Chapter 27
“If anyone found out what happened, I’d lose my marriage. My child. My whole life would be over.”
We’re at Sleepy Dog, a coffee shop a half hour out of town, tucked upstairs in the back corner.
The seating is all old living room furniture from some dead grandma’s estate sale.
I sit on a floral couch with fringe at the bottom.
Korgy sits opposite me, on a puffy chair upholstered with carpet-like fabric, his back to the shop.
He wears a baseball cap, the same one he was wearing when he came into Victoria’s Secret that day, and he keeps his head low while he talks.
He paid with cash, too. All efforts, I assume, to keep this meeting as discreet as possible.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to be offended, or ashamed, or embarrassed, to be someone’s secret, their stressor, and maybe their regret, but I’m not.
It almost doesn’t matter what I am to him, just that I’m something to him.
Like being something to him makes me something.
“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” I say, reassuring him.
I take a sip of my coffee and he chews his lip, neither of us saying anything for at least half a minute. We just sit here reading each other, or trying to, a silent chess match flitting back and forth, played with our eyes. What’s the next move?
“Look, Waldo,” he says, “it…can never happen again, okay?”
“Is that what you want?” I ask.
The barista downstairs shouts “Marianne,” with a tinge of “I give up on my life” in the tone.
“Yes,” he says, unblinking.
I want to reach over and grab his cock and feel it harden in my hand and say, No it’s not.
You want me. And you feel guilty about it, and awful, and disappointed in yourself, but it doesn’t matter what you feel about what you want.
All that matters is that you want it. What you want is the truth of who you are.
And you want me. But instead something else comes out. Timid, almost squeaky.
“Are you sure?”
The barista shouts “Marianne” again, this time with heat. Maybe they haven’t given up on life yet.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Mr. Korgy says. But I think back to the other night at winter formal, how his body was saying a completely different thing from what his mouth was saying. So I turn my attention to it.
His legs are crossed and his arms are folded over his belly like he’s trying very hard to close himself off, to shut me out. But the gesture looks forced, against his will even. Underneath the pose, I feel his pull, magnetic and undeniable. The truth.
“No,” I say finally. “I think you wish you wanted it to never happen again. But I don’t think that’s what you actually want. Can you admit that to me at least?”
“Waldo, you’re so young,” he says, pleading with me and wrestling with himself at the same time. He runs his hands through his hair and shuts his eyes and repeats it half under his breath. “So young.”
I can’t tell whether I’m supposed to feel insulted or validated. Is this a rejection or an admission of feelings? Or maybe it’s a challenge. I almost push but something in me stops me. Dignity, perhaps? No, that can’t be it. So curiosity then. Or maybe it’s a sense of knowing. He has more to say.
He looks at me with a combination of guilt and anguish, deep concern and deep longing, and I feel a piece of him crack open before he even says it.
“I do have feelings for you, and they…keep me up at night. But there’s nothing I can do about them.”
An explosion inside of me. This is all I’ve wanted, all I’ve needed, and now I have it. I don’t care about what’s on the other end of it—resistance, reluctance, even a hard no. He admitted it. He has feelings for me.
“Yes, there is. You can do something about them,” I say.
“I’ve already gone so far out of line. I’m horrified. I’m ashamed of myself. This is very, very wrong. I have to…pull myself together for my family.”
“I’m not trying to interfere with your family. I’m okay not having all of you. I’ll take whatever I can get.”
“No, Waldo, you deserve all of someone. Someone who can be there for you fully. Someone who’s emotionally available.”
“A seventeen-year-old? You think some beefy senior’s gonna be emotionally available between his rounds of Grand Theft Auto and his daily hour of Pornhub?”
“There are good, age-appropriate guys out there.”
“What in my life is age-appropriate? I bought my car, my laptop, my clothes, my gas. I pay the electric bill. I do the laundry and the dishes and the vacuuming. I’ve been managing my mom’s emotions since I was five.
I don’t spend my days worrying about what house party I’m gonna get wasted at, I worry about if water’s gonna come out of the faucet the next time I turn it on.
If my mom’s gonna be bedridden from a breakup and I’m gonna have to drop everything in my life to be there for her so she doesn’t spiral so bad she loses another job. None of that’s age-appropriate.”
“You’re right, those are things seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t have to worry about.
But you’re still seventeen. And I am still a lot older than you.
I have life experiences, a context for life, that can only come with age.
I’ve made mistakes that you haven’t. I have regrets that you don’t.
I assure you, your feelings for me will fade.
Three months from now, you’ll be going to prom with your new boyfriend and you’ll be laughing to yourself about the crush you had on your crusty old teacher. ”
“I don’t want a boyfriend. I want you,” I say. “And I know you want me too. We’re two sad, bored, tired, lonely people who want each other.”
The barista shouts “Marianne” a third time, this time with a vengeance. Marianne finally steps forward for her frappuccino. Sometimes you’ve gotta fight to be heard.
“Please,” I say, “just promise me you’ll think about it.”