Page 17 of Summer Skate

JESSICA

I AM GOING TO BE SICK . I’m surprised by how bad I feel, by how fucking horrible it makes me feel to see him leaving with that girl, that soulless polka-dotted creature in a diamond necklace you can see from outer space.

My only plan is to get the fuck out of this bar and head toward the water. The water will save me.

I walk down the beach, away from the crowd near the hotel, to a part of it where I can be alone, where nobody can see me, and then I feel a wave of nausea.

I bend over. I expect to throw up, but I don’t.

I stand there for a while, wait for my body to feel somewhat stable again, then sit on the sand, cross-legged, looking out at the water.

The sunset has thinned out to just a strip of red.

The sun is a half-circle, glowing above the Peconic Bay.

I don’t feel like myself at all. It’s been a while since I’ve felt the acute sting that occurs after this kind of hit.

Everything in my life has become a little off since I met him.

It has all faded into the background, making space for this onslaught of emotions.

Little Miss Jessica. Little Miss Breaks the Rules found someone who really knows how to break them. Serves her right.

I sit there, lost in my own thoughts, for what feels like an hour. I sift through my history with other guys, try to make sense of what is happening here. I take out my phone and fill the Notes section with a deluge of emotions.

I’ve flirted before, but this time is different.

The temptation is too strong. My heart rate is too elevated.

I’ve always had control. I’m always sitting comfortably at the switchboard, pushing buttons.

Now I feel like the victim. I write: It’s like looking out at a rough ocean, knowing that if you step in, just a little, you’ll drown .

Well, I’ve had about enough. I need to just stay away from him. That’s all. That’s the only answer. Separation. Distance. Avoid him at all costs. It shouldn’t be too hard. He’s with another girl already. I doubt he’ll ever seek me out again.

And that’s when I look to the right and see him walking toward me, his feet lifting a clump of sand with every step. Despite all my resolutions, relief floods through me.

“You know what we have to do,” he says, sitting down next to me. “We have to teach you how to throw a punch.”

I smile but can’t look at him.

“In case there isn’t any fruit available.”

I shake my head at the sand.

He says: “Okay. Stand up. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.”

I hesitate, then do as he says.

“You’re right-handed?”

I nod.

“Put your left foot forward and your right foot slightly back. Keep your hands up and your elbows close to your body.”

He holds up his hand and I try to hit it.

“Okay . . . that was . . . terrible. Use your hips and shoulders. Your whole body. You’re only using your arms.”

I try again.

“If you engage your core and legs, you’ll generate more force.” I do it again and nearly fall over in the sand. He laughs.

“Oh my god. What’s wrong with you? All you’re doing is tightening your fist. Extend your arm straight from the shoulder.”

I hit his hand as hard as I can.

“Better. Try to make contact with your knuckles, not your fingers or the palm of your hand. Keep your wrist straight and snap it slightly. Then take your arm back so that you’re ready to throw another one if you have to.”

We do this a dozen times. Then we sit down and quietly stare at the water. I use a stick to make marks in the sand. He is propped on his elbows.

I ask: “How often are you fighting people anyway?”

He looks me over. “What do you mean?”

“ What do I mean? I’ve done my research.”

He is still for a moment. “You say that like I’m fighting random people on the street.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Sometimes.” He laughs. “I’ve been praised for it my whole life.

I did what the other kids weren’t doing.

I tried to hurt the goalie on the other team, which was somewhat unusual.

I played in a peewee tournament on Prince Edward Island in Canada, and when we took the ferry back with the other team, and I terrorized that team so much during the tournament that the parents on both teams made me ride back up in the captain’s quarters, away from everyone. ”

I narrow my eyes at him. “What’s your problem?”

“It’s a great question. I don’t know. I always had the ability to turn a tournament upside down, to cause fights in the stands, in a hotel. I was enemy number one at age twelve.”

“Is this the result of a traumatic childhood?”

“I don’t think so. My parents were always pretty calm. The first time I got in trouble was in first grade, when I made fun of a deaf kid in our class.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t believe that he was deaf. I started yelling and clapping, trying to startle him.”

“That’s horrible!”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I probably didn’t understand the concept of someone being deaf. I also bit my mother in the parking lot of a Chuck E. Cheese when I was eight.”

I nod. “I used to bite the other children on the playground. There was one redheaded girl that I was always after. It got so bad that when the other mothers saw me arrive, they would take their kids home. I had a reputation.”

“When I was sentenced to my room, which happened often, I used to take a tennis ball to bounce off the walls and I would do it for hours, trying to drive my parents insane.”

“If I asked my mother if we could go to the bodega to buy candy and she said no, I would lie down in the middle of Broadway.”

“ Jessica . . . ”

“I know. I know. I was such a menace.”

“I had to get out of there,” he says. “Everyone thought of me as this dangerous outcast. But at least on the ice, I could tear the place apart, cause complete chaos. They could try to kill me, fight me. But that was helpful to my team. And I was rewarded for creating chaos.”

“You’re not afraid of the consequences?”

“No. And I’m not afraid of physical pain either.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “You left yourself wide open there.”

“I did?”

“Well, now I just want to ask about the emotional pain you’re so afraid of.”

“Good luck getting an answer.”

“Seriously. What is your problem? ”

“My parents never told me they loved me?”

“That doesn’t seem like enough of a reason.”

He laughs. “It doesn’t?”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“My dad was the same if I won or lost. A few words. Never a big reaction to anything.”

“Oh. Well, I can imagine that being frustrating.”

He looks at me, at my mouth, then down at the inside of my thigh.

