Swell (5 page)

“You got lucky, Beck.” She skipped by my side as we walked past the old Spanish homes, the streets lined with palm trees that turned into black silhouettes with the sunset.

“Where are we gonna drink this?” I wondered if we could drink the whole thing ourselves.

“Take it to your house, put it outside your window and we’ll go in and pop the screen out.” Jenna was brilliant.

We did just that. I crept into the hedges, planting the beer behind them and below my window. Then we casually entered the house after making sure there was no parental sex going on. Sure enough, my parents were eating ice cream in front of the television.

“Hi honey. I thought you were going over to Jenna’s,” said mom, licking the spoon that my dad held. Jenna gave them a little wave.

“Her mom’s having a reading so we came back here.” Mrs. Beltran had a book club that met once a week, usually on Fridays and not Saturdays, but my parents didn’t know that.

“Ah, I see. Remember, 10 is the curfew.”

“I know,” I said, smiling and leading Jenna down the hall. My room, my haven for art projects and privacy. My parents left my room alone most of the time, only peeking in to make sure I had a pathway through the crap on the floor. An easel sat in the corner, my oil paints laid out on a piece of glass that was covered with plastic wrap. The other corner held my twin bed, covered with clean laundry.

After closing the door and putting on some music, I popped the screen out of my window and hung out to grab the beer. My hands couldn’t reach.

“Let me,” said Jenna, pushing me aside so she could lean her long frame out of the window. She reached the sack with ease and put it on my bed while I fiddled with the screen. By the time I’d gotten it back in, Jenna had two beers open and ready for us.

“Cheers, you pimp.” She clinked her can with mine. And then I started, the beer flowing down my throat with such ease. Without even waiting for the first one to take effect, I was already on my second. Halfway through that one, my body accepted the permission to relax under the alcohol’s effect. It was brilliant.

I had already finished my second while Jenna nursed her first. “You drink fast, Beck. Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Christian,” I burped. True, he had set the precedent for me with his own lightning quick way of making beer and wine disappear. Although he’d never pressured me to drink fast, I wanted to match his pace.

I recalled when Christian told me that pressure was the reason he drank, and thought it was odd that the pressure to drink was what I felt when I was around him. Whenever he’d be in one of his moods — dark, non-communicative, passive-aggressive — he’d hand me a cup of something to drink. It was like I’d gotten on his nerves and he needed me to mellow out so we could tolerate each other. Even after a mere five weeks of dating, we were already having weird moments.

I originally thought that Christian was pissed that I hadn’t slept with him. We’d spent hours talking about sex, who had done what with whom, and what it would be like to do it with each other. Then we would practice with our clothes on and our hands sometimes under them.

One night he was on top of me on his living room couch, cramming his tongue down my throat, rubbing his hands up and down my sides. I responded by grabbing his back and moving my hands near his butt, pulling his hips closer to mine. Really, it was just instinctive, but Christian took it as a sign that I was teasing him and leaped off, crossing the room to sit at his piano.

“What is it, Christian?” I asked, sitting up with a head rush. He had his head down against his chest, hands clasped and thumbs rubbing together. It took a million years for him to speak, and when he did it felt like we were finished before we’d even begun.

“I’m afraid of hurting you… if we do it. I don’t want to ruin what we have, but we’ve gotta do something sooner or later… or… I just can’t handle this.” It was string of words that contradicted one another, confusing the hell out of me and diminishing whatever horniness I had developed on the couch.

“You’re saying you
want
to have sex with me, but that you’re afraid if we do, we’ll break up? Or do you mean if we don’t have sex that the same thing will happen?” It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but Christian just shook his head.

“I need a drink.” He stood up, making a beeline for his parents’ liquor cabinet. Yes, they actually had one like you saw in the movies, with mirrored panels, a padded leather bar, a wine chiller and crystal goblets hanging upside down under a light.

Dr. Rusch must be a drinker, to have that much in his liquor cabinet. Or he kept it around for kicks and giggles, like when he entertained people at Christmas and New Year’s. Or, maybe it was his wife who was the drinker. Christian didn’t seem worried at all about pulling one of their bottles. But I did, my eyes following every step involved in producing a drink, literally “drinking it in” so that I would know what I was doing better the next time it happened.

Christian reached into the chiller and pulled out a white wine, opened it and poured us two big goblets.

We sat on the couch downing the wine, the silence between us like ice sheets on the side of a roof waiting to fall with a crash, the eerie quiet promising something risky. The warm, familiar buzz spread to my toes and I knew that soon we’d be talking again. I hoped for it.

“Isn’t that better?” he asked, putting his goblet down on the table without a coaster.

“Yes, much better. Thank you.” Then Christian was on top of me again, and we resumed making out like nothing had ever happened, except that wine played an integral role in our ability to connect.

Jenna was worried that I drank too much. I cited it as a teenage rite of passage. That everyone drank cause it was fun, and I had to find my limits in life. Limits like how much to drink. How far to go with Christian. Whether I would let Hillman make one more smart-ass remark before I hit him over the head with a stiletto.

Sitting in my room with Jenna, three beers down to her one, I felt a sort of triumph. I won the drinking contest, even though there was none. Proud that I needed more to get me loaded than she did, I opened a fourth can that, to my surprise, she grabbed from me in mid-swig, the goodness of barley and hops spilling out of my mouth.

“Hey!”

“Hey, slow down. You’re scaring me.”

“Better give me that back or you’ll know what scary really is,” I said, swiping for my beer. Jenna held it over her head. I would need a stepstool to get it.

