A Thin Line (12 page)

"What if us girls want to do our own thing with Morgan?" Brandy says.

"Where? Chippendales? Morgan's not going to be into that." Preston says.

"You're going to Chippendales?" Kent's head pops up and he looks around, trying to catch Brandy's eye. Though he's against a co-ed party, he doesn't seem keen on this idea.

"Wherever we want," says Jackie. "We didn't think Morgan was ever going to get married. This is the party we never thought we'd get to throw her. We're not sharing it with the guys that don't want us out of their sight."

"Exactly, Jackie,” I exclaim. Preston rolls his eyes and begins to protest my point. "Besides," I add, "Don't you guys want to drag Nate to some seedy underground lounge and embarrass him with lap dances from a naked woman he doesn't know? Maybe she could pop out of a cake, or pretend to be the maid or something."

Preston pauses and scowls. "Watch less porn, Angie. Also, fewer 80's movies. Those aren't the kinds of parties I throw."

"Well, excuse the fuck out of me. I don't go to Bachelor parties."

“I do, and I’m telling you, that's played out.”

“So is a Hawaiian wedding, but you brought that up.”

The patio erupts in a dull roar of six different voices trying to be heard. "Okay, okay, okay." I stand, tapping my knife against the rim of a wine glass.  "We'll be here all night having this argument. How about a compromise?"

"Like what?" Kent asks.

"How about we do separate parties... but we all meet up someplace around midnight and party together? Like a hotel so we can get a block of rooms and crash."

I survey the table in the waning sunlight. The serving dishes are nearly empty; every plate is practically licked clean. Glasses of tea and wine dot the table and everyone is comfortable, and now beginning to nod in tentative agreement.

"You know the official Engagement Party will be formal and full of doctors and grandparents. That won't be our chance to party."

"I like that idea." Brandy is nodding. So is Jackie. Preston doesn't look happy but he's half-drunk so he doesn't have the energy to protest anymore.

"So the guys will get together and plan Nate's party; the girls will plan Morgan's. Who's planning the end of the night party?"

The entire table looks toward Preston and I. We look at each other and shrug. Of course we're going to get stuck with it. Brandy and Jackie grudgingly volunteer their services, but I know there is a reason Preston and I are planning this wedding.

We're single. They think we have more time, time that isn't eaten up by children and family responsibilities. I’ll be angry about it after the wedding is over. Right now, we need to get it done.

The party moves to the fire pit, where there is ample space to sit back and relax. Deep, plush couches surround the square marble pit in a U-shape. It's the perfect spot to give us a dusk view of sparkling Lake Conway and the sun setting behind the hills on the other side.

Preston plays bartender and DJ, filling drinks and running a Spotify playlist through the underground speakers. I feel relaxed, letting myself have a few drinks and take a deep breath. It's been a rough few weeks of work and worrying about Dad.

Matt and Jackie are the first to leave. At this stage of her pregnancy, she has two modes: hungry and sleepy. She cycles between the two on a constant basis. Kent and Brandy duck out a half hour later. They only have their babysitter until 11 o'clock. That leaves me and Preston sitting in the most romantic spot in the house, with a view of the most romantic spot we could find as teenagers. I shake my head at the irony.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

He sits next to me and puts his feet up on the edge of the pit. I attempt a smart ass answer but nothing comes to me.

"Those were good times. I haven't been out there since... since we..."

Surely he's joking. "Get the fuck out of here, Preston," I say, laughing.

"I haven't," he says, quietly. And I stop laughing. I'm watching him, watching his face. I know when he is lying. He isn't. "That place was ours. I didn't want to... what's the word I'm thinking of?"

He waves his beer bottle in the air like it will jog his memory.

"Sully? Mar? Stain? Ruin?" I suggest words that I thought of when I remembered that he'd been there first with
her
. "You're wrong, though. That place was yours and Stacey’s. Not ours."

"No." He shakes his head. "That spot, that place. I never took Stacey where I took you."

"Same lake, Preston. And almost twenty years ago, as you pointed out to me when you told me to adjust my attitude. Does it really matter?"

"Does to me. It matters that you know that I never took Stacey
there
.  Her brother brought us out here. He liked to hang out at his buddy's house. They lived somewhere down the lake, down that way."

He points downstream with the neck of his bottle. "Stacey's parents didn't know that when her brother chaperoned her dates, he'd pick up his girlfriend and drive all of us out to that house down there. He went one way with his girlfriend, Stacey and I went another.

"She took me to the basement. Gave me my first beer. Smoked my first pot. I had my first ‘E'. Talk about wasting all your firsts on someone."

I rear back at his confession. Preston tried Ecstasy? Why did I never know this?

He swigs a mouthful from the bottle. "I was out of it. Like… I knew what was happening, and I remember it but it was like watching someone else do it. She said all the guys laughed at me behind my back because they knew I was still a virgin. She said you would never have sex with me because I wouldn't know what I was doing."

I have never heard this is story and I am listening with rapt attention, watching his face by the light of the moon and the flickering flame. The truth I never had the courage or strength to hear was coming right at me like a freight train.

"More than anything, I wanted to be with you, but you know how I was, when I was a kid. Kind of soft. I didn't want to be rejected by you, so I let her... you know." He shrugged his shoulders. "Take me."

"
Take
you?"

"She was aggressive, stayed on top, drove the whole show. When she came, that was it."

"What about–" I pause. I know he knows what I'm asking about, the most intimate thing I ever let anyone do to me.

He shakes his head, rolling his eyes up to meet mine. "Never. She wanted me to, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t…not with her."

