Belly Up Page 2

  A burst of laughter from the kitchen caught our mutual attention. Despite over a hundred kids milling around from at least four towns, it was Samantha cackling. Again. She’d been performative all night, her new-girlfriend game strong. Aaron joked, she bray-laughed. She clung to his arm. She nuzzled at his neck. She practically dry-humped him every time he sat down. Aaron seemed to enjoy the attention for the most part, but every once in a while, I caught him glancing my way while she climbed all over him.

  Like he currently was. He held Samantha close but eyed me over her head while she nibbled on his ear.

  “I can’t tell if he’s pretending to be over you or if he’s asking you to save him,” Devi said. “She’s on him like white on rice.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Except I did care a little, and we both knew it, so I poured myself another drink. And another after that. How we ended up playing spin the bottle, I don’t know. I’m not clear on how I ended up making out with Jennifer Gill, specifically, though Devi told me her cheap-seats view proved that gender was absolutely not a hurdle for me when it came to kissing. I met Jack after the game ended. He was tall, almost six foot, with olive skin, black hair and eyes as blue as the Pac-Man Inky ghost on my Atari T-shirt. The boy was hot. Hotter-than-convenience-store-nacho-cheese hot. I liked how he had a ridge in his nose that skewed the angle a bit, like he’d broken it and never gotten it properly set. It added character to his face.

  I was by the pool hanging out with Devi when he approached with another guy, whose name is unimportant (but only because I can’t remember it, if we’re being perfectly honest). The friend was hitting on Devi in the most awkward way possible, opening with a line about Cheetos, but Jack was all about me. Had I been more sober, I probably would have worried that he was doing the wingman, occupy-the-other-chick-so-my-friend-can-score-the-hottie thing, but after so many Aaron-and-Samantha sightings, and walking in on them swapping spit four separate times in four separate rooms, I wanted some attention of my own.

  “Hey,” I said, offering my best smile.

  “Hey. I’m Jack. Cool shirt. My dad’s got a 5200 set up in the basement.”

  “I’m Sara. Serendipity, but everyone calls me Sara.” I grinned at him, he grinned back. He was drinking beer in a blue cup, which I only know because I remember how he smelled in the truck—Budweiser and Old Spice and breath mints. But at that point, he was just the tall guy with one hand wedged into his jeans pocket, the other holding his drink. Devi must have noticed me making eyes at him because she led her half of the duo away to talk to him near the tents. Jack and I watched them go before he nodded at the picnic table.

  “Quarters? I haven’t played that since...man. Last summer some time,” Jack said.

  “I’ve never played,” I confessed, feeling shy that I hadn’t yet experienced this particular rite of passage. Jack looped his arm around my back, his fingers brushing the bottom of my curly hair, to usher me over to the game. It wasn’t complicated—you bounced quarters off the table to try to get them into the cups set up at the end—but after half a bottle of Boone’s, I had the coordination of an inbred squirrel. I ended up missing every round. Fuzzy became full-on tipsy with an obnoxious case of the giggles.

  Jack and I flirted the whole time we played, getting to know one another, casually touching. He was a year older than me and wanted to work on cars with his dad after he graduated. I told him about my plans to go to an Ivy League school and study English. He seemed interested in that, and my video-game hobby, and a few absolutely terrible jokes I made. I was interested in his lopsided smile and the low, quiet tone of his voice.

  When Aaron walked by later, I brushed my hip against Jack’s, hoping he’d take the hint. That glorious boy tangled his fingers with mine, pulling me into his side and leaning down to press a soft kiss to my temple. My eyes met Aaron’s, he flinched, I smiled and he wandered off to find Skank Two. It was bitchy to be so satisfied, but I didn’t care, mostly because Jack’s hand had slid into the back pocket of my jeans.

  “This okay?” he whispered into my ear.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I was suddenly grateful to Devi who’d insisted I not wear the yoga pants.

  Another two rounds of quarters and we abandoned the game, still holding hands. Jack tossed our empty cups into a garbage bag hanging from the branch of some blossoming tree. We paused there, the ground carpeted pinky white with fallen blossoms beneath us. I leaned against the trunk, Jack leaned into me. We smiled at one another, his hands planted on my hips.

