Sara Jaffe - Dryland

IT HAD BEENforever, it felt like, since I’d been to Rich’s. New issues of Swimmers’ World and Swimming Monthly were out on the racks. Swimmers’ World was thicker but Swimming Monthly had more useful information. I didn’t flip through to look for pictures of my brother. I took the magazine and brought it to the register. If Rich had a line about how I was finally buying a magazine, I would say there was a particular breathing technique in this issue that I needed to study closely.

Rich said, $3.95, sweetheart.

On the bus ride home I tore out the subscription card and filled in my name. I hesitated at the address. Maybe Ben would let me use his. But it would be a pain to have to coordinate with him every time a new issue came out. I filled in my address. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to realize it: the point of swimming was to get good. I’d make sure the card went out in the next day’s mail.

AN ANNOUNCEMENT CAMEover the intercom during Yearbook. It said, Attention, swim team members. It said that due to a water main issue at the practice facility, our practice for the afternoon had been canceled. We should meet in the weight room instead. Erika said, Sweet. I knew what she meant but I didn’t feel it. I needed every practice I could get.

Melanie and Alexis had been arguing all period. They’d argued through the announcement. Alexis wanted to have the front pages of the yearbook be in black paper and have people sign in silver pen, and Melanie wanted regular light-colored paper. Ms. C. pointed out that many people didn’t have silver pens and Alexis said a perk could be that everyone would get a silver pen with their yearbook. Melanie said perks weren’t in the budget. The bell rang and Alexis grabbed her things and was out of the room before anyone. Silver pens were a cool idea.

I hated weight room. Whenever I tried to move beyond the least amount of weight on any of the machines, Coach came by and pegged the weight one lighter, as if he were trying to hold me back.

I stopped in front of the trophy case. Someone had gone into it and polished everything. The glass front and the trophies shone. Whoever had polished the trophies had shifted them around a little bit.

Alexis said, You must have a ton of trophies at home. I caught her reflection in the glass.

I said, We have a few. It felt okay to be honest with Alexis. I could see myself, at some point, telling her about the call from my brother. Not everything, but about the music and the clinking bottles that were loud enough for me to hear over the phone, and she and I could wonder together where my brother would keep his trophies in an environment like that. We could imagine a duffel in the closet where he kept them for safekeeping, on occasion unpacking them to set up on mantels, using them to explain the life he’d had before.

Alexis said, It must be cool to have those around.

I caught both of our reflections in the glass. We looked like we belonged there.

Alexis said, Don’t you want to just blow off this weight room thing?

She drove me in her white Taurus, which was messier than it had been the last time. The last time it had seemed like a newish car. It was raining hard and Alexis kept her eyes on the road, on the curving streets. She didn’t speak or turn on music. I said, You’re a good driver.

She laughed and said, That’s a sweet thing to say.

I didn’t want to say something sweet. This was the first time we’d been alone since the party at her house, the shower didn’t count, and I wanted to say whatever was going to make the ride not end at my house in two minutes. Because it was all I had, I tried to think of my brother, with his high school girlfriend, or boyfriend, whatever, an older guy. I turned to face Alexis as fully as I could and said, Let’s go to your house. She slowed the car and pulled over. We were a block from my house. She had her hand on the gearshift. If I had been my brother, or Greg, or anyone else, even Erika, I would have been able to take my hand and put it over hers.

Alexis said, Okay. She said, Julie? She said, Never mind. She drove her car past my house and around the hill to hers. Within a few blocks her hand was on my thigh. Within minutes of getting inside her house and throwing our bags and shoes and coats in the front hallway, and her saying hello to a woman vacuuming downstairs, we were in her room and she’d locked the door.

It wasn’t as dark in her room as it had been the night of the party. Weak light came in through the windows. I stood in the same place I’d stood the last time. I didn’t know where else to stand, or what to do. Alexis clicked around a stack of CDs. What she put on sounded familiar, bluesy guitar and a smoky voiced singer who swallowed his words like Elvis. She said, Is Chris Isaak okay? I didn’t care what music she played. Maybe the hand on my thigh had been an accident. Alexis took my hand and walked me over to her bed. She lay down. I lay down facing her. She pushed some hairs behind my ear. She said, I told myself I wasn’t going to do this again. But you’re so cute. She kissed me, and her mouth felt hungry and wet, too close. I wanted to be at home, by myself, with my memories of the first time she’d kissed me. That was a stupid thing to want. I was where I had angled to be. I kissed her back. She rolled on top of me and rubbed her knee into my crotch while she kissed me, and the feeling was so huge that I rolled her over and did the same thing. She moved with my knee. She moved as if I were making her move like that but I could tell that her moving controlled me. My hand touched the bare skin of her stomach and she said, Your hands feel nice, so I pushed my hand up under her shirt and felt her bra, which was silky and taut, and she pressed up into my hand and then she stopped kissing me. She sat up. I had done something wrong. She took off her shirt. She tugged on my henley and said, Take that off, and I took it off, and she said, That too, and I took off my T-shirt, and it had been cold out so I had a tank top on beneath my T-shirt and she said, So many layers, and then she smiled and said, I like it. She cupped my bicep and said, Nice muscles. She pulled the rubber band from my hair. She pulled me to her, my mouth to her neck, and I kissed her there and she made a low sound and I kissed her there again. She said, No hickeys, okay? I put my mouth on her shoulder, her ear, and she pressed her hand into my hair and said my name. It didn’t sound like my name.

I kissed her neck again, lightly, and she got quieter. I thought that meant she was done. I thought she’d reached the point where she’d sit up and stop and go take a hit of pot and ask me to wait to walk out after her. She took my hand and put it low on her stomach and said, I want you to. Or maybe she said, I want you.

I said, It’s okay.

She looked up at me. Her cheeks were pink. She said, You don’t want to?

I was half holding myself up with my left hand, my right on Alexis’s stomach, and I wanted to move my right hand, to stop holding myself up, but I couldn’t. Was this what I had asked for? She was closer to me than she’d ever been, pink cheeks, thick breathing, hair messy on the pillowcase. I said, I do. I said, Do you?

She said, You’re so modest, Julie. I unbuttoned her jeans and unzipped them. She was wearing silky underwear that matched her bra, and I saw the strip of white skin from her tan line. She’d gotten really tan. She took my hand and pressed it to the crotch of her underwear. It was warm and damp. I pressed in a rhythm and she moved against me. She said, Harder, and I pressed harder. The underwear was thin. My hand slipped and pushed the underwear aside and I said, Sorry, and she said, No, do it, and I put my hand inside her underwear and moved it until she said, There, and I did what she said, I touched her and touched her there, doing exactly what she told me to do, I kept touching her until she grabbed my wrist and said, Okay, okay.