"She said she taught you how to–"

"She was bluffing.
That
I did with you first time."

I am incredulous, as I should be. He is about twenty years late in making me hear him.

He holds a hand up in a Boy Scout's Oath. "I have no reason to lie to you right now. I could tell you we did all kinds of things, but we didn't. We drank, we smoked some pot, we did some ‘E', and we fucked once. She fell asleep and I went back upstairs. Her brother drove us home. I wouldn't go out with her again after that."

His hand scrapes his chin. The stubble sends an earthy, scratchy noise into the quiet.  "She definitely didn't like it when I started dating you. I think she thought she could manipulate me. I finally told her to back off."

I'm trying to wrap my brain around these words, this new information.  I turn my body slightly sideways so I'm facing him. "You never told me any of this."

"You wouldn’t hear it." His words are terse, his voice clipped. "And after awhile I figured I deserved your anger. You were right. I let you believe you were first. I let you waste all your firsts on me."

He parrots my words back to me with a bitter twist of his tongue. "When you asked me if I was a virgin, I didn't answer you."

"Yeah, you did. You said you wanted me to be the first."

“I did." He let that sit there for a full ten seconds before he went on. "I did really want that. But you weren't. I didn't think it was that big of a deal but I started to realize how important it was to you. I wanted to let you have that. I never thought... I never thought Stacey would...."

I watch him inhale a deep breath. The muscle in his jaw pops out, throwing a thin a shadow on his face. He blinks a few times and exhales.

"After that, I figured it wasn't meant to be. And I didn't care about anyone anymore. Caring was a waste of time...a person could be in my life now, but five minutes from now, they might not be, and that's got to be okay with them. It's fine with me."

He's lying. It's all bravado and excuses for being just as hurt as I was. I don't call him on it.

The flames die down to burning embers. Preston doesn't move to stoke it or put it out. The sun has long since dipped below the horizon. The lakefront neighborhood and the hills across the way are wrapped in darkness. A cool ribbon of air whips through the patio.

"I miss us," Preston says. "In my naiveté, I thought I had it all.  I had my life all mapped out. My girlfriend was my best friend. My folks were cool. I had a nice job and a car. I had plans to graduate, go to college, move in with Angie, marry her, and maybe have two or three kids. Then the bottom dropped out."

These plans all sound familiar to me. He wasn't the only one that had to re-do the map for his life.

I feel him slide closer to me on the couch and I don’t move away. My heartbeat ramps upward and goosebumps wave across my skin when his arm lifts and lands on the cushion behind me.

"I know you don't think about me like that. You don't miss me. You don't even like me and I don't blame you. But I miss us. I miss hanging out with you, talking to you. Being with you. We went from best friends one day to nothing the next. Like that."

He snaps his fingers. The sound startles me.

"Angie… I wish I could just…" 

One moment I am gazing at him with a modicum of pity. In the next moment his lips are on mine, soft and wet and gently pressing. It's a familiar feeling... like coming home. He lightly kisses me, feather soft for a few strokes and then presses harder, more urgently. His tongue works its way into my mouth and the kiss deepens. My breaths come in stutters and I moan into his mouth.

I feel his groan deep in his chest as he presses himself to me. A hand wanders from my neck to the curve of my breast, around my back, my hip, my thigh. Then back up, this time creeping up under my skirt–not too far, but far enough. He turns his head and assaults my mouth in a way I have never experienced and
holy fuck
.... I can't focus on anything but how good this feels.

How good he feels. It's been so long...

My head slowly clears and the wheels finally turn. Rational thought is fighting its way to the surface.
I am kissing Preston.

Kissing Preston!

Once my brain catches up with what my tongue is doing, I tear my lips from his and launch myself off of the couch. "I have to go."

"Angie, wait!" I hear him get up and trip over what I guess is the edge of the fire pit.  I almost caught it myself. "Shit! Fuck! Ouch, Goddamn it!"

In the house, I search for my purse. I know I set it down somewhere…I check the kitchen and there it is, on the counter next to the refrigerator.

Preston has limped inside and placed himself between me and the front door. In the light, I can see his bloodshot eyes, his near drunken state apparent on his face.  My mouth tastes like remnants of Stella Artois.

"Angie, please stay. I didn't mean..."

"I know. You're drunk. Let me–"

"I didn't tell you all of that because I was drunk. I wanted you to know. Finally."

"Did you kiss me because you were drunk?"

"Did you kiss me back because
you
were drunk?"

"I'm not drunk."

"Neither am I."

I sigh, closing my eyes, clutching my purse to my chest. "Are you going to let me by, or do I have to spray you with Mace?"

The gaze on his face is emotionless. He doesn't look angry or sad or irritated. It's blank, but he's watching me like I didn't say a word to him. Finally, he steps aside, reaches out and turns the knob to the front door. It stands wide open, ready for me to walk through it.

Away from Preston.  Why
don't
I want to walk out of that door right now? Why aren't I running away, horrified that this man I cannot stand just gave me the best kiss I've had in years?

I force my feet to move, one in front of the other, until I make it to the porch and then the steps and then across the driveway to my car. He stands in the doorway, watching me. I tell my feet to keep moving, not to turn around and throw myself at him.

"You kissed me back." I hear it right before I get in my car and I stop for half a second.  "Might want to think about what that means."

He's got one thing right: I need to think.

I need to think about what it means when a man you claim to hate kisses you and you kiss him back. And what it means when your body completely betrays you, reacts so passionately to said kiss that five miles down the road, you pull over, yank off your uncomfortably wet panties, ball them up and toss them into your purse.