24. Then #2
“It isn’t.” Life isn’t fair. He lived among families with dirt floors and little food for most of his childhood. I’m not sure how he’s only figuring this out now.
He’s permitted to travel with the team when they play Fresno State, three hours away. The pastor and Donna decide not to go, in theory because of the drive, though I suspect it’s simply that the pastor won’t be able to climb up into the stands.
I think it would be better if I didn’t go too. Maybe, if I pretend Luke doesn’t exist, and if I pretend it for long enough, I’ll finally stop missing him. But when Danny pleads with me to come, I don’t feel I can say no.
It takes a series of buses and then a cab to get to the hotel in Fresno, so it’s almost nine by the time I arrive.
The team is just getting back from dinner when I walk in, but I can tell something’s wrong.
Danny isn’t smiling as he crosses the lobby to me, and Luke simply turns on his heel and walks away, his fists clenched.
“Come on,” says Danny, grabbing my bag, morose for reasons I don’t understand.
He already checked me in, since I wasn’t old enough to get the room myself.
My stomach is in knots, wondering if Luke told him about coming into the diner all summer, or if he mentioned his last night on the beach, when I thought he might kiss me.
Nothing ever happened, but it sure doesn’t look great that we kept it all to ourselves.
Using the keycard, he enters the room and sinks on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. “I asked Scott, the offensive coordinator, to put me in because you were coming. He said no. They’re not renewing my scholarship.”
I take the seat beside him and squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry.” I silently thank God I didn’t leave for LA as planned. I guess that’s my silver lining: I didn’t get to go to LA, but I get to be here with him in his time of need—I get to repay a little of my debt.
“I don’t understand.” His voice cracks as he buries his head in his hands. “What did I do wrong? Why am I being punished?”
I think of the platitudes the pastor and Donna would offer now: God works in mysterious ways; When God closes a door, He opens a window .
I know how much I hate hearing them personally, how they feel less like an attempt to console and more like a warning that I’ve complained enough and it’s time to stop.
I could suggest he isn’ t being punished, that hard things happen in life, and his hard things aren’t even all that bad—Luke has suffered far more than Danny has—but it’s not the time for that either.
“I’m so sorry, Danny. I don’t even know what to say.” I lean my head on his shoulder.
“Sometimes it seems like you’re the only part of my life that’s gone right,” he says as he rises. He crosses to the mini-fridge and pulls out two tiny bottles of vodka, opening one and drinking it without a word, flinching at the burn.
And then he opens the other.
“What…are you doing?” I whisper. “You don’t drink.”
He slams the second one and reaches back into the fridge. “You want one? You were always wanting to drink with everyone. Here’s your chance.”
I frown at him as I kick off my shoes and fold my legs beneath me. “Maybe I wanted to have a beer at a party, Danny, but it’s supposed to be fun. Not angrily drinking straight vodka.”
“We’re out of vodka.” He fishes more bottles out. “Now I’m drinking straight gin.”
My stomach tightens. I’m happy to sit here with him, and I’m happy to try to cheer him up, but I don’t like where this is heading. “Please stop. This isn’t you.”
He sets the unopened gin on top of the counter. “I’m sick of always doing the right thing. It doesn’t pay off anyway.”
He slams the gin, then turns, crossing to where I sit and pulling me to my feet, kissing me so hard it hurts.
His mouth opens and his tongue seeks. It feels foreign and awkward and forced.
Something I don’t want and even something he doesn’t actually want.
His grip is too tight, his teeth clank against mine.
I push away from him. “Danny, that hurts.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, pulling me back to him.
He kisses me again, more softly this time. It’s still not what I want but I can’t exactly complain about it.
His hand reaches up to grasp one breast, then slides to the button of my jeans.
I grab his wrist. “What are you doing?”
“I want this,” he says as the button pops open. He pulls down the zipper. “I’m sick of always doing the right thing.”
“I—” I stumble over my words as panic wells inside me. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. You’re mad right now, but when you stop being mad you might wish you hadn’t done this.”
“It didn’t just occur to me.” He pushes my jeans down to mid-thigh. “I’ve been thinking about it for months. When my parents said they weren’t coming, I knew it was a sign.”
He seems to be choosing his signs rather conveniently.
His fingers move against the seam of my cotton panties. “I promise,” he says. “This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
I still think it is and I…don’t want to. With every bone in my body, I don’t want to, but what am I supposed to say? We’ve been together for three years. I’m the one who said I wanted this, and I’m not a virgin, so it’s not like there’s anything to safeguard.
So, when he pulls me to the bed, I go. When he takes his jeans off, after a moment of hesitation, I step out of mine.
I always imagined when I finally undressed in front of Danny, it would be sensual.
Seductive. That just watching it would make him unravel.
But this is awkward and methodical, as if we’re undressing for an examination.
My sweatshirt is still on when he climbs onto the bed wearing only his boxers.
“We don’t have anything,” I say, stalling and hoping for a last-minute reprieve.
He reaches for his jeans. “I got condoms from Luke.”
Which explains the look from Luke when I arrived. His anger. And fuck you, Luke, for having condoms in the first place. For judging me for something you’ve been doing for years, without fail.
He climbs over me, and I press clammy palms to the mattress, trying to ignore the way my chest is tightening, the way my stomach rolls.
Is it because of Justin? I guess I can’t know for sure, but I don’t think it is.
There have been times with Danny when I was more than ready—like at the sorority house last year—but this?
It just feels like something that shouldn’t be happening.
He pulls my panties down before he removes his boxers.
I think there will be more—I think he’ll reach between my legs or into my bra because even Justin did that much, but he just reaches for the condom and then, after a moment of uncertainty, hands it to me.
