Chapter Twenty-Five
If there was bigger middle finger to God than fucking the pastor’s son in a cornfield after youth group, I hadn’t found it yet. And I’d looked for one. Hard.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was mad at God for anymore.
Maybe for making me a woman in a world that seemed to be stacked against them.
This was always something that twisted through my thoughts when Andy was inside me.
Though lately, especially after watching August come the way he had on Friday, I was beginning to wonder if being a woman was perhaps the closest any person could feel to being a God.
Pastor Spires would often declare: God is good, to which the congregation would reply: All the time; and then we would switch and he would say: All the time, and we would have to respond: God is good.
He did this at the end of long rants about God’s wrath, or a disciple’s unjustified sins.
It always felt like a magic trick to me.
‘David, a war mongrel and adulterer, was God’s favorite’ had the same condescending tone as ‘Look at this card, so I can distract you while I pull this rabbit out of a hat’ to me.
You know it isn’t real, but you’re impressed anyway.
That’s what faking orgasms felt like to me.
That brief moment of showmanship to really keep the crowd believing in what you have to say.
The quilt Andy’s grandmother had made him from his pee-wee football shirts was the only cushion my poor knees ever got over the broken stalks of corn Andy had cleared months ago deep enough in the field that no one could see us from the church or the road.
We’d enter through the treeline at the back of the church’s property—walking directly through a corn field is a great way to end up with a thousand tiny cuts so we did our best to avoid it—and spread the blanket out over the soil.
Though it had rained a lot this week, causing the thing to slide back and forth through the mud as we moved, the smell of wet earth mixing with sweat and ripe corn.
I usually preferred to just blow him—it didn’t take as long, and was less of a clean up for me in the long run. But I hadn’t been able to get August’s words out of my head for the past few weeks: “You deserve to come”.
So, I straddled Andy, the chilly air nipping at my exposed thighs, and tried my best to come the way I had with August. Andy’s hands—big and callused from who knows what labor—dug into the bones jutting at my sides, pinning me harshly against him.
He rolled his hips forward, thrusting upward in rough, staccato jolts that rattled my spine.
Each motion produced a guttural grunt from him that echoed through the night air reaching out for that steeple that looked out in judgement over all of Woodland and the sinners that inhabited it.
“Slow down,” I whispered, pressing my palms flat against his chest to steady myself.
He eased back, just barely, rocking in shorter, faster pumps. “Feels too good,” he muttered, voice thick with need. “I’m so close.”
I laid my cheek against the back of his shoulder, inhaling the salt on his skin through his tshirt. “I’m not there yet,” I panted. My breath came in ragged bursts, my insides churning from the relentless motion—far from erotic, more like my organs were being stabbed at from the inside.
Andy’s thrusts stuttered, then accelerated again. “Come with me,” he murmured, voice rough.
“Andy, it’s too much,” I gasped as his hand dug harder into my hip. I felt the pressing line of bruises forming under his grip. His body stiffened for a fraction of a second, then shuddered beneath me in a long, heaving release.
I knew he’d come, and I didn’t bother to plaster a satisfied grin on my face as I finally looked up.
But instead of immediately finding Andy, my eyes landed on a dark silhouette amongst the tree line just a few feet away, its outline highlighted by silver moonlight.
A tall figure, leaning over, as if heaving, against a pine.
My heart skipped before picking up speed. My grip on Andy’s shoulders tightened, and I whispered his name, but he didn’t move—too lost in his own flood of dopamine to realize we were about to star in our own horror film.
As the figure moved, a lazy stumble forward, I lurched, nearly pushing Andy back, and grasped a large moss covered rock we moved to weigh down the blanket, and chucked it toward the figure as I shouted, “Fuck off, perv!”
Andy clung to me as he spun to see what I was yelling at. The figure let out a wounded sound, and then promptly ran further into the darkness of the trees.
“What the fuck are you yelling for?” Andy hissed at me.
My eyes met his, wide with anger. “There was somebody standing there! They were watching us!”
Andy huffed, “Well who could blame them?” He ran his hands further up my sides, but I pushed them down before he could reach my chest.
I smacked his shoulder. “Andy, I’m serious! I saw someone standing there.”
He nodded, his grin dropping as he looked over his shoulder again. “It was probably just a deer. You know they like to eat the corn. Besides, it’s gone now. You probably broke its leg with a pitch like that,” he said, his fingers coming up to squeeze my bicep.
I rolled my eyes, though I let out a sigh. It looked like a person leaning against the tree, but maybe it had just been a four legged creature. It hadn’t yelled, or cursed back, just let out a soft oof and fled.
When I rolled off Andy, his grin spread across his face again like dawn breaking over darkened hills. “Did you come?” he asked, eyes bright with triumph.
My voice cut through the thick air without any attempt to soften the edge. “No.”
“Are you about to start your period?” His tone was laced with so much genuine concern that for a moment I almost hated myself for not faking it.
“No, Andy.” I slid sideways, reaching into my bag for my pack of wet wipes. I tore one away and handed it to him, then used another on myself, the cool dampness a relief against my overheated skin.
He leaned forward, peeled off the condom, tied it in a tight knot, and with a flick, he sent it soaring into the shadowed treeline.
I frowned. He glanced at me, surprised. “I wish you wouldn’t litter.”
He laughed, a brilliant, playful sound. “You want me to leave it in the truck for my dad to find? Not sure which he’d do first—kill me, or call your dad so they could organize our murders together.”
