Alissa Nutting - Tampa

He shrugged. “Well that’s very generous of you. I’m ready to throw in the towel and burn it. But she certainly can’t get any worse. If there’s a way to avoid the headache of having to fire a longtime union worker, I’m all for it.”

“Thank you.” I smiled. “I’m glad for the opportunity.”

He tilted his head and gave a pleased nod in my direction. “If even a quarter of the faculty had your spirit, we’d have the best school in North America.” Standing, he offered his hand, which I embraced between both of mine. “We’re very lucky to have you here.”

On his way out, he stopped and pointed his arm across the rows of empty chairs. “But luckiest of all are all these kids. You’re fantastic with them. I know.” He winked. “I’ve got my ear to the ground.”

That night at 7:23 P.M., I picked Jack up for the first time in front of a combination Taco Bell/Long John Silver’s. It wasn’t dark yet, but in the low light of sunset, eyes could easily be mistaken—passersby thinking they saw Jack entering a red Corvette might have to admit that it could’ve been any boy his size who looked similar, and though they were nearly certain of the make and model of the car, perhaps the color, tinged by the sunset’s pink glare, had only looked red in that moment.

“Thanks for coming.” I smiled. “Buckle up.”

He’d changed into a different, preppier outfit than he’d worn to school; in fact he looked ready to go to a casual job interview at a supermarket—khakis and a striped polo shirt—and the very ends of his hair were slightly wet, telling of a recent shower. His skin bore a soapy-sweet fragrance of cologne; I smiled thinking of the bitter flavor its spice would leave on my tongue. “I like your car,” he offered.

I began to head out of town toward the nearby bay area and its long rows of mangroves where we could park undisturbed. The traffic soon began to perturb me—it was an unwelcome contrast to the adolescent morsel strapped into my passenger seat. We immediately became trapped behind a livestock truck of chickens; when I was finally able to pass, a hideous woman simultaneously operating a station wagon and cramming a Whopper into her mouth came into view. “Aren’t people revolting in general?” I complained.

Jack offered back a polite smile. I noticed him eyeing the car’s center console, my hand gripping the top of the gearshift.

“Can you drive a stick?”

He shook his head. “I wish. I can’t drive at all. I can get my learner’s in February though.”

“Well we’ll have to give you some lessons,” I offered. This seemed to please him a great deal, although it wasn’t a genuine proposal. But I followed it up with a more earnest suggestion. “Jack?”

“Yes?” He was so nervous that it was hard for me to gauge his level of horniness.

“You can touch me, you know. Anywhere you want while I drive. My windows are tinted.” He swallowed and looked straight ahead for a moment, rubbing his sweaty palms against his pants while giving himself an inward pep talk.

“Okay.” He finally nodded. He placed a sweaty hand on my bare knee, then sat motionless for a minute before his fingers began to gently move in one direction and then another, sliding incrementally farther up my thigh. I began to moan but my enthusiasm was slightly dampened when we passed a graphic pro-life billboard, then an advertisement for septic repair service whose mascot was an anthropomorphized plunger. I sighed—Jack and I needed a highway all our own, devoid of reminders about life’s daily vulgarities. Even the rusted exteriors of the jalopies we sped by seemed ominous harbingers of unwelcome news, announcing that my time with Jack, that our bodies and everything we’d each ever known, would all inevitably decay and fall apart.

In an attempt to get his hand closer to my genitals, I lifted my pelvis off the seat, pushing it forward against his fingers in a way that forced me to widen the placement of my legs on the floor and the gas pedal and hunch over the steering wheel for balance in a crablike pose. I reminded myself not to scare him at first with outright demands for more; instead I praised the very restrained motions he was managing. “That feels so good, Jack.” I stole a quick look at his face as I peered behind my seat to change lanes and get on the highway; his eyes were fixed wide upon my airborne lap. Not once did Jack ask me where we were going. He had a perfect sense of what wasn’t important.

Eventually his fingers found a rhythm of stroking my thigh, which made it hard not to close my eyes in pleasure for seconds at a time, but the distractions of the road did finally seem to fade. I didn’t feel like I was driving or even knew where we were going; instead it seemed the vehicle had been programmed to whisk us off to privacy and I was there merely to steer. Each time Jack’s slippery fingers massaged my leg I contemplated stopping earlier and choosing a closer place, but I knew I had to let strategy override lust for just a while longer—what we were about to do was dangerous enough; impulsive decisions would open the door to a whole new set of risky variables. I stayed on the highway until the planned exit, keeping my needs temporarily reined in, and made every single turn required to arrive at an outpost of the lost. Jack’s shaking had risen from a shiver to a tremor. “Are you cold?” I asked. Jack didn’t seem to know how to respond.

“I’m not sure,” he finally said.

Roughly half an hour after I’d picked him up, we pulled into the overgrown tree-lined drive of a long-abandoned farm. “It’s safe here,” I announced. He nodded back at me, eyes filled with eager uncertainty, looking briefly out his car window into the pitch-blackness surrounding us as if to scan for predators. “No one’s going to interrupt us,” I stressed, my voice a honeyed invitation. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

With that I took off my shirt, watching his eyes lock onto my bra. There was a Christmas-morning feel to the way I slid off my shorts to reveal lace thong panties, then crawled over the console, purposefully arching my spine to push my left butt cheek inches from his face as I jumped into the backseat—every step of the process seemed like a new gift being given. “It’s a little cramped, but we can lie down.” I motioned to him. “Take off your clothes and come back here with me.” He removed his shirt, then his shoes and pants, lifting himself toward me with a visible erection beneath his blue boxers.

“You have a great body,” I told him. His build was the slender, undeveloped wiry sort whose tautness revealed the shadowy promise of muscles not yet arrived.

“I’m too skinny,” he began, but I quickly placed one hand across his mouth to avoid further speech and with the other began rubbing across his chest and down his stomach, dipping a finger inside the elastic band of his shorts to stroke the starting delineation of his pubic hair. I felt his lips part beneath my hand to breathe more heavily; his eyes were traveling a vertical circuit from my crotch up to my breasts. “Have you ever taken off a girl’s bra before?” He shook his head no. “They’re mysterious little contraptions,” I said, turning my back to him and raising the veil of my blond hair over my right shoulder to clear his view. “Go ahead and give it a try.” His hands shook as he stumbled with the tiny metal hooks; he was nearly panting as he bent in closer to my back, struggling to see the bra’s petite mechanics in the dark. I could smell the mint chewing gum on his breath—he’d indeed prepared himself for a make-out session. Could consent have been any more transparent? Eventually I felt the release of its pressure and Jack gave a victorious sigh.