Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

“Oh, God, Ethan.” Her glasses were askew, her face pink with shame. “What are we doing?”

“It’s okay,” he told her. “We’re just having a good time.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her voice was barely audible. “I better go.”

“Come on. You don’t have to do that.”

“I do.”

She turned swiftly, heading for the exit. He followed her out to the parking lot, pleading with her to stay for one more drink, but nothing he said made any difference. She just kept muttering about his pregnant wife and child, and how sorry she was, all the while fumbling in her purse for her car keys.

“You have to forgive me,” she said in a pleading voice. “I’m just going through a hard time. I’m really not the kind of person who—”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at his face.

“I love you.” The words just popped out of his mouth, but in that moment they felt true, undeniable. “Don’t you understand that?”

She shook her head. The only thing in her eyes was pity.

“You need to go home, Ethan. Just forget this ever happened. Please?”

Then she got in her car and drove off, her face ashen, her eyes fixed straight ahead. He thought about chasing after her, but he knew it would be useless. There was nothing to do but go home, just like she told him.

Now that he was here, though, he couldn’t seem to get out of the car. Maybe in a minute or two he’d unbuckle his seatbelt and head inside, into the house where his wife and child were sleeping. In the meantime he was happy enough to stay right here and think about kissing Charlotte outside the men’s room and the dreamy look on Amanda’s face when he showed her the measuring tape and explained that she and Ben were dancing too close, the way she just smiled and closed her eyes and let her head fall back onto her partner’s chest, as if the two of them were the only people who mattered in the world, as if they had no one to answer to but themselves.

IT’S PRETTY QUIET WHEN I leave for school, not a neighbor in sight except for Mrs. Scotto, who likes to get an early start on her yardwork. She’s out there every morning in her bathrobe and slippers, cleaning up the leaves that fell overnight. She doesn’t bother with a rake; she just bends over, plucks them off the ground one by one until she has a handful, then straightens up as best she can and drops them into a bag that says YARD WASTE. She does this all day long, from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, into December if necessary. People around here call her the Leaf Lady.

I have no idea how old she is. All I know is that she seemed ancient when we moved here twelve years ago, and she hasn’t gotten any younger. She’s a permanent part of the autumn scenery on Grapevine Road, a stooped, birdlike woman endlessly patrolling her front yard, her entire existence devoted to that little patch of grass. And she gets the job done, you have to give her that. It’s late September now, but even in mid-November, when the whole town’s blanketed with dead foliage, you can count on Mrs. Scotto’s lawn to be spotless.

People around here admire her work ethic, or at least they pretend to. They all say the same thing when they walk by: Come to my house when you’re done. Mrs. Scotto always laughs and says she charges twenty bucks an hour. Then she makes some friendly comment about the weather or asks about the person’s family. She’s a sweet old lady, not nearly as creepy as you might expect.

She’s just lonely, my mother likes to remind me. She lost her husband and her kids moved away. And then my mother gives me one of her looks, like she hopes I’m filing that away for future reference.

I never paid much attention to Mrs. Scotto in the past. I was always busy and happy, and she was always just there, living her strange elderly life on the sidelines of my own. This fall, though, she’s been getting on my nerves. I can’t even look at her without feeling a little sick to my stomach, wondering how she can stand it. But she always smiles and waves in old-lady slow motion when I drive by, and I always wave right back. I’m sure it’s one of the highlights of her day.

WHEN I get to school, Megan’s standing in front of my locker, looking kinda nervous, and I know in my gut she’s gonna break up with me. It’s been coming for a while now. She was gone most of the summer, working at a camp in New Hampshire, and things have been weird between us ever since she came home, like she secretly resents me for ruining her senior year, like I’m some sad sack of shit she has to drag around while she’s supposed to be having the time of her life.

I can’t say I blame her for that.

What I do blame her for are those denim cutoffs, cuffed way up above what the dress code allows, and those teetery wedge sandals that make her muscly legs look longer and thinner than they really are. It just doesn’t seem necessary, getting all dressed up like that to break my heart, a nice big Fuck you with a cherry on top.

“Okay,” I tell her, tensing my stomach like I’m about to get hit. “Just get it over with.”

“What are you talking about?” She smiles like I’m the old Clay, the boyfriend she deserves. “I just want to know if you’re busy after school.”

“Busy?” I laugh, but even that sounds pissed off. “Busy doing what?”

“That’s what I thought.” She runs her fingertip down the center of my chest, stopping just above my belt. “Then you won’t mind a little company?”

I can feel my brain working away, trying to catch up. I didn’t used to be this stupid.

“What about your practice?”

Megan’s co-captain of the cheerleading squad, which is a major deal in our school. They go to regional tournaments and usually do pretty well. Most of the girls are trained gymnasts; they don’t mind getting tossed in the air. They like to brag about how, statistically speaking, cheerleading is even more dangerous than football. Girls supposedly break their necks all the time.

“I can blow it off.” She’s still smiling, but I can see how closely she’s studying me, like this is some kind of test. “I miss you.”

Her legs are really smooth, except for a coin-shaped scar on her left knee, a circle of shiny pink. She fell on blacktop when she was a kid, an older boy cousin pushing her from behind when she was about to beat him in a race.

“You look hot in those shorts,” I tell her.

MEGAN’S PRETTY cheerful in the car after school. She told Ms. Lambert — the cheerleading advisor — that she had a dentist appointment, and Ms. Lambert just nodded and said, Okay, see you tomorrow. It was that easy.

“That would never happen on the football team,” I tell her. “Coach Z. used to say that dead guys were excused from practice, but only if they brought a note from the undertaker.”

“That sounds like him.”

“It was a joke, but it was kinda serious, too. Nobody ever missed practice, not unless they were on crutches.”

Megan switches the radio from my hip-hop to KISS 108, the only station a self-respecting cheerleader will listen to. It’s their tribal music, the soundtrack of high school popularity. Within seconds she’s bobbing her head and singing along, doing that seated dance that girls do in cars, all hands and hair and puckered lips.

“I love this song,” she tells me.

“You love every song.”

“Nuh-uh. Just this one.”

I smile back, happy to see her so happy, to know that she can still feel that way with me. And it’s a beautiful day on top of it, the sky blue and the windows open, the trees turning color and those cuffed-up shorts.