Dirty Read online

  He had to lean in close so I could hear him, and I didn’t bother looking any further. I turned to him and smiled. I raised my beer in his direction, like a toast.

  “They look like they’re having fun,” I said.

  He nodded. The music here was inconsistent, one minute a hip-hop ode to the female posterior and the next a hard-edged rock ballad full of angst and woe. At the moment, the song had softened into a retro-pop tune that seemed to make everyone want to bounce.

  He was cute. I leaned closer. He smelled good, even after a night sweating in smoke. I leaned back. Our eyes met. I let him take me out to the parking lot, where I got in the backseat of his car and he put his hand up my skirt.

  I didn’t ask his name, and he didn’t offer it. I told him my name was Jennifer, and I was twenty-two. He seemed to believe me. He got into my panties with fumbling fingers as he unzipped his pants and put his erection into my hand.

  He understood the etiquette of Hookup Alley and didn’t press for intercourse. He also attempted, at least, to get me off, and it wasn’t quite his fault that he didn’t. I made the appropriate noises and writhed beneath him, though I was as far away from coming as a woman can be without being dead.

  He came after about five minutes of jacking, which was before my wrist started to ache but about four minutes after I’d lost interest. He ejaculated into my fist with a loud cry I hoped no passing cops would seek to investigate and collapsed on top of me like he’d passed out. We stayed that way for a minute or so, until I pushed him to get up.

  We blinked at each other without saying anything for a moment. I wiped my hand on the tails of his shirt. He looked down with a grimace but didn’t complain. I sat back from him and rearranged my clothes.

  “Can I give you a ride home?” He scored points for chivalry, at least.

  “No, thanks.” I smiled. It wasn’t his fault he’d been meant to be a distraction.

  “Are you sure? Because—”

  I got out of the car before he could finish. I didn’t feel drunk anymore. This time, when I hailed a cab, I actually got in.

  Chapter 12

  My role as dutiful daughter might not have extended to visiting my parents’ house, but when my mother called and invited me to meet them for dinner, I could think of no good excuse to refuse, especially when she told me my father was coming, too. My father, in a restaurant? The idea would have been laughable, if it didn’t give me acid reflux.

  It meant canceling an appointment with Dan. He said nothing when I told him I’d have to change our dinner plans. He didn’t have to say anything. I could hear his frown through the phone.“I’ve never met your parents,” he said at last.

  Silence fell between us again. I wished for an old-fashioned phone so I could twirl the cord in my fingers. I had to satisfy myself with tangling my hair.

  “You don’t want to,” I said when I could no longer stand the quiet.

  “Why don’t you just give me a call when you’re free, then.”

  I waited for what seemed an eternity before replying. “I don’t want you to meet my parents.”

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t blame him for sounding affronted. “Because I barely want to go to this dinner, Dan. I can’t subject you to it. Not only that, but it would be very stressful for me to have you there.”

  It was a very honest thing for me to tell him, but he didn’t sound appeased.

  “All families are stressful, Elle. But if you don’t want them to meet me—”

  “I don’t want you to meet them,” I interrupted. “There’s a difference.”

  “Do you think I won’t like you anymore if I meet them?” He sounded teasing. I didn’t laugh. “Elle?”

  “It’s my mother,” I told him. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Never having met her, no. I guess I wouldn’t.”

  I got the sense he was waiting for me to invite him along to dinner. The thought of that was enough to make me shudder. “You don’t want to. Believe me.”

  “Actually,” he said. “I do.”

  “Dan, you don’t. Trust me.”

  “You don’t want me to meet your family. It’s fine. Have a good time.”

  I didn’t want to fight with him about it, but I also couldn’t imagine introducing him to my mother and father.

  “It’s complicated, Dan.”

  “Elle,” Dan said. “It seems that most things with you are.”

  Then he gave me the dial tone and I stared at the phone before I hung it up. This time I didn’t call him back.

  My mother waited alone for me at the table. “Daddy couldn’t make it.”“Why not?”

  “He was busy, Ella. What difference does it make?” She stirred sweetener into her tea.

  “The difference is, you told me he was going to be here, that’s all.”

  She sniffed. “Why? I’m not good enough?”

  “It’s not that.”

  She pursed her lips at me. “If you’re that concerned, you could come over to the house.”

  We stared at each other without speaking until the waiter came over and asked us what we wanted to order. She ordered for us both, food I didn’t want but was grateful not to have to think about, and he went away. She talked on and on about my cousin’s wedding, which I hadn’t attended. I couldn’t have cared less about the details, but it filled the space between us with words so we didn’t have to actually speak.

  She paid for dinner, and I allowed her to. We left the restaurant and I walked her to the parking lot, when it occurred to me I hadn’t asked how she’d gotten there.

  “I drove,” she told me as she dug in her purse for her cigarettes and lighter. She lit up with the ease of a long-term addict. “I’m going to have to get used to it again.”

  For when my father was gone. She didn’t say it, but I heard it. That simple admission revealed more to me about the extent of my father’s illness than anything else she could have said, yet I found myself unable to respond with anything beyond a low murmur.

  “Will you ever visit us again, Ella?”

  I looked at her car, the same one they’d had for fifteen years, before meeting her gaze. “No, Mother. I don’t think so.”

  She made a low, disgruntled noise. “Such a selfish, selfish girl you are. I don’t understand it. Your father is sick—”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “You know what?” She asked sharply. “I think it’s time you just got over it. How about that, Ella? Just get over it. It’s been ten years already. I can’t keep bending over backward to apologize to you for things that happened in the past!”

  I could only blink, listening to her tirade. “Mom, it’s not about you, okay?”

  “Then what’s it about? Tell me, please, because I’m so interested to know.” Her tone made that statement a lie. “Because I’d really like to hear how it’s not because of me. I understand how you hate me, but you should at least come to visit your father,” she added, like that made everything sensible. “He’s not well.”

  “That’s not my fault,” I repeated, my voice steadier than I’d thought it could be. “And you’re right. I think maybe I should just ‘get over it.’ But I can’t.”

  She didn’t seem to have much to say to that, but her cigarette got a vicious workout. “You keep holding on to the past like that, and you’ll never have a future. I’m warning you.”

  “Good advice,” I said mildly, “considering the source.”

  She glared. “Why do I bother? Why? When all you do is give me grief? Maybe I should just give up on you, Ella. Let you go your merry way. Forget about trying to have any sort of relationship with you at all. It’s impossible to communicate with you. All you do is hear your own self.”

  What she said was probably true, though I didn’t want to admit it. “Maybe you should just give up on me, then. Like you did with Chad.”

  Deep lines gouged her face as she frowned. “Don’t talk to me about him.”

  “Maybe we need