  “I feel good,” Jack said quietly.

  I ruined it with, “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na,” because of course I did.

  He laughed and nuzzled at my throat. “James Brown. My dad listens to him at the garage.”

  “I wish that’s what my grandmother liked. She’s into the other seventies stuff. The Bee Gees. Donna Summer. ABBA, because of course she’s a Swedish cliché. It’s disco fever forever in the car with her.”

  “You poor, poor thing.”

  He expressed his sympathy with a nibble on my earlobe.

  I slid my hands down his back, looping my thumbs into his belt. He grinded against me. I grinded back. It was obvious where things could go if I wanted them to. I debated with myself if I wanted to follow the slutty rabbit down the slutty hole. Jack was cute. He smelled good. He understood the pain that was ABBA.

  He also wasn’t Aaron.

  It’s not super flattering to admit, but that was the main reason I decided to do it, I think. My ex-boyfriend was thirty feet away with the girl he’d cheated on me with and they were all over each other. I’d loved Aaron once, still carried a torch, so to not have to grapple with that ugly truth, I’d entertain myself with a hot stranger. When Jack kissed me again, and walked me toward the driveway, I knew what I was in for: a hookup that’d put Aaron away awhile. A momentary distraction from a lot of old hurts.

  I understood what it was—and what it wasn’t—from the get-go, and I was okay with it.

  Jack led me to The Truck—emphasized because it’s the only truck I ever think of anymore when I hear the word—which was parked at the last spot on the right side, granting him unblocked access to the road. It was black and new and tall, and when he opened the passenger’s side to invite me in, I had to take his hand and grab the door to haul myself into the cabin.

  It had a new car smell. The dash was pristine, the seats were shiny leather. I was running my fingers over the radio plate when Jack circled around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He turned the radio on and then lowered the volume, smiling at me from his side of the bench. His hand captured mine again, and I slid my butt over to sit next to him, my thick thigh up against his more slender one.

  “Having a good time?” he asked.

  “I am.” I perched my chin on his shoulder with big eyes, my smile practically stitched to my face. I probably smelled like strawberries and potato chips, but he didn’t seem to mind, not as he nudged my nose with his own. The kiss was soft and sweet at first, lips skimming and gliding and nestling together. His hand crept up to my cheek, then back into my hair, cupping my skull. I opened my mouth first, he took advantage, and the make-outs were epic. Perfect amount of tongue and lips, limited slobber. I climbed into his lap, straddling him. His free hand had drifted down to the small of my back, was running up along my spine between the top of my jeans and the band of my bra. It felt good; the fuzziness of my buzz and the gentleness of his touch. When his hands slid from back to front, gliding over the softness of my stomach and up, I was all in.

  “We cool?” he asked. His fingers danced over the satin cups of my bra.

  My answer was to pull off the Atari shirt. His answer was to drop his face into the cavernous valley between my boobs. His hair was thick and silky between my fingers. I liked how he looked. I liked how he smelled. I liked how he felt touching me, so when he kissed my neck, and then droppe
d my bra strap to nuzzle at my shoulder and squeezed my butt...

  The humping was a natural progression. Drunk teenagers, a dark car, soft music, my ex about fifty feet away? It was all pretty inevitable. To Jack’s credit, he asked me if I was sure I wanted it before he pulled down my pants. I groaned a yes and my hand plunged into his boxer shorts. Gratuitous bouncing, sweating and groaning were a matter of course.

  ...for three hours. Not straight through. That would have chafed. But we went, stopped, went and stopped again. I never asked about a condom. He never asked if I was on the pill.

  Mistakes, as they say, were made.

