Hilary Fields - Bliss

“You, ah, wanna hit the semi with me?”

Sera had felt like she’d been hit by a semi. She honestly wasn’t sure if she wanted to go. She didn’t know Robbie. Dancing made her queasy. And damn it, she’d really been looking forward to seeing if she could get those caramels to firm up properly. But one didn’t say no to a date with Robbie Markham. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience; even Sera could see that. Caramels could wait.

“Sure,” she’d croaked. She’d really, really wanted to throw up.

But she’d said she would show up, and now Robbie would be meeting her at the school in less than half an hour.

Wonder if Pauline will notice if I take a nip from her liquor cabinet, Sera thought as she made ready to leave. Pauline kept some Kentucky bourbon and a bottle of single malt around somewhere, she knew from previous raids. While a shot of sour, fiery Maker’s Mark was more likely to set her stomach roiling than settle the butterflies currently occupying it, Sera was willing to risk it.

Pauline, unfortunately, was blocking the booze. When Sera emerged from her small bedroom into their living room, she found her aunt sprawled out on her settee, a big Victorian affair draped in lace doilies and tassels, reading her tattered copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex for the fourteenth time. Seeing her niece decked out in gay cotton print and dark, dramatic makeup, she leapt to her feet.

“Rite of passage!” she cried, throwing her hands to the sky and planting her bare, toe-ringed feet in a wide stance. “Don’t move a muscle, kiddo. Let me get my camera. I gotta record this for posterity.” Pauline dashed to her bedroom, returning almost instantly with the battered Nikon she’d toted across four continents in her days as a cultural anthropologist. She fiddled briefly with the lens cap and the focus. “The lucky man’s not picking you up?” she asked, pouting, though Sera had already told her as much at least twice.

“Guys don’t do that anymore, Aunt Paulie,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’re meeting in front of the school.”

“Shame,” Pauline continued, clicking her tongue. “I’d have loved to get one of those cheesecake prom night pics of the two of you, even if it is horribly 1950s of me.” She sighed and shook her head. “Oh well. This’ll have to do. Strike a pose, Baby-Bliss. Make like it’s the luckiest night of this young fella’s life—because with you as his date, he damn well better think so.”

Sera managed a pained grimace for the camera.

“Um… Aunt Pauline?” she ventured when the Nikon was safely stowed again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Baby-Bliss, anything,” her aunt replied, giving her a squeeze as Sera reached for her denim jacket and checked her reflection one last time in the mirror by the front door. Is my eyeliner still crooked? she agonized briefly, but decided she couldn’t afford to start all over again. By the time she was done, Robbie would have given up on her and gone inside, and she really didn’t want to look like the lonely dork wandering the halls seeking her date when he’d probably already be hooking up with somebody more popular. Still, her uncertainty was so paralyzing it was hard to get her feet to move. She needed help. She wanted her mother like never before, but her mom had been gone for three years, and she couldn’t help Sera now. Now there was only Aunt Pauline, who tried hard but who had the maternal instincts of a burlesque queen.

Oh, Mom, she thought, aching. What I wouldn’t give for one of your hugs and pigtail pulls right now. Sera’s eyes stung with sudden longing, but she refused to cry and ruin her eyeliner. She’d wept for her parents long enough—so long she’d missed a good portion of her freshman year, and been so mute with grief even after she returned to school that she’d barely managed to make friends. Things had slowly improved and, Sera hoped, were about to get even better now that she’d been noticed by one of the most popular boys at school. She couldn’t afford to mess this up.

But Sera didn’t know how to ask Pauline, who had been born bursting with sexuality, what she wanted to ask. So she just blurted it out.

“Aunt Pauline, what do I do? ”

Pauline’s hawklike features crinkled in surprise before realization set in. “You mean, when you’re with the boy? Oh, that’s simple. You do what you want to do, Bliss. No more, no less.” She touched her niece’s cheek fondly. “You don’t need a refresher on our safe sex talk, do you?”

Sera frantically shook her head. That’d been one conversation she wouldn’t soon forget. Souvenirs from that discussion had included a rainbow assortment of condoms, a semester-long self-defense class, and a prescription for birth control pills Sera had no intention of filling until she was in college.

“Don’t forget you’re a strong, confident, beautiful young woman,” Pauline reminded her, resettling Sera’s denim jacket collar so that it lay properly against her neck. “You deserve the best. After all, kiddo, you’re my niece.” She drew Sera into a fierce, patchouli-scented hug. “Go get ’em, Tiger.”

But it was Robbie who turned out to be the tiger, growling and nuzzling her neck like a wild animal the minute he’d shuffled her through their obligatory first dance. In an alarmingly chaperone-free corner of the gymnasium, he boxed Sera in and began smothering her surprised mouth with deep, slurping, porno-inspired kisses. In the background, Hanson’s “MMMBop” played at deafening volume, further nauseating Sera.

Sera pulled back. “Robbie—Robbie, whoa!” She grabbed his hand, shocked, and yanked it away from where it was crushing her breast. “What are you doing? ” Robbie’s fingers abandoned the battle for her boob and swooped down to make a grab for her butt. Before she could so much as gasp her shock, he’d gotten a handful and squeezed—hard. His mouth dive-bombed her neck, sucking in a way she was sure must leave hickeys.

Hickeys! she thought, horrified. God, everyone will see! She’d always found love bites revolting when girls walked down the halls proudly displaying them like brands of possession by the strutting, preening boyfriends who strolled beside them. And though most girls at their school might kill to sport a Robbie Markham™ hickey, Sera was becoming surer by the moment that she wasn’t one of them.

Robbie began pressing his lower body against hers, and Sera grew even uneasier. There was a hardness there, poking her, and she didn’t think it was his belt buckle.

“Robbie, stop it!” she cried, pushing against his chest. It took almost all her strength to create some breathing room between them, and his hand was still kneading her ass like a baker with a vendetta against his dough. “What are you doing?” she asked again. She swiped a trembling hand across her slobber-spattered lips.

“What’s wrong, babe?” he asked glassily.

Sera had already tasted the stale malt liquor on his breath, so she guessed he’d been hitting the forty ounces from the corner bodega pretty hard. Maybe if he’d offered me a forty, she thought, I’d be enjoying this more. What was wrong with her? Shouldn’t she be thrilled to have the hottest boy in school mauling her—and what’s more, mauling her in public where everyone could see? But she wasn’t. “Skeeved out” was the term that came to mind. Of all the romantic fantasies she’d entertained—Robbie parading her down the halls proudly, Robbie dipping her expertly in a dance— this definitely hadn’t been one of them.

“Um… could we, just, you know… slow things down a little?” she squeaked.