I’ve had a few girls. Prettier than her. Riper. Girls who feel under your hands like peaches that have sat all a summer day on a sunny windowsill. But not one of those peach-girls ever looked at me like she did, with slow, pleased eyes. It was true, what my buddy had said about older women. They want it. So they know how to give it. At first, it was embarrassing, the way she looked at me all over, like I was a picture or something. But her looking made me want her more than I had ever wanted those other girls who lay down for me so sweet and sort of sad. I never had a married one before. Maybe they’re all like that. Like my buddy said, too hungry to be shy or afraid. She acted like we had all the time in the world, when really we didn’t and never would.
It was crazy for us to be there, in her kid’s bedroom on a rainy Monday morning. I should have been in Algebra II, and she should have been in the supermarket or some other housewife place. The bedspread had cowboys on it, and there were posters of ball-players on the walls. I saw the scar, low on her belly, where they had cut to get the kid out. It was white, with a little shine, like it might glow in the dark, and it felt, under my fingers, like a tiny speed bump. I didn’t need a speed bump by then, though. By then she’d shown me the fun of dragging things out ’til it almost hurt, of going forward, forward, forward, and then backing up a little, and even talking some, not a real conversation, only scraps like “baby” and “kiss me there” that she made sound secret and hot.
There were sounds, too, that weren’t words, sighs and moans that seemed a song almost, once I got used to them, and I could tell by her sounds and the small turns of her body where to touch her and when and even how. I remember from Sunday school a story about how God sang the world into being. He sang special God-notes that made the sun and stars appear, and the trees and animals and us and everything. Maybe it’s not right to think of God’s song and her song together, but they could have been alike, all praises and calling.
When at last she lay underneath me, it felt familiar and comfortable, like the first night on your own cool pillow after a week down the shore and a long drive home. I thought how I could take charge now, finish and be safe. Instead I listened for her again, let her ache soak into me, seawater into sand. Afterwards, we stayed just quiet on the narrow bed. There was nothing to say. Her leg was over mine, and I liked the weight of it. I worried for her. My buddy would never understand that.
“Lover Boy” won third prize in the 2016 Flash Fiction contest at Story Circle Network.