  Chapter Three

  I woke up in Jack’s truck in my T-shirt and panties, my jeans and bra in a ball in the footwell. Jack was passed out cold beside me, his head tilted back, quiet snores rumbling from his throat. I slid from the truck’s cabin and into the driveway to wrestle back into my clothes, hoping nobody came along and saw me. Unfortunately, jumping up and down to fit my pants over my butt made my stomach flop. I puked into the Levitzs’ forsythia bush. Day-after wine burned like lava, and I swore then and there to never touch the stuff again. Two more hurls drove the point home, and I sagged against the side of the truck, my eyes trying to focus on the pale gray sky with the big ball of pain rising past the pine trees.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked sleepily from behind me.

  “Yeah. I...gonna go find Devi. Think I need to pass out.”

  “I’m tired, too. It’s not even six yet.”

  Jack poured himself from the truck and limped to my side. He leaned down to kiss me, but I offered a cheek instead. Not subjecting him to my hurl-mouth was the least I could do. He seemed to understand, and patted me on the butt instead.

  “I should go before my parents kill me,” he said. “Call me, okay? We’ll go out. I had a great time.”

  “Sure,” I responded, offering him a thanks-for-the-bone hug. He smelled like stale beer and sweat and I reeked like vomit and Boone’s, but we got through it unscathed. I watched him drive away, my stomach all fluttery and not in the totally-going-to-puke-again way. Maybe Jack was my after-Aaron rebound. Maybe he’d be someone to hang out with over the summer when Devi went to visit her grandparents in Connecticut for what she called her yearly Jewish reprogramming.

  Except I didn’t have his number.

  “Aww, crapcicles!”

  He hadn’t given me the digits and I’d been too worried about smelling like puke to realize it. Maybe that was his plan all along—an easy escape after a hookup—but he’d seemed like he liked me, so...

  “Crap.” I bumbled toward the house in search of Devi, hoping maybe she’d befriended Jack’s wingman so I could ask him, but no, she was passed out on Michelle’s couch alone, her arms wrapped around her mostly-empty bottle of Boone’s like it was a teddy bear.

  “Hey.” I shook her foot, which was missing a sandal, though there was one on her other foot. That’d make walking hard. “Devi. Wake up.”

  “M’tired,” she slurred.

  Still drunk. Oh, good.

  She grunted and rolled over on the couch so her back faced me. I sighed and wandered the premises in search of her missing shoe, finding it not near the pool but actually in the shallow end. I used the net to scoop it out, the leather straps warped and forever ruined. Good thing Devi owns sixty thousand shoes, though, so maybe her parents wouldn’t care about the one ravaged pair, even if they were Gucci.

  A quick spin of the property showed no sign of Jack’s friend, though I did discover Aaron and Samantha curled around each other on a hammock. It wasn’t what I wanted to see first thing in the morning, so I stalked back to the house, the realization that I’d just had my first one-night stand poking at my brain. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Mom always told me to respect my body as it was the only one I was going to get. She didn’t mean don’t have sex, but to be safe and make sound choices I wouldn’t regret later. Jack had been fun, but I probably should have been a bit smarter about our fluid swap. He could have had junk fungus or an infection or any number of diseases.

  A baby never even occurred to me.

  Maybe it was the booze. Maybe it was misplaced optimism.

  Again, oopsie.

  I pulled open the back door of Michelle’s house and passed through the kitchen. Around me, kids groaned, heaved and crawled like extras in a zombie movie. Out back, tents started coming down. Out front, cars pulled from the driveway one after the other. The people who were blocked drove over the lawn to escape, the tracks left in their wake an awful way to thank Michelle for hosting. I roused Devi and loaded her into my old Subaru, tilting her head toward the window so if she had to throw up, she’d do it away from me and my upholstery. I drove us home and lugged her up the apartment stairs with my arms around her waist, supporting almost all of her weight while I wrestled with my house key. We stumbled inside like we were competing in a three-legged race, silent as we made our way to my bedroom. Mom’s bedroom door was closed and her fan was on, so I knew she was still asleep. Grateful for the parental absence, I stripped Devi to her bra and panties and loaded her into my bed, leaving the trash barrel near her head in case of emergency spew.

