Part 6 (1/2)

”What's wrong?”

”Nothing,” I told him. ”I'm just resting.”

We lay there, his hand brus.h.i.+ng back and forth over my hip. It was peaceful in the darkness.

”What are you thinking about?” I said.

”I'm thinking how smooth your skin is.”

When he said it, I wondered how he had learned to do that, to say exactly the right thing. I wondered if it was a thing all pretty boys just knew how to do.

I climbed on top of him then, but when he went to touch me, I took his hands in mine and moved them above his head, pinning them against the mattress. He struggled against my weight for a second, and then he understood what I was doing, and he let me hold him down. I kissed him and I moved my body over his body, but I did not let him touch me with his hands.

I had just gotten him up inside me, and had my nipple-on my good breast, not the one where he'd almost bitten through the skin-in his mouth when I started talking to him.

”Am I your ten-point buck?”

”What?”

”Am I your ten-point buck,” I said.

”You know you are.”

”Not a doe?”

”Not a doe.”

”All right,” I said. ”I'll be a buck. But don't you forget.”

”What, honey?”

”I let you catch me.”

”So you did,” he said. ”So you did.”

We f.u.c.ked then, me rocking on him and stopping, rocking and stopping. We did it a long time, and I kept feeling like I was dripping down around him. I'd never felt that wet before just from s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, and I couldn't get enough of the feeling. It was not like coming, but something in me just kept opening and opening.

After a time, Del couldn't take it anymore. I let him move his hands, and he wrapped his arms around my back so he could f.u.c.k hard up into me. There were no more words then, no more talk, but I'd already heard everything I wanted to hear.

My ten-point buck-to anyone else, it probably would have sounded stupid, calling a woman a deer. But I'd seen Del's face there in the Ruby when he said it the first time, and I had his c.o.c.k up inside me when I made him say it again. I never forgot the bruises, but I never forgot those words, either.

12.

THE following weekend, June called. She asked how I was, but by that time things had settled down between Del and me. My bruises were two weeks old and almost gone, and it seemed pointless to go into the whole thing. I figured she had enough on her plate. ”I've been better, but I've been worse,” I told her. ”How's the love nest?”

”Be serious, Vangie. I need to talk to you.”

”I'm listening,” I said.

She told me they'd gone out s.h.i.+ning deer, she and Luke and Ray. She didn't like the way they used the lights against the deer, but she was glad she went anyway.

”I wanted to sit between the two of them,” she said. ”I wanted to know what it felt like.”

And of course it wasn't the leg of the one who already was her lover that she concentrated on when it pressed against hers, and it wasn't his warmth she missed when he got out of the truck to check a stand.

When they got back to the house, she stayed out on the porch to smoke, because she didn't want to go in the house, not yet, not for another night. Luke came out to find her, and they stood smoking in the dark air while Ray was inside.

June said they didn't talk at all. She said she heard Luke move before she felt his touch. Then his hand was there, reaching under her hair to the nape of her neck.

”His fingers were so cool and smooth, Vangie,” she said.

She told me she was sure then that Luke had to know her in a way no one else knew her, because that was her favorite place to be touched-her neck and her face and her hair-and Ray never touched her there.

”Do you know what I'm saying?”

”I know,” I said, and it was a lie and it was the truth. I knew what it meant to be touched in a way you liked, but I didn't know what it meant to June to be touched by Luke. There was no way for me to know.

She told me she and Luke had s.e.x for the first time the next morning, after Ray left for work. She went to Luke's room, and they f.u.c.ked in Luke's bed. She said it wasn't like anything she ever did.

That was all she told me. It wasn't like when we were in high school and we recounted every detail.

”Say something,” she said at the end.

”I'm glad you found someone. I'm glad you love him.”

”But?”

”But nothing. Just be careful.”

She laughed at that. ”You mean if I can't be good, be careful?”

”Yeah, something like that.”

”I'll call when I can,” she said. ”When I have something new to tell.”

But I didn't hear from her again for a long time.

13.

DEL and I crossed some kind of line the night he called me a buck. Maybe it had to do with me trusting him again, or maybe it had to do with me pinning him to the mattress. I didn't know. What I was sure of was that our s.e.x changed.