“Hey, is Wavy home?” he said. He was real.
I stood there like an idiot for a minute, while my brain tried to come up with a reason that Joshua would be standing at our door asking for Wavy. How did he even know her name? Had she actually introduced herself to him at the party?
“Sure. Come in.”
I parked him on the couch next to my essay-writing mess, and went to get Wavy. She was in her room, typing, with her Spanish dictionary open on the desk. I think she had a Spanish Lit essay and some kind of Quantum Mechanics final left.
“Joshua’s here to see you,” I said.
Wavy shook her head and waved her hands at me in baffled horror. Under stress, she still defaulted to silence. While I waited to see what she would do, I had several unkind thoughts. If Joshua was attracted to fragile, ethereal Wavy, I’d never stood a chance with him. The nicest things I’ve been called are exuberant and earthy. Anyway, I was the one who invited him to the party. Where did he get off coming around to see my roommate?
“Not here,” she finally said.
“Too late. I already told him you were here.”
I stood there, enjoying the panicked look on her face, until I really thought about Wavy for a minute. Kellen was serving a ten-year sentence. What was she going to do—wait for him? He was never going to be not too old for her, and now he was a convicted felon. She needed to move on with her life.
“What could it hurt to talk to Joshua?” I said. “He’s nice. He’s funny. Plus, he’s gorgeous. Seriously, have you looked at him? He’s like a pre-med Adonis.”
Wavy made the face that meant, “Do you know what it’s like being me?” I honestly didn’t want to know, because she was pretty fucked up. I liked to play at tragedy, but she drank it out of her baby bottle.
“Just go talk to him,” I said. “I’ll save you if it gets too awkward.”
Wavy stood up, and I thought she was going out to the living room. Instead, she walked over and shut her bedroom door in my face.
6
WAVY
I closed the door, but Renee opened it back up. We glared at each other until she said, “You’re a coward, Wavonna Lee Quinn.”
I didn’t fall for that trick in sixth grade. I wasn’t going to now. I flipped Renee off and tried to close the door, but she held her ground.
“Pot calling kettle,” I said.
“That is such bullshit. Show me one time I was a coward.”
Renee thought recklessness was the same thing as bravery. I stepped past her into the hall and walked toward the kitchen. She came after me.
In the front room, we passed Joshua, who looked confused. Not a Kellen kind of confused, where he always worried he’d misunderstood or done or said something wrong. Joshua thought someone else had made a mistake.
I stopped in front of the refrigerator and Renee was under such a head of steam that she bumped into my back. At the party, she had written Darrin’s phone number on a napkin and said, “Yeah, I’d love to go out with you.” The napkin was still stuck to the fridge. She hadn’t called him. He wasn’t her type. Not good-looking enough and probably too nice to break her heart.
“Are you seriously going to wait for a guy you haven’t seen since you were fourteen? How do you know he even still wants you?” she said.
I jerked Darrin’s number off the fridge, sending the magnet flying. When I pinned the napkin to Renee’s chest with my forefinger, she made a surprised little O with her mouth.
“Coward,” I said.
She smirked.
“Tell you what. I’ll call him after you talk to Joshua. And you have to try, Wavy. You can’t sit there like a stone until he gives up. You have to try or it doesn’t count.” Renee knew me. When I let go of the napkin, she stuck it back on the fridge.
I walked into the living room, feeling nauseated. Not because I was nervous about talking to Joshua, but because my stomach was full of the poison of Renee saying, “How do you know he even still wants you?” How did I know?
“Is something wrong?” Joshua stood up from the couch.
“No.” I took a deep breath and sat down on one end of the couch. Joshua sat down in the middle. Closer than I liked.
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by, since I didn’t have your phone number,” he said.
“Hey, I’m gonna go downstairs and get the mail,” Renee said. On her way to the front door, she gave me a warning look.
“So, Wavy. I think your name is so cool. Kind of hippy, but not in a goofy way. Not like Moon Unit,” Joshua said, once we were alone.
