No Such Thing as Perfect (7 page)

Just leave him alone,
I tell myself.
What’s the point? Where is he going to fit into your life?
And although I know it’s true, and I know there isn’t a space carved out for someone like Jack – that I’ve never even known anyone like Jack, despite barely knowing him now, I can’t help but be irritated. Just because there isn’t a place doesn’t mean there can’t be. Isn’t everything supposed to be fluid? Shouldn’t life make room for something different?

They’re stupid thoughts and stupid questions, and despite their ache in my mind, I sit down and wait for Jon and Derek. The familiar is always right; the familiar makes sense; the familiar keeps you safe.

****

“I
see you found the cafeteria just fine.” My mom’s first words when I walk in the door, having not seen them in six weeks. “She’s putting on weight, isn’t she, Derek?”

He laughs and squeezes my arm. “You know what they say, Mrs. Drummond. Freshman 15 and all that.”

I haven’t gained fifteen pounds. I haven’t gained even five pounds, but they laugh as if it’s funny, as if making me a joke is how they prefer to spend their weekends. I feel Derek’s fingers on my flesh, but for the first time, I don’t want him touching me. I feel wrong when he does.

“What about you?” my mom asks him. “Anything new at school?”

“Just settling in. I’m playing rugby this year.”

“Oh, that’s great. Isn’t that great, Lily? You should try that. Joining a club would be good for you.”

“I’m in clubs,” I remind her. I’ve told her several times, but she only asks what my grades are and how Derek is when she calls. “And the paper.”

And like I didn’t speak, she turns back to Derek and asks about his classes. I want to scream. They treat me like I’m naïve, childish, stupid. A fool. I want to tell them they’re both wrong, but since I stand silently taking it like a fool, maybe they’re not the ones who are.

“Will you be staying for supper?” She’s on a roll tonight. Maybe my dad and I should go get hot dogs and let my mom and perfect Derek discuss his rugby stardom over dinner.

Why are you angry at him? It’s not his fault
, that little voice tells me, but I disagree. Jon and Derek can do no wrong, but no matter how hard I try, no matter what I give, it’s just never enough for her, and that does make me angry at him. Maybe it’s not his fault, but he’s never once defended me in the time I’ve known him and he’s seen it for years. I don’t know why this is all irritating me so much right now, but it is and it does and there’s not much else to be done, is there?

“I can’t,” he says. “I need to head home. I’m beat.”

“You just got here,” I reply.

“I know, but it’s late and I’m worn out. I’ll come by tomorrow and we can do something, okay?” He leans over and kisses the top of my head, something that has always been his sign of affection for me but it just makes me feel young again.

“Can you call me later?” I ask.

“Don’t beg,” he answers. “It looks pathetic. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

W
aking up the day after my birthday was weird. I wasn’t a virgin anymore and I’d had this night that I had thought about for years, but in the morning, something about it felt wrong. I told myself it was because Derek had gone back to Jon’s room immediately after, telling me he didn’t want anyone to find us together, but I wasn’t sure, as the sun came up, that there wasn’t more. I hadn’t said no. I hadn’t wanted to say no – not really. But it had been sudden and I hadn’t thought it would happen and then it did and I couldn’t take it back and there was no big ceremony to address the fact that a part of who I was no longer existed.

Abby had already had sex, but it had happened with Tony Ellroy, a guy she’d been seeing and they had planned it and spent the weekend at a hotel his cousin booked for them. She’d told me Tony had been shy and he’d brought flowers and grape juice because they weren’t old enough for wine, and that both before and after the actual deed, he had told her she was more beautiful than sunsets. It sounded cheesy at the time, but in my room, alone, feeling somehow less than I’d been the day before, I wanted to be more beautiful than anything. Aside from Derek calling me sexy and reminding me that I’d pined for him for years, he didn’t say much. And the little he’d said certainly wasn’t about sunsets.

I waited for a while, thinking maybe he would sneak back in, find a stolen moment in the chaos of morning, but no one came. I heard everyone moving and I could smell breakfast, but my door never opened. Eventually, I got up and put on jeans and a sweater, even though it wasn’t that cold despite being November, and I tried not to cry.

