Alissa Nutting - Tampa

“Blow Pop?” He shook his head but I took one and began unwrapping, imagining the lollipop tracing against the blond fuzz of Jack’s abdomen like a sticky wand. Stretching my lips across the sucker, I twisted it between them in a hyperbolic way as a visual aid and removed it with a dramatic pop . “Valentine’s, sure. What did you have in mind?”

The actual holiday fell on a Tuesday, meaning Buck’s schedule afforded Jack and me only an hour to complete a quick act of sixty-nine and a game of Nintendo Mario Kart, but Jack insisted on a weekend excursion. I hardly remember how Ford and I observed the occasion, mainly because I’d drugged myself after getting back from Jack’s house; Ford had switched shifts that evening to arrive home earlier, and we’d gone somewhere bland to eat, then had the planned act of cornball sexual variety Ford always insisted on for Valentine’s—he liked to have sex on the living room sofa while facing the entryway mirror, our warming skin making small squeaks of friction against the couch’s leather. I nearly vomited as I watched the ceiling fan spin above me in my dizzied state; it was only the next morning that I noticed the roses and diamond pendant he’d given me on the counter. He was asleep when I left for work so I called from school to thank him on my lunch break. “I’m glad you like the necklace,” he answered. “Last night I couldn’t tell if you did or not. Did you get a little buzzed?”

Indeed. By the time I’d dismounted the couch, the room had been whirling so fast that I’d had to crawl to the bedroom. Ford had already gone to take his usual postcoital shower; I suppose he hadn’t noticed the extent of my temporary handicap. Did it ever register with Ford that I often seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness during sex? Was this denial or apathy on his part? “I guess so,” I answered. “But that’s what one does for a celebration.”

The following Saturday I told Ford I had to attend an all-day continuing education workshop so Jack and I could drive to a roller-skating rink on the other side of the bay. Something about the colored lights turned our faces into those of strangers, allowing us to momentarily transform into two different people. It was delightful to round a corner, whip back my hair, and through it see not Jack but a boy very similar to him whose entire body was fair game for my roving hands. No onlooker appeared to sense anything out of the ordinary—whether I seemed younger or Jack seemed older enough to normalize the difference between us, I’m not sure. I still didn’t feel it was safe enough to push our luck and join the throngs of teenagers sloppily making out in the arcade room. But when we had a tandem fall and hit the polished wooden floor in an intertwined pile, Jack got the beginnings of an erection as we struggled to stand back up on moving wheels and our torsos kept hitting into one another. I led him out of the ring and we dry-humped behind a coin-operated prize machine until it lit up in a manic flurry of color and sound that almost gave us a heart attack—a young child had approached from the opposite side and put in a quarter. We stayed for a minute and watched her play, feeling the bittersweet pain of heat draining from our genitals. She operated a metallic claw inside the machine and tried to close it over a stuffed animal, and when it missed by only centimeters, it seemed a fitting metaphor for our orgasms that had just slipped away. To recover we bought Slurpees and cotton candy that dyed our mouths blue, and I felt a near-pharmaceutical rush at the weightless feeling in my chest as we sped across the floor for a few final songs, seemingly falling and speeding up at the same time.

Afterward in the car, Jack gave me a red envelope; the card inside was covered with glitter-outlined roses and affirmed our love to be forever. “This is incredibly sweet,” I told him, though after our fun day I couldn’t help but be slightly perturbed that he’d do something so stupid. “But you know I can’t keep it, don’t you?”

His first expression was one of angry surprise, but finally, he nodded. “We could do something ceremonial with it… burn it together,” I offered. “Or tear it up and scatter the pieces over the ocean.”

He said nothing, so I started the car. It wasn’t until we got to the highway that he conceded his thoughts. “That just seems depressing,” he said. I didn’t respond, forcing him to dwell on it—I needed him to see that he’d behaved inappropriately. Finally, tinkering with his seat belt buckle, he tried to channel his disappointment into a romantic proclamation of selflessness. “I just wanted to give it to you,” he said. “You know? What happens with it now doesn’t matter, I guess.” I thought he was going to say more, but those were his last words of the evening.

From then on, in fact, he began to talk less in general. It almost seemed like he was trying to express his thoughts physically instead, but that in doing so he encountered equal frustration. Our sessions had gone from being short and multiple to being long and continuous; by the time he came Jack now looked tellingly exerted, so much so that he had to jump in the shower when Buck came home so his wet hair wouldn’t seem suspicious.

It was during one such marathon session in March when it happened, just before spring break was scheduled to start. Thinking back on it, I remember the lighting in Jack’s room as having been different that day—somehow localized and ominous, like the umbral flicker thrown from an open fire. Jack’s hands were cupping my ass cheeks as he pushed inside me; I was pinned against the wall, both of us standing up. Buck’s immediate view would’ve been Jack’s buttocks, clenching and unclenching, his scrotum swinging between his legs, my elbows braced against the wall and my head and throat tilted backward in the clutches of receiving. I was the one who first turned my face, thinking I’d heard a noise.

“Shhh,” I said to Jack. I could feel him tense up inside me as he stopped and listened.

“Shit,” he whispered, pulling out of me and beginning to dress. I began to get dressed too, though not with the same frenzy. I knew I’d seen Buck’s figure moving away from the open door frame, and my mind was racing at a disoriented pace: I had to come up with a plan; seduction alone wouldn’t be able to bury what he’d just seen. Perhaps his pride was the best course of appeal? If he went to the police and this was made public, all his neighbors and coworkers would know that he and his son had been sharing a lover. It was an angle I could take: he didn’t want the shame of it, didn’t want to put Jack through the embarrassment.

Jack’s eyes met mine as a low wailing sound began to come from down the hallway—it would intensify, then fall completely silent and start up again. Was Buck crying? I picked up my pace and finished dressing, hoping his sadness might be an opportunity to go comfort him, even if I was the cause. Maybe I could say that Jack forced me to do it—he’d gotten into my purse, looked up my husband’s number on my cell phone, and had threatened to call Ford and tell him about my affair with Buck unless I slept with him. Even if Buck didn’t fully believe it, perhaps it would be a plausible enough story for him to play along with. In the distance, Buck’s warbled moan was growing louder and more frantic. How long had he stood watching at the doorway before I’d sensed him there and turned around?

“Stay here,” I said to Jack. “Let me try to talk to him first.” Jack nodded but gave me a look that bordered on disgust—his eyes held a fluent jealousy, and I knew he was imagining that if Buck’s catching me with my pants unbuttoned had meant a bribe of sex, who knew what his catching us in the middle of the act might require. “Keep your cool,” I warned him. “The important thing is that he doesn’t call the cops.”