I didn’t know what to make of her comment, but I suddenly felt like Adam in the Garden of Eden after biting the forbidden apple, suddenly very aware of my nakedness.
Over the course of the remaining school months, Donna did teach me, and I was an eager and willing student. We had sex in the Falcon so many times, sometimes climbing in the back seat, I was certain we would wear out the shocks. After one of these occasions, I mustered my courage and asked, “Do you want to go to a movie Saturday night?”
Donna was refastening her bra. She paused. Then she said, “I can’t Saturday.”
“How about Friday, or there’s a matinee on Sunday?”
“I’m busy this weekend. I have to study.”
“All weekend?”
“I told you, my father is a slave driver.”
“Maybe you could take a break for dinner.”
“We have a commitment. A relative is coming to town. Gag me,” she said and stuck her fingers as if choking. “I’d invite you, but trust me, it will be so boring.”
“What night?”
“I pretty much have to stick around the whole weekend. Come on—I better get home. It’s getting late.”
Other times that I’d asked Donna to go out she would say she had commitments to the graduation committee, which added to her already-heavy school workload, or she’d say she was grounded by her father and couldn’t go out. I held out hope she would invite me to her school prom, but she told me she decided to go with some of her girlfriends who didn’t have dates, and she didn’t want to make them feel bad.
Confused, I finally broke my promise and confided in Mickie as we drove to watch one of Ernie’s track meets. With Mickie you got brutal, blunt honesty.
“She’s using you as her personal vibrator,” she said.
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that. She’s saving on batteries by humping you.”
“She just said it would be awkward if we were seen in public.”
“Of course it would be, for her. She just turned nineteen, and she’s screwing a seventeen-year-old.”
“I haven’t done anything I didn’t want to do. I mean, it isn’t like she forced me.”
Mickie shook her head. “You need to end it, Sam. You need to tell her either you’re good enough to be seen with her in public, or you’re ending it. If she says no, then you’ll have your answer. I just hope to God you’ve been wearing a condom.”
“I have,” I said. “And she said she’s on the pill.”
“Screw that. I’m not worried about her getting pregnant—I’m worried about you catching a disease.”
“A disease? No. She said I’m the only one.”
Mickie rolled her eyes. “Please. If she’s screwing you, she’s screwing others.”
“She said she wasn’t.” And practically I didn’t see how she could. We spent so much time in the Falcon, there seemed little time for Donna to spend with anyone else. Then again, I knew, deep down, I was being naive, just as I knew that the reason Donna didn’t want to go out with me in public was because she didn’t want to be seen with a boy with red eyes. But I really liked those moments in the Falcon, and what red-blooded boy wouldn’t?
“This is not going to end well, Sam,” Mickie said sadly. “Trust me on this one. End it.”
20
I found any number of excuses not to end it. In a sense, I suppose, I was addicted to the sex. Even the occasional pangs of Catholic guilt were not enough for me to give up Donna cold turkey. Mickie eventually stopped asking if I had said anything to Donna, though she’d still occasionally make a face or a sound to convey her disgust. Then, as the end of the summer neared, Donna surprised me with an invitation to her house on a Saturday night for a belated birthday celebration.