No one prepares a girl for the moment when she allows someone access to herself. When you're still a virgin, there's this aura around you. You're untouched and unsullied. It's almost like being superhuman because everyone else has quiet moments in dark places when they become base animals but not you. You are intact. As a girl you're told to treasure this part of yourself. It defines you. You are good while you're a virgin. Pure and perfect. But when it's gone, it's just gone like that. Maybe you got lucky - no pun intended - and it was something magical and fulfilling but most likely it wasn't. Most likely it was just like it was for me. Awkward and weird and painful and disappointing and, worst of all, intrusive. While he washes you off of himself, just a place he visited, he's been inside of you. He will forever have been there and there is no way to remove him. And the first time? Even if he physically didn't break through that barrier, so to speak, he will always own that part of you. That piece that was yours and was perfect and unbroken is now his. Forever. And you can't ever forget that or make it not true. While Derek was with me, I enjoyed it on a sensory level, but I felt like I’d been drained of the only thing that made me worthwhile.

“Lily, are you coming down for breakfast?” My dad was in my doorway and I wondered if he could tell. I wondered if he looked at me and saw the shame, if he sensed that I was missing a piece. I felt like I had let him down, that the night before, on my birthday, I had sat at dinner and I was his daughter and I was whole. Now I wasn’t. Whether Derek loved me or not was not even discussed. Someday, if I moved on or if he did, he would always be the person who owned something of mine.

I shook my head. “I am. Sorry. I was just thinking.”

“It’s your birthday. Don’t look so sad, honey.”

I wanted to run to him, but I dug my feet into the carpet. The polyester fibers scratched at my toes, and I pushed down on them until it hurt too badly to ask my dad to hug me.

“I’m okay, Dad. I’ll be down in a minute.”

After he left, I went into the hall and I looked towards Jon’s room. The door was open and the shades were up. I could hear Derek and Jon’s voices from the kitchen, chatting about school, and I stood in the upstairs hallway, crying, because it was my fault and I had wanted it and why couldn’t I be happy? Why couldn’t I be normal?

By the time I made it downstairs, the puffiness was gone around my eyes and I smiled when I saw him at the kitchen table. He got up and made a big gesture of pulling my chair out for me.

“Can I tell them?” he asked loudly as he pushed me into the table.

“Tell us what?” Jon asked.

“Last night, Lily and I talked and... well, Mrs. Drummond, you wouldn’t mind her having a college boyfriend, would you?”

My mom glowed at the idea.

I had pacified her. I had proven I could be good enough and Derek and I could succeed where Jon and Brianna had failed and she would have everything she wanted. It didn’t matter to her that Derek hadn’t asked me a thing, including whether I was ready. It didn’t matter to anyone that my body ached because I’d done things I suddenly wanted to wash off, that I hadn’t planned on doing yet. I told myself that what I had given up for that smile was worth the price. Anything was worth the cost to feel like maybe I hadn’t failed for once. I believed that, because I had to believe it.

T
here are only two reasons people in town come here, to the hill that looks over the river, and neither has to do with the way that the sun glares off the ruins of the factories that built, and eventually ruined, our town. One reason is to have sex, and Derek and I know the area well. We’ve spent many evenings, and some afternoons, up here, when my parents were at home or Jon was or he just wanted to do something different. It’s not romantic, but it’s secluded because it used to belong to the factories and now only the ghosts of those lives remain.

The other reason people come up here seems inexplicably linked to that history. It’s oddly both a place where couples go to be together – and also to grow apart. Throughout high school, almost everyone broke up with someone here, like there is pressure in the air that you need permanence to exist in such a place and, without it, you realize there is little worth clinging to in your relationship.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said,” Derek starts, “about transferring.”

I turn in the backseat of his car to face him. The weather is still insisting on summer regardless of the calendar and I’m sticky and warm. Derek turned the car off when we arrived and now, in a barely acceptable state of undress, I’m trying to find my underwear and he’s looking out the window at the river.

“Good, I wanted to talk about that,” I say. I find my panties somehow between two soda bottles and an old CD under the passenger seat. It was over before it even started, like requisite physical interaction without meaning. “I mean, I like Bristol. I guess I would love it eventually, but it’s hard to be in two places at once. I feel stuck between home and school.” He doesn’t say in anything in response, but as soon as I say the words, “I think I’d be better off somewhere familiar, with you and Jon,” he says the words I’ve dreaded since he acknowledged me for the first time.

