What I Did This Summer by Davey Fitz Read online

waist and returned the gesture. And as I felt myself drowning in a million past summers—a million opportunities to get to know her before she gave herself over to someone else—I felt the top of her hosiery and the indentation of her spine in her back. And when I drew my hands up to her shoulders she bit her lower lip and made a weak noise that sounded like pain. Through the sheer fabric of her dress I saw she had what looked like deep bruises running up the insides of both of her shoulder blades. And I wondered how I hadn’t noticed them earlier, in the light of day. I wondered if I’d been lost in her eyes or ogling her body for the entirety of our initial connexion. Hoping it was the former and she wasn’t beginning to peel away from me out of unease.

  She relaxed her hold and put her face in front of mine. So close I could taste her heavy, delicious breath. My hand brushed her left cheek and, instead of pulling away like I feared she would, she rested her head on it, closing her eyes and experiencing its warmth. Then she took my hand, kissed the inside of the palm and placed it back against her cheek. And, as she closed her eyes again and rested her head on my hand, I could do nothing but watch her eyes roll under their lids and listen to the sound of her breathing and her comfort.

  Then she told me she felt sorry for me, as she kept her eyes closed and kissed lightly at my fingers and thumb. She told me she didn’t think it was fair I should have to squat in another abandoned house while my friends lived in regular homes. And she told me she believed me when I said I lived with my uncle, even though she’d never seen him, and she thought that was doubly sad. The both of us having to live with nothing.

  I smiled at her with muted sorrow while she talked and, when she opened her eyes slightly to look at me, her face returned that affection. And she told me, as she let her eyes open fully and moved my hand to the back of her neck, that, if it made any difference, I hadn’t ever really been living with nothing. Not alone. Not like I thought. Not in a world where I wasn’t loved and cared for. Not since we were younger. Not since she first saw me. She told me that, yes, she’d noticed how I watched her, and the way I looked at her, ever since I’d started coming around town to visit my uncle. She told me she’d always hoped the world would make up some excuse to push us together. She told me that, when it finally had, she loved the way I talked to her and not down to her.

  I opened my mouth to tell her I’d felt exactly the same way about her. For all of our days together. That I’d known I’d loved her since the first time I saw her and how beautiful she was to me, but she placed her other hand over my lips before I could speak, nodded, and told me she knew. And that knowing was enough for now. And, if what we believed about each other was true, the world would keep bringing us together until it was our time. As she spoke those last words, she began to cry. She didn’t sob and moan like the distraught women did on the television news, but the tears that flowed down her cheeks were warm—not fake—and she had nothing to gain from me by shedding them.

  And as much as I wanted to take her right then and there. As much as I wanted to pretend she wasn’t temporarily promised to some other man who treated her like filth. As much as I wanted to do that, I couldn’t find it within myself to compromise her expressed desire for me in order to satisfy my physical longing for her. Not when she was in a relationship with someone else. Not when she’d made herself truly vulnerable and given me the opportunity to be the sexually depraved bastard every adolescent boy hides away deep inside.

  And not when I felt that my uncle was watching.

  I kissed the hand she held over my mouth and she shivered as the room lit up slightly and the normally pungent smell of her skin began to reek even more heavily, mixing with a salty sweat. Then she removed her hand and she kissed me. Looking into my eyes. Making love to my mouth with her own. She kept her eyes open the entire time, watching me with wonderment as she bit around my lips, her breath so heady and warm I felt intoxicated, and she kissed my chin and then the tip of my nose. Seeing the awe she felt echoed in my gaze as she continued to taste me. And, in those odd moments when I could focus my vision, I could see she was lost. In the mirror I could see the bruises on her back that looked more like burns against the pale white of her flesh as she pushed my left hand farther down and encouraged me to explore the soft fat of her hips and thighs while she placed my right hand across her breasts and allowed herself to experience how much I truly loved the natural size and shape of every inch of her body.

  And, as immediately as she had begun kissing me, she stopped. Looking around the room. Noticing, as I did, the darkness of the night and the glow of the moonlight that pierced through my bedroom window.