What was I supposed to say to that? I’m glad you like my name. The man I love gave it to me. That probably wasn’t what Renee meant when she said I had to try. That was me being impossible. Aunt Brenda said that about me. You’re impossible! Most days I was impossible. Like a unicorn.
“Short for Wavonna,” I said.
“Really? I never met anyone with either of those names. So that’s pretty cool. I mean, I have a pretty common name, so it’s neat to meet people who have unusual names.”
Joshua’s teeth were perfect. He must have had braces. Renee talked about him like he was a statue. David standing naked in a museum in Italy. I thought he was more like a mannequin in a department store. He smelled like a mannequin, too. Soap, deodorant, cologne, mouthwash. How was I supposed to tell what he smelled like under all of that?
“So, what’s your major?” he said.
“Astrophysics.” I didn’t want him to panic, but as soon as I said it, his eyes got bigger.
“Oh, um, wow. So, uh, what do you do with a degree in astrophysics?”
“Become an astrophysicist.”
Joshua stared at me. I was being impossible again, saying things he didn’t know how to respond to. Serial conversation killer, Renee called me.
When she came back with the mail, I expected her to give me an accusatory look, since Joshua and I were sitting there in silence. Instead, she slammed the front door and practically ran across the room to the kitchen.
“Wavy, will you come in here?” she called.
7
RENEE
I went down to get the mail to give Joshua and Wavy a chance to talk in private. She did need to get on with her life. Then I saw what was in the mailbox: a pizza coupon flier and one of those familiar, heartbreaking envelopes. A fancy envelope, addressed to Jesse Joe Barfoot, Jr. Inmate #451197. Stamped UNAUTHORIZED CORRESPONDENCE in big red letters. Except this one wasn’t. This envelope had a big red stamp that said RELEASED.
A less romantic person might have taken a more measured approach. Me, I thought, Screw moving on. This is true love! Clutching the mail in one hand, and my boobs in the other, I ran up both flights of stairs.
I put the envelope down in the middle of the kitchen table, and when Wavy walked in, I was staring at it in disbelief. She picked up the letter and her hands started to shake. I can only imagine what was going on inside her head, because my brain was lit up like the Vegas strip.
“Does that mean he’s been paroled? Don’t they have to notify you? If he’s out, why hasn’t he come to see you?” I said.
Oh, right. If he hadn’t been getting her letters, he wouldn’t know our address. It wasn’t like he could drop by her aunt’s house and say, “Hey, where’s Wavy?”
How was he going to find her?
He wasn’t. We were going to find him. At last, I wasn’t just a fat college girl watching a soap opera. I was part of the drama. I was going to rewrite the third act and change it from tragedy to happily ever after.
While Wavy sat there in shock, the envelope pressed between both her hands, I picked up the phone and started making calls, all of them long distance and out of state. I wondered what Mrs. Brenda Newling would say when Wavy’s phone bill hit triple digits.
“Hey, what’s up?” Joshua said. He stood in the doorway, looking unbelievably sexy.
“Give us a couple minutes, okay?” I was on hold with someone at the office where
they kept the records for the state’s sex offender registry, a thing I hadn’t even known existed until somebody at the Department of Corrections transferred me there.
“Is she okay?” He was looking at Wavy, who seemed a little shaky.
“She’s had some news—”
“Ma’am?” Someone came back on the other end of the phone line. “Do you have the offender’s full legal name?”
“Jesse Joe Barfoot, Jr. I don’t know what the process is—”
“One moment, please.”
Wavy looked at me expectantly.
The woman came back on the line and read me a street address, apartment number, and city. Wellburg, which was across the state line, less than three hours away. I wrote it down on the back of the pizza flier, and as soon as Wavy saw it, she jumped up from the table and brushed past Joshua in the doorway. I knew exactly where she was going: to get ready for her reunion with Kellen.
“So, do you think I have a chance with Wavy?” Joshua shot me a panty-melting grin.
