All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(64)
The barber would have come to me, if the invitation had been for him, but Kellen blushed and looked away. I didn’t know what to do, because the things Mama and Sandy did when Liam was upset, I wasn’t allowed to do those things to Kellen.
Night after night, he sat next to me on the sofa, watching TV. Never on my bed or the recliner. He held my hand, but he didn’t put his arm around me or touch my hair or kiss me.
If he didn’t want to touch me, I could accept that, but I wanted to touch him. That was never against the rules before, but it was now. All of December he didn’t let me touch him, and then I spent winter break at Aunt Brenda’s without him. Now January and February were gone, and I still wasn’t allowed to touch him.
Even though he wouldn’t say it, I knew what he felt. I’d felt it enough to know. Dirty. Too dirty to touch. Too dirty to be touched.
If he wouldn’t touch me, that was bearable, but to have him look away from me wasn’t. I needed him to see me.
On the sofa that night, after the haircut, he reached for my hand. I looked down at his jeans, the ones he wore for his birthday that got ruined by bleach. Bright white spots already going threadbare. Because of me. I pulled my hand away and said, “I’m too dirty to touch.”
He jumped like a bee had stung him and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees.
“No, sweetheart. I told you. You’re not. You’re beautiful. I love you, but you’re only thirteen. So we can’t be fooling around.”
He didn’t look at me when he said, “You’re beautiful,” so he might as well have said, “You’re invisible.”
“I’m sorry I made you dirty.” Saying the words felt like swallowing burning cigarettes, but I had to say them.
“You didn’t make me dirty. You couldn’t, because you’re not dirty, okay?”
“Then you’re not dirty.”
“Okay, I’m not,” he said.
I slid my hand along his belly toward his buckle, but he shoved my hand onto my leg and pressed on it to make it stay. “Don’t, Wavy.”
After that my words were hot enough to burn my tongue, but I couldn’t swallow them, either. They stayed in my throat, so that I almost couldn’t breathe. I stood up and went into the kitchen, because I wasn’t going to cry in front of him again. As quietly as I could, I pulled on my coat and slipped out the back door.
Orion was in the sky, but the clouds hid him, so there was no sense cutting through the woods, where it would be dark. I followed the safety rule—walk facing traffic—and made it as far as the second stoplight before the Panhead rumbled up behind me. Kellen rode ahead and turned around to pull up facing me.
“Get on. I’ll take you home if that’s where you want to go,” he said.
I ducked my head and kept walking. After I passed him, he turned the bike around and pulled up beside me, going the wrong way down the highway, his boots dragging in the dirt of the shoulder. His arms were bare, muscles tense as he braked and clutched. He came out in his T-shirt after me, so I was guilty twice. I made him unhappy and he was cold, but walking was the only thing that kept me from crying.
“Please, Wavy. You’re breaking my heart and I don’t know what to do.”
He was unhappy when I was there, he was unhappy if I went away, and I was miserable. Now I understood what Mama’s hot, scary eyes meant when she danced with Uncle Sean. They meant everything was broken.
“I broke everything that made me happy,” I tried to say, but I had to press my hands against my eyes to stop the flood.
Kellen grabbed my wrist and put my cold fingers to his warm mouth. After he kissed the ring, the worst of the words slid down my throat. He lifted me up to the gas tank in front of him and when I kissed his neck, he didn’t stop me. After I kissed his neck, I kissed his cheek. After his cheek, his lips, and then he kissed me back. He loved me. If the mouth was a dirty place and he wasn’t afraid to kiss mine, I wasn’t too dirty.
A car honked, and Kellen said, “Get on the bike, sweetheart. It’s cold out here and we’re giving everybody a show.”
After that we only pretended to watch TV. Slow was a game. While Kellen ate the dinners I cooked for him, I ran my hands along his shoulders until he took off his shirt to have his back rubbed. Once I rubbed his back, I could touch his bare chest and his belly. Almost to his belt buckle.
Even more than I wanted food, I wanted his flesh. I wanted to touch the places where he was hard, and the places where he was soft. He didn’t like his soft places, but I wanted them the way I wanted mashed potatoes made with real butter. I had nothing on my body like the warm damp crease between his tits and belly. Nothing like the muscles that bulged in his arms when he used the pulley in the shop ceiling to hoist engines out of cars.
Kellen’s slow game was different, like getting a wild rabbit to take a piece of carrot from my hand. If I tilted my head a certain way when he kissed my mouth, he might kiss my throat, too. If I reached my arms up around his neck, his hands would slide down to my waist, searching for skin to touch in the gap between my T-shirt and skirt. I had to invite him, like the stories where you have to invite the vampire in.
Sandy said, “The right outfit will make or break a date.” Kellen would never take off my dress, but he would help my T-shirt creep up and up. Sandy was right about that, too. The tight shirts made me look older. They made Kellen want to touch more than my hair, and he didn’t mind how small my tits were.