All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (24 page)

“Thanks. Aren't you glad I didn't show up at your house drunk off my ass in the middle of the night this year?”

“I liked that birthday.” She exhaled too fast, ended up with not enough breath to get her to the end of the sentence, so the last part didn't make any noise at all. When she reached across the table, I took her hand and turned it over so the ring picked up the candlelight and sparkled.

“So did I. I felt like such a jackass waking you up, but then you were so nice, like you were glad to see me.”

Wavy was maybe getting ready to say something else, but the waiter came back before she could. He looked at our hands together on the table, but I didn't pull mine back. It wasn't none of his business.

“Are you finished with your salads?”

I was. Wavy hadn't touched hers, but the waiter took them both away when she nodded. After our dinners came, she pushed her plate off to the side to watch me eat. When the waiter came back with my third drink, he said, “Is there a problem? Is her entrée not to her liking?”

“No, it's fine. She'll just need a box.”

We got to giggling after the waiter was gone. Wavy took her fork and moved the food around on her plate, and I ate a few bites to make it look better.

After I finished my steak, she scooted around the booth to sit next to me. Her dress strap was slipping down her arm so I lifted it back into place. I couldn't believe how soft the back of her neck was, where her hair was sneaking out of its pins. I'd never seen her hair up like that.

“This is a really nice birthday present. You planning it for me. Nobody ever did that for me.”

She kissed my cheek, and that was when the waiter came back with the check. I didn't say a word when Wavy added up the tip and counted her money into the leather folder. I wanted to let her give me something. It was important to her.

She picked the movie. Not
Annie
, which was a kid movie, or
Porky's
, which looked dirty.
Poltergeist
. I was the one jumping in my seat at the scary parts. She laughed and squeezed my hand. After the movie, we went by the store for ice cream. She paid for that, too.

At home, I made myself another drink and, even though I knew she wouldn't eat it, I scooped up two bowls of ice cream. She carried hers out to the living room, cupped in both her hands like a prize. I turned on the TV to some old movie on PBS, and settled into my recliner. Wavy stood there, waiting for an invitation.

“Well, come on.” I patted my knee.

Like I figured, she wasn't gonna eat her ice cream. She put it on the coffee table before she sat on my lap. Somewhere in the last five years, she musta been eating something, because she'd grown. There was a time when she fit all the way in my lap, but now her legs were long and her head reached my shoulder. The way she leaned into me was the same, though. She trusted me. When I pushed her dress strap up, she shivered, but then my hands were cold from the ice cream.

The movie was just background noise, while Wavy watched me eat my ice cream. Mint chocolate chip, that was what she picked.

After I set the empty bowl on the coffee table, she handed me my drink and scooted further up my legs. She leaned into me real nice, slipped her arm around my neck and put her cheek up against mine. That moment was a good birthday present by itself, just to sit with her and be happy together. During the movie, her hair had come out of the bobby pins, so I smoothed it out over her shoulder and snuck in a sniff.

When I got that first prickly heat in my crotch, I figured it was the booze. I shouldn't've had another drink. It felt so good sitting there with Wavy, her hand stroking the back of my neck, but it didn't seem right either. Even if it was just the bourbon, I had no business letting her sit on my lap when I was worked up.

“Let me up, sweetheart. I gotta step out,” I said.

She made this annoyed sound, but she got up. In the bathroom, I splashed some water on my face and took a piss. That put me back to rights.

As soon as I sat down, she came right back to my lap. With the problem taken care of, I wanted her there. She brushed her cheek against mine and then she gave me a cold little kiss on the corner of my mouth. Minty.

“You finally ate some of your ice cream?”

She nodded.

“Why won't you eat it with me here?” I didn't expect an answer, because I'd asked before and never got one.

“No looking,” she said.

“So, if I close my eyes, will you eat your ice cream before it melts?”

She thought hard about it, walking her fingers along the ribbing on my undershirt. When she got to my bare arm, she ran her finger over the scar from my wreck, staring at her ice cream the whole time.

“Cover them,” she said.

