He sighed, exhaling beery breath. (I liked his beery breath-I like it still, on grown men, because of Cross.) “So Martha is at Dartmouth, huh?”
“How do you know that?”
“Let’s see. Maybe because I talk to her about ten thousand times a day.”
This was true, because of their being prefects. Over the summer, I had wondered whether, when we all returned to school, their new connection would affect my own contact with Cross, but it hadn’t seemed to. They ran roll call together, of course, and a lot of times when I was with Martha, sitting at a table in the dining hall or walking out of chapel, Cross would approach, but their exchanges were usually quick or else so long that they went off somewhere together. In these moments, I felt a vast and sickening jealousy, and then a loathing for myself for being jealous of my closest friend, who was herself completely unjealous.
And yet in bed with Cross, it was hard not to think that maybe his link to Martha had affected his contact with me-maybe he’d been reminded of me, all those times when he’d spoken to her and not even glanced my way.
“You know what I think?” Cross said. “I think Martha tells you all the secret prefect business. I bet you know everything that goes on at the disciplinary meetings.”
“Of course I don’t,” I said. “That would be a violation of the rules.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Do you tell Devin everything?”
“Devin doesn’t care. But you’re probably interested in that stuff.”
“Why would I be interested if Devin isn’t?”
“You just are,” Cross said. “I can tell. You think I don’t know you?”
“I don’t see how you could since you haven’t talked to me in, like, four years.”
“Try three. In fact, less than three years because that surprise holiday was in the spring.”
I think maybe my heart stopped, just for a few seconds. He remembered-he didn’t even try to conceal that he remembered-and he knew that I remembered, too.
I might have tried to prolong, or to amplify, the admission, but he said, “For instance, I’m sure Martha told you all the details on Zane.”
Arthur Zane, a junior, had been busted a few weeks before, in the first month of school, not for drinking or drugs but for breaking into the headmaster’s house late one afternoon while everyone else was at practice and trying on Mrs. Byden’s clothes. The break-in part of the story was what got announced at roll call; the clothing part they had tried to keep quiet.
“I doubt I know any more about Arthur than anyone else,” I said. (He had even put on Mrs. Byden’s panty hose and lipstick. And though he’d left the school, he hadn’t technically gotten kicked out-it was his first disciplinary offense, and besides, Arthur was third-generation Ault-as much as encouraged to find a place where he’d feel more comfortable. “What does that mean?” I’d asked, and Martha had said, “It means Mr. Byden was terrified Arthur would be the first student in the history of Ault to come out of the closet.” Both Martha and I assumed then that cross-dressing was the same as gayness, and also that Arthur was the only gay person we knew-at that point I still didn’t recognize Sin-Jun as actually gay.)
“You’re not a very good liar,” Cross said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
I felt the corners of my lips turn up.
“But here’s the real question,” he continued. “Was he caught in a black strapless dress or a red sequined one?”
“Mrs. Byden would never wear a red sequined dress,” I said. It was true-she mostly stuck to long pleated skirts and cropped wool jackets.
“So you’re going with the black strapless? You’re positive you don’t want to change your answer?”
“Wasn’t he just wearing a brown corduroy skirt and a blouse?”
“You’re so busted,” Cross said. “Martha totally tells you everything. I knew it.”
“She tells me nothing.”
“She tells you everything.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “But if Mrs. Byden did have a red sequined dress and a black strapless dress, any self-respecting transvestite would have picked the sequins.” Saying this, I felt a twinge of guilt-calling Arthur a transvestite wasn’t the cruelest remark I could make about him, but it wasn’t particularly nice, either. But what strikes me now is that I had no idea how much I’d give away in the service of flirting. This was just the beginning! For years and years, there would be so many things I’d do for a guy that I wouldn’t do in my usual life-jokes I wouldn’t normally tell, places I wouldn’t normally go, clothes I wouldn’t normally wear, drinks I wouldn’t normally drink, food I wouldn’t normally eat or food I would normally eat but wouldn’t eat in front of him. I am twenty-four, and I and the guy I like are with a group of people and the person driving is drunk and the seat belts are buried in the seat and I ride along anyway because, apparently, what I want from the guy is worth more than everything else I want or believe. It must be, right?
Cross was silent. I wondered if, after all that, he hadn’t even found my transvestite joke funny. Then I wondered if he had fallen asleep.
That was when, not unlike the way he had that rainy evening in the taxi three years before, he began to stroke my hair. He set his fingers against the top of my forehead and ran them back, smoothing out my hair against the pillow, then set his fingers against my forehead again. Over and over, back through my hair, the glide of his fingertips-I think that maybe nothing else in my life ever felt that purely, uncomplicatedly good. I couldn’t speak because I was afraid if I did, I might start crying, or he might stop doing it. I shut my eyes.
After a long time, he said, “You have nice hair. It’s really soft.” He ran his knuckles along the line of my jaw, over my lips. “Are you awake?”
“Sort of,” I murmured. It was an effort to speak.
“Can I kiss you?”
My eyes flapped open.
I was, of course, obsessed with kissing; I thought of kissing instead of thinking of Spanish verbs, instead of reading the newspaper or writing letters to my parents or paying attention during Indian sprints at soccer practice. But to imagine it and to have Cross next to me wanting to kiss were different. I didn’t know how to kiss. Kissing terrified me, as an actual thing you did with another person, and there was no one it would be more humiliating to kiss badly than Cross.
He had propped himself up on one elbow. “Don’t be nervous.” He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “See?”
His lips when they finally touched mine reminded me of the skin of a plum.
“You can kiss me back,” he said.
I pursed my lips toward him; we were kissing. It was harder work than I had imagined, and less immediately pleasing. In fact, it felt intriguing more than enjoyable-the shifting, overlapping wet and dry parts of our mouths and faces, the mild sourness of his mouth (it seemed so personal to be tasting Cross’s mouth), and also the way it was hard not to be conscious of the moment as it happened, not to want to pause and acknowledge it, even if only by laughing. I didn’t find kissing funny, but it didn’t seem that serious, either, not as serious as we were acting like it was.
He rose and twisted over me so that his legs were on either side of my hips and he was balanced on his knees and the palms of his hands. He had an erection, I realized, and I was slightly shocked. I’d heard, of course, that all boys wanted was sex, that they masturbated endlessly, and that any of them would do it with any girl, even if she was ugly. But I existed outside this world; no one ever tried to do anything with me.
Except that now, Cross was trying. And was his erection because of me or was it just the situation? And if it was me-was I supposed to have sex with him? It didn’t seem like that would be a very good idea.
Over my nightgown, he gripped my breasts, squeezing one, then pressing his face to it, sucking the nipple through the cotton. I did actually laugh then-it felt ridiculous, like I was nursing him-but Cross didn’t seem to recognize the noise as laughter, which was probably for the best. “Do you like this?” he asked.