When Jake came home from his dates at two or three in the morning, I always knew. I would wake up, miles away from where he was, and see, like a nightmare, Jake pulling his shirt from his jeans and rubbing the back of his neck. We had this connection with each other. Sometimes, if I wanted to talk to him, all I had to do was picture his face, and within a half hour he’d be on my doorstep. “What?” he’d say. “You needed me?” Sometimes, because I felt him calling out, I would phone his house late at night. I’d huddle in the kitchen, curling my bare toes under the hem of my nightgown, dialing in the pencil-thin gleam of the streetlight. Jake answered at the end of the first ring. “Wait till you hear this one,” he’d say, his voice bubbling over with the fading heat of sex. “We’re at Burger King, and she reaches under the table and unzips my fly. Can you believe it?”
And I would swallow. “No,” I’d tell him. “I can’t.”
I had no doubt that Jake loved m ináJake lovee. He told me, when I asked him, that I was his best friend; he sat with me the whole summer I had mononucleosis and read me trivia questions from those Yes & No game books that come with magic pens. One night, over a campfire on the shores of the lake, he had even let me cut his thumb and press it close to mine, swapping blood, so that we’d always have each other.
But Jake shrank away from my touch. Even if I brushed his side, he flinched as if I’d hit him. He never put his arm around my shoulders; he never even held my hand. At sixteen, I was skinny and small, like the runt of a litter. Someone like Jake, I told myself, would never want someone like me.
The year I turned seventeen, things began to change. I was a junior at Pope Pius; Jake-out of high school for two years-worked full time with his father at the garage. I spent my afternoons and my weekends with Jake, but every time I saw him my head burned and my stomach roiled, as if I’d swallowed the sun. Sometimes Jake would turn my way and start to speak: “Flea,” he’d say, but his eyes would cloud over, and the rest of the words wouldn’t come.
It was the year of my junior prom. The sisters at Pope Pius decorated the gymnasium with hanging foil stars and crinkled red streamers. I was not planning to go. If I had asked Jake he would have taken me, but I hated the thought of spending a night I had dreamed of for years with him humoring me. Instead I watched the other girls in the neighborhood take pictures on their front lawns, whirling ghosts in white and pink tulle. When they had left, I walked the three miles to Jake’s house.
Molly Flanagan saw me through the screen door. “Come in, Paige,” she yelled. “Jake said you would be here.” She was in the den, playing Twister with Moira and Petey, the two youngest Flanagans. Her rear end was lifted into the air, and her arms were crossed beneath her. Her heavy bosom grazed the colored dots of the game mat, and between her legs, Moira was precariously reaching for a green corner circle. Ever since I had met her three years before, I had wanted Molly as my own mother. I had told Jake and his family that my mother had died and that my father was still so upset by it, he couldn’t bear to hear her name brought up. Molly Flanagan had patted my arm, and Terence had raised his beer to coast my mother, as was the custom of the Irish. Only Jake realized I was not telling the truth. I had never actually come out and said this, but he knew the corners of my mind so well that from time to time I caught him staring at me, as if he sensed I was holding something back.
“Flea!” Jake’s voice cut through the romping music of the television, startling Moira, who fell and caught her mother’s ankle, pulling her down as well.
“Jake thinks he’s the king of England,” Molly said, lifting her youngest daughter.
I smiled and ran up the stairs. Jake was bent over in his closet, looking for something in the mess of socks and sneakers and dirty underwear. “Hi,” I said.
He did not turn around. “Where’s my good belt?” he asked, the simple question you’d put to a wife or a longtime lover.
I reached under his arm, tugging the belt from the peg where he’d placed it days before. Jake b waáfore. Jakegan to thread the leather through his khaki slacks. “When you go to college,” he said, “I’m going to be lost.”
I knew as he said it that I would never go to college, never even draw another picture, if Jake asked me to stay. When he turned to me, my throat ached and my vision grew blurry. I shook my head and saw that he was dressed for a date; that his grease-spotted jeans and blue work shirt were puddled in a corner under the window. I turned away fast so that he wouldn’t see my eyes. “I didn’t know you were going out,” I said.
Jake grinned. “Since when haven’t I been able to get a Friday-night date?” he said.
He moved past me, and the air carried the familiar scent of his soap and his clothing. My head began to pound, surging like a tide, and I believed with all my heart that if I didn’t leave that room I was going to die.
I turned and ran down the stairs. The door slammed behind me, and the wind picked up my feet for me. I heard the concern in Molly’s voice reaching out, and the whole way home I felt Jake’s eyes and their questions burning into my back.
At home, I pulled on my nightgown and fell into bed, drawing the covers over my head to change the fact that it was only dinnertime. I slept on and off, waking with a start just after two-thirty. Tiptoeing past my father’s room, I closed the door, and then I went down to the kitchen. Feeling my way through the night, I unlocked the door and I opened the screen for Jake.
He held a dandelion in his hand. “This is for you,” he said, and I stepped back, frustrated because I could not see his eyes.
“That’s a weed,” I told him.
He came closer and pressed the wilted stem into my hand. As our palms touched, the fire in my stomach leaped higher to burn my throat and the dry backs of my eyes. This was like being on a roller coaster, like falling off the edge of a cliff. It took me a second to place the feeling-it was fear, overwhelming fear, like the moment you realize you’ve escaped a car accident by precious inches. Jake held my hand, and when I tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let go.
“Tonight was your prom,” he said.
“No kidding.”
Jake stared at me. “I saw everyone coming home. I would have gone with you. You know I would have gone with you.”
I lifted my chin. “It wouldn’t have been the same.”
Finally, Jake released me. I was shocked by how cold I became, just like that. “I came for a dance,” he said.
I looked around the tiny kitchen, at the dishes still in the sink and the muted gleam of the white appliances. Jake pulled me toward him until we were touching at our palms, our shoulders, our hips, our chests. I could feel his breath on my cheek, and I wondered what was keeping me standing. “There isn’t any music,” I said.
“Then you aren’t listening.” Jake began to move with me, swaying back and forth. I closed my eyes and pressed my bare feet against the linoleum, craving the cold that came from the floor when the rest of me was being consumed by flames I could not see. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
Jake let go of my hands and held my face in his palms. He stared at me and brushed his lips over mine, just as he had three years before at the drive-in, the kiss I had carried with me like a holy relic. I leaned against him, and he twisted his fingers into my hair, hurting me. He moved his tongue over my lips and into my mouth. I felt hungry. Something inside me was tearing apart, and at my core was something hot, hard and white. I wrapped my arms around Jake’s neck, not knowing if I was doing this right, just understanding that if I did not have more, I would never forgive myself.