If I had liked it a lot, I wouldn’t have been able to admit it. But because I liked it only fine-definitely I didn’t like it better than having my hair stroked-I said quietly, “Yeah.”
He leaned down to reach for the hem of my nightgown-it was white and calf-length, those were the kinds of nightgowns girls wore at Ault-and as he started to push it up (was he planning to take it off me completely?) I stiffened.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I want to make you feel good.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated. “What kind of question is that?”
So I’d said the wrong thing; really, it had only been a matter of time. “Never mind,” I said.
I thought he’d press me, that he’d say, No, what?; I had so little idea of how it all worked. Instead, he ran his hand over my abdomen, my left hipbone, down to my thigh, then back to my abdomen. My nightgown was bunched around my waist, over my underwear, and I knew what would happen next-it was all a combination of suspense and not suspense.
He used two fingers, and I bucked against his hand, as if I were trying to help him find something inside me. Everything was damp and hot. Abruptly, I was at his mercy, I could sense how things had shifted and I wanted it more, but it felt so good that I almost didn’t care. I couldn’t tell how long it lasted, only that it made me feel wild with greed, ravenous and ecstatic. Then it ended and we were kissing again, and the kissing was easier this time, it was something we were coming back to. And then slowly we grew calmer, I understood that he wasn’t going to try to have sex with me (and how could this have disappointed me, when I had already decided I didn’t want it?), and he lay with his head on my chest, over my heart; his legs must have been dangling off the end of the bed. His body was heavy against mine, almost too heavy, but not. I could adjust to it. This was also something I didn’t know until later, how some guys will never rest their full weight against you, and how with Cross it made him seem sure-sure I was strong enough and sure that I would want it, which I did. I put my palms on his shoulders and my hands made a hushing noise as I rubbed his back.
After a long while, from outside, we heard a car drive past. The car might have been the night watchman, patrolling the campus-it was after four o’clock-or it might have been a teacher coming home very late or leaving very early. Whoever it was, it imposed reality; the moment broke. “I should go,” Cross said. Neither of us spoke, and he didn’t move right away. I looked down at his head. Slightly, very slightly, it rose and fell as I breathed.
When I woke the next morning, there were a few seconds before I opened my eyes when I remembered that something good had happened, but I could not remember what it was. Then I thought, Cross. I opened my eyes. The room was light-it was a little before nine, and Sunday chapel, which was mandatory, would be at eleven-and it all seemed so ordinary: the desks and posters, the futon and the trunk that served as a table, covered by magazines and pens and cassette tapes and an open bag of Chips Ahoy and a rotting orange. There was no evidence of Cross anywhere-I had thought that if he forgot his shirt or sweater, I wouldn’t say anything, but he’d remembered to take both-and I began sliding into that familiar state of distrust and disorientation. It was like when I was supposed to meet someone in the library, and I’d arrive and they wouldn’t be there, or I’d get to their door in the dorm and the moment before I knocked, I’d think, Did I imagine we had something scheduled? Sometimes I couldn’t even return phone calls, because I’d talk myself into believing I had made up the other person’s call in the first place.
But Cross had been there. I knew he had. I rolled over and my body was sore, and the soreness was proof. And it seemed I should feel glad about what had happened-I had finally kissed a boy, that boy had been Cross-but the more that sleep, and the night, slipped away from me, the stranger the incident seemed. Who had been the girl who let Cross stick his fingers inside her, then writhed and whimpered beneath him? Certainly it could not have been me. I wanted to talk to Martha, but she wouldn’t be back until the evening.
Most people skipped breakfast on Sunday mornings, but Martha and I always went. We went around nine and ate slowly and a lot and shared several newspapers with the handful of our classmates who’d also showed up. Among the regulars was Jonathan Trenga, who would lay claim to the serious sections of The New York Times–his parents both were lawyers in Washington, D.C., and no matter what was going on in the world, which unpronounceable countries were at war, what drug or energy or market crisis was unfolding, Jonathan was not only conversant in the subject but had a strong opinion about what needed to be done. Once I had asked, “But are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and Jonathan said, “I’m socially progressive but fiscally conservative,” and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, “Is that like being bisexual?” Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.
Then there was Jonathan’s roommate, Russell Woo, who also didn’t talk much but had a more benign presence than Doug. For reasons I couldn’t pinpoint-it wasn’t much more than glances-I had the idea Russell was in love with Martha, which I mentioned to her on a weekly basis, as we left the dining hall, and she always denied. I knew little about Russell except that he was from Clearwater, Florida, but sometimes I wished he were in love with me so that I could visit him there on spring break.
The other seniors who showed up regularly were Jamie Lorison, the boy who our freshman year, in Mrs. Van der Hoef’s class, had given his presentation on Roman Architecture just before I gave mine; Jenny Carter and her roommate, Sally Bishop; and, on the days she’d gotten up early to study, Dede. On these days, she wore her glasses and her navy blue sweatpants, which I found curious because she was so vain the rest of the time, and even though not many people saw you on Sunday morning, it wasn’t like no one did.
I never dressed nicely for breakfast, but I didn’t dress nicely the rest of the time, either. That morning, after I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth-on Sundays, I rarely showered-I pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and a fleece jacket. Then I stood in the room, fully dressed, feeling Martha’s absence. I’d have gone to breakfast alone without much thought if not for what had happened the night before. But was it appropriate now to go as if everything was ordinary? Was everything ordinary? Maybe it was, after all.
I walked outside, and the farther I got from the dorm, the more strongly I felt it: Everything wasn’t ordinary. My unease was rising around me like smoke. By the time I reached the dining hall, I was choking on it; I couldn’t go inside. What if, by coincidence, today was the one Sunday Cross went to breakfast? And what if he saw me like this, in the light, in the daytime (why had I left the dorm without showering, why was my natural impulse to be such a slob?) and what if he felt surprised to remember I wasn’t prettier, what if he decided he’d made a mistake? Or maybe what had happened was not, to him, even a big enough deal to count as a mistake. That was the thing I wanted to know the most, if it meant something or nothing. I turned around and began walking toward the dorm, walking more and more quickly, and as I hurried-it felt important, suddenly, not only that I not run into Cross but that I not run into anyone, not even a teacher-I actually missed my old self, the self I had been until the night before. I had gone to Sunday breakfast with Martha and talked or not talked to the other students, I had gotten seconds on pancakes, and it hadn’t mattered. For the first few weeks of this year, my senior year, I’d felt the calmest I ever had at Ault. There hadn’t been pressure, I hadn’t been answering to anyone, trying for anyone. Or I had-all along, of course, I’d been trying for Cross-but in the moments when I’d needed to think he couldn’t possibly notice, I’d been able to. It had all been acrobatics in my head. And now something mattered, there was something for me to ruin.