Deidra’s father was in California, opening a new plant for his pharmaceutical firm, and her mother had flown out to join him for a few days. It was a big thing for Deidra. She told Paul her parents had moved to Harmony because she’d fallen in with a bad crowd. Leaving her home alone meant, after three years, she had earned their trust once more.
She glanced up from her reading and smiled. “What?”
Paul realized he was staring and blushed. “Sorry.”
When she looked back at his script, her eyes slid across two words, then rolled over and locked with his again. “I can’t read with you looking at me like that.”
She grinned at him. An angel’s grin that brightened his dreams, so natural, so warm and tender, a grin made all the more special because she rarely revealed it. It was something of herself she showed only to her closest of friends ... and to him.
Paul lowered his eyes to the camcorder in his lap. He’d been checking the footage he’d shot earlier this evening for the video yearbook. Harmony High’s annual Powderpuff Football Game. The girls dressed in red and white uniforms and played flag football. The regular varsity players did cheerleading routines in drag. “Again ... sorry.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Can I ask you something?”
His eyes jerked up to her. “Sure.”
She seemed a bit bewildered. “Why am I reading this?”
“You don’t want to read –”
“It’s just that ...” She hesitated. “I mean we’re finally alone and I don’t wanna spend the whole night –”
“Reading my script, you already said.”
Deidra looked at him with fondness, her voice soft. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
Paul shrugged. “It’s just that I’ve been working on it for so long and I ... I think it’s finally ready. I need you to prove me right. Yours is the only opinion that matters to me.”
“I’m honored.” Paul could see the light burn brighter in her eyes as she spoke the words. She looked down at the notebook for a moment, then her face snapped back up and she laughed a bit. “But I still can’t read with you watching me.”
Paul held up his hand. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” He put the eyepiece monitor of the camera over his eye. “I’ll just be toiling over yearbook stuff.”
Satisfied, Deidra began scanning his screenplay once more.
When he returned his attention to the camera, Paul saw an image of Danny Fields. The six-foot-tall, one hundred and seventy-five-pound running back – who averaged five and a half yards a carry and scored twenty-five touchdowns his junior year to win himself a full ride to Notre Dame – was doing cartwheels in a skirt.
Paul had to smile. One of the advantages of being the sole editor of the video yearbook: he could always find ways to sneak in footage of his friends. In fact, tomorrow, when the Class of 1988 played the Wide Game, Paul planned to chronicle the whole event with his camcorder, planned to splice a record of their adventure into this year’s tape. It would be his way of immortalizing “the group.”
The Wide Game had become the stuff of legend, Harmony’s version of alligators in the sewer. Ask anyone, and, more often than not, they would tell you that they knew of a friend or relative who’d played before, knew of some “horrible thing” that had happened to them. But Paul’s own brother, Allen, had been part of the group that played in 1984, and Allen’s tale had been far from cautionary.
To participate, a player need only contribute five dollars and race through cornfields and woods to reach an old limestone quarry turned lake by heavy rain. The first one in the water won every dime, and, when everyone made it to the end, there was a day-long party. Tomorrow was Senior Skip Day, and most of Paul’s classmates had decided to play. Danny said the prize was now a staggering one thousand dollars.
On the tape, Nancy Collins jumped up and down. She wore a red Powderpuff ’87 T-shirt and sweats, her face streaked black under the eyes. In her hand she held a white #1 button trailing a blue ribbon. For the first time in four years, Red beat White.
Paul next saw Robby walk into the frame. He’d just come from a shift at Harmony’s volunteer fire station and still wore his badge and uniform shirt. Deidra flashed him a polite smile. They dated the year before, went together to the Junior Prom. Paul had seen them in the video footage he edited for the 1986-87 yearbook. They looked happy, dancing together. Paul was no fool. He knew what happened after proms. And there were times, after they went to a movie or a football game with Robby and the others, when Paul wondered if the two had slept together.
