24-Joe

The twilight faded fast as the last remains of the day fell into shadow. Joe drove toward Katherine’s house with his windows rolled down, the cool air rushing in, and the music blasting.

He parked his car on the street in front of her house right near where he had said goodbye to her last night. He stepped out, shut the door, and walked up her driveway. As he rang the doorbell, he shot a glance at his reflection in the glass window that bordered the front door. He had on a random T-shirt and shorts, and his face was tan with plenty of stubble as he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He thought briefly then of just how much he loved summertime.

She answered with a hello and a smile. She looked great, with her straight dark hair pulled back and some stray locks drifting about naturally. She wore jeans and a chick-shirt—Joe thought it may have been called a blouse or something like that, but he wasn’t sure. They hugged, and while in so close he became incredibly aware of her scent, which he immensely enjoyed—whether it was perfume, or just her, or both—whatever it was, it was so perfectly chick-ish, and so wonderfully opposite of a smell that he or another guy might produce.

He stepped inside with her, and the first thing he noticed was the framed picture of her hanging in the foyer. It must have been from last year, her freshmen year, and it made clear the metamorphosis she had undertaken since then. In the picture she looked gawky and childish, not at all the woman she was now.

“Don’t look!” she said. “I hate that picture!”

Joe laughed. “You look fine! Don’t even worry about it. You should see my picture from freshman year. It looks like I have a mullet. It’s terrible.”

She smiled as Joe followed her further inside. They passed a family room, where her little brother was parked in front of the TV, playing a Sega Genesis.

“Anthony. This is Joe.”

“Hi.”

He didn’t even look up. Joe respected that.

“How you doing, bud?”

“Fine,” he said, while rapidly pushing buttons.

“Well, that’s Anthony. Joe, c’mon.” She took his hand and led him further along into the kitchen. He loved how she did that.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Coke? Water? Or…” She opened the fridge.

“A Coke would be great.”

She got a tall glass with ice and poured it. Joe could hear it fizz.

“So, are you excited for summer?” Joe asked.

“Yes! I can’t wait.”

“Got any big plans?”

“Not really. I’m trying to get a job. I’ve been looking down at the mall…and at some places in Old Town.”

“Nice. I always thought it would be really cool to work there.”

“Me too. I like it up there. What about you? What are you doing this summer?”

“Just workin’ at the golf course. I’d like to try and get down to the beach some, also.”

“Ah, yeah, that would be so nice! What beach?”

“Ocean City. Or, Virginia Beach, I don’t know. Hey why don’t you show me around the rest of your house?”

They walked near the family room again, and Joe happened to notice the video game Anthony played was Road Rash II, a motorcycle racing game that he knew well.

“Good game,” he remarked.

“Yeah,” Anthony said robotically. They watched him for a few moments. Joe saw his bike get bumped by another, pushing him off the road where he plowed into a cactus, sending his rider skidding across the ground in a wicked crash. Anthony moaned dramatically.

“Anthony, calm down,” Katherine said, laughing.

“I hate it when that happens!”

“You got to get a chain, man. Or at least a club. Smack those other riders off their bikes before they can bump you,” Joe suggested.

“Every time I get one, I lose it.”

“What bike do you have now?”

“Shuriken,” Anthony answered.

“That’s not bad. You got to step it up to nitro class, though. Those are the way to go.”

“I can’t get enough money. The cops keep busting me!” Anthony actually paused the game and looked back at Joe, his face intense. Katherine listened in quiet amusement.

“Yeah, it’s tough. Unless you use the code.”

“Code?”

“Yeah, you don’t know? You can get any bike in the game.”

“No way!” Anthony screamed in excitement.

“Yeah, dude!” Joe said, laughing. Katherine laughed also.

“What is it?”

Joe showed him how to do it. In a couple minutes he was driving the highest nitro class bike in the game, hooting and hollering as he flew through the tracks and sailed off jumps.

