mumbled something about not wanting to scare her, which she laughed off. She took the arm in her own and examined the hook. She ran her fingers over the seam which separated flesh from plastic and flicked a fingernail against the metal, smiling at the little ding noise.
“Did it hurt?” she asked.
“More than anything,” I admitted, trying to sound brave.
“Why don’t you get one of those high-tech hands?”
“I don’t know. I like my claw. It makes me feel…like the outcast I am. It separates me from people.”
She looked at me, frowning. “It’s not good to be separate from people,” she said and let go of my claw to rub the side of my face.
“I guess, but I don’t really have a choice.”
“Yes you do,” she said.
She scooted closer to me until our noses almost touched. Then, softly, she kissed me.
Her lips were so delicate, so sweet. I could taste some fruity lip-gloss as her lips wrapped themselves around mine.
I was too shocked to know what to do—not that I knew what to do anyways. I laid there and let her kiss me, unsure of what to do with my lips, my hands, my entire body.
She pulled back from me and smiled. “That was your first kiss, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, not bothering to lie or play semantics involving aunts, talk show hosts, and my mother.
“I could tell. You need practice.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be. Let’s practice.”
And she kissed me again.
I realize I’ve said this before, but the problem is that it’s true. That moment was the best I had ever experienced. That strange day kept getting better and better. She kissed me and I learned to kiss her. Before long we were making out, and, with her encouragement, I let my hand wander. We were in that bed for hours. It was early afternoon when she arrived and by the time we climbed out it was dark. By that time I had experienced quite a bit more than my first kiss. The most important of which was that for the first time I trusted someone completely. I no longer worried about her motives—that would probably have come later, if there had been a later—at that moment my joy that she was there and doing what she was doing consumed me.
After we each showered, we made our way down to the family room hand in hand. I went into the kitchen and got myself a piece of the pizza that had brought her into my life while she sat on the couch. I heated the pizza in the toaster oven and peeked through the opening into the living room while I waited. Laura sat on the couch, absentmindedly flicking through television stations. Her legs were propped up on the coffee table, and I let myself drink in the sight of them until the little bell went off, telling me that my pizza was warm once more.
“Find anything good?” I asked, dropping beside her and biting into the pizza.
“Just you,” she said and leaned against me. I swung my left arm—the one with the hook—around her, and she wiggled her head into my shoulder until she was comfortable. I didn’t worry about my hook, my melted face, or anything at that moment. I was completely comfortable. Perhaps for the first time in my life.
We watched some cheesy TV movie and exchanged kisses periodically. I was thinking about a return trip to the bedroom or breaking in the couch when her phone rang.
“Hello,” she said when she answered it. She listened for a moment. She had the volume turned low, and I couldn’t overhear whoever was on the other end. “Oh I’m at John Woodward’s house. What?...Yeah…Yeah that’s him….No I met him when I delivered a pizza earlier….No!...He’s really nice, actually incredibly nice, and handsome though he doesn’t realize it….Of course he can hear me; he’s sitting right next to me….No I don’t think he’ll get the wrong idea.” She smiled at me and squeezed my leg. “Because he’s going to be my boyfriend. He just hasn’t asked yet.”
This knocked the wind out of me. I’m sure you’re wondering why. I mean we had already played right through the bases, but I guess the logical part of me, buried nice and deep by that point, still believed it was too good to be true and she had done what she done out of curiosity or perverted lust, and that the experience would be one time only. Now she was telling whoever was on the phone that I was to be her boyfriend. That meant that things—days like the one I was enjoying—would become a regular thing.
“…not sure, let me ask him.” She covered up the phone with a hand and looked at me. “My friend Jenny wants to meet you. Is it okay if she comes over?”
“Umm…yeah, that’s fine. It’d be great,” I said quickly, taken aback by the sudden request and not really thinking it over.
At this point alarms should have been blaring. Life wasn’t supposed to move quite that fast. I had met Laura just hours before, and now she was introducing me to friends. Usually I would have been beyond suspicious, but at that time, something other than the head on my neck was doing the thinking for me, and Laura could have asked for anything.
