Page 6 of Tonight's the Night
2
Angela
Oh god.The more he tries to push me away, the more I want him. I want him to growlgo to your little partywith his face between my legs while he’s wiping my juices off his chin. To suck me raw until my clit is bruised and then tell me to go play around with boys my ownage.
But I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t touch anyone else. He could tell me what he and I are doing is wrong and needs to be kept between us and that I should go live my life like any nineteen-year-old girl should, and I would still keep myself only for him. No one else would touch me.Ever.
I squirm in my seat. I think I might be getting it wet. I still have the bikini bottoms on and they’re so wet that once we get to the party and I take my frayed jean shorts off they might just slide right down my legs at the softest gust ofwind.
“You missed the turn!” Emily whips her head to the right and follows the street I missed with her eyes. I offered to drive because I needed to do something with my hands. I white-knuckle the steering wheel and narrow my eyes at the road ahead of me with intent to turn us around as soon as I can. I guess I was a little too distracted by Joshua to pay attention to where I was going. At least I’m paying attention to the road in front ofme.
The street signs, not so much. I correct our course and apologize, turning into a driveway so I can back up and go back to where I should have been driving us allalong.
We continue to make conversation, discussing the classes we’ve both signed up for for next semester. Emily intends to go to medical school. She’s talked about it since we were kids. She was the only thirteen-year-old I’d ever met who knew exactly what she wanted to do and, even more, how she was going to get there. She didn’t just say she wanted to be a doctor. She knew she wanted to be an internal medicine generalist with a private practice and knew exactly where she wanted to go for undergrad and for medical school. Because we’re in totally different fields — I’m studying English and will probably become a teacher like my dad — we only have a few classestogether.
And honestly, we arebothprobably all the better for it. I love her but it’s getting hard to be around her so much because all I ever think about is her dad. It’s become a distraction. We were going to go off to college together and have so many firsts together. We were going to haverealboyfriends for the first time and actually have sex with them for the first time, and we planned to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. But after everything that happened inside me when I saw how her dad looked at me that night a year ago, it makes me sad to be around her - not because of anything between us, but because I know she’d be devastated if anything happened between her dad andme.
He’d already been dragged through the mud during his divorce. We grew up in a small, insular, and cliquey community here out in East Hampton, and when the divorce happened, it seemed that everyone took sides. Even our teachers had something to say. None of it was nice. And even though Emily’s mom was the one ostensibly at fault -shewas the one who’d had the affair,shewas the one who’d broken the vows of marriage - some people took her side. The saddest I think I felt through the entire divorce was when I was dropping some books off at a classmate’s house and went around to the back yard no one was answering the door and I overheard my classmate’s mom and her friends talking about how a woman driven into the arms of another man had to be pushed there by her ownhusband.
It didn’t make any sense to me at the time and it stilldoesn’t.
But it was proof that I might not be as understanding about the way the world works as I’d thought Iwas.
And to think that Emily could be hurt by the whispers of our neighbors and friends if her father did something with me. I know his name would be dragged through the mud yetagain.
It was like someone else had inhabited my body back there when I was alone in his office with him. What the hell was I trying to do - seduce him? I feel disgusted with myself. I’d even planned out the whole stupid stunt with making him put his hands on me to assist with his car key. Ugh. I can’t help but shiver with coldshame.
We finally arrive at theparty.
“Oh, yay!” Emily squeals, pushing her door open and piling out. I cut the engine and get out on my side, staring up at the massive house where the party is. Emily told me everyone would be here, and she’s right -everyoneis here. I look up at second floor of the house, where there are floor-to-ceiling windows, and the lights are off but I can see the movements of shadows where people are dancing. The thudding bass of some slow R&B song is making the ground beneath mevibrate.
“The reunion,” I observe dryly. Emily comes around and links arms withme.
“The reunion!” she counters, getting a little closer to me as we make our way up the driveway. “And who are you planning toreunitewith tonight? Are you looking to get intotrouble?”
“Trouble?”
I came into this community as a true outsider. I was thrust upon its inhabitants when both of my parents passed away in a car accident and I had to live with a long-lost aunt. The sister of my father, and a woman he always called a “bitch on wheels.” See, he didn’t like her phony elitism and he didn’t like the way she’d had an affair and then divorced her husband and then married the man she’d had the affair with, and then was somewhat…callous when he passed away six monthslater.
“I can’t come to the service,” she’d fretted to my father, putting a handkerchief to her breast. “I have to remain home and wait for the caterers. And it would be too hard for me to see my poor deceased husband lying dead in a coffin. Why do Catholics insist on having open caskets? Oh, Richard, it’shorrible!”
I laughed at that exchange between her and my dad. She wasn’t trying to be comically moribund, but hell, I found it darkly funny, and I’d apologized to my dad for laughing at her. This was after she shot me a death-glance that made me think her eyes were going toliterallypop out of her head and made me apologize to herfirst.
“Laughter is an involuntary human response just like a sneeze is,” I’d said to my dad in the car. “You can’t keep itin.”
“Youcankeep it in,” my dad toldme.
“Sorry.” I’d folded my arms across my chest and slumped in myseat.
“You apologized too quickly,” he’d said, peering at me kindly through the rear-view mirror. “I was going to say that youcankeep it in, but it’s unhealthy. She’s a bitch. Don’t worry abouther.”
Then I’d had to go and live with her just six short months after that. I spent a lot of time — most of it, in fact — at Emily’s house, though, because my Aunt Anne, in addition to being a little bitchy (I don’t like the wordbitchand won’t use it to describe a person, but for some reason I’m okay withbitchyand actually kind of think it can be used as a compliment), was odd. My chores around the house didn’t consist of mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. No, she had people to do that. My chores involved the strangest little things, things that maids and personal chefs didn’tdo.
Like when she needed new napkins. She got on this kick where she needed new napkins for a Good Friday dinner she was hosting (she’d converted from Catholicism to Judaism and then back to Catholicism, which I thought wasn’t possible but she insisted it was), and instead of simply buying some new napkins, she’d had me purchase a new tablecloth and then cut it into twelve identical rectangles. Don’t ask me why. I made the mistake of askingherwhy and was met with a silent rebuke in the form of an exaggerated eyeroll.
So my addition to this world made me anoutsider.
“Elijah’s going to be here,” Emily says, patting my hand, her eyes sliding mischievously around the front yard. We make our way up the straight walk-way to the front door and I go to ring the bell but the door opens without us having to announce ourarrival.