Katherine and Joe left the room still chuckling, and Anthony didn’t even notice. Joe followed her upstairs, toward her room.

“So, are you ready for our Spanish exam?” she asked, as they climbed the stairs.

“No,” he said, bluntly.

She stopped on the landing and looked back at him.

“You know how everyone is allowed to omit one exam each year? I’ve decided to go ahead and omit Spanish.”

She looked utterly perplexed. “What? What are you talking about? You can’t omit an exam.”

“You can’t? Aw, man, I’m in trouble!”

She laughed heartily, but then her face turned serious as she spoke. “Señora is hosting an extra study session after school on Monday, you know, for people who need a second go-round.”

“What about for people who need a first go-round?”

She laughed again. It was light and airy, just like old times.

“Where did your parents go tonight anyway?” he asked.

“To a party way up in Arlington. And since they won’t let Anthony stay home alone yet, I had to stay too. Lucky me!”

“How late will they be out?”

“They said they’d be back around eleven.”

“Would they get really mad if they knew I was here?”

“I don’t know, Joe. They probably wouldn’t care too much. So long as they didn’t…catch us…doing anything bad.”

Joe felt lightheaded for a moment as he followed her into her room and she shut the door behind them.

It was a cool room—a little girly, but in a good way, and not too girly. There weren’t a million stuffed animals on her bed or anything. Van Gogh’s Starry Night was displayed on the wall, and Joe thought that was cool. It was probably the only work of art he could recognize, and that he liked, and seeing it on her wall made him like it even more. It was just so much better to see than a poster of a boy band, or say, the Dirty Dancing poster his ex-girlfriend had on her wall. Joe didn’t know that movie, had never seen it, had no clue what it was all about, but he dearly hated it anyway.

Next to that poster was a Dave Matthews one. He accepted it gracefully, realizing that no one was perfect—even though he kind of secretly liked Dave Matthews.

She saw him looking. “I went to their concert just recently.”

“Cool, I know a bunch of people who went to that. How was it?”

“So much fun. I love Dave.”

Joe nodded. It made perfect sense—it seemed most girls that he knew shared that exact sentiment.

His eyes then turned to the mirror above her dresser, which was halfway covered with photos of Katherine and her friends. Joe stopped and looked at them. She came over and explained them all—who the people were, when the photos were taken, and what was going on in them. As she talked, they were very near, their shoulders touching, both of them sensing the closeness and veering toward it, encouraging it. It sent those waves all through him again, and he was pretty sure they went through her too, because while he had trouble listening to everything she said, it seemed she had trouble speaking.

She finished explaining and they gradually stood back up. It was quiet until Joe noticed her lacrosse stick in the corner of the room and his eyes lit up.

“Aw, man, how did I not notice this until now?” He picked it up and checked it out, twirling it around a few times. “Nice,” he said.

“Thanks,” she replied.

“What record did the J.V. girls finish with this year?”

“Eight and two. We kicked ass.”

“Damn! You all finished better than we did.”

She smiled. “Yeah, lacrosse went a lot better than field hockey did this season.”

“Oh, that’s right, you play field hockey also. Which one do you like better?”

“Lacrosse, definitely!”

“Nice.”

She smiled, and Joe smiled back at her. Then he noticed a large white envelope on her desk, and through the clear plastic front he saw several portrait photos of her, of varying sizes. It was her class picture.

“Can I look? Please?” he asked, setting the lacrosse stick down.

She nodded.

Joe pulled the pictures out. She looked incredible. It was a great picture of her.

“Wow. Can I have one?” He picked up one of the wallet-sized ones.

“Yes, but not yet!” She smiled. “I have to sign it before I give it to you.”

Joe placed the picture back down on her desk.

She sat on her bed. Joe sat next to her.

“Joe…can I ask you something?” Her voice was hesitantly steady.

“Of course,” he said, open, encouraging. “Go ahead.”

“Is there something between you and Crystal Stevens?”

Joe felt a sinking, downcast feeling as he shook his head and spoke quickly.

