His head rested in the crook of my shoulder. I ran a hand over his back, light, unsure of myself yet, of this closeness. It was like an awful pounding clock had finally stopped ticking. The silence in the room was peaceful, melancholy. I breathed in the smell of him. Of us. My sweat on his body, my wetness on his jeans. I wanted to pause this moment and linger in it, looking around, memorizing.
He pulled out gingerly, but didn’t let me down. His arms tightened. He carried me to the bed.
My breath fluttered in my lungs.
He laid me down and lowered himself beside me, looking up at the ceiling. We reached for each other at the same moment, our hands linking in the small gulf between us.
Oh my god, I thought. Just that. A pleasant daze. My body was full of sunlight. No blood, just liquid blue sky.
I didn’t know how much time had passed when his head turned to me. I looked over, feeling lazily magnanimous. Everything was golden and graceful.
I’d thought his eyes were blue, but in the September light they had a silvery, metallic look, like brushed aluminum.
“Hi,” he said, soft and low.
Something lit up in me like a candle. I propped myself on an elbow, swung my leg across him, and crouched over his body. “Hi,” I said.
It was the first time we’d spoken since Friday.
For a long time he held me atop him, looking at me. I kissed him but he broke it after a second. When I tried to get up, he pulled me back.
“Let me look at you,” he said. “Before your guard comes up.”
So I let him look. At first I was nervous, my eyes flickering away, suddenly aware that I wore nothing below the waist. I tucked my hair behind my ear and it immediately tumbled back into my face.
Then I eyed him askance. There was nothing in his expression but curiosity, so innocent it seemed almost childish. My anxiety melted. A slow, small smile took over me. Cocky, not shy. The way I’d smiled at the carnival. I owned every part of me, the nudity, the just-had-sex hair, every mistake I’d ever made, and wrapped myself in it.
Evan touched my cheek and pulled me closer against him. My hair fell around us, enclosing us in a dark veil. I ran my palm over his chest, the smooth-carved muscle, the patch of coarse gold hair across his pecs, the dense, solid bones. Let my hand move lower to the silky down on his belly. God, I thought. You are such a f**king man. His hands moved over me, outlining the slimness of my arms, my hips, stopping on my bare ass, his fingernails pressing into my skin. The innocent look was gone.
“Did you see her?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“The real me.”
“She’s right here,” he said, and kissed me.
The afternoon became a blur of this: of kissing him, and being held, and not leaving that bed. He stepped into the bathroom to clean himself up and brought me my underwear. I put it on but took my shirt off, and we spooned, his hands all over me. We talked as much as we kissed.
“Tell me everything about you,” he said. “What’s your favorite movie?”
“Oh my god. You can not ask me that.”
“Why?”
I sat up, giving him a horrified look. “First of all, because I want to impress you. Second, because it changes on a daily basis.”
“You have one, you just don’t want to tell me. I’ll tell you mine.”
My lip curled with hostility.
He laughed. “Say it together, on three. Ready?”
“No,” I shrieked.
“One. Two. Three. Casablanca.”
“Jurassic Park.”
He broke into a huge grin.
I flopped face-first onto the bed. “I’m going to die.”
“A modern classic,” he said, tickling my heel. “I remember seeing it in the theater and thinking, ‘Someday CG will be as real as real life.’ My favorite scene was when the girl—”
“If you start quoting,” I said into the mattress, “I will actually kill myself.”
He laughed again. His laugh was nice. Not mocking like Wesley’s, but giddy, conspiratorial. I glanced at him over my shoulder.
“Tell me everything about you.”
His laughter faded, but the smile stayed. He lay beside me, his fingertips tracing the curves of my back. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
So I wasn’t far off. He was fourteen when I was born. Maybe Wesley wasn’t far off with his theory, either. And so what? I’d f**ked guys older than thirty-two.
“Where did you go to college?”
“Northwestern.”
I peered over my shoulder again. “You from upstate?”
“Just outside Chicago.”
“Snob. Everyone says they’re from ‘just outside Chicago,’ like towns don’t have names up there.”
“It’s true. They don’t. Very confusing for mail carriers.”
He slid a finger under my bra strap and followed it up over my wing bone, cresting my shoulder.
“Why—” I started.
“My turn.” His finger moved slowly toward my breast. “Why did you talk your way into my class?”
Fate, I wanted to say. Kismet. It was in the script.
“I reserved it last year, actually. They messed up the registration.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going to film school.”
His hand stopped. He sat up a little. “Really? Where?”
“I don’t know yet. I mean, I have my top choices, obviously, but I’m trying to be realistic. Hopefully somewhere like USC, or UCLA. I’m kind of torn whether to focus on indie or commercial film. Commercial is safer, I think, because I’ll get a broad view of how the whole process works. But focusing on commercial shit can turn you into a philistine who just churns out garbage, so maybe I should focus on indie stuff. On storytelling, and art. But then maybe I’ll be really naive when it comes to actually doing the work. I don’t know.”
