This Too Is Love Read online

  After a month I knew a lot more about how it worked. I knew what he liked and that there was really nothing he didn’t like. It was always fast, my clothes stripped off and his stripped off too. He’d press himself inside me while I was on my back or on my knees. He’d lick my breasts and kiss my ear and each time I wanted him to hold me after, to cradle my face in his hands, but he never did.

  Then one time another guy was at his house when we were there. When I walked from Todd’s room to get a can of Coke from the kitchen, this guy sat on the couch messing with his phone. He said it wasn’t fair that Todd got all of me, and that he should get some too.

  Maybe it was how he said it, like half complaining that I wasn’t playing nice, but I told him there was enough for everyone. It wasn’t until later that afternoon when the new guy drove me home, whistling and saying, “Damn, girl, you’re hot,” that I knew what I was becoming, what I was doing.

  I was going to let anyone have me until someone wanted me for more.

  But now a year has past. And the routine I have with guys like Todd has been perfected. I’m good at it, being the booty-call. I know it sounds bad, but at the moment, while I’m kind of drugged up on this freaking cold medicine, deep down I still like it. Being chosen in this way by someone.

  So I know when I get over this sinus infection, off the couch and dressed in something besides sweatpants, I’ll return to school — finally start my sophomore year — and be that girl again. It’s still better than being Mom’s guardian; heaven knows I’m no angel.

  Week Three

  He pulls at my jeans, pushing them down my thighs, so he can get to what he wants. A piece of me. A piece that’s easy to give away, something I’ve given away so many times before.

  The music pumps through the smoky air around us; I’m pushed against the back of the bathroom door, not worried if someone might try to come in. The main thing I’m worried about is if I look fat with my shirt unbuttoned while my legs are wrapped around him.

  He kisses my neck, my ear, somehow avoiding the part of me that would create a real sensation — my lips. He’s a few years older than me, a senior in a letterman jacket from a school I don’t recognize, the jacket now crumpled on the dirty tile floor. A stranger who took a few shots with me before he led me to the bathroom at the back of the house.

  It’s been over a year since Todd took my V-card, and I’m still as self-conscious as ever. Tonight, this guy and I haven’t exchanged words, only laughter and liquor and smiles I hope are sexy.

  And now we’re exchanging pieces of ourselves — but I’m too buzzed to think about it. I know he is too. I feel nothing as he grabs my waist, pulsing into me. There’s a constant ache at my core, but it has nothing to do with this guy — this time. It has everything to do with the emptiness I carry everywhere I go. Hoping the next time I let someone inside of me I can feel something.

  I exhale knowing he’s done. Done with me.

  “What’s your name?” He zips his pants, asking my name to make me feel as if I’ll be remembered past this night, this moment.

  “Trix. What’s yours?” The question slips through my lips, even though there will be no reason to remember. He won’t ask for my number or wonder where I go to school. I won’t take pictures with him at Homecoming or hold his hand at the mall. I’m not that kind of girl.

  I’m the girl who goes to bathrooms with strangers.

  “Ricky.” He offers me the kind of perfect-white-straight-teeth smile I want to believe is a turn-off. I smirk, hoping if I act confident I won’t feel like shit for letting him touch my skin, my hair, for sliding his hand across my back like I’m someone familiar.

  I get put back together quickly; reapplying my lip gloss in the mirror as Ricky offers me a hit from the joint he’s just lit. I shake my head in the mirror, wanting to see what he saw when he looked at me with my eyes closed, legs apart, heart-cracked. I doubt I really want to know.

  I open the door, scanning the room for Justice. She’s never looking for me; I’m the one always trying to find her. Always looking to make sure she hasn’t passed out somewhere ready to be raped by some asshole who doesn’t care if there’s vomit on her chest. Not that Josh would ever let that happen.

  It’s my mode of operation, even though I don’t need to be her lookout girl. I lived it with my mother and somehow it’s just crossed over to someone else. Walking out the back door, I find her hanging on Josh. She’s been crying, makeup streaks her cheeks. But that’s the kind of drunk she is. You can tell it kind of ticks off Josh, too, like if she wasn’t such a mess he might get laid more often, but mostly he doesn’t want the girl he loves to look like a fool.