Ten minutes later, I heard the low rumble of one of those redneck pickups, loud and untuned, turn into the drive. A few seconds after that, the doorbell rang. Laura climbed out from under me, adjusted her clothes, and went to answer it. I ran a hand through my hair and sat up straight on the couch, trying to look casual—like I met tons of new people every day.
Laura led two people into the room. One of them was the largest girl I had ever seen. She was probably five foot ten, but her true asset was the incredible layer of fat-rolls she had collected. The floor creaked under her, and I gave her weight a conservative estimate of three-hundred pounds. She didn’t so much as walk through the family room door as ooze through it. She saw me and smiled. Her gaze was disconcerting. One of her eyes slipped onto me and focused without difficulty, but the other was just a little off center and didn’t focus at all; I had enough experience in missing body parts to recognize a glass eye. Her grin was as greasy as her shoulder length, scraggly brown hair. I had a glass eye of my own and my body, covered in scars and missing chunks, wasn’t exactly pretty either, but, hypocritically, the girl revolted me to my core, and I instead looked at the boy who had come in with her. He was about the same height as the girl, perhaps an inch or two shorter. His sandy blond hair was close cropped; his neck short and his shoulders powerfully broad. If it hadn’t been for a pair of midsized man boobs and a large gut I would have assumed he was an athlete.
Great, I thought, just bring a whole party, why don’t you?
I smiled at them.
“John, this is my best friend Jenny,” Laura said, pointing at the fat girl. “And this is her boyfriend Mitch.”
I said hello to both of them and shook their hands. Mitch’s hand was dry and leathery. His eyes drooped to the floor, not meeting mine. Jenny’s hand was spongy and slick with sweat, and I hastily wiped my palm on the seat of my jeans after she let go.
“So you’re that kid that melts in the rain?” Jenny said bluntly. Her voice was a thick, deep, husking thing. I had thought they only made girls like her in the movies. Surprise.
“Yeah. That’s me,” I said, unsurprised to hear my usual resentment make a return.
“Neat,” she grunted. “Must hurt.”
I nodded and walked away from her. I didn’t trust myself around her. If she wasn’t Laura’s friend it wouldn’t be a problem—god knows I’ve been nasty to people before—but she was Laura’s friend, and I didn’t want to create open animosity.
I walked back to the couch and sat down. Laura followed and snuggled up next to me. I threw my arm around her and silently wished that her friends would leave already. Instead, they wandered into the kitchen and helped themselves to some of the pizza—and by some I mean they each took a mostly whole pizza. When they came back into the living room, they dropped into the two big recliners by the fireplace. The chair Jenny sat in groaned loudly, but to my surprise, didn’t buckle. I hadn’t realized La-z-boy made such sturdy furniture.
“So,” Jenny said around a mouthful of pizza. “What’s it like when you get
hit with water?”
I clenched my teeth and felt my temples bulge. I wanted to cuss her out. I wanted to lay into her until she cried. Never before had I met someone who I instantly hated, but I hated that fat cow with the glass eye.
“I get wet,” I said in as even a tone as I could. Laura must have sensed my inner struggle, because she held my left hand tightly, stroking the back of it with her thumb.
“I thought you melted?”
I breathed two deep, slow breathes. “Only in the rain.”
She shoved most of one piece of pizza in her mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed. “What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know. If you figure it out let me know; you’ll be rich.”
Jenny stared intently at me with her real eye while she shoveled more food into her gullet and washed it down with a can of beer I hadn’t seen her bring in—it was probably tucked up under a fat roll. She didn’t say anything while she looked at me, but she made a whole heck of a lot of noise. Her mouth sounded like a wet, sloppy swamp being shaken by an earthquake and her half dozen chins wiggled constantly. Sounds like a whoopee cushion erupted every time she wiggled. I wasn’t sure if she was actually farting or if it was just her fat making air pockets against the leather. It was probably a little of both, and either way it disgusted me.
“So…” Jenny said when she polished off the last piece and licked her fingers ‘clean’.