I was rambling. I glanced back at him. He had a slightly dazed look on his face.
“You’re serious about this,” he said.
I gave a half-shrug. “Well, yeah.”
“What do you want to do? Job-wise.”
“I’ll take what I can get. I’d love to be a PA, get a general sense of how it all fits together. Because someday, I’m going to direct.”
It was as if I’d said something enchanting, romantic. His eyes sparkled. “You’re a creator.”
I thought about that. It seemed too lofty for me. All I did was watch a lot of movies and daydream. But he’d given me an opportunity, one I hadn’t even really acknowledged because I’d been so obsessed with him: our semester project. I could actually make something. If it turned out halfway decent, maybe I could include it on my college app.
“I don’t know what I am yet,” I said.
An electric moment between us, balanced between honesty and fear. Because I was young. Maybe I had more drive than most kids my age, but I was still a “kid my age.” And you know that, Mr. Wilke, I thought. That’s part of what this is between us—the thrill of the taboo. Teacher and student.
“If you’re going to film school,” he said, “there’s something I need to give you.”
My heart skipped. “What?”
“An education.”
The first thing he taught me was how to make love.
Before you laugh, know that I’d always hated that phrase. It sounded so corny, so old. Hippies made love. People my mom’s age, though I preferred to believe I was an immaculate conception.
People my age hooked up, f**ked, had sex. We didn’t attach frilly ideas of oneness and eternity to a basic biological act. Most of us were from single-parent homes. Those who weren’t wished they were when their parents screamed and beat the shit out of each other. We grew up sexualized, from toddler beauty pageants to the constant reminder that adults were waiting to lure us into vans with candy. The invention of MMS gave us a platform for the distribution of amateur porn.
That’s a lot of conditioning to break through.
The afternoon light got that long slant to it, slowly folding into dusk. Half a day had passed since I’d eaten and I barely felt hungry. I didn’t want to stop this thing, lying on a motel bed with this beautiful man, our hot skin always in contact, never breaking apart. He sat up and I sat in his lap, facing him, my legs wrapped around the long lean muscle of his back. I rubbed my palm against the bristle on his cheek. He wore a sleepy, smoldering look, his lower lip jutting out, and it completely worked on me. If he’d asked me to do anything right then, I would have. I kissed that sulky lip. I couldn’t tell the taste of his mouth from mine anymore. Only warmth, softness, pressure.
“I want to see you,” he said quietly. “All of you.”
I breathed quicker. Disentangled myself from him, my eyes locked on his, and stood. I felt like I was in a trance. I’d undressed for other men, and I wasn’t wearing much right now to begin with, but this felt different. He wasn’t just going to see my body. He was going to see me. In the way I undressed, the way I stood there under his gaze, the way I wore my skin.
He moved to the edge of the bed.
I unhooked my bra, slipped it off one shoulder. Let it fall to the floor with cool disregard.
That was the easy part.
I was breathing hard now.
His eyes moved over me, but hovered mostly on my face. That was almost worse. Who am I without this? I thought. Without the seduction I wear like armor, without my bravado and cocksure confidence? Am I really just a little girl under it all?
I tucked my thumbs into my underwear.
And I thought of myself getting into the front of that deathtrap rollercoaster all alone. Of swinging out from the water tower. Of getting into my teacher’s car.
I slipped my underwear down until it fell. Then I stepped out with one foot and kicked it away with the other. I never broke eye contact.
Evan’s lips parted in awe.
I’d like to thank the Academy.
“Now you,” I said.
He stood smoothly. His silhouette blocked the dregs of sun filtering through the curtain. It limned the edges of him, a bronze arc of light on his shoulder, the tips of his hair turning white-blond. His jeans clung tightly and he had to strip them off. He was hard again, totally hard, his boxers doing nothing to hide it. He slipped them off. My eyes didn’t know where to stop. Apparently my hands didn’t either because they were all over him, following the cascading slabs of his ribs, his abs, the smooth chevron of muscle that led to the hard dick I took and wrapped in my fingers. His hands came down on my shoulders, heavily. His breath was heavy, too. He leaned on me, eyes closed.
“I want you like this,” I said.
He looked at me as if he was drugged. I pushed him onto the bed. My knees fit to either side of his waist. We sat face to face again, but without any clothes between us. I was higher than him and he kissed my br**sts, his dick stiff against my thigh. The heat of it drove me crazy, my blood percolating, a viciousness winding up in me like a cobra preparing to strike. If he didn’t f**k me, I was going to force him.
He looked up at me. “Are you sure?”