  She stood up slowly and held out her hand. I took it and we walked back downstairs, to the front door and outside my uncle’s house. I offered to walk her home to make sure she got back safely and she told me that, even though she didn’t think it was a good idea, she would love me to do that for her. She looked up into my eyes once more and framed my face with her hands, adoring me as much as I’d been adoring her for all of our years together. As much as she claimed to have been adoring me all that time, as well. She took my hand in hers and we walked.

  As we got closer to her boyfriend’s home, I could feel her beginning to shake and she pulled a baggie out from the waist sash of her dress. It was filled with a brown powder and she took out a pinch and offered me a taste. And I took it, even though I’d never ever used the drugs my friends and I moved before. As soon as I snorted the junk, she tossed the baggie away, even though it was still full. She said she was sorry she’d pressured me into using, she didn’t do drugs ever, she hated them and what she’d done wasn’t right. But I didn’t really think much of it and, even though she already knew from watching my body’s reaction to the brown poison, I assured her it was my first, and hopefully last, time and it didn’t change anything about how I saw her. That made her smile and she gave me one last soft, slow, painfully lingering kiss on the lips as she let go of my hand and we walked the half a block to her boyfriend Dan’s house.

  When we reached his doorstep, as she was thanking me for walking her home and, I hoped, contemplating whether she could kiss me one more time, her boyfriend’s front door opened wide and her body went stiff.

  She apologised to him, like a reflex, which made me feel cold and abandoned, as she rubbed at her nose, visibly shaking with terror. Explaining perhaps a little too eagerly about how she’d been out a bit too late and I’d been kind enough to make sure she arrived home safely.

  He questioned her about who else she’d been with and how she’d managed to lose track of time, as he motioned to us both and she passed me on the left. Her hands directed me to follow. Dan closed the door behind us and soon we were standing in his living room. As brightly lit inside his house as it was pitch dark outdoors.

  Melody watched anxiously as her boyfriend stared into my eyes and grilled me. Asking me why I was such a nice guy all of a sudden. In my peripheral vision, I could see her eyes and face begging me to keep cool as she mouthed another apology. And I knew for sure everything she’d said to me on the dirty mattress in my room had been the truth. And, in the weight of her gaze, I could feel the shame she endured under the thumb of her boyfriend. The humiliation of being used as an incentive. And, though she tried to momentarily pretend it away for my sake, I could see she really had felt the same for me as I’d felt for her. For all of those years. That she still did.

  And it wasn’t plainly obvious to just me. It hadn’t been for a good long while. Melody had been right. As magical as it felt, walking her home and spending a few more moments with her hadn’t been a good idea.

  Dan smiled pityingly, looking at Melody and back at me. He gave her ass a loud smack, making sure I saw he was getting a good handful, as he told me how, ever since he’d known her, she’d been asking about me. Well before he decided her body felt way too good to let her looks ruin all the fun he could have with it if he turned out the lights and kept her drainage ditch of a mouth covered with pillows or b
uried in his lap. And he laughed as he wondered aloud why she’d really thought all of her asking, and incessant pondering, about how I was over all those years could possibly seem innocent to anyone. Then he made sure to let me know that, even though her infatuation with me was beyond annoying, he didn’t let any of that get in the way of him catching more than he could ever ask for in a girlfriend: Dumb as a post. Afraid of her own shadow. See-through as Saran Wrap. Well aware of her place.

  I stood there and listened to him as she begged me with her hands to let it go.

  Then he began to really humiliate her, and I wished I hadn’t been such a chicken around her when we were younger. That I’d never let her feel lonely enough to date someone like him. She didn’t use. And she was a brilliant and beautiful girl, though the world she lived in had constantly insisted the opposite, probably for most of her life.

  And my friends’ voices were in my head, drowning out my uncle’s. Asking me if I was surrounded by things I loathed. Asking me why.

  Dan continued groping her harshly as he goaded me. Illustrating, with his hands, every vicious and needlessly cruel