“That’s why I think we should probably take a break,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just...” He pauses and cracks the window open more, but the suffocating air isn’t because of the heat. I
need
to fix this. I can’t screw this up. This is the only thing I’ve been able to keep intact, besides my schoolwork, and I can’t just take tests and write papers for the rest of my life. “Look, Lily, I really enjoy spending time with you, but I like my freedom, too. Some of the rugby guys have been talking about renting a house and I feel like I’m trapped in this relationship with you, like I have to pass everything by you first,” he says.

“I’ve never asked you for anything,” I argue.

“Not exactly, but you need me and it’s a little annoying.”

“Oh.”

I don’t know what to say, because I should have seen this coming, I suppose. Instead of saying anything, though, I stare out my own window. The closest factory’s windows have all been shattered and plants hopelessly try to grow through the damage. It’s more depressing than if there was nothing there but ruin. Watching the life try to continue after everyone else has moved on just makes me think it’s all futile. When we outlive our purpose, we should disappear. No one needs a reminder that they’ve failed.

“It’s not a break up. Not really. We can still see each other when you want and I’ll come up the weekend after your birthday so we can do something. I still care about you,” he says, but the words feel rehearsed.

“The weekend after my birthday?”

“I have a match the weekend of and we’re going to stay in a hotel for that weekend, so I’d rather spend the whole weekend with you the week after. Maybe we can go somewhere romantic,” he says and methodically rests a hand on my knee. It’s still uncovered, because I haven’t found my pants yet. Why does it always seem like the moments when you’re most vulnerable are the ones when you are missing something as obvious as pants?

“You just had sex with me,” I whisper, but even at this volume, the comment feels too loud.

“Oh, Jesus, Lily. Really? Don’t act like you’re somehow pure and innocent. So we had sex. It was good. But we were never getting married. You can have sex with someone and still need a break.”

“No, Derek, I can’t. I can’t do that, because I’ve never done that. I’ve never been with anyone else,” I remind him.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” he says, sighing. “Things are crazy right now. I haven’t seen you in a while and I have exams coming up and I can’t spend all my energy on whatever issues you’re making up in your head.” He stops speaking, and it’s painful. There’s something he isn’t saying, and I don’t know if I want to hear it.

“What happened?” I ask, preparing myself for the worst.

“Nothing happened. Why is it always about you? I just have papers and exams coming up and things have gotten away from me. I’m so worried I’m gonna fail all my classes. I’ve been screwing around so much with sports and-”

“You’re failing school?” It comes out judgmental, which I don’t mean to happen, but it kind of annoys me. Derek’s always been a mediocre student. He only passed his first year of college with my help, and now he’s letting school slip and he’s making that my problem. He’s leaving me with nothing because he can’t do it himself.

“I’m starting to wonder what I ever saw in you,” he snaps. “For someone who has no clue and who needs me to pick up all her pieces, you certainly act like a bitch.”

“Yeah, I wonder, too,” I say. We have nothing in common. What kind of person chooses rugby over school? It’s not even a real sport.

He reaches behind me and finds my pants tossed by the rear car window. I don’t say a word and finagle myself into them and then go sit in the passenger seat. I just want to go home.

When Derek gets into the driver side, he pauses and looks at me and I want to remember. I want to see the boy I thought I loved, but in his eyes, there’s nothing but this guy. I wonder if he was ever anything but this guy and I feel sick. He leans down to kiss me and I turn my head, trying not cry.

“Whatever, Lily. What the hell do you know, anyway?”

“Nothing. I think it’s really, really clear that I know absolutely nothing,” I say and we drive back to my house in silence. Everything that I left behind is floating off into the past like uncontrollable wisps of memory and I’m reaching out with nothing to hold onto. I guess this is the whole point of college and growing up and life in general, but I hate it. I hate that everyone always has the answers when you don’t need them, but once you reach a point where you’re surrounded by nothing but questions, you’re standing alone in the middle of people who don’t have a clue.