I was. There was no question about it.
“Maybe you’re afraid that you don’t belong in this perfect world any more than I do.”
But that was taking it too far. It made me feel defensive. I didn’t have to stay the poor kid. I was smart, I had gotten a scholarship to UMaine, I had just as much right to be there as every other student walking around campus.
“I seem to be fitting in just fine,” I told him. I moved past him towards the door. “Maybe you would too if you didn’t have such a huge chip on your shoulder.” I yanked at the doorknob and went into the hallway.
“You’re running away? Back to pretty boy? Tell me, is he a good f**k? Does he make you cry when you come?”
I paused, fury making me speechless. I couldn’t believe he would say that, that he would be so crude. That he would take such a beautiful moment in my life and make it seem so pathetic, so base. “Go f**k yourself, Heath.”
With that, I left.
It wasn’t satisfying to be the one to leave. But it was a lot better than being the one who was left.
Chapter Six
I texted Ethan that I felt better and wanted to go to dinner with his parents if they were still free. I was pissed off and I felt like I had something to prove. I wasn’t going to sit around my room and feel bad. I was going to go to dinner with the parents of my fiancé, a lawyer and a psychiatrist, respectively. Professional people who never once had made me feel like I was a usurper in their world. So there. Just there.
But before I went to dinner I did go into my closet, reach way up on the shelf and pull down a box that I had decorated in a misguided crafting phase freshman year. I had put scrapbook paper on all sides, only the edges weren’t straight and I hadn’t taped it correctly so several corners were peeling off. The ribbon I had run around the bottom was crooked. Inside were important papers, childhood mementoes. Including the one and only picture of Heath and me that existed.
I pulled the sandwich baggie out that I stored it in so it wouldn’t get scratched up or exposed to moisture. My anger dissipated and I ran my finger across the fading image. It had been taken the day that Heath had given me my first orgasm at someone’s hand other than my own. We were out on the fishing boat that he worked on part time. We had ‘borrowed’ it, to use his words, though I doubt his boss would have described it in quite the same way.
All afternoon we had driven around the island, mostly floating so there wouldn’t be a noticeable decrease on the gas gauge. I was scandalized that Heath seemed so nonchalant about it and kept questioning whether he would get fired if we got caught.
But he had just smiled and said, “Cat, nothing is a secret here, you know. Of course we’ll get caught. We’ve already gotten caught.”
I looked around and realized he was right. There were other boats out on the water, and there were eyes on all of them. There were eyes on the shore as well, and the ferry from Rockland. Fishermen knew each others’ boats on sight and they would know Heath wasn’t the owner of this one. People would talk and his boss would know.
“You’re crazy,” I told him. “You need this job.”
“I need to be alone with you more.”
At sixteen I had melted at that, and when he’d pulled me down on the bench next to him and found his way under my skirt while kissing me, I had been stunned at how amazing it felt, how alive he could make me, how real and tight and sparkling everything seemed. The sun was shining, the air was warm and briny, and when I shattered at his touch, I cried because I loved him so much and everything felt so beautiful, so right.
He took a picture of us with his phone, a grainy overexposed shot of me smiling at the camera, hair blowing all around my face. Heath was staring at me, and I had studied that stare a million times and every time I looked at it I always concluded the same thing- he loved me. It was there in the softness of his eyes, the rigidity of his jaw, the way he leaned towards me. He loved me, at least in that moment.
Apparently I had been right. I hadn’t lied to myself all those years. He’d left because he’d been afraid of going to prison, being labeled a sexual predator. It eased the sting a little. But just a little.
Because he still could have told me.
He hadn’t gotten fired that day. His boss had been amused and had mentioned he remembered wanting to impress a girl once upon a time. He did dock his pay for the gas, but when we did it two more times he didn’t even bother to do that.
As I got ready for dinner, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder who would have complained to social services about Heath and me. It couldn’t have been my mother. She had no idea what was going on. My father would never have called it in. He would have talked to me. He would have asked Heath to move out if he was worried about me getting pregnant or something like that. I didn’t think anyone in town would have given two shits about what Heath and I were doing in private.
Which left one person. Brian. The brother I no longer spoke to. The drunk brother who had laughed at my father’s wake and stormed out when I confronted him.
The brother who lived with his grad student girlfriend right there at UMaine near me, and who refused to acknowledge me as resolutely as I refused to acknowledge him.
I drank the second glass of wine Ethan’s parents had given to me and smiled and laughed a little too loudly at a joke his dad made. Ethan’s dad was a future version of him- charming and attractive and thoughtful. He commanded respect everywhere he went and he hadn’t even expressed concern over Aubrey and me being underage. He’d just ordered two bottles of wine and poured. The staff at the restaurant all knew him and clearly knew he tipped well, given how attentive they were to our table.
Aubrey was in a better mood than she had been on Saturday and she rolled her eyes and laughed too. “Dad, you’ve told that joke like seven thousand times.”
“But you’re still laughing.” He winked.
Even Ethan laughed at that. “Wow.”
“I wouldn’t laugh,” Aubrey said. “You’re looking at yourself in twenty-five years.”
He made a face. “Don’t be weird.”
“I’ve held up pretty well. Haven’t I, honey?” Ethan’s father, Joel, asked his mother.
She was essentially the future Aubrey, blonde and always pulled together, with a biting sense of humor to her husband’s goofiness. She patted his arm. “I’d still do you.”
“Oh, God!” Ethan reached for his wine. “Seriously, Mom?”