“No, there’s nothing between me and her.”

“But, I heard about you two, at some party not long ago—”

“I was wasted.” He spoke quite earnestly. “It was…a mistake.”

She didn’t look thrilled, but at the same time she looked a little relieved, like the most difficult thing for her had just been asking the question.

“Please…don’t do something like that again,” she said, finally.

“Oh my God, I won’t!”

“Otherwise, I can’t…we can’t…”

“Katherine, I won’t. Seriously. And I regret that whole night, completely. And I don’t like her, seriously.”

She nodded calmly. “Okay.”

The silence went on for too long.

“So…well…about last night…” Joe started.

She looked at him.

“Is everything…cool?” he finished.

“Yes. Well…I’m just glad you’re here now.”

There was no hesitation at all this time.

They kissed eagerly, and eventually made an awkward shift from sitting next to one another to lying down together on her bed. Joe marveled at everything, how pretty and how awesome she was, the intensity and clarity of his feelings, and how much better this was in complete sobriety—which was totally unlike most times he had been in this position.

Minutes became seconds as their breathing quickened and clothing became disheveled. He moved decidedly slow with her, gently touching her hair or along the curves of her body, but never going underneath her clothes. He’d let her make the first moves, or wait for a sign to let him know she wanted him to. So, it was joyous indeed when she lifted his shirt up first, at which point he peeled it off the rest of the way and threw it to the floor. Soon after he had her shirt pushed way up and her bra sleekly unfastened by his encircled arms. Underneath was small, but this didn’t matter, not with Katherine, not one little bit. Their every detail was sensational and becoming acquainted with them could have gone on indefinitely. But it was during this time, almost as if by chance, her hand found the tent in his pants, and gloriously, it didn’t leave. This upped the ante unimaginably, and so Joe reciprocated the action on to her, his hand slipped in between her legs, pressing and feeling along the denim, and he heard her breathing quicken more so.

But that was all he could do though, he could do no more, because by that time he’d become incapacitated, her fingers lightly tracing and teasing, and during those mind-bending moments he silently screamed for her to proceed, to do it please before he fucking exploded. Seriously he thought it might happen, and it became achingly painful, as he lay in blissful torment. She perhaps didn’t know the magnitude of what she was doing almost idly, without even realizing it, and Joe could only wonder how much further things would have gone had his stupid fucking pager not gone off.

Of course he didn’t care someone was paging him—if it was up to him, he would have thrown the goddamn thing out of the window before they went to lay down on the bed together. It’s just that the beeping broke them out of whatever trance they were in, as her hand withdrew, and she stood up from the bed quickly, hot and flushed.

“Joe…we should stop.”

His world spun and crashed. Truly those were the worst four words he’d ever heard in his life. It took several moments for his world to right itself and for things to come back into focus.

“Okay,” he said, while his face looked like he’d just been punched, or shot, or both.

“I want to, but…”

“It’s okay,” he said, rather emptily, but he did manage a smile.

He slid off the bed and got to his feet awkwardly. In doing so he made an attempt to hide it, but it was pretty much impossible by that point. He almost couldn’t stand up.

She put herself back together, refastening her bra, smiling as she did. Joe smiled back at her once more and then put his shirt back on. Afterward they hugged, a long and close one.

“Who paged you?” she asked when it was over.

Joe picked up the pager and looked at the phone number. “Antwann,” he answered. He put the pager back in his pocket, at the same time making a mental note to remember to punch Antwann in the face next time he saw him.

“Joe…you can go, if you want. It’s fine. I won’t be mad, or anything.”

“No, it’s okay,” Joe said brightly. “I want to hang out with you.”

“Really?” She smiled.

“Yeah.”

“But don’t you want to hang out with your friends?”

“I see them all the damn time. Don’t worry about it.” Joe smiled widely at her.

Beaming, she took his hand and began leading him down the hall. “Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked.

“Sure,” Joe replied.