He remembered working with Deidra on the West Side Story set in the school auditorium. She’d been painting the New York skyline while he glued individual Styrofoam “bricks” to a plywood wall. One afternoon, their conversation turned to sex, and Deidra had been open in her admission that she wasn’t a virgin. Paul was fine with that. There were times when he felt as if he were the last remaining virgin in Harmony, and she’d told him it happened before she moved to town. This made the boy who deflowered her faceless, a stranger. Robby was another story. Paul saw him almost every day of the year. There were times when Paul wanted to ask her about it, but would instead banish the question from his thoughts, telling himself it was better he did not know.
He watched static wipe away Robby’s image and cleared the thoughts from his mind. He aimed his camcorder at Deidra, watched her come into grainy focus in his black and white eyepiece monitor. Her creamy skin contrasted with the darkness of her hair, and her eyes sparkled in the lamplight. She looked up from her reading and into his lens; her face wore an enigmatic expression.
“What page?” he wanted to know.
“Twenty. They just ran over the zombie.”
Paul turned the camera off and moved to sit beside her on the bed. “Do you like it?”
Deidra nodded. She handed the script over to him, letting go to cover his hands with her own. “The action was extreme.”
He smiled, slid the notebook into his backpack at the foot of her bed. Perhaps tomorrow, if there was time, she could read more of it. “So you really thought it was good?”
“Oh yeah ... I loved everything but the title. Invasion of the Astro Zombies?” She crinkled her nose.
“That was Sean’s idea,” he was quick to point out. “It’s just a working title. I was actually thinking of calling it In the Flesh.”
She kissed him. “That’s a Clive Barker title.”
“Yeah, but who’s gonna know?”
Deidra chuckled. “Everyone will know. What I wanna know is how you plan to film a head getting crushed under the car tires?”
“I make a head out of plaster bandages, fill it full of pig brains, then run over it with my Mustang.”
Her nose crinkled again. “You’re a sick puppy.”
“Then why are you with me?”
“What can I say, it must be love.” Deidra corralled her hair behind her ear again and moved in to kiss him; her fingers rose to his face, gently traced its contours. “In the spirit of sharing, I’ve got something I want to show you too.”
“All right.”
Deidra pulled a sketchbook out from under her bed and flipped it open. She paused, then offered it to him. “I just finished this tonight.”
When Paul looked at the drawing, a startled expression crossed his face. There on the page, depicted in intricate, breathtaking detail, was his own profile. It appeared as if Deidra had individually drafted each hair on his head. She’d drawn him in an all-to-familiar pose: staring into the eyepiece of his camcorder, the Sony logo clearly visible.
“I don’t think I got your nose quite right. I had to do most of it from memory so you wouldn’t see.”
“It’s beautiful,” Paul told her. Later he would think it odd that he used that word in connection with his own image, but no other adequately described what she had rendered.
Her hands found his face again; they turned it away from the sketch and to her lips. “
You like?”
“I love,” he said as their lips parted, then abruptly laughed, realizing he had nearly forgotten her surprise. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small package covered in rose-colored paper. “I have something else for you.”
Her eyes instantly ignited with excitement. “Paul ...”
“Open it.”
Deidra took it from his hand and ripped through the wrapping to reveal a small, felt-covered jewelry store box. She rubbed her fingers across its surface, then flipped it open. A small golden charm on a chain rested on the satin pillow. It appeared broken, incomplete. Etched into its surface were curved lines and seemingly random words.
Paul reached into his shirt and pulled on the gold chain that hung around his neck. At the end of the chain twirled a mirror image of the charm in the box. Deidra held her present up to his necklace. The two charms fit together like a puzzle. The complete design formed two hearts, intertwined, and the saying inscribed in gold read, in its entirety:
The Lord watch
between me and thee
while we are absent
one from another.
Genesis 31:49
“Some guys give the girl they love a promise ring,” Paul told her as she stared at the two halves made whole, “but you’ve already got my class ring. So I thought this was a better way to show you how much you mean to me.”
