Never Have I Ever(15)

I had nodded, stoned and owlish, but I hadn’t known. Two days later, in civics, it suddenly hit me that he didn’t mean he wrapped it up as in “closed down before sex.” He meant he used a condom. Tig Simms had for sure had sex. Tig Simms for sure knew how to do it.

After that the way I watched girls changed. I couldn’t stop imagining myself getting in them. If I could only body-swap, I’d change with Shelley, walk away covered in pretty. I’d go Downtown and show Tig Simms my brand-new teacup breasts, the curvy little belly she hated that I thought looked so taut and sexy. I’d lie beneath him, slim legs tangling in his. Shelley had sex all the time with Cliff Mayes, everybody said, so my new body would know how to do it, too.

“Well, I want to be drunk. So there,” I said. Defiant.

Tig looked at me with kind eyes. “Bad week?”

I nodded, and he leaned his shoulder against mine. I tried to be still and cool. I could feel my fat, and it was both me and a living wall around me. I sat inside my body, yearning. If he put his arm around me, he would feel the lumps and folds of my waist. Some nights I pretended my hands into his hands. I would grab squashy handfuls of my own ass, suck in my gut, and touch the ripe flap of it still hanging down in a dandle. My own hands were repulsed, so I knew I couldn’t let him touch me. Even so, I’d send one of my Tig-hands snaking between my legs, to touch the place where I was just like any other girl, to rock against the pretend of him.

I was not one of those loose-hipped, saucy girls from way down in his neighborhood, but when he leaned his shoulder against mine, my body didn’t seem that bad a place to be. We sat quietly together, and then I said a true thing.

“Mom’s sending me back to camp.”

“Ugh,” Tig said. “Camp Celery?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Camp Sweat.”

She’d announced it Monday night, watching me eat my allotted roll as if she begrudged me every dry, unbuttered bite.

I’d burst into tears. At fat camp mini Reesey cups were valid currency, same as Camel Lights in prison. Last summer I’d huffed and puffed through daily aerobics with floppy, uncommitted arm movements, half a beat behind. I’d doodled cats and ballerinas all through the nutrition classes, learning nothing except that I was an exceptional candy smuggler. I came home only six pounds lighter, and I’d quickly gained those back and then some.

“Please, no! It didn’t even work,” I’d begged my mother, crying.

“You didn’t mind it so much last year,” Mom said, but last year I hadn’t had a Tig to leave behind.

“Camp Fuck That Noise. You’ll be gone all summer?” he said, like he might miss me. Like I mattered.

I nodded, and then I said a thing that made me feel more naked than I had ever been with another person. The words came quiet and ashamed. “Camp Get Less Disgusting.”

“Hey. Don’t say that,” Tig said, turning his head. We looked at each other, faces close, still leaning on each other’s shoulder. “You don’t call you disgusting.”

“I know what I am,” I whispered. I could smell the wine sour on his breath. I liked it.

“You’re my best friend,” Tig said. “Don’t talk that way about my friend.”

I warmed. All of me warmed.

“I know what I am,” I told Tig again, and he shook his head, and then he kissed me. He slipped his shoulder sideways and ducked his face in. A real kiss. No sad cheek smacked with pity-lips, but the real thing, like I’d seen in movies. Like I’d seen pretty girls get kissed in the hallways, pressed up against their lockers by their boyfriends. My mouth opened under his, all of me alight and atremble.

He pulled back, and I pulled back. I was conscious of the night around us. The mattress behind us. The moon making him crazy.

He grinned. Ducked his head. Finally he spoke. “Shit, Smiffy, we are real bad drunk. We can’t ruin this. We can’t do this wrong.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. Ruin this thing that he started? Ruin our friendship by starting this thing? I just waited, panting, my mouth going dry again.

He leaned away to get the jug, and I hated the loss of that small pressure, his shoulder on mine. He poured the wax cup full, handed it over. I gulped at the wine, which felt so cool and good now on my sandpaper tongue. Tig relit the half joint, and we traded it and the cup back and forth, not talking. I wasn’t sure if we were comfortable or crazy. I wasn’t sure what time it was.

“I gotta eat somefin’,” I finally said.

The big green jug was close to empty, but I didn’t realize how bad it truly was until I stood up. The world lurched and tilted around me. I spread my arms out, braced my feet against the whole huge earth. I could feel it rotating under me.

“We’re so stoned,” Tig said, jerking his thumb to point behind us. “Let’s havver nap?”

When he said it, my chest filled up with a host of tiny, popping bubbles. He meant that mattress. He was asking me to lie down on it with him, and what would happen? He might fall asleep, snoring as I yearned—pathetic. He might roll to me and touch me. Kiss me. I thrilled to this, but what if he meant sex, all-the-way real sex? Would I be naked, my folds and creases open to him in the moonlight? I wanted. I wanted so much, and yet I shook my head, near panicking.

“I gotta eat,” I insisted, though I wasn’t actually thinking about food. I reached down and grabbed his hand, hauled him up. He let me tug him along the path, but it was my choice. My fear and my self-loathing.