Tilt - Alan Cumyn [57]
Her hand was on his thigh. For balance.
“Can’t be very comfortable,” he said.
If she pushed slightly she could knock him flat on his back.
“I’d love to see your room,” she whispered.
If he tried to get up too quickly the blood would evacuate his head and he might keel over into the sink.
No dream.
He closed the cupboard door gently and pressed forward on his knees so that she had to kiss him. Which she did, kneeling on the floor, until the universe dried up and both of them nearly spilled into the legs of the kitchen stools.
“It’s up the stairs,” Stan said finally.
His room, he meant.
She reached between his legs, which was not far at all.
“Feels pretty tight,” she said. She had a gentle way of squeezing. So Stan reached between her legs but she intercepted his hand.
“Upstairs,” she whispered.
The blood left his brain long before he stood. They walked together up the loudest set of cracking stairs ever built. Where was Stan’s weight? He had no idea. His feet were somewhere miles down below the rest of him.
Feldon did not wake up.
This was all part of the dream. She knew exactly where his bedroom was. She’d seen it during hide-and-go-seek. He followed her like a balloon on a string.
She pulled him through the door.
And closed it behind.
She looked at him and didn’t do anything, really. But somehow buttons began to undo themselves and Stan’s shirt fell from him like old skin. She had old skin, too, to lose but first he needed to escape from all of his.
She pulled it from him.
He probably should pull hers.
But he was on the bed, being propelled backwards. She was pushing him backwards.
She wants this, he thought, a slow-motion realization. She wants this as much as I do.
Maybe more.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”
Meaning all of him, not just the throbbing egomaniac in the center.
He wasn’t particularly calm. Somehow her shirt came off and in bending forward for something — just to kiss his belly, actually — the pink lace fullness of her bra brushed against . . . things and he spurted like a fountain. Like some Yosemite geyser on a nature show.
All over her beautiful chest.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” he said, and when he got up he was still gushing — on the bedspread, on her arm, the carpet, the floor.
“Is that . . .?”
She didn’t complete her question. It was all new. New in fact but he could tell she knew the facts.
The facts of life.
Sixteen-year-old boys were lousy lovers.
Stan pulled a reasonably clean gym sock from his drawer and wiped the milky glue from himself.
Then he pulled out a T-shirt — exactly the same T-shirt he would have worn to the basketball tryout that morning if he had remembered to pack gym gear — and wiped what he could of the rest, from Janine and every other object he’d sprayed.
“I had no idea,” Janine said. She kept sneaking peeks at him. He was still naked and . . . and rigid as ever, practically. Grinning, one-eyed fool. “I had no idea it shot out so easily.”
She was in her bra and her skinny black pants and there was the lizard tattoo waiting for him to kiss it.
“It has a mind of its own,” Stan said.
He wrapped the gym sock in the T-shirt and placed the whole disgusting wad carefully, dry-side down, on the carpet by the bed.
He started to pull his underwear back on.
“Are you finished already?” Janine didn’t sound disappointed. All right, she sounded a bit disappointed. But mostly she just seemed to be asking.
“I’m going to be oozing for a while,” he said.
He pulled on the plain old, baggy, ripped white cotton underwear he’d owned since he was eleven.
“Those are cute.” It was a cool thing to say, but Janine’s face was baking red. She wasn’t looking away. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere.
—
It was like swimming. In the warmest, most delicious water. Underwater sometimes, but with clear vision. And breathing. And being able to fly and being underwater all at the same time.
He wasn’t sure always when he was inside her. Inside her! It was clutch and accelerator.