For a few seconds, a whole scenario played out in my mind. After I broke the bad news to him about Wavy’s fiancé being paroled, I would usher him into my bedroom. Wavy could drive herself to Wellburg. Meanwhile, I would comfort Joshua, listening sympathetically, while I arranged myself on my bed in a flattering pose. I would make him feel sexy and smart and funny.
That’s exactly what I was imagining. I would get him in my room and seduce him, thereby accomplishing the whole point of me inviting him to the party in the first place. He really was amazingly good-looking. It wouldn’t be a hardship to fall into bed with him, but what kind of lies would I have to tell myself to pretend I wasn’t a second choice rebound?
“The thing is,” I said. “Wavy has a lot of baggage. Like a nine-piece matched set of hard-sided Samsonite. The girl is so far—”
For the first time in my life, I stopped. It wasn’t my story to tell.
“What? Help me here,” Joshua said. Even though I wasn’t going to kiss his booboo and make it better, I yanked the Band-Aid off.
“Wavy’s engaged. She’s going to see her fiancé as soon as she gets out of the shower.”
* * *
I would have needed new clothes and hours to get ready. Wavy showered, fluffed her wispy hair, and put on her favorite dress. It was gray with thin white stripes in it, worn to limp softness. She hadn’t seen him in almost seven years and that’s what she was wearing.
On the drive, we made a plan. Or I made a plan anyway. I would drop Wavy off at Kellen’s house, and then I would go to the library at Wellburg College and work on my Women’s Studies essay. That way my evening wouldn’t be a total waste, and Wavy could check in with me before I drove home.
By the time we got to Wellburg, it was late afternoon and it had started to rain. We circled Kellen’s address and then parked half a block back, where we could see the front door to the apartment building, which was a run-down brick tenement. It faced onto what was basically an alley, with garbage Dumpsters on the sidewalks.
Would Wavy want to live with him in that dismal place? It hadn’t occurred to me that I was orchestrating the end of us being roommates. I’d been going along thinking I was Shakespeare, but I’d written myself out of the play. I was staring out at the rain, feeling sorry for myself, when this big old truck drove past and parked at the end of the block.
“Nineteen sixty-nine Ford F-250,” Wavy said. She was weird that way. She always knew the years of cars. The man who got out of the truck wore blue work pants and a blue and white striped shirt, like a uniform. Reaching back into the truck cab, he pulled out a baseball bat. He ducked his head against the rain, but he didn’t run for cover. Walking up the block slowly, he looked around, but he didn’t see us watching him.
8
WAVY
Kellen had lost weight. Of course, they hadn’t fed him well in prison, but I could make all his favorite foods and fix that. Seeing him free, my heart jumped in my chest. Not empty, not burning. Alive.
“Oh my God, that’s him? That’s him,” Renee said. “What are you going to do?”
I opened the car door, but she grabbed the sleeve of my raincoat.
“Wait. Should I wait for you? What should I do?”
“I don’t know.” My heart was moving too far ahead to think about that.
“Well, I’ll be at the library. Just let me know everything’s okay.”
Kellen was already through the apartment building door. I ran across the street, splashing through puddles, and my hand shook on the door handle. I was all the things I’d almost forgotten how to be—nervous, excited, happy. I wanted to run up the stairs, but my legs could only manage one step at a time.
There was no doorbell, no peephole.
I knocked and Kellen answered.
Water dripped out of his starling-wing hair. Embroidered over the pocket of his wet uniform shirt: Jesse Joe. Three buttons undone, showing the tops of the arrows and the calumet on his chest.
“Wavy,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t thought about that at all. Did I have to say anything? I never had before. I took a step forward, wanting to be in the same room with him. To breathe his air. His eyes weren’t soft. They were hot and frightened. He was afraid of me. I was afraid of me.
Sunlight broke through the clouds and rain stopped pounding against the windows. Kellen’s breath hitched. Anything could happen. Everything. I pressed against him, smelling him. His sweat.
