Authors: Barry Lyga
I looked at her as she looked down into my lap. "Well," she said. "Well."
And started to do to me what I had been doing to myself two, sometimes three, times a day. Only it was so much better.
"Can you..." She stopped. Stopped
talking,
that is.
"What?" I was shocked I could even speak.
"Never mind," she whispered. "I want to be surprised."
I didn't understand, but seconds later I didn't even understand how to breathe as a kaleidoscope of stars exploded behind my eyes, leaving fire trails like bottle rockets.
Eve giggled a little and murmured something that sounded like, "That answers
that.
" She kissed me on the cheek and went to the bathroom to wash her hands. I slumped on the sofa in something like shock until I heard her open the bathroom door and close the bedroom door. Then I went to clean myself up and straighten my clothes.
When I emerged, Eve was still in the bedroom, so I turned on the Xbox. Even though my play wasn't as good, I made up for it in sheer hours—I was kicking ass in the game because I was playing it so much, and I had promised George that I would get to the end before Christmas break and show it to him.
Eve came out of the bedroom a little while later. She looked at the TV and at me with the controller in my hand, sighed, and said, "Men," then kissed the top of my head in a way that was creepily like Mom. I pushed it out of my mind.
I heard her rummaging around in the kitchen. "Do you want me to help?" I shouted.
"No, that's OK, honey. Keep playing your game."
Usually only Mom called me "honey," and I hated it. But I liked it when Eve said it because she didn't
have
to say it.
I played Xbox until George got home. Eve came out of the kitchen to greet him with, I noticed, a dry, brief peck on the cheek. Did she ever kiss him like she kissed me? I thought about it—I had never seen my parents kiss like that, either. Maybe...
Maybe what? I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I knew married people had sex because I'd heard my parents. But they didn't seem to kiss a lot. And Eve and George weren't kissing. Maybe they didn't have sex, either?
George took off his coat and kicked off his shoes, then joined me in front of the Xbox. "How's it going, bud?"
"Fine. I got into the pyramid." I didn't let my eyes waver from the screen.
"Excellent!"
My manners kicked in. "I can stop, if you want to play."
He shook his head. "Nah. I've been playing games all day. My thumbs are killing me. I'll just watch."
The three of us ate dinner together at the little table in the corner where the kitchen met the living room. George talked about the games he'd tested, some of which sounded really cool, although I discovered that he also had to test games for little kids, which sounded boring.
On the way home, Eve drove with one hand; we held hands over the armrest.
"Did you like tonight, Josh? Please tell me." She pouted.
"Yes." Deep down, though, I felt bad. Bad that I'd made her do it. Guilty that she'd felt compelled. Guilty for making a mess, of all things.
"Good. Look, this went farther than kissing, you know. I wouldn't just lose my job if this got out. I would go to jail. You don't want me to go to jail, do you?"
"No way!" I was getting tired of her constantly reminding me not to tell anyone, though. Of course I wouldn't tell anyone. I wouldn't do that.
"I'm going to miss you this weekend, honey."
"Me, too."
She sighed heavily. "Maybe I could buy you a cell phone or something?"
"My parents would wonder about that. I'd have to hide it."
"I figured that," she said, exasperated. "You'd have to leave it off at home, but you could go outside and call me, right?"
"I don't know. During the day, maybe. But it's getting—" I didn't want to continue. As the weather got darker and colder, my parents wouldn't let me go out as much at night. But I didn't want to advertise that I was a freakin' baby. "Maybe," I said.
"I'll think about it," she said, chewing her lip.
We had our usual make-out session in our usual secluded spot and then she dropped me off.
Mom and Dad were arguing when I got home, so I just slipped into my bedroom. They were fighting about money, which bored me, so I tuned them out. It was a good hour or so until Dad poked his head into my room and asked, "How long have you been home?"
"A little while. Mrs. Sherman brought me home."
Dad frowned. "You should have told us you were home. It's late. You should eat something."
"I ate already."
"OK."
I heard the front door close. "Where's Mom going?" Dad's eyes narrowed. He didn't answer. I thought maybe he didn't hear me. "Dad, where—"
"Shopping," he said, and left.
As always, Zik was my font of knowledge for all things sexual. He eavesdropped on his brother and father all the time, got to watch Kevin Smith movies on cable at home, and had that nigh-endless supply of fresh nudie magazines to consult. I bugged my parents until they drove me over to Zik's to spend the day. I told them we were going to play baseball with some other guys, despite the cold.
Zik and I spent the day out of the house, wandering his neighborhood. Anything to stay away from his parents. It was freezing outside, with a bitter wind, but we just jammed our hands into our pockets and roamed up and down the streets.
I didn't specifically tell him anything about Eve and me, just sort of made some calculated, seemingly random musings, and learned that I had been the recipient of my first "hand job," which sounded exactly like what it had been.
At dinner that night, Mom said, "You're awful quiet, Josh."
I shrugged. Only on the weekends did we all sit down as a family for dinner; we did it so rarely that it felt awkward and wrong somehow. I wasn't the only one being "awful quiet." Mom and Dad barely said a word through the whole meal.
"Is everything OK?" she asked. Dad was just watching the whole exchange like a prison guard or a scientist. I shrugged again. I figured that if I just gave her nothing, she'd get bored and give up.
Instead, she flicked her eyes to Dad, who nodded. Mom took a deep breath. "Josh, honey?"
