I’ve had a few girls.\u00a0 Prettier than her.\u00a0 Riper.\u00a0 Girls who feel under your hands like peaches that have sat all a summer day on a sunny windowsill.\u00a0 But not one of those peach-girls ever looked at me like she did, with slow, pleased eyes.\u00a0 It was true, what my buddy had said about older women.\u00a0 They want it.\u00a0 So they know how to give it.\u00a0 At first, it was embarrassing, the way she looked at me all over, like I was a picture or something.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I never had a married one before.\u00a0 Maybe they’re all like that.\u00a0 Like my buddy said, too hungry to be shy or afraid.\u00a0 She acted like we had all the time in the world, when really we didn’t and never would.<\/p>\n
It was crazy for us to be there, in her kid’s bedroom on a rainy Monday morning.\u00a0 I should have been in Algebra II, and she should have been in the supermarket or some other housewife place.\u00a0 The bedspread had cowboys on it, and there were posters of ball-players on the walls.\u00a0 I saw the scar, low on her belly, where they had cut to get the kid out.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I didn’t need a speed bump by then, though.\u00a0 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\u201d that she made sound secret and hot.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I remember from Sunday school a story about how God sang the world into being.\u00a0 He sang special God-notes that made the sun and stars appear, and the trees and animals and us and everything.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I thought how I could take charge now, finish and be safe.\u00a0 Instead I listened for her again, let her ache soak into me, seawater into sand.\u00a0 Afterwards, we stayed just quiet on the narrow bed.\u00a0 There was nothing to say.\u00a0 Her leg was over mine, and I liked the weight of it.\u00a0 I worried for her.\u00a0 My buddy would never understand that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Lover Boy” won third prize in the 2016 Flash Fiction contest at Story Circle Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"