Alice hadn’t thought about her ovaries in years. She had an IUD that ruled her body with a copper fist, metering out only tiny periods that were supposed to remind her that her body could produce a child, if one were required. Before that, she’d been on the pill for fifteen years. Alice wanted to make changes in her life, but having a baby as a teenager was not one of them. “Those are all good points.” She paused. “I know where to find condoms.”
Her father’s room was as spartan as Alice’s room was messy—his full-sized bed was always made, and the stack of books on his bedside table was the only thing not put away. There wasn’t so much as a sock on the floor. Alice had seen the package of condoms in his bedside table years ago—when she was in the seventh grade, she had stolen one and put it in her wallet, because she thought it made her seem tough, even though she never showed it to anyone else, not even Sam. She pulled open the drawer. Like hers, it held a pack of cigarettes, some matches, a notebook, a pen, loose change—but unlike hers, in the very back of the drawer, tucked in the corner, was a package of Trojans.
“This grosses me out,” Sam said, watching from the doorway as Alice slid one into her pocket. “Majorly.”
* * *
? ? ?
Tommy was on the couch, just the way Alice remembered. In the time that they’d been in the bathroom, more people had shown up, and now the counter was covered with beer bottles and makeshift ashtrays and CDs that had been pulled out of rotation, now stacked on top of each other like the leaning tower of Pisa. Lizzie was in the corner talking to some other girls, but she was eyeing him. She was wearing a skimpy tank top, and the end of her high ponytail swept her bare shoulders. Alice swooped in, collapsing next to Tommy on the couch.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey,” Tommy said. He smiled and curled toward her.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” She put her hand on his chest. He had slept in her bed so many times. He had kissed the back of her neck. Alice had always thought that Tommy was playing hard to get, or just playing with her, period, but now she understood. He was a teenager, just like she was, waiting for someone else to tell him what to do.
Alice had been in love a few times, enough to know that soul mates were a myth and that a person’s requirements and tastes changed as they did. Her first love, in college, was a sweet boy with red hair who’d studied film. Her second was a lawyer, a friend of Sam’s from law school, who’d loved to take her to fancy restaurants, places that she’d only been for weddings and bar mitzvahs. Her third was an artist who liked to have sex with other people—Alice had tried and tried to make it work. She would have married him if he’d asked, despite everything.
That was it—despite everything, despite her life after tonight, after the rest of her life, Alice had always been sure that this was where she’d gone wrong. There was an infinite number of partners in the world, of lovers, of husbands and wives and significant others, but there was only a tiny number of people who set you on your path. Alice thought of Richard Dreyfuss’s voice at the end of Stand By Me—did anyone have friends like when they were twelve? Once, when Alice was in college, one of her painting professors had gone on a long, meandering tangent about how Barbara Stanwyck was the start of his sexual profile, and though everyone in the room cringed, Alice had nodded in appreciation. There was a spark, a root. Tommy Joffey was her root. She didn’t know what it would do to her life if she had him the way she had so badly wanted him, what it would do to her, but Alice wanted to find out. Even if she couldn’t figure out how to get back to her real life, even if she was stuck.
Alice got up and pulled Tommy to his feet. A few of the boys covered their mouths and said, “Oh, shit,” as they walked by. Alice could feel Lizzie’s eyes on her back, but only for a few moments—she didn’t know what she was missing, only what she’d wanted, and Alice knew all about that. The feeling would pass.
* * *
? ? ?
When they were in her room, Alice shut the door. There was a slim hook-and-eye latch that she’d made her father install, and Alice gently slid the metal hook into the hole, locking them in.
“You didn’t clean up? Before everyone came over? Jeez, Al.” Tommy gestured at the mountain ranges on the floor. He nudged a path clear with his boot. There was one chair in the room, in front of Alice’s small desk, but it had a pile of sweaters on it and several textbooks and Tommy headed right for her bed. Her stomach was doing cartwheels being so near to him in this moment, touching his skin. Alice hadn’t felt this way when Tommy had walked into her office—she had felt the much more familiar feelings, the ones that she’d been living with for decades: shame, incompetence, a basic geriatric millennial malaise. Now Alice’s whole body felt combustible, on the verge of explosion. She wanted him.