  “Hey, Trixie, you ready to get out of here?” he asks.

  Josh is my ride so I’ll do what he wants. I’m sure he’s thinking if he gets Justice home before she’s too wasted, there’s still a chance of sleeping with her.

  “Yeah, this party’s pretty lame. I’ve never seen half of these people before.” That was true, but also since I’ve been sick the last couple of weeks, I’m ready to get home and crawl in bed. We walk in the grass to his car; Justice steadies herself with his arm. Her heels sink in the dirt, making it hard for her to not look like a complete drunk.

  My head hurts; maybe it’s the tequila. Maybe it’s the country music Josh insists on blaring. Maybe it is the long backroad we are taking to get to Justice’s house. Josh used to go to school with the guy who was throwing the party, and we’re thirty miles from home. It feels like ages before we pull up in the driveway.

  Josh puts the car in park and Justice is laughing over something Josh said about her being a crappy driver and how he’ll never get in a car with her behind the wheel. They’re cute when they are like that. Like the entire world is in the space between their smiles.

  Justice turns and looks at me, mascara-tears dried on her cheeks, but she’s glowing. Being tucked safely next to Josh brings out the best in her. Teasingly, she asks, “So, did you hook up with anybody, Trix?”

  Justice knows the answer; she knows what I do when I go out. Everyone does.

  Back in my room, I’m no longer tired. In my underwear and tank top, I wrap my comforter around me. Pencil and eraser in hand, I pull out my sketchpad. I draw the lines of my face, the ones I saw in the bathroom mirror tonight. My eraser is rubbed gone by the time I finish. It’s hard to see the edges of my cheeks, my eyes, my mouth. Everything is blurry.

  I close the sketchbook, and close my eyes. My heart, though, it’s still open. It still believes in some sort of happily-ever-after. In some sort of hands-held-tight love story.

  My heart isn’t jaded like Aunt Lena’s or Mom’s. My heart is still wishing a boy like Ricky would look at me and think I am enough.

  Week Four

  I wake up to Justice and Aunt Lena shouting in the kitchen. Something about cellphones being disconnected. I grab mine off the floor — NO SERVICE.

  It doesn’t bother me much. It’s not like there’s someone dying to get a hold of me — but I wonder if there were any guys last night wishing I would answer a text so they could pick me up for a fifteen-minute “country drive.”

  Throwing on some clothes, I walk downstairs, my fingers brushing against the dirty walls I’ve known my entire life. When I was a little girl, when Grandma was still alive, we’d come here to visit. Mom and I’d show up for a week, a month, however long it took before they’d get into such a big fight, the only thing left for Mom to do was load all our stuff back into garbage bags, swearing we’d never come back to this hellhole.

  We’d get in the car of whomever she found to give us a ride back to a bigger city. An easier place for her to do what she wanted, with whomever she wanted.

  Aunt Lena’s lived here her entire life; when Grandma died she just stayed. She’s worked at the gas station for eighteen years, starting the job when she was a pregnant seventeen-year-old.

  “Trixie, honey, you look like shit. You sleepin’ okay?” Aunt Lena asks. Is it sick that eve
n though she just said I look terrible, I’m slightly comforted that she cares?

  “Yeah, I’m good. Just need some coffee.”

  She grabs a mug and fills it for me, pouring it how I like it, half cream, half coffee.

  “Trix, we got to go. Josh is gonna be here in, like, five seconds.” She zips the hoodie she wears every day.

  “She just sat down, Justice, give her a minute.” Aunt Lena lights a cigarette, and absently flicks it toward the ashtray. She always holds two things, a cigarette and either a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer — depending on the hour of day.

  “Mom, you don’t get it. We. Are. Running. Late. Okay? I don’t want to piss Josh off.” Justice is always like this with Aunt Lena. I watch them argue while I sip my steaming coffee. Maybe it’s something you can do when you’re totally sure in how someone feels about you. You can demand and be bossy and tell your mom she’s a loser but still know she’ll kiss your head before you go and figure out a way to get the cash to pay for your cellphone.

