Page 10 of Melt With You

‘What are you doing?’

He was down on the bed, and he pushed up her dress and stared at the smooth skin between her legs. ‘I like that,’ he said, eyes bright. ‘That Brazilian look. It always works for me.’

Then he was between her legs, licking her pussy, but he still had her phone in his hand.

‘Smile,’ he said.

‘Luke, don’t –’

Was he getting her back for the things she’d said to him? The images she’d created of him downloading porn onto his X-pod, watching solo when he found himself without ready-made company?

‘Come on, baby. Smile.’

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. He took the picture anyway.

‘Something to look at late at night,’ he said, ‘when you’re by yourself and thinking of me.’

Chapter Four

‘Slut,’ Chelsea said, looking as if she were trying to pull off a joke, but saying the word a bit too harshly to be humorous. Chelsea had left college to marry her boyfriend, Dameron, knocked up before her second year of junior college. She had wanted to be a … a … what? She’d wanted to be famous. That’s what Dori had always thought. Chelsea had wanted to be on TV, or in movies, but she’d never really had the talent or the drive to work for her goal. Had she been born later, she would have swooned to be on one of those semi-reality shows. MTV’s The Hills or Laguna Beach. Dori could even imagine her on The Real Housewives of Orange County or The Bachelorette. Instead, she was a stay-at-home mother whose kid had left the nest as soon as his feathers were dry, making her simply a stay-at-home nothing, and she was bitter.

‘I’m not a slut.’ Dori felt defensive, even when there was no need to be. She didn’t have to prove herself to Chelsea.

‘You fucked him, though, didn’t you?’ Again, Chelsea appeared to be making a joke, her coral-glossed lips raised in a smile, her tone purposefully light. But she seemed to be honestly interested in Dori’s answer, as did the rest of the gang.

Eyebrows went up around the table.

‘Isn’t it too early for this sort of talk?’ Violet asked. She looked as if she were trying to hold herself still, to quiet the noises reverberating in her skull. Of their group, Violet had always been the one to indulge too much. Now, no longer a youngster, the morning’s payback was more difficult for her to hide. But even though Violet had come to Dori’s rescue, she seemed as curious as the others as to whether or not Dori had slept with Luke.

‘Never too early to talk about fucking,’ Chelsea said with an even broader smile. Yet her eyes blazed ferociously. Had she thought she was the one who should leave with Luke? Had she believed since he’d been King of the Campus and she’d been Queen that they were destined to be together? Didn’t she remember that she’d married her high school beau? Didn’t she understand what destiny was all about?

Dori sipped her coffee and wondered what her friend would say if she spilled the whole scene, if she described exactly how she and Luke had spent the night. With Luke tied down to the bed with his own tie, arms over his head. With the leather belt in Dori’s hand. Would that vision have turned Chelsea on or off?

She looked around the table, feeling all those eyes on her. Should she lie and say they hadn’t done it? These girls had known her since grade school. They’d guess quickly if she were lying. At least, Violet would. But telling the truth wasn’t the same thing as spilling the details. She didn’t have to explain the way they’d fucked, the way she had known what he’d wanted her to do to him. The way she had understood that this was a onetime deal. That she’d never quite look at him, or her memories of him, the same way again.

They spent the day walking through their old town, visiting the hangouts that they’d claimed as their own twenty years before. Or, at least, trying to. So many of the places were gone now. Dori felt an unbearable longing, that desire to go home when there was no home for her here. Not any more.

What had happened to the place she remembered? Were all her memories, like those of Luke, destined to be demolished before the reunion was over?

That evening featured another reunion-sponsored affair, the final one in the two-day event: an 80s extravaganza with a prize for the best costume, held at an expensive restaurant in the city. Dori had her miniskirt in her suitcase. Bangles for her arms, slouchy purple suede boots. But at the last moment, she decided not to go.

‘I can’t,’ she said, finally caving in and showing Violet the photos that Luke had taken the previous night. ‘I don’t want to see him again.’

Violet’s eyes widened at the slide show, but she didn’t say anything negative. Violet never judged her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t up for teasing Dori a bit. ‘Really? You two aren’t destined to be one of those couples who hook up at reunions, and the next time we all get together, you’re married, and you have six children, and you lead him around on a striking leather leash …’

‘Shut up …’

‘So, what do you want to do?’

‘Get drunk.’

Violet grinned. She always liked that idea. Together, they headed back downtown, passing the bookstore that had once been The Majestic, their treasured movie theater, the place where she and her gang of friends had gone every Friday and Saturday at midnight, dressed in costumes, Violet as Columbia, Chelsea as Janet, finding no irony in the role, simply choosing the girl she thought was prettiest.

Was it worse that the owners of the bookstore had kept the façade the same, rather than tear the whole building down? The blue-and-white marquee remained in place, but instead of stating the names and times of the second-run movies playing, the words spelt out the latest New York Times best-sellers.

Janie and Chelsea met them at the bar, a Silicon Valley mixing hole that had once been Gael’s 24-hour Creamery, the place they’d gone for coffees and cocoa before the midnight show, or (if they thought they could sneak in after curfew) after the show had ended. Everywhere Dori looked, she saw her past, as if a thin layer of translucent film covered her memories. If she could only peel back the surface of this superficial bar, would the Creamery be right beneath? If she headed back to the ladies room for a quick touch-up, would she return to see the burgundy barstools had vanished, the yuppies had disappeared, and her girlfriends had lost twenty years in a blink?

That’s how she felt. But when she confessed the thoughts to Janie, her friend simply smiled at her and told her to go easy on the alcohol, advice neither of them took.

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