He says, “I have this recurring dream that I’m in my sixth-grade classroom, and the teacher and students are all there and they see me, but they aren’t engaging with me at all.

They’re just calmly going about their business, as if I’m not there. ”

I stare at him, studying his features in the almost-darkness.

“This is my nightmare,” he says, shaking his head. “Not that I’m being buried alive or chased by some maniac with a gun. I’m just basically . . . being ignored. And I wake up in a cold sweat. At least if you provoke somebody, they might care enough to punch you in the face.”

I laugh. “You want your presence to be felt.”

“Not everyone can be the one provoking people. But I can, so I make use of it.”

“Sometimes a professional strength is a personal liability. Many of my romantic monologues are fueled by some rage I felt about something else. People will say to me: Why are you so angry ? I’m trying to make something of myself. That’s why. Why aren’t you angrier? ”

“I know,” he says. “No rage? Good luck trying to be successful at something that many people want and most can’t have.

I’m trying to not end up back in Johnstown.

It’s not that I don’t want to be derailed.

It’s that I can’t be derailed. Sorry if what fuels me sometimes flies off in the wrong direction.

Sorry that I’m not in complete control of it at all times.

It’s not a perfect world. I’m not a great humanitarian.

And I never claimed to be. That’s somebody else’s job. I am a force.”

I lie back, bend both knees, dig my toes into the cooling sand.

“I had the president of a literary agency once say to me: ‘You might be a good writer, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it for a living. It’s hard and you’ll never make any money, so if you don’t have to do this, you shouldn’t.

’ I looked him dead in the eyes and said: ‘I have to do this.’ And then he agreed to be my agent, and I marched right out of his office and into an alleyway on Seventh Avenue and pumped my fist and screamed, ‘Come on!’ at the top of my lungs. ”

He laughs at me. “God.”

“It was so loud that a flock of pigeons flew away.” I am laughing with my eyes closed. “A homeless man ran in the opposite direction.”

“I’m trying to think of a consistently even-tempered person who I’d like to hang out with for more than two seconds.”

I turn onto my side. “Speaking of which . . . what’d you do with that girl? The girl with all of that . . . blonde hair?”

“She’s not my type.”

“No? She’s pretty . . . rich . . . What’s not to like?”

He shrugs, like he’s tired.

“Plus . . . ” I pause for dramatic effect. “Phenomenal tits.”

He gives me a serious look. “I know.”

“Do you think they’re real?”

“They seemed fake to you?”

“They just seemed a little far apart, like one tit had nothing to do with the other. There was no togetherness, no synchronicity.”

“You could be right.”

I say: “She’d make a great evil villain actually, with that choker . . . She had antagonist written all over her.”

It’s late. Our friends are long gone. The hotel guests have retired to their rooms. We can hear the waitstaff shutting down the restaurant. We are the only ones outside. Suddenly, I am creeped out by the silence, the pure darkness.

“You know, if you murdered me right now, nobody would know,” I say.

“If you murdered me , nobody would know.” He brushes sand from his legs. “Death by sandal.”

I laugh, cover my face with my hands, stand up, dust the sand off my body.

“You know you can never show your face here again,” he says, looking up at me.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ve seen worse.”

“I’m not.” He stands up. I give him a slight shove as we walk.

“All right,” I say. “How are we getting home?”

“We’re not going home.” He raises his eyebrows and then removes a shell-shaped key from his pocket. “We’re sleeping here.”

I gasp. “Is that her room?”

He shrugs. “I doubt she’s using it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I hurt her feelings, and she has a house twenty minutes away to drown her sorrows in. The room was just a ploy.”

We walk away from the water, toward the road.

“I’m not having sex with you,” I say.

“I know that. But come on. I’m exhausted, aren’t you? And it’s right here. Let’s go check it out. I promise you don’t have to have sex with me.”

“You need to write that on your forehead.”

“For you or for me?”

“For both of us.”

The room is sparse. A white bed with a wooden headboard and matching wooden nightstands next to it. There is a glass table in the middle of the room with an orange and white beach ball on the floor. I look at the bed.

“You take it,” he says. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“What? Really?”

“I can’t lie in that bed next to you. I will try to fuck you. Guaranteed.”

“Fine. Take a pillow at least.”

I put the pillow on the floor next to the bed and grab a blanket that I find in the closet. He already has his head on the pillow when I put the blanket over him.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m okay.”

I get into bed. Under the covers, I remove my shorts and bra, let them drop to the floor.

I pull the covers up to my nose and lie there, completely still.

I stare at the ceiling, listening to him move below me.

Then I shuffle my body toward the side of the bed.

I dangle my arm over the edge. He takes my hand and holds it.

I must have taken it back at some point, but I don’t remember when.

There is a loud knock on the door. It startles me awake. Carter gets up to answer it.

“Good morning, sir. Sorry to bother you, but we found these at the front desk. We believe they belong to you. Your friends left them.”

“Thank you,” he says, in a raspy voice, and then closes the door.

I sit up, hold the covers to my chest. “What was that?”

He coughs. “My car keys.”

“They didn’t take your car?”

“I thought they would. I gave them my keys. I guess they found another way home.”

“You mean we could have driven home last night?”

He looks at me. “I’m glad we didn’t.”

“Me too.”

On the ferry ride home, he opens the windows halfway.

I look out at the land in the distance, the large houses overlooking the water.

I listen to the steady hum of the boat as the water churns against it.

His left hand is on the steering wheel. His right hand is resting on his thigh.

I put my head on his shoulder, then wrap my arms and hands around his right arm so that the entire thing is in my possession.

I laugh. “Can you drive without your right arm?”

“I’ll let you know if I need it.”