She traced the chain that hung around his neck. “You’ve had this on you all night?”
“I’ve had it on for a week. I kept waiting for some special moment to give you your half. Rumor has it tonight’s going to be pretty special.”
Deidra looked as if she might cry. She fastened her present around her neck, the golden half circle standing out against the white of her T-shirt. “I’ll never take it off.”
“I love you,” Paul said.
She grinned, her chuckle clogged by tears of joy. “You are so getting lucky tonight.”
He kissed her, then pulled away. “You know how much I want to be with you.”
She nodded, moved in to kiss him again.
Paul stopped her. “But I want us to be together because that’s what you want—because it feels right.”
Deidra smiled. She turned out the light, striping the room with the moonlight that spilled through her blinds. “I do want it, and with you ... everything feels right.” As she spoke, Deidra leaned forward, brought her face within inches of his, her breath hot on his lips. “By the way, do you snore?”
“Do I ...?”
“Snore. Do you?”
“No one’s ever been there to say one way or another.”
She smiled, her nose nearly brushed his, then she jerked back. “I just had a horrible thought.”
Paul’s heart skipped a beat. “What’s wrong?”
“What if your mother calls Sean tonight?”
His mother had been told about Senior Skip Day tomorrow, was even going to call him in sick, and she knew about the Wide Game. But he had not confided in her that he was going home with Deidra after Powderpuff. Instead, he told her he would be sleeping at Sean’s.
“All taken care of. Sean, Mick, and Danny are all staying at Mick’s house tonight, because it sits right at the edge of the cornfields. Sean told his Mom that all the guys would be there.”
She smiled. “Then when she calls Mick’s?”
“You know Mick’s Mom. She gets all of our names mixed up. She won’t know which of us are there, and by that time the guys will all be asleep anyway. Mom won’t want to wake her sleeping baby.”
“You’ve got this all thought out. I never knew you were so deceitful.”
Paul blushed in the dimness. “I did what I had to. I’d do anything for you.”
Deidra raised an eyebrow at that. “Anything?”
They kissed. As it grew deeper, more passionate, Paul put the sketchbook on the floor and untucked Deidra’s shirt. When he reached for the glorious curves of her breasts, she arched her back, allowed his shaking hands to fumble with the clasps of her bra. Paul pulled it off over her head with her shirt, then tossed the clothing aside, his lips traveling down her neck. The charm he’d given her sat on her left breast, he could see it rise and fall as she drew rapid breaths, a golden mirror that glowed with reflected moonlight. He threw off his own shirt and pressed himself against her; felt her warmth, her softness against his chest.
She placed her hand over his, guided it downward, positioned it on the belt buckle of her jeans. A moment later, his hand slid beneath the waistband of her panties, paused in her thick, coarse curls, then moved further south. Until now, this had been the climax of their intimacy; in his car, beneath an afghan as they watched videos in a darkened room – his mother or her parents mere feet away. Tonight, however, there were no parents ... no limits.
Her voice was a hot whisper in his ear. “Did you bring it?”
Paul nodded and reached for his back pocket, his fingers glistening. His hardness pushed against his jeans, made them so tight that he could barely free his wallet. He took the square Trojan packet from his billfold, held it out for her inspection, and hoped she could not see him shaking.
Deidra read the inscription beneath the Roman soldier’s profile: “Ribbed for her pleasure. My, but you’re the considerate one.” She then slid from the bed, condom in hand, and moved to the stereo on the other side of her room.
Paul blinked, his length aching. “Whatcha doin’?”
“I’ve been thinking about this night all week.” She found what looked like a blank Maxell tape and slid it into the player. “So I made us a tape of appropriate songs.” She looked back at him and smiled. “Our own background score.”