"Don't call me 'honey,'" I said in the lowest growl my adolescent voice had ever mustered. I don't know where it came from, some deep, secret place low down in my heart or gut. But when I heard "honey" now, I thought of Eve and her lips and everything else, and the thought of that and my mother's voice and—
I just couldn't handle it.
Mom was taken aback. It was as if she'd gone to pet a cat and been snapped at by a wolverine. "OK," she said after a moment. "Josh, do you..."
And I knew, in that moment, what had happened. Someone had seen me kissing Eve in her car and told Mom. I was about to get into more trouble than any human being had ever conceived of.
"Josh," she said, starting again, "do you want me to quit my job?"
Huh?
"So that I can be here when you get home from school? So that you can come right home and not have to spend so much time with your teacher?" She was unsure, tentative, and I wasn't used to hearing my mother like that; it definitely got my attention.
But ... give up Eve? Unlimited Xbox? Give up being treated like an adult and not a child? Was she
nuts?
"No, Mom. Everything's fine."
"You've been quiet lately." Dad jumped in. "Spending a lot of time alone in your room. More than usual."
"Yeah, but—"
"I want you to think about what your mother said very carefully," Dad said. "Very carefully."
"I know, Dad. But I'm fine. I just ... I just have a lot more homework this year, that's all."
I don't know where the lie came from—my homework was no more burdensome or difficult than it had been the previous year, and spending time with Eve instead of doing my homework in the afternoons hadn't made much of a difference. I was used to cramming in my homework after baseball practice two seasons a year anyway.
But the lie worked. Mom's maternal instincts came online. "Are they giving you too much work? Should you cut back on one of your academic classes?"
"He's not cutting back on a class," Dad told her. "That's stupid. He can't just change his schedule. This isn't college."
"If my son is having trouble, we'll talk to the principal and—"
"They aren't going to—"
"Guys!" I said. They stopped bickering. "It's no big deal. Really. It's just tougher, that's all. I saw my progress reports the other day and I'm still getting straight A's. I just have to work harder for them, that's all."
We finished dinner in a chilly silence, Mom and Dad barely looking at each other.
***
It was a long weekend and, for some reason, the phone rang a lot. Caller ID said "Caller Blocked," so no one picked it up, but Mom became increasingly annoyed at the constant ringing. Finally, late on Sunday afternoon, I picked up the extension in the basement just to find out who was bothering us.
"Hi, Josh," Eve said.
I checked my surroundings; no one was around and the basement door was shut. I would hear the creak of the steps if my parents came down and have time to hang up.
"Have you been calling all weekend?" I asked.
"I blocked my cell phone number," she said, "and figured I'd just hang up if your parents answered."
"You've been driving my mom nuts." I meant it as a scolding, but halfway through I started giggling. Eve laughed, too.
"Oh, well," she said.
"Why did you call?"
"I just missed you. I wanted to hear your voice."
That didn't make any sense to me. She just wanted to hear my voice? Now what was I supposed to do? What if I didn't have anything to say? Was I supposed to just say random words so that she could hear me?
"Do you miss me?" she asked.
"Sure."
"That's nice. I like to hear that."
"I miss you," I told her.
"You can be very literal-minded, Josh."
"I was making a joke."
"Look, you have my cell number, right?"
"Yep." I had written it down for my mom, and once I write down a number, it pretty much sticks in my head forever. I used to think everyone was like that, which made things weird because I would get frustrated at people, thinking they were lying to me or being stupid by pretending they couldn't remember the number of strikes in the previous night's game or the page number of a homework assignment or the answer to the third question on last week's math test. Eventually, though, I learned that not everyone had my memory, poor suckers.
"Well, call me whenever you want, OK? Unless George is around, I'll pick up. Leave me a voicemail if I don't."
"OK."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"OK."
She paused, like she was either waiting for me to say something or for herself to say something that she hadn't settled on yet. And then: "Sweet dreams, Josh."
I shivered.
It was the week before Christmas break. I went to Eve's every day after school, as usual, and for the first few days, we had our usual make-out session, now bolstered by the mind-blowing hand jobs that I replayed each night at home.
Over the weekend, Eve and George had decorated for Christmas, and the apartment was adorned with holly and wreaths. The living room had sprouted a Christmas tree, and Eve turned off the lamps so that only the glow of the tree's lights lit the room.
"It's going to be a whole week," Eve said Wednesday night, pouting at the calendar as I zipped up. "Actually,
more
than a week."
The next day, on her sofa, she did something different. She fished me out of my fly and then, to my astonishment and complete disbelief, leaned down and took me into her mouth. I thought my eyes would melt out of their sockets.
When she was finished (and
I
was finished), I lay half on and half off the sofa, my body limp and weak, my ears ringing. Eve disappeared into the bedroom for a while, and when she came out, I was still lying there, my pants open, in shock, flickering in and out of the present as I relived moments that had just passed. She slipped next to me on the sofa and slid her arms around me, holding me, her lips pressed to my hair.
"I guess you liked that," she murmured.
"You could—you could say that."
"Good. I wanted to make sure you wouldn't forget about me over break."
"Not after
that!
"
She laughed and brought us drinks, letting me have some of her wine. "To relax you a bit," she said. And I
was
breathing pretty hard, both from what she'd done and from the flickers, which kept catapulting me back to those delicious moments.
I hadn't figured out the flickers and
I hadn't told anyone about them, either. I thought they were temporary. Or maybe they were a part of growing up, something that happened when you became ... active. In that case, mentioning it to my parents would be a clear sign of what I'd been up to. And mentioning it to Eve would make me look like a clueless little kid, not her mature young man.