Slide - Kyle Beachy [83]
“If I'm to believe these people from Delia's, stripes and oversize necklines are going to be everywhere this winter. Pointelle yokes with ruffles. I can't wait.”
I quickly assumed my preferred state of rest, sitting in a composed manner with legs crossed. After a few seconds I switched the crossing of my legs and shifted in the chair. The music went to Ella or was it Billie or maybe Etta.
“I might as well just come out and say this.”
“Good,” I said. “You start.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“That's. No you don't.”
“It's true. At this party two nights ago there was this guy Luke who I've known forever. And he asked if I would go out with him. Nobody's ever asked me to go out with him before. I didn't know what to say. I asked if he meant like to a movie or something and he said, no, he meant, like, to be his girl. I couldn't believe that's what he meant.”
“He asked you to be his girl? Just like that.”
She nodded.
“Luke the swimmer? You can't go out with Luke the swimmer. There's something weird about his ears. You told me about them.”
“That's Jeremy,” she said. “Luke is nothing. I mean, he's not someone we've talked about. He really has no thing. He's just Luke. You'd like him.”
“Why would I like him?”
“Jesus, Potter. I don't know.”
I put my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes. The plot churned in the background, wheels greased to spin silently, high-grade Swiss precision bearings. And now the pictures had sucked another person into the affair, this courageous Luke boy with his forthright invitations.
“Listen, I'm sorry,” she said. “Honestly I didn't expect you to be so sad.”
“Do you want coffee? Let me get you a coffee. Some kind of latte. Shot of vanilla.”
I stood and went to the counter and, facing away from her, ordered a complex and stupidly named drink. I could tell her about the photographs or I could not. She was a responsible young woman with a firm grasp of the world's ways, a generational forbearance that must have emerged since I left high school. I could pad the truth. The sheer potential here was impressive, the number of ways this could go. The door was not far away. I could stay here or run away. They weren't all that different. Her drink came, tall, pale, blended, and topped appropriately with whipped cream.
“I didn't realize I was ordering something pink.”
She said, “Listen, I get it. You're going to say don't tell anyone about what happened because you could get in trouble. Technically. You're going to say our fathers are friends and you know my brother and nobody should know, probably. And I'm going to say don't worry, please, it's not that big of a deal. It will be our own little secret. Like it never happened. This is good, the drink, thanks. But I probably won't finish the whole thing. I'm supposed to meet Luke in a minute.”
“You're being so polite. Stop it. We have to talk about this.”
“But not really,” she said. “As I understand it, things like this happen, then they end, and then you appreciate them as something that happened sometime in the past. And together they make up memory and shape who you are as an adult person.”
“Just a couple things to iron out. First on the list is the question of whether or not you were a virgin. I'm sorry to speak so bluntly but it's something I'd like to know.”
“What?”
“Were you? A virgin.”
“I was at one point a virgin. Yes. But it has been a while. I continue to not be a virgin.”
And would you agree that I never abused the inherent power dynamic of the student-teacher interface to coerce you in any way? This is a yes-or-no question.”
“Sure. Okay. I agree.”
“The point here is just to achieve closure.”
She was smiling at me and I did not like it. “Closure for what?”
“Okay fair enough, ha, good point. Good point.”
Zoe picked up her drink. I watched her lower her head, lips meeting the bright novelty straw. Her hair today was pulled into pigtails. Then she stood, and I knew that in this place of bitter coffee and watery jazz, the girl standing across from me was