Once I put my hands over my eyes, she picked up her bowl. Like I was her favorite chair, she stretched back against me and rested her head in the triangle my elbow made. I didn't cheat, wasn't even tempted to look, but I knew she was eating. First came the squeak of the spoon scooping up ice cream. Then the sneaky sound of the spoon going into her mouth and coming out clean. After a couple bites, she put the bowl back on the coffee table.

“Are you done? Can I open my eyes?” I said.

“No.”

She shifted in my lap to straddle me, getting her knees into the gaps between my legs and the sides of the chair. Then she rested her head on my shoulder and said, “Lean back.”

I took my hands off my eyes, but didn't open them. I eased the recliner back, and she settled into me with a sigh.

When she put her cheek against mine again, I turned my head, hoping for maybe one more kiss. She gave it to me, cold and soft. The next kiss was still cool, but getting warmer. Every one after that was warmer and softer, like ice cream melting, until she gave me a kiss that wasn't just a peck on the lips. Her lips were warm but her tongue was still cold.

“Hey,” I said. I didn't want to startle her.

“Hey.”

That wasted word surprised me, so I opened my eyes. She was looking at me. I couldn't guess what she was thinking, but deep down I knew what would happen if I closed my eyes. I did it anyway. Closed them and waited for her to kiss me. It started with both of us shy, but not too long after, her mouth was full on mine, and then her tongue slipped past my teeth to my tongue. All the while her arms got tighter around my neck.

After that, there was just one kiss that kept on going, which was what I liked. She let me play with her hair, and after a while, I petted her bare shoulders. I wondered how it felt to her with my hand being so rough and her being so soft. To me, it was like all the skin on my palms coming awake after being asleep. Same way I felt lying under the sky at night. The stars rubbing across me, making static electricity.

Until she gasped into my mouth, I didn't even know what I'd done—slid my hand down from her shoulder to cup her little tit in my palm. She leaned into me and her dress slipped down, leaving her naked in my hand. Her nipple went hard in the curve of my thumb, and she shivered. Made me shiver, too.

I tried to pull my hand back, but she pressed hers over mine to hold it there.

“Orion,” she said.

She ran her fingers down my belly to my belt buckle and unhooked it. I brushed her hand away, and I was gonna refasten the buckle, except if I sat up and did that, I figured that would be the end of her kissing me. So I pushed her hand away and kissed her some more. Her hand went right back to my belt, like a fly that won't quit buzzing around. She unthreaded the belt and opened the button on my jeans.

I had to stop her.

I opened my eyes and sat up, but it only made things worse. Her eyes were thunderhead dark, her lips were red from kissing, and I'd turned her hair into a tumbled mess. She was straddling my lap with her skirt riding up. Holding her by the hips, my forearms rubbed against her bare thighs. Just short of letting go of her and dumping her on the floor, I didn't know what to do.

The zipper on my jeans came down with some help from her, but mostly from the pressure of a hard-on that had built up on me like a temperature gauge going into red.

“Wavy, you can't—”

“I want to,” she said.

She kissed me until my blood pounded in my ears, like I was fixing to have a heart attack. She held the back of my neck with one hand and, with the other, she petted my dick like it was a wild animal. Real gentle at first. Then she closed her fingers around me as far as they would go, and goddamn, when she squeezed a little harder, it was far enough.

“Wavy.” That was me begging, and not for her to stop.

As much as I always wanted her to kiss me, I didn't have no idea how desperate I was for her to touch me like that. I couldn't even recollect how long it was since somebody besides me had. And Wavy. Wavy. Her hand was so soft, not a callous on it. Took less than a minute to get me off. As soon as I came, I knew what I'd done. My stomach turned over and, for a second, I thought I was gonna be sick.

“Oh, Jesus, Wavy. Jesus fucking Christ. What are we doing? Get up. Get up.”

