I nod. “I know, and I’m starting to like that quality about you. You’re like a vicious brother, only you’re nothing like my brother and I feel closer to you than any other human on earth right now.”
He pulls himself up and gives me a kiss. Not a passionate stop-the-world kiss, but an I’m-right-here kind of kiss, which is exactly what I need to keep going.
“Love Bites” by Def Leppard
He left me that night with just one deadly kiss. I went back up to my party where nobody even noticed I was gone except, of course, my best friend, or to be more exact, my very livid best friend.
“Sara, what was that? Why was Jeffery so mad at you? Did you guys have a fight?” I recall Emily frantically at my side, questioning me.
Poor Emily, I lied to her so much about Jeff and what we’d done and the number of times we did it that I didn’t even know where to begin. I decided more lies were the answer.
“Emily, he was just mad that we can’t fuck until later. He said he came over earlier but I wasn’t home. He wanted us to have sex before the party. I guess he missed me.”
Emily had that face that I can only describe as shocked and embarrassed rolled into one. I was the one saying all that shit and she was the one blushing.
“Sorry, your parents wanted to surprise you so I made you come over to my house to help me get dressed.” She looked as if she were the cause of our fight. If she only knew what our fight was really about. If she only knew that I’d just experienced the second best kiss of my life. That I just signed on the dotted line and sold my heart to a perfect stranger I’ve only seen twice, all for a kiss. What would she think of me? What would she think of The Sara Klein if she knew that all I’ve ever had was a kiss?
“Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll find someone else to screw tonight. He left to go see his girlfriend, I think.” There we go, I loved being able to put that awestruck look on Em’s face.
“You don’t mind if he sleeps with other girls?” she asked in shock.
Of course I mind, Emily, but nobody needs to know that. “Of course not, he’s had a few girlfriends since we started fucking last year, I think. Em, I have sex with other guys, too, so it’s not like we’re exclusive or anything.” Emily seemed to contemplate my answer in that innocent little brain of hers. The brain that thinks that people only have sex when they get married and that fathers and mothers love each other dearly and would never ever be unfaithful. I hoped for her sake that she’d find a nice guy that would never prove her wrong.
She did find that with Louis. But I knew the truth about the real world, my world. I knew men needed lots of women to be happy and no man could be with just one girl. How could they love just one woman their whole life? I figured it would be easier going through life with very little expectations from love and from men in general. Love was not beautiful and pure—love was a joke that little girls believed in.
“But you like him, right?” Emily continued to question me. She still felt the need to make sense of my character.
I more than like him, Em. I love him, I wanted to tell her. But I couldn’t let him wreck me. I would be in control of my emotions. I would be in control of my reality, thanks to all my lies, and I would have the exact relationship that The Sara would be proud of. I would pretend to be the whore that every man wished he had, the kind of whore that men like my father left their families for to have weekend meetings with. If I let the world know what kind of good girl I really was, what would I gain? I’d have no one to appreciate it or pay me any attention, so I got the love and attention I craved by telling lies.
I remember coming out of my thoughts to answer my confused, beautiful friend. The girl that I’d give anything to change places with. “Yeah, I like him; he’s okay. He’s great in