Boy Toy (17 page)

"Josh, wait a sec."

I turned back to her.

"Do this." She mimed wiping at her cheek.

I obeyed, then looked down at my fingers—her lipstick blurred the tips.

"Good night," she said.

"Good night." I realized I was whispering.

It was dark out. I stood in the cold night air and watched her pull away, watched until her car's lights disappeared over a hill. Then I went inside.

Dad wasn't home yet, but Mom was eating a TV dinner by herself in the kitchen. I washed my hands and checked my cheek in the bathroom mirror, just to be sure.

"Hungry?" she asked.

"No. Mrs. Sherman made something."

In bed a little while later, I thought about the kiss. I focused on the memory, trying to transfer the sensation of her lips from my cheek to my lips, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't stop thinking about the taste of her lipstick.

I lay awake a long time and went through many tissues before I slept.

December 15 is the day everything changed for good, though I didn't realize it until much later.

As usual, I went home with Eve. In the car, she told me she had a small headache and that she was going to lie down when we got to the apartment.

"Kids acting up today?" I asked.

"More like the teachers," she said. I knew that she didn't get along well with the other teachers. She was new to the school and they didn't like her for some reason. She always ate lunch alone, in her room, not in the teachers' lounge. Sometimes the assistant principal came by to talk to her, but she always asked him to leave.

I counted six—half-turn on the landing—and six again going up the steps. She sighed with relief when the door opened.

"Do you want me to get your wine?" I asked.

"No, Josh. I'm just going to lie down. Let me sleep a little bit, OK?"

She retreated to the bedroom and I went into my usual routine—switched on the Xbox and got my Coke from the refrigerator.

Something was wrong, though. The Xbox usually announced itself with a dinosaur roar as the game loaded. I knew that sound, knew how long it took to come up. It always came up while I was in the kitchen. Was the disk broken? Had George taken the disk out last night?

I heard something else. Something unfamiliar. I went into the living room.

On the TV, there were three people. A man and two women. They were naked.

And they weren't sitting around talking about the weather.

My breath got locked up somewhere deep in my lungs and I almost dropped the Coke.

I had seen naked bodies before, thanks to Zik's filching of his Dad's and Mike's porn, but never in motion. And never with sound. I stood, paralyzed, as the three people on screen entwined themselves into something that looked almost painful. The sounds they were making didn't sound painful, though. They were quite the Happy Trio.

I grabbed the Xbox controller and turned it off. My breath, restored, was making up for lost time by coming hard and fast. What the hell—?

I remembered Eve saying that they didn't have a DVD player; they just used the Xbox.

This was hers? She watched it?

Well, of course she did. This was her apartment—who else would be watching it?

I slowly came to realize that my heart was pounding ferociously and I was fiercely erect at the same time. The images and sounds from the DVD seemed to be imprinted on my brain itself, pressed there like a fossilized footprint. What should I do? Take out the movie and play Xbox like nothing had happened? But where would I put the DVD in the meantime? Eve would see it when she came out.

Or should I leave the movie in and just not do anything at all? Maybe that was the best thing to do.

Or maybe...

Maybe Eve didn't even know about it. Maybe this was
George's
DVD. Maybe he watched it alone. Zik had told me that his father hid his porn from Zik's mom. So maybe it was something like that.

Yeah, that could be it. Maybe Eve didn't even know about it. That was a lot better than the idea that she was watching it
with
George.

With
George...

Anger suddenly burbled up from deep within me like water foaming as it boiled over on the stove. I didn't understand it or anticipate it—it was just
there.
It was there as I thought of Eve curled up on the sofa with George, watching naked people have sex, kissing him with those lips, kissing him
on
the lips, not caring if he had a smear of lipstick on his cheek or lips.

It had to be George's. I had to tell her about it.

I went down the hallway. The bedroom door was open.

Eve lay on the bed, turned on her stomach, one leg brought up, the knee bent. The room was dark, but I could make out the smooth curve of her calf, the crook of her knee before her leg disappeared up her skirt.

I trembled in the doorway. I had meant to tell her about the DVD, but she was sleeping, her back softly rising and falling with each breath. I took a step into the room; she didn't move.

What did her leg feel like?

I was possessed by a sudden urge to lay my palm flat on her calf and run it up to her knee, taking the curve into the hollow there, then running up—

I swallowed, hard. A memory slammed into me from nowhere, hitting me like a line drive: When I was little, maybe five or six, Mom used to have me rub lotion on the backs of her legs at night before I went to sleep. My dad didn't like the greasy feel of the lotion, so I did it.

That memory—along with the sense of touching the leg—came back to me. My fingers twitched. I
knew
what her leg would feel like. I knew. And looking at her while knowing...

My breath was so loud that I thought she had to hear me. She would wake up and turn to see me standing there, evidence of my lust tenting the front of my jeans.

But I didn't care. I
wanted
her to see. Somehow, imagining her seeing drove the image of her and George on the sofa out of my mind, and it was
very
important that I kill that image.

I took another step. My feet made no sound on the carpet.
My hand, running up her leg, up under the skirt ... fingertips brushing against ... against ... shiny black—

I stopped before I could take another step. What the
hell
was I thinking? Before I could imagine any further, I backed away slowly, making no noise as I retreated to the hallway and then the living room. I sat on the sofa, shivering as I drank my Coke.

I didn't touch the Xbox.