  I was tired and I wanted to sleep, but more than that, I was sore and sticky from all things truck. I hopped in the shower to hose off, scrubbing extra hard to eradicate Jack’s nasty from my person. Did you know that sperm swim fast? Like, super fast? I didn’t, and by the time I was topically de-sexed, it was far too late. Jack’s little dudes were speeding past Cervix Town and rushing north for Uterusville.

  It was only a matter of time.

  * * *

  “So, I have some news, and I know you’re going to hate it, so I’m just going to rip off the Band-Aid. Do you want it now or do you want me to wait until after Devi goes home?” Mom asked at half past eleven from her position before the stove. She was all perky-looking in her tank top and size-nothing yoga pants, her blond hair piled on top of her head in a sloppy bun that made me think of a Real Housewife. I glanced back at my room. The door was still shut with Devi inside, so I was pretty sure my convo with Mom would be private unless Devi had developed bat sonar hearing overnight.

  I looked up from my tea with sleep-soggy eyes. “Sure.”

  “We’re moving in with your grandmother in August.”

  I’d been reaching for a coffee mug, but I froze mid-reach. I was the possum in the middle of the road, watching the headlights approach and waiting to be run over.

  “Uhhhh...”

  It was the best I had.

  “Surprise?” Mom offered me a pained look over her shoulder. Seeing my trauma face, she stopped shoveling eggs onto a plate to pour me that cup of coffee. “She’s getting older and could use the help. The house is huge. And it’s only one town over. You have the car, so you can still see your friends. You’ll have to switch schools, but this makes a lot of sense for us, Sara. Financially, family-wise. I told the landlord last night we won’t be re-upping the lease.”

  I blinked at her incredulously. I loved my grandma—love her—but my mother also affectionately calls her the Geriatric Battleax for a reason. She took no crap, and when it came to throwing shoes, her aim was Olympian. It was also her preferred method of correcting people; I needed extra hands to count how many times my butt had suffered one of Mormor’s turbo-launched tennis shoes.

  “She’s going to drive you nuts. Us nuts,” I insisted.

  “Yep, you’re right, but we’ll figure it out. No rent means a lot of extra income, and someone I know is going to college in a couple years.” Mom slid the plate in front of me. I hoped she attributed the gassy expression on my face to her news and not the hangover. She hadn’t said much about the party or the previous night, probably because she was sitting on her ticking bomb of an announcement.

  “You’re serious,” I said. “I’m going to Stonington next year?”
<
br />   “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard.” She sat across from me and watched me not so much eat the eggs and toast as push them around and make interesting shapes with them. “I wanted to settle it before the end of the school year, so you could say your goodbyes and get contact info and stuff. Mormor’s excited, thinks it’ll be good for us.”

  “Mormor also thinks Tang is delicious. She’s wrong a lot.”

  “Serendipity.” Mom reached out to squeeze my hand. “I know it sucks, but Stonington has a great school. Better accredited than your current one. More AP classes, more languages to choose from than just Spanish and French. It’s not all bad, I promise.”

  I wanted to argue that it was a heaping helping of bad, but I understood why she’d made the decision, even if I didn’t like it. Mom struggled to support the household with her nine-to-five office job. She borrowed money from Mormor a lot to make sure she didn’t bounce checks or make late payments. I did want to go to college, and I’d get some scholarships with my grades, but Mom made just enough money that I’d fall into the uncomfortable bracket of “not poor, but definitely not middle class, either,” so financial aid was sketchy at best.

  Moving was probably the best solution, I just hated admitting it. A new school with new teachers, a new curriculum and new students to navigate sounded exhausting.

  “I get it,” was all I could muster. I ignored the eggs and nibbled on the toast, wincing when it hit the acid vat that was my stomach. Mom kept stroking my forearm, and I let her curl her fingers around mine between bites.

  “You’ll have the summer, at least? And it’s not far. You’ll see Devi.”

  I glanced toward my bedroom door, hearing the vague rustling of human stirring within. Devi groaned and something thudded. I hoped it wasn’t her body hitting the floor. “Yeah, I will. Once she’s back from Connecticut.”

  Mom followed my gaze to the groaning on the other side of the apartment. “Should I make her some breakfast, do you think?”