Chapter 55
— Chapter 55 —
I cannot stand the idea of going back inside the house without Aubrey.
I run all the way to Jam’s. In jeans. In my heavy work shoes. The cold air makes my lungs itch, and by the time I climb through his window I’m wheezing and I have a cramp in my side.
Jam is lying in bed watching James Bond. His eyes are kind of red. He reaches into his nightstand, throws me his inhaler, stares at me while I take it. It’s warm in his room and the sweat catches up to me, streaming down my face. I unzip my sweatshirt and my button-down is plastered to my skin.
Jam gets out of bed, grabs my wrist like he did before.
“I’m disgusting,” I say.
When I try to pull away, he slips his hand behind my sweaty neck and kisses me.
“I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
He pushes my wet hair out of my face and kisses me again.
I always imagined that he’d be on top. All the times I thought about having sex with Jam, I imagined that he’d hold me down, one hand pressing both of mine into the pillow. I’d pretend to struggle, and he’d like it, like James Bond would. But even that is a chaste fantasy, where everything eventually fades to black. In reality, we are animals, not movie stars. I can taste the salt from my skin on his lips.
He unbuttons my shirt, my pants, pulls my sweaty clothes from my body. I smell the musk of myself, of a full day of work, the hard sprint over.
“I’m disgusting,” I say again.
And instead of saying anything at all, he lowers his mouth to me. Kisses around the edges of my underwear before he peels them off. “I love it,” he says, using his fingers too.
My appendix scar aches from the inside out.
I am drenched when I lower myself onto him. His bedsprings sag and squeak like they are working against us. We move to the floor, the rug burning my knees. I like the pain because it’s mine to control, because the intensity drowns everything in my mind. But there are moments when I catch his face in a state of awe and feel it too—that everything between us was always leading up to this. And then there’s a moment when I look into his deep, familiar eyes and think that I have just ruined everything.
I bite his neck, pinch the flesh on his chest. He digs his nails into my side.
Finally, I roll over, pull him on top of me, let the rug burn my back.
I leave before Jam wakes up, wearing his jeans without underwear, my sweatshirt zipped all the way to my neck, trying to hide that I don’t have a shirt or bra. I managed to grab my shoes but could only find a single sock and left it behind because I thought being uneven would be worse. By the time I get out to the main road, I’m sorry I didn’t save one of my feet from Doc Marten blisters.
Just as I cross Route 116 back to my neighborhood, Eddie’s truck pulls up to the stop sign, blinker signaling toward town. Maybe his real house is out that way and he’s leaving his mom’s to go home to Lexi. I pull my phone from my pocket and pretend to be on a call.
He sees me and rolls down his window.
“You alright, Frey?” he says.
I know I still have to see him at the bar. And I need my job. What he’s done will look worse on me than it does on him, because he’s a man and an actual hero. It won’t matter that I didn’t know, that I believed what he told me. I understand how this works. Eddie means more to them than I do.
I point to my phone, make a squawking chicken beak out of my hand like the imaginary person on the line is talking so much I can’t get away. I wave him on like it’s fine. I’m fine. Go on about your business. It’s all okay, Eddie.