when we’ve got the kinks smoothed out. But I’m too nervous now and you take my strength away. I have to go. Sorry.”
She hangs up. Before I even have a chance to be hurt by Aubrey telling me I take her strength away, the phone rings again.
“Mrs. Lightsey.” It’s Tyler. He’s whispering. “Come to Town Square. But, you know, just for a look. Don’t let her see you, okay?”
“Thank you, Tyler.”
“I know that the money was for college. Not what we used it for. We’re going to pay you back. With interest.”
I’m not sure why, at that moment, I look over at Martin, who has wandered off and is studying our old house and the cartoon-colored bungalows around it. Probably because of treacherous, atavistic brain wiring of the sort that made cavewomen look to their mates, the upper-body-strength ones, when a saber-toothed tiger approached, I think of him working Coach Hines and Randy. Whatever the reason, I’m strangely confident when I say, “Oh, there is no question about that, Tyler Moldenhauer. You will pay back every single cent.”
DECEMBER 12, 2009
As the sunset fades and the sky goes black, I flip over onto my stomach, prop my head on my hands like a third grader at story time, and ask Tyler to tell me, one more time, my favorite bedtime story. The one that answers the question, “Why me?”
“You’re beautiful, you’re smart, and you have a soul.”
“Madison is beautiful, and she got into Duke.”
“Right. And the soul part?”
We laugh. We are pretty much laughing at everything.
“I also like that you never wore brand names.”
“But I did. I started wearing brand names for you.”
“Yeah, I noticed those Nike shorts and I liked that too. That’s hard work, fitting in. I knew you were doing it for me.”
“How did you know that?” I play-slap at him like I used to when it was the only way I had to touch him.
“I knew. Plus you totally had the booty for them.”
“Really?”
“Oh. Really.”
He slides his hand down and pats my butt. I guess I have to thank Shupe and all that marching for something, because my butt is as springy as a bag of Gummi Bears. He strokes my hair; his fingers catch it, pull it into a fan, then let it fall slowly.
“What did you mean when you said that you wanted it to be different with us?”
“Different in every way.”
The rumble as he answers, my chest against his, makes me think of the girl I was with my head against his heart that first time and how long ago that seems. A lifetime ago.
“Different in the important ways.”
“But how? Different from what?”
“You do not want to hear any more of Tyler Moldenhauer’s loser redneck stories.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
The wall heater clicks as it switches on. Out on the highway a car passes with a stereo playing so loud the bass pulses through us. “You know those vampire books that all the girls are reading now?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Twilight? Or something like that.”
“That’s how I always felt. I felt like a vampire.”
“You want to drink my blood,” I joke, tilting my head to offer my neck to Tyler, wanting his mouth there.
“Well, that goes without saying. But it’s the other part. That the vampires have lived forever and they’re older than everyone else and will always be older. That’s how I always felt. I mean, I was older. But it was more than that. I always had to pretend to be ignorant. Especially about girls.”
“Girls? You were pretending about girls? God, you’re a good pretender.”
He traps me in his arms, rolls over on top of me, his hair making a curtain that encloses both of us, moves against my crotch so that I can feel him. “Yeah, I may have to start pretending again right now.”
I brush his hair back from his face and hook it behind his ears. Him talking about us together is as good as sex. Better. “No, really, tell me. About vampires. About us being different.”
He flops back onto the pillow. “You know, all that locker-room shit that starts, like, in grade school or something?”
“Uh, not really.”
“At first, it’s just guys bragging or lying about touching some girl’s tit, scoring a hand job. Shit like that. But it made me feel about a thousand years old. I always wished I could be like them, wanting sex so much, wanting to touch a girl, just touch one, but you were so scared that you had to