Page 76 of The Way I Used to Be
“Right on,” he says through beer breath.
We waste no time with pretense. He rips a button as he clumsily gets my shirt off. At this rate, Steve won’t even know I was gone. In just four steps, we’re tumbling into Rachael’s tiny bed. He unbuckles, unbuttons, and unzips his pants. “God, you’re fuckin’ hot,” he murmurs into my mouth while trying to simultaneously kiss me, get my pants off, and get his hands inside my bra. I reach into my back pocket for my just-in-case-Steve-turned-out-to-be-not-just-a-dull-polite-guy condom. He takes his shirt off. His body feels soft and flabby against mine. That’s fine. I don’t care about that. I care only about this moment—about forgetting, about leaving myself behind.
Just as he’s sliding my pants down over my butt, the door opens. I look at the doorway. Two bodies: Rachael, I presume, and the guy whose hand is attached to her hand.
“Dude, what the fuck?” the guy who’s on top of me shouts at the two dark figures.
“This ismyroom, asshole!” A very tiny Rachael marches in and flips the light switch on; I cover my eyes with one hand, my body with the other.
“What the fuck?” I hear a strangely familiar voice say very slowly.
I spread my fingers and peek through. No. No, no, no.
“Eden, get up!” he shouts. “Hey! Get up right now, you fucking asshole, that’s my sister!” he yells at the guy.
“Get out of my bed—this is disgusting!” Rachael screams at us, with her skinny jeans and faux-punk haircut, near tears. She could pass for cool, or at least interesting, out on the street. Too bad in here, her tweenie magazine centerfold posters of steamy, shirtless celebs give her away. She’s more of a poser than I am, even. I start laughing. I want to ask her if her nose ring is magnetic, but I can’t seem to remember how to use my voice at the moment. The guy hovers over me, looking down at me like I’m nuts.
“I’ll kick your fucking ass”—Caelin charges the bed—“if you don’t get the fuck off my sister right now!”
“Dude, chill the fuck out,” the anonymous guy on top of me says as he tries frantically to zip his pants back up so he can get off me.
“Everybody needs to get the hell out of here now!” a high-pitch-voiced Rachael shouts, hands on hips, looking not at all threatening, just comical.
Finally the guy is standing and I struggle to button and zip my jeans. “Caelin, whaddaareyou...doing—”Here, I was going to say. It surprises me how much I’m slurring, how slow I’m talking, how dizzy I suddenly feel, as I brace myself against the desk.
“What the hell areyoudoing?” he screams in my face. I can barely stand without falling over—I’m definitely drunker than I thought I was.
“And you,” he says, pushing the guy up against Rachael’s wall, knocking over a stack of books on the floor. “She’s sixteen years old, you pervert! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Stop it!” Rachael yells. “You’re destroying my room.”
“Dude, chill—I didn’t know that, okay? I don’t want any trouble, really.” He holds his hands up in the don’t-shoot-I’m-innocent way. He seems genuinely scared of my brother.
“I’m not six—”Teen, I try, but Caelin’s eyes flash over to me and he has this look of disgust and hate in them that makes me freeze. Just freeze. Because my brother just caught me almost having sex with some guy in a room that he was supposed to be having sex in, with the girl whose room this actually is, and now I’m standing here in my lacy black bra and it’s obviously hard for him, my own brother, not to look at my breasts.
“Jesus-fucking-Christ, Edy! Would you put some fucking clothes on?” He looks down and backs away from the guy.
“I’m outta here,” the guy says, scooping up his shirt as he stumbles out into the noise.
“Were you actually going to have sex with that guy, Eden? Do you even know him?”
I finish buttoning my shirt and pick the unopened condom up off the bed, shoving it back into my pocket. “So what, do you even know her?” I ask, gesturing to Rachael, who’s inspecting her things to make sure we didn’t steal or ruin anything.
“You know what, I really just want you both to get the hell out of here now—right now,” Rachael says, thrusting the two beer bottles into my brother’s hands.
“I’m so sorry about this,” Caelin says, pulling her aside.
Rachael crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “Just go,” she orders.
“Yeah,” he whispers, “sorry.”
We file out of Rachael’s room and into the common area without a word, without eye contact. “I cannot motherfuckingbelieve this,” he says under his breath as he sets the beer bottles down on top of a stack of papers on the table next to the door. Once we get out in the hall, he yells, “What the hell are you even doing here, Edy?” Partially because of the music, but mostly because he’s mad, really mad, madder than I’ve seen him in a long time.
“Apparently, the same thing you’re doing here, Caelin.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t. Fucking. Do. That. Don’t be a smart-ass.”
“I’mfuckingnot!” I yell in his face, not sure yet if he’s making me want to be mean or funny. I feel my mouth grin. “Or are you just mad because I fucked up your fucking plans. That I fucked up your plans to get fucked, I mean.” Still, that’s not what I meant to say. “You know what I mean. You wanted to fuck that girl.” I laugh because the word “fuck” sounds like the funniest word ever.