  I grab my sketchbook off the table and shove it in my bag before I throw it over my shoulder, ready to go. I don’t want Justice mad at me.

  “Thanks for the coffee, Aunt Lena.”

  “Of course, baby.” She gives me a hug and we exchange a knowing look about Justice. A look that I wish Mom would give me. A look that says, I get you. I know you. It’s okay.

  For all the good about Aunt Lena, her taking me in, her working a steady job — she’s still a wreck. When I moved in I didn’t realize just how bad until I saw it for myself.

  When she’s been drinking she can get nasty. When I’d been living here about a month, Josh and Justice didn’t come home one night. Just up at his uncle’s cabin, they’d said. But they hadn’t told anyone they were leaving and didn’t call anyone to say where they were. Aunt Lena got lit, and panicked.

  When the two of them came back to the house the next afternoon, she went nuts. Calling them out on what they were doing, grabbing Justice and pushing her around, she started throwing dishes and cussing them out for being selfish pricks. No one got hurt, but I saw Aunt Lena in a different way. She’s scary drunk.

  I get in the back of Josh’s truck, thinking that even though Aunt Lena fucked up that night, she was mostly scared something had happened to Justice.

  I can forgive her because she thought she lost her most valuable thing. Her daughter.

  Week Five

  On the way to school I make Josh pull over so I don’t puke in his car.

  Shit. I can’t be sick again. I’d had enough of sitting around Aunt Lena’s house watching reruns of shitty TV. Besides, I’ve only been back in school for two weeks.

  In art class, Mrs. Carter suggests I go to the school nurse. Mrs. Carter is one of those people you wish you could hang out with on the weekends because they’re different, always doing things in the city like going to museums and concerts and buying clothes at places besides Shop ‘N Go.

  I go to the office and sit in a plastic chair until the nurse calls me in.

  “So what can I do for you today?” she asks, her mouth pinched tight as she takes me in.

  “I think I have the flu again, or something. I threw up on the way to school; Mrs. Carter said I look like crap so she sent me here.”

  “Well, then, let me take your temperature.” She huffs, like I’m putting her out.

  I hate it when adults are like this. This is her freaking job, to take my temperature and make sure I’m okay, yet somehow I’m bothering her. She puts the stick in my mouth and waits a minute for it to read. I look at the checkered linoleum to avoid her critical eye.

  The thermometer beeps and she clucks her tongue as she reads it. “Looks good, but tell me, how else are you feeling. Tired? Achy?”

  “I don’t know, I mean, I guess I’m tired. But, like, isn’t every teenager?” I offer her a half-smile, but it’s interrupted by a yawn.

  “Let’s see here, Trix, I know you were really sick a few weeks back, were you on any meds at that time?”

  “Just antibiotics. But I’m good, totally over whatever I had. Just on the pill right now.”

  She looks me up and down. Like she’s trying to see something besides black eyeliner and skinny jeans.

  “Okay, well, why don’t you do something for me, then. Can you take this cup in the bathroom and give me a urine sample?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I take it from her and go to the bathroom.

  Last time I was in here she told me I had HPV and I really didn’t want to add another STD to my list. Living in a town with a high dropout and teen pregnancy rate meant liberal nurses who stuffed condoms in the hands of every student they came across. Still, it didn’t keep kids like me from getting a “treatable condition.”

  When I return with the filled cup, she places a strip of paper in it. Standing next to her, I keep messing with my fingernails, trying to chip off the black paint that’s peeling. After a few minutes, she tells me to take a seat. When she sits beside me, with her earlier annoyance wiped away, I know this is serious.

  “Trix, I recommend you go to the clinic in town. You know the one I sent you to before? They can help you make the decisions you need to make.”

  I look at her blankly until I realize what she’s talking about.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “I’m pregnant?” I ask hoping she’ll laugh and say, “No sweetie, you just have the flu after all.” But I know she isn’t going to do that. I know I’m just like my mom and just like my Aunt Lena and just like half the fucking girls in my town.