“Wavy, you can’t be here.”
I tried to will him to kiss me, the way I used to, but he frowned down at me with his mouth closed. I turned my back on him, and a spiraling hot thing in my chest said, Leave. Behind me was the kitchen table. Grabbing the closest chair, I carried it to Kellen and stepped up. Then I was the Giant, towering over him. I took his face in my hands the way he did on the morning I knew he loved me. I lifted his mouth to mine. Would he resist? No.
He opened his lips and I knew Val had been right. People could get into you that way. I was creeping into Kellen. He wanted me to. He kissed me, but he wouldn’t touch me, so I took off the raincoat. I unbuttoned the dress myself and dropped it to my feet. The slip, all slippery silk, whispered off me. The panties, which I wanted him to ease down the way he had the first time. The last time. This time my hands did it. My hands for his hands.
Freeing his mouth for a moment, I looked into his eyes, to see if he would come to me.
“Kellen,” I said.
“Are you real?”
I nodded. His hands came to rest on my hips, and he lifted me off the chair. I wrapped my legs around him and he carried me to the bedroom. I’d always imagined it on the kitchen table, or the desk at the garage, but a bed was good, too. Everything I needed was there. His shirt off quick, his arms cool with rain and his chest sticky with sweat. I ran my hands over him and found a long puckered scar that split the skin over his ribs. Something they had done to him in prison.
I was eager to rub my tits against his, to show him mine were finally bigger. His hands were all over me. My hands everywhere else. His mouth laughing, even while he tried to kiss every part of me.
“Goddamn, these are some boots. How do you get ’em off?” he said.
“Slowly.”
He gave up on unlacing when I slid my feet over his shoulders.
His tongue felt good, going into where I was already wet for him. I’d been wet there for him for seven years. His tongue was good but not enough. Pulling him to me, I found less belly to slip my hand past to reach his belt.
“Orion.” The same buckle, the one I knew how to open, and he was in my hand. We could go fast now. He shoved his pants down only as far as we needed. That was how much he wanted me, he wasn’t even going to take his boots off.
He was so heavy my breath caught in my chest. That was pleasure, being pinned under him, where the air was thin. His cock was as hot as I remembered pressed between my legs.
We could move time. Go back to that day.
Undo seven years. I opened my eyes, to let him into me everywhere.
That first moment, when he pushed against me, hardness against softness, was wonderful. The next moment, when he pushed into me, burning pressure and a tearing pain. It hurt more than I thought it would. Kellen was in me everywhere. Inside my nerves. He moaned against my ear.
“Oh, Wavy. I love you all the way.”
I pressed my face into his neck and held on, not breathing, thinking the pain would stop, the way it had when he put his fingers into me. I waited for it to go to burning pleasure, because it couldn’t go on being unbearable. But it did. The pain cauterized my throat. I thought I might choke until the seal broke open, let out the sob I’d been keeping in.
Kellen stopped. I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn’t look back.
“Are you okay?” he said.
I nodded but the tears I’d been holding back escaped. He jerked out of me, as painful as the going in.
“Oh, Jesus, Wavy. You waited for me?”
“Who else?” I said.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d wait for me. I never thought—after all that mess, I never thought you’d want me. You didn’t come to my parole hearings, and I figured I’d ruined everything.”
He was pulling away from me, but I dug in, my nails into his shoulders, my heels into his thighs.
“Hold on tight. Don’t let go.” I learned that from him.
“I’m hurting you, though. And we shouldn’t be doing this. You don’t under—”
“Yes.” I held him tighter, reached between us, found him sticky and still hard. He groaned when I pressed him into me. I only had to guide him there and he stopped arguing. My stomach clenched and my legs shook when he sank into me. Kellen stopped again.
I clawed at his back.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“All the way.”
He started again, slowly, and as much as it hurt, I could see how eventually it would stop hurting. The next time and the time after. Given enough time there would be burning pleasure where my softness and his hardness met.