He kicks me out on a Sunday morning, one month after he invited me in. It is the day before my eighteenth birthday, and the day my lie about my age catches up with me, surprising us both.
‘It’s my birthday tomorrow,’ I tell Mr Jackson, into that place under his arm I fit so perfectly. I lick at the downy hairs of his pit. ‘I just remembered.’
We’ve been living outside of time. I’ve stopped tracking days. A birthday feels odd to consider, evidence of life going on, when we have retreated so far from the everydayness of it.
‘We’ll do something special,’ he says. ‘Oh, to be nineteen again.’
‘Mmmm.’ I am drowsy, careless. Forgetting my first lie. ‘I’m turning eighteen, silly. Don’t add another year just yet.’
I don’t register at first. The way his body tenses, the way he pulls away from me, his body beginning its retreat.
‘Alice.’
‘Mmmmmm?’
‘Alice!’
He is gripping my shoulders now, his knuckles turning red. Something is charging under his skin.
‘What? Ouch. That hurts, Mr—Jamie! Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Alice,’ he says my name slowly. ‘Alice, how old are you?’
‘Huh?’
‘How old are you!’
It is no longer a question, but a command. How could I have thought I had any power over this man.
‘I … I’ll be eighteen. Tomorrow.’
He looks at me for a second, and then he is up out of bed and across the room before I understand what is happening.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuck. Jesus Christ, Alice. You’re fucking seventeen?’
‘Yes? Why—’
‘I took pictures of you! I filmed you!’
He hurls these words across the room at me, looking like he’s going to be sick, and I still don’t fully comprehend what is going on, why my birthday has caused such a panicked reaction. Then slowly, up through the fog of my brain, I hear Tammy’s voice the last time we spoke, the way she called me jailbait, and I cannot believe I never considered this. The girl so obsessed with the freedom that comes from turning eighteen should never have missed what she was not considered free of, all the days before.
‘Jamie, I’m sorry. I thought you knew. And it doesn’t matter. I mean, I said yes. It was my choice. It wasn’t … you didn’t …’
That strange, unrecognisable look has solidified, he is now staring at me as if he has never seen me before.
‘Jesus Christ! I could go to jail for this!’
‘No! I would never. It would never—’
‘You have to go!’
He is pacing the room now, shouting.
‘No, Jamie. Don’t be silly. It’s just one more day and we’ll be fine. Just one more day and—’
‘Shut up, just shut the fuck up. Get away from me, you stupid little cunt!’
These are the ugliest words he has ever said to me, worse than anything I could have imagined, and when he does not come to comfort me, I know that he means them. I say Sorry! over and over, but he has already left the room, I can hear him fumbling for his car keys in the hall.
‘You need to be gone by the time I get back, Alice.’
Mr Jackson says this from the front door, and then I hear it open and slam shut behind him. His car revs, skids from the driveway. And I am, once again, on my own.
My chest is caving in.
He knows I have nowhere to go. He invited me in, with no real intention of letting me stay. Anger rises up in my throat each time I think of what he offered me, what he held back. This righteousness is a brief respite, before I throw up my sadness all over again.
I can’t go back to Gloria’s. She texted the other day to say she was out of town for the week. When I get home, we’ll need to talk about your plans, she ended the message, and I knew what that meant: she was expecting me to leave after my birthday. I’m going to stay up here with Tammy through the spring, I had texted back, thinking I was creating space for Mr Jackson and me. I’ll let you know when I’m back in town. Her Cool in response was enough for me to know that she wouldn’t bother checking up on me. As for Tammy, we haven’t spoken since she called me jailbait, outside of a few text messages we each take a little too long to respond to. I’ve been preoccupied with Mr Jackson, and she will no doubt have been busy monitoring her father’s sobriety, and keeping her boyfriend Rye on the straight and narrow; I can see her drinking vodka from a can and rolling her messy smokes, as they huddle together by the water, inhaling harder stuff than whatever she could get hold of back home. I know she is as happy as she expects to be, which makes me happy for her.