And when I come, emptying myself inside her, in that seriously high moment—ejaculation is the closest thing I now have to a heroin hit—I can’t keep myself from saying, “I love you, Portia Kane. I have always loved you,” and then immediately wish I hadn’t and feel like an ass, even when she whispers back, “I’m hoping you’re my good man, Chuck Bass.”
She rests her head on my chest and we just sort of lie there—her breathing, me stroking her long brown hair—until we both surrender to sleep.
In the morning, we shower, dress, and walk the boardwalk, holding hands again, listening to the waves crashing, and talking about the fact that we both need change in our lives without really going into specifics, neither of us bringing up Mr. Vernon, even though I keep wondering where he ended up last night—and also if he might actually eventually kill himself like Portia said he wanted to when she called me from New York City. I hadn’t told the classmates we rallied about Mr. Vernon being possibly suicidal, and I’m now trying not to think about what they’d say if they found out he had actually gone through with suicide after our failed party.
“You don’t think Mr. Vernon might have tried to hurt himself last night after he left the police station, do you?” I ask Portia when I can’t take it any longer.
“It’s out of our hands,” she says, and then adds, “at least for now. We left him with cops. I’d say that clears us from any responsibility. What else could we have done?”
I think about how we could still get him professional help—maybe contact a therapist or call a suicide hotline or something like that—but I understand what Portia means. She’s just driven all the way to Vermont, shown him a big fancy time in New York City. She will go on to tell me how she’s saved his life twice already. How many times are you expected to raise your former teacher from the dead, after all? And yet I still can’t shake the feeling that we could do more.
“Hey,” Portia says, looking up into my eyes, her forefinger lifting my chin as seagulls cry and swoop overhead. “We tried. And maybe we haven’t heard the last word from Mr. Vernon.”
I don’t understand what she means about “the last word,” but we did try.
After late-morning pizza slices at Manco & Manco, I drive Portia home to her mother’s row home across the street from the Acme in Westmont, and just before she gets out of the truck, looking sun-kissed and wondrous, I say, “This isn’t going to sound very cool, I’m aware, but please tell me that I’m going to see you again soon.”
She smiles. “How’s tonight sound? You around?”
“I have Tommy tonight, but he’d love to see you too.”
“Cool,” she says. “Maybe you’ll let me sit in on a Shot with a Fart session?”
I smile.
She gives me a kiss on the lips, and then she’s climbing her mother’s front steps.
“Portia Kane,” I whisper to the dashboard, tasting each delicious syllable, “Portia Kane. Portia Kane.”
I pull away from the curb, and as I pass the Crystal Lake Diner, I feel like something really good has begun. Like I’m basking in the warmth of the best sunrise I will ever experience. Maybe this really is the story of Portia and Chuck, and I’m just at the beginning. Could I be that lucky?
And then I think of Mr. Vernon hobbling away from me as quickly as possible, and how my little speech seemed to make no impact on him whatsoever.
What do you do when the person you admire most literally turns his back on you?
I’m not sure.
How the hell did we end up at the police station last night? I think when I pass it.
Where did Mr. Vernon go?
When I pull into the parking lot across from the Manor, I see Portia’s rental car, and my heart leaps, because it gives me a chance to call her right away, to hear her voice without coming off as needy.
So I dial her cell phone.
“What took you so long to call me?” Portia says. “I’ve missed you, Mr. Bass.”
It takes me a second to answer, I’m so giddy—I feel like a teenager again—but then I say, “Forget something at the Manor last night?”
“Shit. The rental car.”
“Should I come get you?”
“Please.”
“I’ll be there in five.” I hang up, and when I check myself out in the rearview mirror, I see a happy man—more elated than he’s ever been in his entire life.
CHAPTER 23
Tommy gets attached to Portia really fast, which scares me a little, even though Portia is great with him. For months, almost all of our dates are sexless because the little man is along for the ride, usually right between us, actually, holding both our hands.
We take him to the movies, where we see all of the animated films; to the Franklin Institute, so he can climb around in that huge beating human heart they have there; to the Academy of Natural Sciences, so he can marvel at the reconstructed dinosaur bones looming above; even to Longwood Gardens to smell the spring flowers, which I never dreamed Tommy would be into, but he is in a big way. Especially the tulips, of all things, like just how many there are, endless amounts—he even tries to count them, but quits around one hundred or so. We go to a few Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park when my Manor customers float me tickets as tips, and even though none of us really like baseball we have a good time watching the Phillie Phanatic dance, goof on people, and throw his big green belly around; we run the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and victoriously hold our hands up in the air like Rocky before we eat cheese steaks at Pat’s in South Philly, where Tommy—with electric-yellow Cheez Whiz all over his face—innocently asks, “Who’s Rocky?” so we immediately rent the movie that weekend, and Tommy says, “Yo, Adrian!” for weeks. We go to the beach a lot when the weather warms up, and Portia looks drop-dead gorgeous in a bikini; at the zoo we take a ride up in their hot air balloon, which freaks me out a bit, to the point where Tommy reaches up and holds my hand because he sees how nervous I am; and when the temperature breaks into the nineties, we go fountain hopping, even though it is technically illegal now. “How can you make a Philly tradition illegal?” Portia says as she strides into the first fountain like a seasoned lawbreaker. We do all the stuff that most normal families do every weekend in and around Philadelphia.