“Look,” she said, keeping the beer high. “You need to calm down about this drinking. You’ve been going out with Christian for just a few weeks and you’re already a lush.”

I stopped reaching for the beer and crumpled back down on the floor, my mouth open. My breath came and went from my lips.

“I just really enjoy it, okay? Don’t make decisions for me, Jenna.”

“I’m worried about you, Beck, that’s all.” She lowered the can, which I grasped and brought to my mouth. Any more of a delay and my buzz would have gone away.

Later, after Jenna had gone home — after only another half beer — I sat on my bed thinking about what she’d said, and trying to figure out the real reason I liked to drink. First, it was fun, like when you’re a kid and you spin around in an office chair until you can’t stand up. It also drained tension from my body better than sleep or taking a walk. And it made me laugh more. Even though these reasons were good, they didn’t compare to the way drinking made me feel in love, like I was with Christian.

It brought us together as a couple, and made us equals with every open lid. There was a moment when I could pretend he was watching me drink, clapping at me as I downed this bottle or that one, stolen from my parents. Tonight I had taken it a step further by pimping the booze myself. Self-sufficient drinking. Christian would be proud.

Chapter 6

Alo
ne for the first time
that night, I tried to regain movement. I’d had a lot to drink before, but this was different, like someone had given me something. I could move my head around and slowly, gratefully, my hand came up to my face, slapping against it f
or a moment before flopping down on the velvet
couch. At least there was movement, but I needed more.

≈

The night we had sex, Christian had threatened to break up with me. We’d gone to the movies, had an argument about whether we were going to do it or not, and then came home to the empty Rusch house, where ticking clocks and windchimes talked to each othe
r in the dark. He’d grabbed a bottle of wine and some cups, and we went upstairs to his bedroom.

Christian’s room was like the broom closet of the house. Here, the grandest star of the Rusch family lived with barely enough room for a bed and a desk, and a tiny window that looked over the roof and the chimney. Sometimes we crawled out on the roof to drink and talk. But lately, our conversations had gone from his talking about my gorgeous hair and curves to bits and pieces about school, what colleges were courting him, and my jibber-jabber about art school and what I was working on, which was nothing.

My poor easel had barely been touched since I’d met Christian. During the school year, I was forced to perform the brush strokes and dabs that were building my future career and a solid reputation as an artist. During summer vacation, though, I cared much less, lounging around doing nothing while planning when I’d swipe my next drink. That was my art, the creativity of scheming to commit theft so as to cop a buzz.

I was sitting on Christian, his tiny twin bed groaning under our weight. He had just started feeling me up, placing his hands on my breasts and into my pants. I did the same, and it was like a science experiment, finally meeting and greeting the body parts I’d only seen in diagrams. Christian told me he’d had sex before, but it was hard to believe given that it had taken him so long to even go anywhere near my parts. When he finally did, his hands felt awkward and almost like my own, fumbling through unfamiliar movements. Experienced or not, we both liked what we were doing, and that’s how we ended up naked in the broom closet.

He was on top of me and tried to get inside. When it didn’t work he jumped off and sat on the floor, angry. I was ready to go, even though I wasn’t sure about what I was doing. I consoled Christian on the floor, taking him into my arms and telling him it would be fine.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I repeated before I told him I was horny and that we should try again, right there on the floor.

There’s something gritty and real about doing things on a rug. It promises to burn your knees and elbows if you rub against it too much, and it’s also great for getting your footing. So it was there, on that shaggy rug where Christian and I finally figured it out. I prayed for no rug burns on my butt. It hurt at first, like a stabbing pain that kept going, going, going. He remained above my body, not kissing me or doing anything else except moving back and forth. There was no ecstasy, no rippling heat through my groin or cries of delight like the movies. Nope. It was just irritation from inside-out, and when Christian finished he hopped back onto the bed and poured himself another drink. Even something as important and serious as sex was sandwiched between what really mattered to him.

We eventually dressed and drove to the top of the city — a hill so high that we could view the lights and ocean from Long Beach to San Diego. Christian had brought a quilt, wrapping it around both of us, hugging me from behind as we looked over the land.

“I love you so much,” he promised in my ear, rubbing his hands over my stomach and tucking them into my waistband. We made-out as the moon went from harvest phase to high and bright in the sky, an owl flying by to take notice of the fools below who had nothing in common except endless containers of glass and metal filled with diversion.

/////

As I moved closer to Christian’s inner circle, I learned how to behave and fit into the scheme of things. By partying, I was able to connect with Allison, Kayla and Audrey, three girls I suspected had been with Christian at one time or another. They latched onto me like leeches
, sucking information out
like who my parents were and what they did, where I lived, what I wanted to do after high school,
and
why I thought Christian was the one for me.

“You’re young. There’s plenty of time to get it right, Rebecca,” said Kayla, an extremely petite blond with pencil legs and no ass. When I first met her I thought she was a midget, but she was actually just above the height range for that.

“Has he told you he loves you?” asked Allison, also blonde but taller than Kayla, with a generous line of flesh between her pressed boobs, a gold
cross
necklace sinking deep into the abyss.

“Yes, he has. A couple of times.” Ever since we did it in his room, Christian couldn’t stop saying how much he loved me.

“That’s what he tells the girls after sex.” She pulled the necklace from her cleavage and rearranged it on her freckled chest. My face turned
hot and I imagined it looked purple
, even though
nobody could probably
see it because the sun had set on Christian’s pool deck. Allison’s tone was all-knowing, as if she personally knew Christian’s girlfriend routine, and felt pissy because of it.