I’ve lost track of time. I finish my Jack and Coke. It’s time to go. I kiss Dev and stroke his neck. I want to go back to his house. His mother will make us grilled cheese sandwiches. Because Dev’s mother is one of those mothers who grills you a sandwich at midnight. Dev’s mother makes him her priority. My mother is incapable of functioning the same way. This is what happens when you have a mother with bipolar. You don’t get sandwiches at midnight. You get worry instead.
I shake it from my mind and think about Dev’s mom and how she’ll linger in the kitchen. How I’ll sit on his lap sipping whole milk as she asks us about the party. How she’ll call me sweetheart. That look of his that he’ll give me. Those eyes holding on to me like that. Squeezing me. We’ll go back in his room and get naked in his bed.
“Let’s go,” I say, and nibble on his ear.
“Nessel,” he says. “We have to wait for Nessel.”
2
ALI
Sean Nessel pushes open a bedroom door. His hands fall across my hips as he glides us forward. It’s so easy; I could be on ice skates. We sit down on the floor and kiss more, but soft, not with saliva and spit everywhere. He lays me down, slips his jacket off, rubs my breasts over my shirt, then under my shirt over my bra, and then under my bra.
I want to whisper something, but if I open my mouth, something stupid will spill out like, “I’ve never done this before.” And I want him touching me. I want to be here, drunk and making out with Sean Nessel, even if I’m not the greatest kisser and even if my breasts aren’t huge, and even if no one has ever, really, gone under my bra before.
Then his hands are inside my jeans, and I let him do that too, because I am so warm and his hands feel so good on the inside of my thighs. We kiss like this for what seems like a while. My body buzzes. I’m for sure drunk.
You want a different take, don’t you? That I’m scared. Or that it doesn’t feel good. But it does. It feels frightening and amazing all at once.
The music from downstairs vibrates through the floor—there’s this song that’s not really slow, but it’s intense and moody. My body rocks along with Sean Nessel’s and I feel him. You know what I’m saying? Feel him. My mind goes to such a crazy place filled with roses and flowers and all the rainbows and feathers I’ve ever decorated his face with in my collage book. I’m turned on. I’ve kissed other boys before, and nothing has ever felt like this.
He starts pulling down my underpants and I am breathing so heavy, and then he stands up and I lie on the floor with my knees touching and my underpants dangling from one leg, and he is trying to kick off his shoes with the heel of his foot and laughing because he can’t get them off. He does this funny dance, or maybe he’s just stumbling. Either way, I’m laughing.
He’s unzipping his pants. Why is he unzipping his pants?
I hear the party going on below us, the song still blaring through the floor.
“Wait,” I say.
But he just sort of moans like this: uh-huh.
“Wait.”
And in three seconds, he’s on top of me. His body feels like deadweight. The rough carpet and his wool soccer jacket scratch across my back and thighs. My hand fights against his shoulder, shoving him away, but he’s not paying attention. My T-shirt is riding up, but I’m naked down below and his penis jabs at my inner thigh and then closer to my vagina.
“Sean, I don’t—”
“Shhh, relax,” he says.
“You have to stop.”
He forces his penis into me, and I feel like I’m ripping open, literally tearing. It hurts so bad, and he’s grunting, shoving himself in. Then there’s a wet, heavy rush between my thighs. He grinds his hips into my bony pelvis, and I push his face away with one hand.
“You’re hurting me,” I say. I cannot believe this is happening. Doesn’t he hear me?
My body is too lazy from the alcohol, and though I fight him off, pressing into his chest, the pain is like this crazy lightning bolt, so I groan out, and he muzzles my mouth with his hand. Pins my shoulder to the ground and grinds himself deeper into me. I pound on his back with my fist.
I can’t move.
I cannot move.
When I scream again, it’s a low holler this time; I only hear my voice inside my head.
As his body bangs into me, a low-level ringing goes off in my head. The ringing carries through my ears, then across to my nose and down my throat.
He gets up and reaches for the light, and I’m crying and my knees are shaking, and the lights are on. Blood covers the inside of my thighs and his jacket.
I’m hysterical, hardly able to catch my breath, and Sean Nessel seethes. “Holy shit, what the hell is this? Your period?”
“No,” I cry, shocked at my own blood. My words buckle. “I didn’t know.” I wipe the snot from my face.
He curses and paces, telling me how he ripped up his dick and now there was blood all over his soccer jacket. “How are we gonna clean all this shit up?” he says. He paces the room with his pants off and with me still crying and his penis has blood on it, and he finally finds a tissue and wipes the blood off.
He throws the bloodied tissue in the garbage and then throws the box of tissues at me and tells me to wipe myself off. So I do. I’m doing everything he says. I can’t even do it myself first. I’ve never been so paralyzed in my life.
“Okay, okay,” he keeps repeating, pacing around the room and putting his pants back on. “I’ll get your friend, so just stay here and stop crying or something. You’re going to be fine.”
I’ve never been this drunk before. But am I though? Am I that drunk at all? Don’t I know exactly what just went on? Wasn’t I right there? He looks at me again as if I’m not the girl he brought upstairs. My mouth is numb. I am dizzy and for certain at least very buzzed, very confused. All I can think is that my father is going to find out. The whole school is going to find out.
I run over to the trash basket where all the bloody tissues are and puke. Vomit rages out of my mouth burning everything.
I wipe the snot and puke off my face with my sweatshirt and turn to him.
“I told you to stop,” I say, and then tears erupt. Miles and miles of tears.
He’s blank, looking confused. He rubs his hands in his hair and paces more. That hair. My first dream about Sean Nessel was me kissing him, stroking him at the back of his head like a sweet puppy.
I flap my arms because I look like a duck when I cry. The room felt big in the dark, but with the lights on, it’s tiny. There are dirty socks on the floor, and I pour what is left of the hard seltzer onto one of the socks and wipe the rest of the blood off my inner thighs and my ankle.