  She gives me a packet of information. Like I’m going to sit and read it at lunch or something so everyone can start talking about the fact that I don’t just give blow jobs in the bathroom but I’m also going to have an abortion. I stuff them in my bag and mumble some sort of thank you while wondering if this is what my mom felt like when she was seventeen and found out she was pregnant with me. If she was late for third period and debated going to the bathroom to cry in a stall or just go to class late. But my mom wasn’t in school when she found out about me. She was snorting coke and living with some guy in a trailer park on the outskirts of town.

  I go back to Mrs. Carter’s class and am relieved to see it’s her planning period and that besides us, the room is empty. She looks up from the stack of watercolors she’s sorting, choosing which ones to hang. I see she’s pulled out my painting of Justice smiling bright on the day of her engagement.

  I tried to capture the smile across Justice’s face when she showed me the engagement ring Josh had given her for her eighteenth birthday. There was something about her having a piece of jewelry from the person who loved her that made me insanely jealous and insanely happy. It was like he put that ring on her finger and promised to be a part of her. I wanted someone to slip a chain around my neck or clasp a bracelet around my wrist, claiming a piece of me, not wanting me to forget that they held a piece of my heart.

  “I’m not sick. I guess. Well, not sick like a fever.”

  “Sick like something else?” Mrs. Carter puts down the papers and walks over to me, her dark hair catching the light in the window.

  “Sick like I’m pregnant.” I know she won’t be mad or tell me what I need to do or give me a lecture. She isn’t like that.

  That’s why I’m okay with telling her. Last fall, the start of my freshman year, I had my first real art class with her. She always loved my drawings and would ask me about my life. Why I lived here, where my mom was. And even though she knew what I did with guys, not because I ever talked about it, but because it was the kind of thing everyone knew about to some degree, she never judged me. At least not to my face.

  “Just a moment.” She walks to the back of her room and pours the hot water she had in a pot on her counter in two ceramic mugs. After adding scoops of dried tea leaves to little baskets with lids, she drops them in the steaming mugs and brings them to the table. We sit across from each other and she picks up her tea and breathes deep. I copy her. I wo
uld copy her every day if I could.

  “I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, you know? I mean, I’m just a fuckup.” I say the words that make me feel weak and feel most true. I say the words that will make her pity me, and in that moment maybe I want her pity. Her concern. “Talk about a walking cliché. I swear to God I’m a waste.” I’m trying so hard to sound tough and strong and like I don’t give a fuck. But I do. I give all the fucks, but it’s not going to change a thing.

  “No.” She shakes her head slowly. “You’re not a waste, Trixie. You’re much more than that.” She says it not wanting anything from me, like she’s giving me a gift with her words, not needing anything in return. Pity doesn’t fall from her lips or her eyes. I guessed wrong when I guessed about her. She’s even better than my imagination painted.

  I’m too scared to look up. Scared the tears in my chest will make their way to my eyes and betray the strength I want her to believe I have. They come anyway. No one’s strong enough to stop that current once it starts.

  Week Six

  At school there are these girls who have blond hair. Not like Justice’s blond hair. She basically took a bottle of bleach to it six months ago and now she has half-dingy-brown and half-bright-yellow. She says it’s ombre, but I know better.

  No, these girls had their hair done at a salon where someone got a license to get the right to cut and color hair. It’s not just their hair, though. They have this attitude that somehow they deserve to be wearing jeans from a department store and a Coach purse hanging off their shoulder. Like they did something to earn it. They don’t get that they just happened to be born to parents with jobs and they could have just as easily be born to a woman in a hut.

  I used to be really jealous of girls like that. Girls who carry white to-go cups of coffee that they bought at a drive-thru on the way to school. Girls who went out with guys like Todd after he’d 69’d with me. But we’re the same. Those girls and me. We just cover it up in different ways. I take off my clothes to feel worth something; they keep theirs on to feel the exact same thing.