Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,74
and then it seemed that she had found it: her shoes. She tied them on.
“Okay, well, I’ll see you guys around. Try not to get in too much trouble,” she said, seeming to be talking to Tom specifically, and then on her way out the door she touched his head and ruffled his hair with a gesture that seemed lovingly possessive. But it didn’t matter, because Marie had won. Sara K. was leaving, and she was still here. Tom waited a moment after the door closed, and then came to sit down on the bed next to her. He looked up at Jamie.
“Hey, will you go downstairs and grab another bottle of wine?”
“Aren’t your parents coming home soon? I don’t want to run into them and have to, like, have a conversation right now.” He giggled slightly and did a little half twirl.
“They’re at some dinner or gala or something, they won’t be home for hours yet. Don’t worry about it. Make yourself at home down there, if you want. Like, watch some TV or something.”
Jamie laughed again. “Ohhkay. See ya.” Marie’s reaction time was so slowed down that it took the click of the door closing behind Jamie for her to realize what had happened, what was about to happen. Involuntarily, she tensed up all over as Tom turned to her and leaned in for a kiss.
The edges of Tom’s face blurred as it moved closer to hers. His body, too, was close, and for a second this was wonderful—cozy and warm, exciting but not in a heart-pounding, panic-inducing way. But then something in the way that he clutched at parts of her started to feel impersonal and claustrophobic. They still had on all their clothes and she was trying to kiss him, and in a way he was kissing her, too, sort of haphazardly, his mouth off to the side of her mouth.
He began pressing her down harder and harder into the bed. She tried to just roll with it, focusing on the parts of the experience that were enjoyable and trying to relax and become smaller, so that it wouldn’t feel bad when he pressed down. But she was too fucked up to talk herself into thinking that this was fun. It was time to make him stop. She gave him a gentle shove and rolled out from under him, over to the side of the bed.
“Okay, that’s enough for now.”
To Tom’s credit, he didn’t protest. He even sort of apologized. “I’m really out of it,” he said. “We should try this again when we’re more sober.”
He helped her find her shoes and even used her phone to get an Uber, which she would not have been capable of doing. The phone seemed so small, and the icons on it blurred under her fingertips. He waited with her downstairs till the car came, and opened its door for her, and kissed her gently, in the way that he should have kissed her on his bed.
The ride home wasn’t good, but at least she didn’t throw up in the car. She was hoping that somehow she would be able to sneak in, but it was still relatively early, and when she opened the door of the apartment (using keys, and deeply ingrained muscle memory), her mom and Matt and Kayla were sitting at the dinner table, eating taquitos from Trader Joe’s.
* * *
Marie’s drunkenness was so egregiously obvious that at first Laura wasn’t sure whether to be angry or concerned. They made eye contact, and then Marie slurred something about having food poisoning and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Matt turned to Laura as though expecting her to go do something, so she got up out of her seat but then just stood there, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do.
Marie was only fourteen. Laura had thought she had more time before this kind of thing would start to happen, more time to figure out how to be stern and parental but yet understanding and cool enough to keep lines of communication open. But all she could muster right now was anger, muted by exhaustion. The tipsiness from her drink with Callie had shaded quickly into a bone-achy tiredness—hence the half-assed dinner. Why was Marie doing this to her right now? Without saying anything to Matt, she eye-contact-pleaded with him to handle it, but he shook his head. Marie was her daughter; she was the first line of discipline. That had