Like I’ll know what to do. Like I’ve ever been a willing participant.
I swallow down a flare of resentment and hand it back to him. He hesitates, then tears it open and inexpertly, uncertainly, puts it on.
I’m still dressed from the waist up, and every light in the room is on when his weight settles over mine. I’m too warm in this sweatshirt, with his weight above me, and I begin to sweat. My stomach is so locked up I can’t get a full breath.
After a moment of fumbling, he pushes inside me. I’m not ready, and it hurts, but what am I supposed to say? How could he ever not blame me for what happened if I told him what Justin used to do to make this better?
My mind goes somewhere else, pretending I’m not even here. I’ve got experience with this, with letting my mind wander until it’s over. He suddenly groans, then stops, less than a minute in.
I’m slow to understand that…that was it. I feel used and relieved at the same time. I exhale as the knot in my stomach finally starts to unwind.
He rolls off me, painfully quiet. Maybe he’s embarrassed? I want to reassure him that it’s okay that it went the way it did and that we can try again in a while if he wants, but I don’t. I can’t stand to suggest doing it again. Not yet.
He glances down. “I guess I’d better get this thing off.”
I nod, letting my eyes close as he walks into the bathroom. I once thought if he and I were sleeping together that it would bridge the impasse between us, but it’s even wider now than it ever was.
When he reenters the room, he turns off the lights and climbs in beside me, pulling the blankets over us.
“Did you…” he begins, before trailing off.
It takes me a second to even understand what he’s asking, because how could he possibly think I came from that?
“It’s…” I begin, and then stop. “I think maybe it takes longer for girls.”
His jaw clenches as he rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “Did you finish with him ?”
For a moment, I simply don’t understand the question. “What?”
“Did you finish with Justin?”
It lands like a slap in the face. “God, Danny. I can’t believe you’d bring that up now .” I don’t know if I’m more enraged that he would ask or embarrassed by the answer, but I have to lie because he will never, ever understand the truth—I’m not even sure I do. “Of course I didn’t.”
He slides an arm under my head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked.”
And then it’s silent. I don’t want him to try again—the mere idea makes my chest constrict—but maybe he should because something needs to be salvaged here, and I think it’s us.
I think we need to be salvaged because I’m not happy, and I haven’t been happy for a long time, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep pretending this is all okay.
I drift off after a while, still wondering how to fix things. When I wake in the middle of the night, he’s sitting up in the darkness with his face in his hands.
“Hey.” I sit up beside him. “What’s going on?”
His eyes squeeze shut. “I feel like I made a bad decision. We should have waited until we got married. My father’s sick. The least I could have done is honor his values.”
All the air seems to slip from my chest. I slept with him when I didn’t want to because I thought I could improve a bad situation. But it only made things worse.
“Okay.” I exhale silently, gathering my thoughts. How do I fix this now? How do I fix this moment? How do I fix the two of us?
He swallows. “It’s not your fault.”
I turn toward him, stunned. That he felt he needed to even say it aloud implies he thinks it could be my fault. After I fucking argued against this whole thing as much as I could. “Why would I think it was my fault?”
He hitches a shoulder. “You know, because you said you didn’t want to wait.”
“And how does me not wanting to wait make your choice my fault?” I snap.
“I just said it wasn’t!” he explodes, tugging at his hair. “But I was trying to make you happy.”
Thirty seconds of intercourse, no foreplay, and you’re trying to say you did it for me? Jesus Christ.
It’s my fault for not telling him, “No,” he thinks. It’s my fault for wanting it in the first place. He pulled me out of the gutter and brushed me off, but I wasn’t quite pure enough for him after all.
I climb from the bed, searching the floor for my clothes.
“Juliet, what are you doing?”
I step into my panties. He didn’t even take off my fucking sweatshirt last night but this was my fault? “You were trying to make me happy? What about that would have made me happy, Dan?”
“Hon, stop.” He throws off the covers. “It’s the middle of the night. Where do you think you’re going?”
I round on him. “I don’t know. Someplace where people aren’t blaming me for their fucked-up decisions.
You brought this up tonight, and I even told you it seemed like a bad idea, and you pushed ahead anyway.
And now you don’t like what you did and it’s too goddamn uncomfortable for you, so you’re looking for a way to blame me . ”
He winces. I’d like to believe it’s guilt but it’s probably just that he hates profanity.
“Babe, wait.” He jumps out of bed too fast and flinches in pain.
If his knee is reinjured, I guess that will be my fault too.
“Honey, I’m sorry, okay? You’re right. You’re absolutely right.
Please just come back to bed. It’s been a hard couple of months between my dad and my knee, and now the scholarship, and I’m just not thinking clearly. ”
“It’s been a hard couple of months for me too,” I reply.
“You aren’t the only one who’s unhappy.” My words are calmer than before, but I’ve still got one foot in my jeans, ready to finish dressing and leave.
I stare at him, willing him to hear the truth in my words.
To see that there are two of us here, two of us who matter.
His shoulders hunch, and he starts to cry. And for a moment, I’m frozen, torn between resentment and pity. He presses his face to his hands, trying to conceal it, but his body is shaking. He’s never cried in front of me, and already I can feel my anger dissipating.
His father has heart problems, he’s just lost his scholarship and his spot on the team, and now he’s given up something he’d valued deeply. It’s a lot.
I don’t have the heart to stay mad. With a sigh, I climb onto the bed and hug him because, when you’ve been with someone for a sixth of your life, that’s what you do.
But I just want out. And when I’ve been with him for a fifth of my life, for a quarter of my life…is that going to get any easier?