Unteachable(38)
Author: Leah Raeder

The apartment almost looked like an actual apartment now: tables, chairs, framed posters. Evan said he’d had his furniture in storage because he wasn’t sure how long he’d be here. Our eyes caught and held for a moment, then I went to the kitchen to grab beers. The two of them stood there in a shaft of dust-flecked sun, sweaty T-shirts plastered to their torsos, tipping their throats back to guzzle longnecks, and I sat on a box with an appraising look. Park laughed and did a few bodybuilder poses, veins bulging, then went to shower.

“So you’re staying here,” I said to Evan.

“Not sure yet. But I think I’ll live here a while, instead of merely surviving.”

I looked away, sipping from my bottle. My other hand was buried in my pocket, clutching the ring.

Park showered like a marine. He was out in three minutes, immaculate and combat-ready. “Borrowed a shirt, E,” he said. “I look better in it anyway.”

Evan and I glanced at each other, smiling. “E” seemed to fit him. Both old and new.

Park took off for St. Louis, and I spent most of the day helping Evan get settled. The whole time I thought, Tell him. Tell him not to get comfortable. Tell him you’re going. But I couldn’t. He was starting to seem like his old self, relaxed, that flashbulb smile catching me unpredictably, always making something in me go still, dazzled. The light waned and we didn’t touch the lamps. We sat on the couch in the last dregs of dusk, searing blood-red rays slowly cooling into cobalt. I lay against Evan’s chest, my head moving slightly with his breath, as if drifting on gentle waves.

“I can’t tell if this is a beginning or ending,” he said.

“What does it feel like?”

“Both.”

We ordered a margherita pizza and drank chianti and sat on the floor, watching indie films on his laptop until we became more interested in making out than watching. It was relaxed, too, not meant to lead to anything, slow and light and sweet, our mouths brushing and parting as if we kissed accidentally while trying to whisper to each other.

“Why did you leave me?” he said as I knelt over him, my knees astride his waist. The only light was the bluish glow from his laptop, painting us on one side. My hair coiled in dark tendrils around his neck.

“Because I saw us the way everyone else did. I thought I was just a type to you. Student. Young girl.”

“Teacher,” he said of himself. “Older man.”

I shook my head, my hair rippling.

“Why did you come back?” he said.

Because I love you, I thought. But I’m going to leave you again, in a few months. For good this time.

“Evan,” I said.

I was going to tell him. I really was. But he pulled me to him and kissed me again, and the lightness of it became him lightly lifting my shirt and me shrugging it off as if it was smoke drifting away, then rolling down my leggings, then opening his fly. His dick was hard and hot in my hand and all the old feelings came flooding back, his solid masculinity setting off a tripwire in me, a sudden intense vibration. He let me touch, his eyes closed, a faint groan coming out of him like he’d relinquished his hold on something delicate. I was in a trance. I wanted him but I was also outside myself, watching this happen to us. It was all me. My body atop his, my legs spreading, my fingers digging into his shoulders as I took him inside of me. The sound I made was full of pain and a sort of intolerable relief because I had missed this so much. It was less like f**king than nursing an ache, cradling him in that bruised, tender place inside me. I moved over him slowly, my bare knees burning on the cold wood floor. He still had his jeans on and they rubbed the insides of my thighs raw. The laptop cast our shadows on the wall and I turned my head, watching the slim, sinuous lines of my body joining to his, the rolling curve of my spine, my hair slithering and lashing like some strange spidery creature. He felt so thick inside me, so excessive. Pushing me to the limits of my skin. To the edge where my body met the world, where reality blurred with internal fiction, and I wasn’t sure who I was anymore aside from hollowness and fullness, ache and relief, repeating over and over. It had been so long that I couldn’t control myself, I started to come and gaped at him with a ridiculous look of surprise. His expression was serene, dreamy, the only change being his hands tightening on my h*ps when he came.

We stared at each other, motionless. Something flashed between us and broke open on his nak*d chest, leaving a glittering scar. A tiny diamond. Then another. Then another.

“Maise,” he said, touching my wet face.

I couldn’t stop. I pushed myself off of him and folded my legs beneath me, his come running warmly between my thighs. I covered my face with my hands. He sat up and pulled me close, holding me. After a while I felt a hot point at the crown of my head, trickling down through my hair, and realized he was crying, too.

It was different afterward. I said good night without kissing him and tried to sleep on the couch, watching shadows tilt slowly across the room as the earth turned beneath the stars, but when I was still awake at two in the morning I crept into his bedroom. He was awake, too, sitting up in the dark. Faint light drifted through the blinds like luminous breath, a sigh of night air. I climbed onto the mattress and sat beside him without touching. Our feet rested side by side.