I bent down, feeling the mud slicked blanket beneath me, and fished my underwear and pantyhose from the ground. As I tugged them back on, he nudged my arm with an easy grin. “Hey so what’s up with the misfit bringing you lunch?”
I met his teasing eyes with a glare. “Please stop calling him that.”
He shrugged, unrepentant. “I don’t know why you’re standing up for him. He’s pretty arrogant for someone who looks like he eats stale crackers for dinner. Did you see the look he gave me? He’s lucky he’s got all his teeth.”
I pinched his arm so hard he let out a pathetic yelp. “Not everyone has to bow down to you just because you came out of the womb built like a linebacker, Andy. When did you get so condescending?”
He stared at me, as if trying to map my anger and find the moment he went wrong. His confusion only fueled my frustration. I rose, my knees creaking from the strain of rocking back and forth for so long.
Andy stood too, and pulled the blanket up with him. We walked in silence back to his truck. I would’ve stomped several feet ahead of him any other night, but I was still on edge from the pervy deer that I now felt horrible for injuring, so I kept pace with him until we reached the parking lot.
He finally broke the silence as I was strapping myself in, his words barely audible over the waking engine of the vintage beast. “You didn’t answer my question Lola.
I know you didn’t leave that food in the lab, the box was steaming.
So tell me why one of the misfits skipped class to drive down to The Grill to buy you lunch? ”
I held my breath for a moment, before lulling my head against the head rest to look over at him.
Andy’s blue eyes sparkled in the moonlight.
He looked so much like the boy I’d met at vacation bible school that the guilt I’d been begging myself to feel since Saturday began to unwind in my stomach like a vine.
“He thinks I have an eating disorder.” I say softly, reaching across the bench to trace my fingers over his knuckles.
Andy’s brows pinch and he asked, a bit irritated, “Do you?”
I shake my head, “No.”
“Then why would he—” his eyes raked over me, and it’s like he was seeing me for the first time.
Seeing me how other people did, anyway. The prominent cheek bones, eyes too large for my face, collarbones that shouldn’t have been as visible as they were.
I realized then that Andy had never looked at me the way other people had—with a deep and obvious pity for how oblivious my parents were of my existence.
His mouth bent down at the corners. For a moment it felt like we were two mirrors of our self-involved parents reflecting back at ourselves and the rest of our lives all at once.
I could tell he felt it too, because Andy didn’t crack a lewd joke, or gloss over it the way he usually did when things got too serious.
Instead, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine and whispered, “I should’ve noticed. ”
The vine of guilt in my stomach grew thorns and used them to climb its way up my esophagus, a thousand buds whispering liar into my lungs and throat before finally reaching my mouth, forcing words to bloom on my tongue.
“I love you.” I whispered into the dark cabin. He didn’t say it back. I think he knew I didn’t mean it.
I pulled my muddy stockings off and turned the shower dial all the way up.
Steam curled around me as scalding water pounded my shoulders, hissing against the yellowing tub.
I breathed in the faint sweetness of strawberry scented soap, then slid my fingers between my legs, searching for that tender spot.
Everything still felt dull and overused after Andy’s rutting.
I closed my eyes and pressed my head against the vinyl wall, trying to will my body over the edge. But instead of Andy’s face, it was August’s voice that echoed in the back of my skull, low and urgent.
“I build temples to you in my mind all the time”
Need coiled tightly, deep within me.
An urgent knock rattled the thin doorframe. I sighed and let my arm drop, giving up. “Yes?” I called into the spray, my voice muffled by the roar of water. I held my breath, praying it wasn’t my father.
“Sweetheart,” my stepmother’s singing voice drifted under the door. “Your father asked me to remind you that anything important should be cleaned in less than ten minutes.”
I wanted to shout, “Is period blood important?” but instead I swallowed and said, “Yes, sir.”
The water cut off as I twisted the knob, steam billowing into the chilly air. I climbed out, letting the water run off me and soak the matted bath mat below my feet. Every drop of heat in my body disappeared against the sudden cold.
I heard their low voices through the wood—a soft tsk from her, a grumble from him—while I toweled off my hair and wrestled into my pajamas, the cotton tangling against still-wet skin.
Her lilting question came next: “Did you have a nice time at church?”
I shivered as I tugged the soft pajama pants up over my calves. “Yes, ma’am.”
More quiet murmurs, then my father’s gravelly voice: “What verses did you go over?”
I cracked the door and a wave of mist washed out.
He stood there, his shoulders slumped, breath smelling faintly of the diet soda he drank more often than water.
“Not any specific chapter,” I said, stepping onto the creaking hallway floor.
“ Pastor Sam gave an example of why evolution is impossible and reminded us we can excuse ourselves from class when teachers lie.”
My father nodded slowly. “He’s a smart man.”
I lifted my chin in agreement as he shuffled off toward the kitchen, the floor joist sighing under each footstep. Denise offered me a polite smile and a soft, “Good night,” then followed behind her husband.
“Good night,” I murmured back, my voice disappearing into the quiet house.
Later, curled beneath my covers, I wondered what it would feel like to hear my parents tell me they loved me before I fell asleep. I wondered where my real mother was, whether she’d be proud of me. Then a thought shaped itself in the darkness, too vivid to push away: Would she like August?
I pulled out my phone and tapped open our thread before I could overthink it. My thumbs moved on their own: Good night, August.
His reply came almost immediately: Good night, Sin.
I folded the screen into my chest, cradling it as if I could imprint those words on my heart. And in the silence, where no one but me could hear, I whispered into the dark, “I love you, Lola. Good night.”