My Dark Vanessa(31)
“How would I even get there?” I ask. “What about curfew?”
“Slip out of the dorm afterward. I can wait for you in the parking lot out back and whisk you away. Then in the morning, I’d get you back early enough that no one would be the wiser.”
When I still hesitate, his body stiffens. His chair rolls backward, away from me, and cold air sweeps across my legs. “I’m not going to force you if you’re not ready,” he says.
“I’m ready.”
“It doesn’t seem like you are.”
“I am,” I insist. “I’ll come over.”
“But is that what you want?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it really?”
“Yes.”
He stares at me, the shine of his eyes moving back and forth. I gnaw harder on my cheek, thinking maybe he won’t be mad at me if I hurt myself enough to ignite a fresh round of tears.
“Listen,” he says, “I have no expectations. I’d be happy to sit on the couch with you and watch a movie. We don’t even have to hold hands if you don’t want to, ok? It’s important that you never feel coerced. That’s the only way I’ll be able to live with myself.”
“I don’t feel coerced.”
“You don’t? Truly?”
I shake my head.
“Good. That’s good.” He reaches for my hands. “You’re in charge here, Vanessa. You decide what we do.”
I wonder if he really believes that. He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me. Every first step was taken by him. I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there’s a whole list of things he has to believe.
*
For Christmas I get: a fifty-dollar bill; two sweaters, one lavender cable knit, the other white mohair; a new Fiona Apple CD to replace my scratched-up one; boots from the L.L.Bean outlet store, but you can only tell the stitching is messed up if you look closely; an electric kettle for my dorm room; a box of maple sugar candies; socks and underwear; a chocolate orange.
At home with my parents, I do my best to put Strane in a drawer and close it up tight. I resist the urge to stay in bed daydreaming and writing about him and instead do things that make me feel like the girl I used to be—reading by the woodstove; chopping figs and walnuts with Mom at the kitchen table; helping Dad haul home a tree, Babe the puppy bouncing alongside us like a furry yellow dolphin as we trudge through the snow. Most nights after Dad goes to bed and Babe follows him upstairs, Mom and I lie on the couch and watch TV. We like the same shows: period dramas, Ally McBeal, The Daily Show. We laugh along with Jon Stewart, cringe when George W. Bush comes on-screen. The recount is long over now, Bush declared the winner.
“I still can’t believe he stole the election,” I say.
“They all steal elections,” Mom says. “It’s just not so bad when a Democrat does it.”
While we watch TV and eat the expensive ginger lemon cookies Mom keeps hidden at the top of the pantry, she inches her feet toward me and tries to burrow them under my butt even though I hate it. When I grumble, she tells me to stop being prickly. “You used to be in my womb, you know.”
I tell her about the note Jenny gave me with the Secret Santa present, about her and me repairing our friendship, and Mom smirks, jabs her finger at me. “I told you she’d try to do that. I hope you don’t fall for it.”
She falls asleep, her dishwater blond hair tangled across her face as the TV switches to infomercials. This is when Strane comes roaring back, when the house is still and I’m the only one awake. I stare at the screen with glazed eyes and feel him there with me, holding me, slipping his hand under my pajama bottoms. On the other end of the couch, my mother snores, jolting me out of the daydream, and I flee upstairs. My bedroom is the only safe space to let him in, where I can shut the door, lie on my bed, and imagine what it will feel like to be in his house, what it will feel like to have sex. What he’ll look like when he takes off his clothes.
I dig through my old issues of Seventeen, searching for articles about having sex for the first time in case there’s something I should do to prepare myself, but they all say the same inane stuff like, “Having sex is a big deal, don’t feel pressured to do it, you have all the time in the world!” So I go online and find a message board thread titled “Advice on Losing Your V-Card,” and the only piece of advice for girls is “Don’t just lie there,” but what does that even mean? Get on top? I try to imagine myself doing that to Strane, but it’s too embarrassing; my whole body cringes at the thought. I close the browser, first checking the search history three times to make sure I deleted everything.
The night before we drive back to Browick, while my parents watch Tom Brokaw, I sneak into their room and open the top drawer of my mother’s dresser, root around the bras and underwear until I find a silky black nightie with a yellowed tag still attached. Back in my bedroom, I try it on without anything underneath. It’s a little long, reaching past my knees, but it’s tight, the outline of my body visible in a way that seems grown-up and sexy. Staring in the mirror, I pile my hair on top of my head and let it fall around my face. I bite my bottom lip until it turns swollen and red. One of the straps falls down my arm and I imagine Strane, with his tender-condescending smile, slipping it back up my shoulder. In the morning, I stuff the nightgown into the bottom of my bag and can’t stop smiling the whole drive back to Browick, pleased with how easy it is to get away with something, with anything.