“Can’t sleep,” I said.

“Me either. I kept thinking about you out there, wishing you were in here.”

Tiny firefly wings flitted in my chest. I imagined my heart pulsing, a miniature red glow.

“Wish granted,” I said. I kicked his foot, gently. “Remember the stepping stones in St. Louis?”

“We pretended to be pioneers on the Oregon Trail.”

“You lost all your bullets and food. You had to eat the oxen.”

“Yeah, but you died of dysentery.”

I laughed. “Live hard, die young, leave a disgusting corpse.”

He kicked my foot back. “Have you heard from any colleges yet?”

Deep breath. I faced him.

“I got into USC.”

Evan sat bolt upright. He turned to me, laughing in disbelief, his hand finding mine and squeezing so hard it hurt.

“I got accepted to a bunch, actually,” I said. “So did Wesley. We decided on USC.” Another breath. “I’m going to LA, Evan.”

“I am so proud of you.” His voice was a loud whisper. He was smiling.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Then why are you happy? I’m leaving.”

“I know.”

I wrenched my hand away. “So you’re fine with it? You don’t care if I go?”

He put his hand on my bare leg. He was shirtless, his body like carved marble in the eerie, milky light. “I care if you go,” he said. “More than you know. But I’m happy for you. This is your dream, Maise.”

It was. But I had another one, and it was about being loved, completely, for who I am. Body and mind. Flaws and strengths. Fears and dreams.

“Is this why you left me?” Evan said. “Because you knew you’d be leaving anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

His fingertips moved over my thigh, making my nerves shimmer with warmth. Then he took my hand again, softer now. “I’m not pulling the age card, I swear. But there’s something I believe. You should love something while you have it, love it fully and without reservation, even if you know you’ll lose it someday. We lose everything. If you’re trying to avoid loss, there’s no point in taking another breath, or letting your heart beat one more time. It all ends.” His fingers curled around mine. “That’s all life is. Breathing in, breathing out. The space between two breaths.”

Wesleypedia told me once that you take about seven hundred million breaths during your lifetime. Not until this moment had that number meant anything to me. Now I was counting every single one.

“Come with me to LA,” I said.

Evan smiled, lowering his eyes.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“I know.”

I reversed his hold on my hand and clutched his fingers in mine. “This is real. We’re still in love, and I miss you so much, Evan. I miss seeing the world with you. I miss your body, I miss your voice and your laugh and your smile and the way you make me feel like a child, in the best way. Afraid and full of wonder and totally alive. This is me telling you, without reservation, that I love you. Come with me to LA. Let’s find happiness.”

He was giving me that sweetly mournful look, and even as I said the words I knew they weren’t quite right. We didn’t need to go anywhere to find happiness. It was here, now, and if it ended in June when I got on a plane, the only choice was whether to be happy or miserable in this moment.

“Let’s not make any plans yet,” he said. “This is all so new. We’ve only just found each other again.”

I winced, turning away, and he touched my face and turned it back.

“You’re right, though. I am still in love with you.”

No kiss. No bombastic love ballad swelling from hidden speakers. Just a simple declaration in a dark room that was beginning to lighten.

I leaned against the wall and talked to him all night. I didn’t want dawn to ever come.

“Where were you this weekend?” Wesley said.

I popped the last of my grilled cheese into my mouth and gave him a long look. The cafeteria was loud, kids nervy and restive, dying to go wild during spring break next week.

“In Carbondale,” I said. “With Evan.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Yes.”

Wesley didn’t blink. “Are we still going to LA?”

“Yes,” I said, and took a sip of 7-Up. “I’m not giving up my future for a man.”

“Even a man you’re in love with?”

“Even a man I’m in love with.”

He shrugged. “Guess I’m more romantic than you, then. I’d give up my future for true love.”

“That’s not romantic, that’s stupid. You sound like one of these girls whose only career aspiration is housewife.”

“I like to subvert gender roles,” Wesley said, and I laughed.

In the lab later, I pulled him aside to a quiet corner. “How are we on footage?”

“Pretty good. Still waiting on your pièce de résistance.”

“Friday,” I said. “Do or die.”

“Do, and hopefully not die,” he said.

“Here’s the deal,” I told Gary, sitting with him at the back of a restaurant. “If my friend comes through, then Yvette is even with you, and I’m out.”

Gary’s eyes narrowed shrewdly as he smiled. “Everyone says that, sweetheart. ‘I’m only in until I get X amount. As soon as I hit X, I’m out.’” He took a hit of scotch. “It gets its claws in you, one way or another. You get addicted to the merchandise or you get addicted to the money.”

“Well, I’m different. I don’t want either.”

“You’ve made a pretty little sum so far, haven’t you?”