make a quick try at coming up with a plausible story but nothing sounds even half good so I decide to tell the truth, if she's even interested by then.

I can see the lights going on in Cynthia's bedroom, then the hall light, and then she's at the door. This is so awful.

“Victoria!” she says, opening the door. And boy, is she stunned and confused. “Victoria! What are you doing out here?”

“I don't have a key,” I say, postponing the inevitable.

“The door isn't locked.”

“Yeah, it is.” Wouldn't it be nice if she just forgot everything else and we stood around and talked about the locked door.

“But we never lock the”—she didn't forget—“door. What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Well, it's sort of a long story.”

“Why don't you just come in here and start telling me?” And there's a whole big change in her tone. Not good either.

We get into the living room and I pick the worst chair in the room and sit at the edge of it. She sits opposite me. If only there really was something easy like a nine-alarm fire.

“Okay, Victoria, let's have it from the beginning. What are you doing out at two thirty in the morning?”

“I don't think it's two thirty yet.”

“All right,” she says, looking at her watch, “out at two twenty-five in the morning, when you're supposed to be home in bed? I mean, what
is
going on here?” By now she's really rolling and nothing's going to stop her. “You know you have a one o'clock curfew and what's even worse you just take off in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. I can't believe you'd do such a thing! It's so dishonest. Victoria, what's got into you?”

“I'm sorry,” I say, because I really am.

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“Out where? With whom? What's going on? Don't make me pull it out of you. For goodness's sake, I think I deserve a proper explanation. After all, I am responsible for you while you're living in my house.”

I start to answer but she goes right on. “What if I weren't home? Would you have just sneaked out and left my children alone? How can I believe that
you wouldn't? After this, how can I believe anything you say or do?”

“I'm really sorry,” I say, “and I would never, ever, go out and leave the kids alone. I made sure you were in bed way before I even thought of going. I was only out an hour and a half.”

“Where were you?”

I try to answer her, but the minute I open my mouth I start to cry.

“All right, Victoria, calm down and tell me everything. I'm not a monster. If it's possible to understand, I will. Now please start from the beginning.”