She did what I said, slid off my lap awkwardlike, and staggered back a step. Standing there with the TV flickering on her face, she looked like she was worried about me. A string of cum dripped off her hand and she wiped it on the front of her skirt. I stood up, trying to get my pants fastened, but I was all thumbs, and my dick was still half-hard. Goddamn belt opened up easy enough in her hands and I couldn't hardly get it to close.

“I did it wrong?” she said.

“No—it's—oh, God, Wavy.”

“You liked it with the girl at the party.”

“Wha—what party? What girl?”

With the hand she'd wiped on her dress, Wavy drew a slithery line up her arm. She'd seen the girl with the snake tattoo giving me a hand job? That was the last time somebody else had touched me.

“But you, Wavy. It's not okay for you to do that.” I couldn't catch my breath and my voice wouldn't stop shaking.

“Why?” she said.

“Because it's not. You—it's—it's dirty for you to do that.”

She flinched like I'd slapped her.

Standing there, both of us not talking, I saw the thing I shoulda looked at first—the ring on her finger. It was my fault she didn't understand. When I told her she was too young to get married, I figured she knew I was talking about sex. But I bought her a wedding ring. I promised there wasn't gonna be other girls, and there hadn't been. I didn't even look at other women anymore. Maybe I was the one who didn't understand.

“Wavy—” As shitty as it was, I wasn't getting ready to apologize. I was so ashamed of myself, I was gonna say, “You can't tell anybody about this.”

Before I could, she clamped her hands over her mouth and said, “Mama was right. I am dirty.”

She was gone like a flash, leaving the kitchen door slapping in the frame.

I stood in the middle of the room, shocked as hell, wondering where she learned all that. The kissing, the other stuff? Did Liam's girls talk about sex with her?

No, that was my fault, too. Except for the one skin mag I threw away, I hadn't done anything with the other magazines in my nightstand. How many times had she been there without me and looked at those pictures?

Wherever she got those ideas, she was only thirteen. All those times I said, “I'm not that kinda guy,” maybe I
was
that kinda guy. What happened hadn't just
happened
. There was that whole half hour of us making out before she unzipped my pants. I'd had plenty of time to put a stop to it, and I didn't. Because I liked kissing her. I liked all of it, no matter how messed up that was.

My pa was a crazy, mean drunk who beat the shit out of my ma and us kids. Alcohol did that. It didn't make you do what I'd just done.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't blame the booze. I don't think I'd ever been as sober as I was right then.

 

11

KELLEN

I paced up and down, until the TV played the national anthem and went to the test screen. Standing there in the quiet, I knew how bad I'd fucked up. Not just that fooling around with Wavy was illegal—considering all the other laws I'd broken, I didn't care about that—but that up 'til then, I'd never betrayed anybody I loved. Wavy trusted me, and I took advantage of her.

I got my gun out of the drawer next to the sink and pushed the clip in. When I was younger, I thought about it plenty of times. Just put the barrel in my mouth, pull the trigger, and paint the ceiling with my brains.

I used to think about it when I was lonely and miserable, but now it seemed like something I deserved. Except Wavy had said, “I'm dirty,” and I couldn't stand for her to think
she
did something wrong. I didn't want her going through life thinking she was so dirty I had to kill myself after she touched me. Whatever I deserved, she didn't deserve that.

The temperature gauge at the kitchen window showed forty-two degrees. I'd let her run out into the night, wearing that skimpy dress with no coat, knowing she'd have to cross two highways and the meadow to get home.

I put the gun away and washed my hands. Then I put her coat and sweater in the saddlebag, and rode. I scanned the shoulder ahead for her as I went, but I'd waited too long.

At the farmhouse, the porch light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. I wasn't brave enough to call her name, so I stood in the kitchen and listened until I picked out two clear sounds. Splashing water and a muffled hiccup.

I tapped on the bathroom door, and there was a hiccup followed by silence. There was no latch on the door and, when I pushed it open, it thudded against something. Wavy's boots. The air burned when I sucked it into my lungs. Bleach.

I got down on my knees and crawled to the tub, saying, “I'm sorry, Wavy. I'm sorry I let that happen. That was all my fault and I'm sorry.”