It was none of my business, I decided. I just watched TV for a while, surfing the sports channels mostly, until my breathing and trembling subsided and I felt like I was, if not in the strike zone of normal, at least close enough to fool an ump.

After maybe an hour, Eve came out of the bedroom. I heard her in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine. My heart kicked into high gear again.

She came into the living room. She had a sort of sleepy vibe about her. It was strange and exciting. Her hair was fuller somehow; her eyes were enormous.

"What's this?" she asked. "Did you beat the game or something?"

I shook my head. I didn't trust my voice. My heart pounded.

She sat down on the sofa, at the end opposite me. "Then what's wrong? Why aren't you playing?"

And I realized that I would have to tell her. I could stonewall for a while, but not forever. And if she didn't know about the DVD, then seeing it might make her angry at George, and that would kill the image in my mind ... and the weird anger that went with it.

I've never been one for theatrics, but for some reason, instead of telling her, I hit a couple of buttons on the remote, and suddenly there was the Happy Trio again, bucking and moaning.

"Oh my God!" she shrieked and covered her mouth with her free hand. The wineglass shook and threatened to spill. "Oh, God! Josh, turn it off! Turn it off!"

I obeyed.

"Oh, Lord," she groaned, pulling her legs up under her on the sofa. "I'm so embarrassed."

And that was that. I knew. It
was
hers. Hers and George's. They watched it together. They
liked
it.

I was stupid.

I was an idiot.

Eve was
married.
Like my mom and dad. She loved George. They had sex.

Stupid. I was just a kid.

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled, setting down the wineglass so that she could go retrieve the DVD. My anger, which had flared bright and hot, now cooled. But it didn't go away. It didn't vanish. It just dimmed and settled and became a dull, nerveless ache in the center of my chest, throbbing there in time with my heartbeat.

As I watched her go back down the hallway with the DVD, I realized what the anger meant: I was in love with Eve.

I hated her, too, of course. Hated her for loving George, for kissing him, for having sex with him. The love and the hate got all tangled up and twisted together until they became the anger.

We sat in silence as I played the Xbox game. Eve started out on the sofa, but then moved to a chair, then back to the sofa, clearly nervous and upset. I played terribly, constantly getting killed performing routine combos, reloading over and over again. I hardly saw the game—I was seeing the Happy Trio, seeing George and Eve in my mind.

Seeing Eve and
me
in my mind.

Earlier than usual, she said it was time to go. I didn't protest. I just gathered up my things and got in the car.

About halfway to my house, she said, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"About what?" As if there was anything else to talk about!

She sighed. It was already dark out and I could barely make out her lips parting.

"About the—about the movie you saw."

Talk about it? How? I didn't get it. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, I imagine it was a shock for you. If you want to talk about it—"

"I don't have anything to say—"

"—about how it made you feel—"

And that was when I had my first flicker.

It was so weird—one second, I was in the car, fuming in the dark. The next, I was back in Eve's apartment, two steps into her bedroom, my hand twitching as I contemplated touching her calf and running my hand up her skirt...

I blinked and I was back in the car. I gasped at the shock. It had been so
real.
I hadn't just
remembered
the moment in her bedroom. I had
relived
it. I was
there
again, for just a second.

"Josh? Josh?" Eve's voice had jumped up into panic altitudes. She looked over at me, back to the road, over at me. "Are you OK? What's wrong? Can you breathe?"

"I'm fine." And I was. With the flicker over, everything was back to normal, except for the ball of pulsating lead where my heart used to be.

"You got so quiet. I thought—" She cut herself off. I never learned what she thought.

At my house, I waited for my usual kiss on the cheek, but nothing came. Eve watched me, worrying her bottom lip. I flickered again

—taste of her lipstick—

but it was so fast that she didn't notice and all I did was blink and lick my lips, expecting to taste the lipstick and wine. But nothing.

I went inside. No one was home yet. I went to bed without eating. It wasn't even seven o'clock yet.

***

I dreamed of Eve, of course. Dreamed of her sleek and free like the women in the Happy Trio.

Mom and Dad coming home woke me up. I told them the first thing I could think of—I had a headache and wanted to sleep. Mom kissed my forehead and left my room. I thought of the backs of her legs, of the scent of the lotion, the feel of it, slippery. Dozing, they became Eve's legs.

I woke up again at four in the morning, this time wide awake, reeling from a dream that I could barely remember but that still had its hooks in me. Something about George, yelling, and Eve stepping on grapes to make wine, the juice painting her toenails blood red.

I lay there, panting, until the sky outside my window began to lighten on a new day.

But in school that day, Eve called me up to her desk as history class ended. She looked tired, drawn. Her face was pale, her eyes dim.

"Josh, I think it's probably for the best if you don't come over to my apartment anymore."

"Why?"

"Keep your voice down." She got up and closed the door. I hadn't realized my voice had been loud.

"Look, Josh, after what happened yesterday ... last night ... Maybe it's just best if you don't come over."

"But ... But, Eve!" Her name was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

"Josh, I could get in a lot of trouble if anyone knew that you saw that. Plus, it was very embarrassing for me."

"I didn't tell anyone. I
won't
tell anyone. I promise!" She didn't look convinced. "And you don't have to be embarrassed. It's just, you know, it's just a movie. That's all. I've seen pictures before. Of naked people. It's no big deal."