Damage - A. M. Jenkins [34]
“I don’t know.”
“He cried. Can you believe it?”
She laughs. Something in her voice chills you a little. You pull the sheet up higher over your chest.
You don’t know what you’ll say if she asks you about your first time. It actually was a lot like Heather described, except you didn’t “keep going.” It was over so quick barely even got going. It happened during a commercial break while you and the girl were at her house watching TV. Of course, you’d been kissing and touching each other for a long time, but the main event was finished so quickly you didn’t even miss any of Saturday Night Live.
Heather doesn’t ask you anything. She turns away from the mirror, bends to pick up her blouse from the floor. “Blech! Makeup stain.” She drops the blouse and gives you a mock glare. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t see it.”
She’s walking over to the closet. “That’s why everybody likes you—you never see anything wrong with anybody.” She starts rifling through the clothes, looking something to wear. “Hey. Recognize this?” She reaches into the closet, pulls out a plaid skirt on a hanger. Short, of course. “Don’t you remember?”
You shake your head.
“I wore it That Night.”
“What night?”
“You know.” She waits, then when you still have no clue: “The night of Our First Time.”
Oh. “It was dark,” you explain. “I couldn’t see much.”
Heather looks annoyed. She hangs the skirt back the closet, slides a bunch of hangers over to bury it.
The hangers make a screeching noise as she moves them across one by one; solids, prints, pastels, plaid, lace.
Then she stops and pushes the other clothes aside to look at a dress. She slides her hand down the silky fabric You don’t recognize that one, either.
Heather sighs. Obviously, this dress has a nice memory attached to it. “Am I supposed to remember that one, too?” you ask.
“No,” she says, and sweeps the dress aside. “You know what I like about you? The way you smell. Some guys slap on cologne like it’s mosquito repellent. But you just smell like a person. Like sun and wind. Maybe just a little sweat. And I like the way in the evenings sometimes you get a little five o’clock shadow, like you need a shave. It gives you this bad-boy look. Very sexy.”
She pulls out a blouse, removes it from the hanger, starts to put it on—then glances at you, and with faintest of smiles, drapes the blouse over the doorknob before she walks back over to the mirror, and brushing her hair. The show’s not over yet.
She scoops her hair up with both hands, holding it top of her head in a mass of curls. Her neck is long arched. “If you look in that bottom right-hand drawer, there’s a basket with ribbons and stuff. Can you through and find a clip that looks like a butterfly? It’s gold, with big wings.”
You roll over, reach down, and pull the drawer open. There’s a bunch of papers in it, and a box made of dark wood, with a duck inlaid on the lid; it looks like something that a man would own. But it’s the only thing that’s even remotely like a basket, so you take the lid off.
The box is empty except for a piece of paper that’s been torn to bits and taped back together. It’s old; the Scotch tape that holds it together is yellowing.
it’s better this way i know Heather will forget i hope you will forgive
“Not that drawer.” Heather’s beside you suddenly, slamming the drawer shut so quickly that it almost catches your fingers. “I said the right side.”
“Sorry,” you say.
“Forget it.” Scowling, she goes back to stand in front of the mirror and starts playing with her hair again, but her hands can’t seem to remember where they left off; locks slide from beneath her fingers and fall down her neck while she frowns at her own reflection.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I