When Deidra hit the “play” button, her speakers broadcast the unmistakable beat of George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” She spun around and placed the condom wrapper between her teeth. Then, with deliberate slowness, she slid jeans and panties down long, muscular legs, revealing the triangular thatch of hair Paul had felt but never seen. Deidra kicked her clothes off into the corner, hiding the eyes of her Cabbage Patch Kids.
When Paul shed his remaining clothes, his movements were clumsy by comparison. He moved across the room, trying to dispel his own nervousness, his own feelings of inadequacy. Deidra was so beautiful, so funny, so ... perfect. He opened his mouth to tell her this, but she placed a finger over his lips to hush him. He kissed it, his eyes drifting down her breasts and tracing the curves of her hips. She pushed on his chest, moved him back toward the frilly comforter that covered her bed. Paul did as she wished. At that moment, she could have asked anything of him and he would have done it with joy.
Deidra knelt before him. As Paul watched wide-eyed, she ripped open the Trojan wrapper with her teeth and placed the rolled condom between her lips. With mouth and hands, she slowly worked to unroll the prophylactic until he was sheathed in rubber.
Paul wanted to ask her where she had learned that little trick, but didn’t. Deidra was far more experienced than he, more in control, and much more comfortable with her own sexuality. Once, she had gone so far as to call Paul from her tub while taking a bath. They had attempted phone sex that night, but Paul had felt very uncomfortable, concerned his mother would pick up the phone, hear them talking dicks and pussies, and have a coronary. Because of her experience, his greatest concern at that moment was that he might come too quickly. He didn’t want that.
God, no.
The tape had transitioned from George Michael to Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” And when Deidra looked up, Paul saw his own longing mirrored in her eyes. She climbed onto his lap, grabbed his head in her hands, and pulled him once more to her lips. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, playfully touched his own, stoking the fires within his flesh until he felt he would blister. Deidra burned with him; a film of sweat slicked her skin, flavoring her lips, her neck, her breasts.
Paul held her by her waist and drew her to him, let her feel how hard he was for her. She moved against him, glossing the rubber of the
condom, breathing into him as she worked her hips. Paul uttered a low sound, a plea for her to end his starvation. Only then did she grasp him, sliding his length into her in a single motion.
No dream, no matter how vivid, could have prepared him for the sensation of moving within her body.
He grew lost in her warmth, in their glorious friction, the ecstasy of his orgasm building, demanding to be set free. He closed his eyes and tried to harness it; he turned his mind to his film, to the SATs next week, to the day that lay before them. In the midst of their passion, Paul thought about the Wide Game. Then, when he felt Deidra grip his shoulders like a vise, when he heard her moans mature to a guttural scream, he stopped thinking and surrendered his virginity to her in a burst of pleasure.
They collapsed onto the flowered bedspread, panting as the scent of their coupling hung in the air. Paul had heard the male orgasm compared to “three seconds in the arms of God.” Nothing could have been truer.
They laid there in silence, Deidra’s head on his chest.
She was the first to speak, “Your heart’s beating so fast.”
Paul ran his fingers through her hair, enjoying the feel of her naked form against him, feeling the palpitations within it. “So’s yours.”
“Did this change anything?”
Paul shook his head. “Doesn’t change a thing, Deidra, except that I love you even more.”
“Say my name again.”
He gave her an odd look. “Deidra.”
“I love the way you say it.”
Paul smiled. It was the most wonderful thing he’d heard in his seventeen years. He thought of the countless nights that preceded this, leaving Deidra standing on her front porch, her kiss drying on his lips as he drove home, an emptiness gnawing at his chest from the inside, leaving him hollow. On those nights, Paul laid awake in his bed, mused about what she was doing, what she was thinking about, and then he took his length in his own hand until the empty ache was muffled by bitter pleasure. But the emptiness was never totally silenced. It remained his constant companion. Even when he and Deidra were together, he was always aware that, at the end of the night, they would be forced to go their separate ways. But now, as Deidra drifted off to sleep in his arms, he had at last found bliss.