I hurried around to my car and, with only a moment’s hesitation, started the engine and drove off defiantly. If my family had so many secrets, why couldn’t I have one? I was confident that I could keep it well. I had fooled Ava, hadn’t I? Anyway, besides being something delicious and wonderful, this was exciting. Yes, my heart beat faster, but not out of fear so much as out of anticipation of that which would help me feel more complete as a woman. As I drove, I told myself I wasn’t simply the blood slave Ava was. I didn’t have her same hatred for and anger toward young men. Love won’t be poison for me. It won’t, it won’t.
And then I stopped myself. Whom was I trying to convince? Was I going mad?
My stomach woke up a hive of bees inside. I slowed down.
Turn around, a voice within was telling me. It’s all too great a risk. Yes, you fooled Ava, perhaps, but you know Daddy will see right through you. He’ll look into your eyes and know immediately. The disappointment he will feel will be too great. You’ll lose him; you’ll lose him forever.
By the time I turned down the street toward Buddy’s uncle’s house, tears were streaming down my cheeks. I stopped before I thought he could see my car and pulled to the side. My body was shaking with fear. I was about to turn around when I saw him walking down the center of the street. He had been waiting closer to the turn. He was that anxious and excited.
It’s too late, I told myself.
I wiped away my tears as quickly as I could, took another deep breath, and drove slowly toward him. He was waving and smiling and looked like a little boy. He jumped up and down to exaggerate his happiness, and I laughed.
This is good, I thought. This has to be right.
I stopped beside him.
“Why did you pull over down there? You were having second thoughts, weren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t have third,” he said, and nodded at the driveway.
I parked, and he hurried over to open my car door. When I stepped out, he didn’t speak. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and then he kissed me. It was a soft kiss, but I could feel the desire in him and the love. His eyes were glossy with tears of happiness. Neither of us said a word. We didn’t have to. We were speaking with our eyes, our lips, and our hearts. He took my hand and led me into the house.
He closed the door and still held my hand. Still, neither of us spoke. He led me down the hallway to a bedroom. I paused in the doorway. If I entered, I was crossing another forbidden line, and I knew that once I crossed it, it would be too late to turn back. My life would never be the same.
He looked at me with nothing but love and affection in his eyes, and I continued into the room. At the side of the bed, we kissed again. His lips moved down my chin and to my neck. I pulled my head back, and he unbuttoned my blouse and brought his lips to my breasts. Then he lifted me gently to the bed. For a moment, he stood looking down at me.
“I want to memorize every part of you,” he said. “That way, you will never leave me.”
“Everyone leaves everyone sometime,” I told him in a whisper.
“Not us. We’ll synchronize our heartbeats, and when yours runs out, mine will, too. It will be the same for you.”
I smiled. He sounded like a hopeless romantic, a dreamer, a poet who had more faith in words than in anything else. Daddy once told me that dreamers and poets suffered more, however: “They create a world that cannot last, cannot be, and the disappointment for them is that much greater.”
Maybe that was true, but right now, it seemed to me that the journey that would take us to that pain and disappointment was worth it. Wasn’t all of life a journey that led to death? But we didn’t stop trying to enjoy ourselves, to find something worth our effort. Daddy wasn’t always right, I thought, and then had the shocking realization that my feelings for Buddy were causing me to challenge and question things Daddy had taught me my whole life. Before this, I had accepted everything as if it had rained down from some divine cloud.
Buddy pulled off his shirt and then gently undressed me. I thought he was out to kiss every part of me, every inch of my body, so he could do what he hoped… memorize me. When he was naked beside me, I could feel my blood carrying the heat from my heart through all of my veins. His lips grazed mine. His eyes were closed, and he looked as if he was trying to inhale the very scent of my being.
“We have to be careful,” I said, knowing that soon I would lose all restraint.
“I will be,” he promised, and showed me that he was prepared.
What neither of us was prepared for was the way my body tightened as I accepted him. I saw the confusion in his eyes as the softness left my shoulders, my breasts, and my stomach.
“You’re harder than I am,” he muttered.
I had no explanation. In fact, I wasn’t sure this wasn’t what happened with every woman as she began to make love. It didn’t matter to him. He wanted me as much as, if not more than, he had when he began.
And when we began, my mouth was filled with that taste of blood again. This time, it flowed back, down my throat and into my stomach. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was sweet, and the stronger it became, the more demanding I was. He moaned in pleasure and then laughed at my enthusiasm, crying out playfully to complain that I was killing him. When I reached a climax, it felt as if my bones had thickened. I thought I was bigger, heavier, and I looked at him to see if he thought so, too, but he was in the throes of his own climax and reciting words of love, pledges and promises.
When it ended, he rolled onto his back, panting. He glanced at me, finally, with some surprise. “You’re not even breathing hard,” he said. “Although your skin is red everywhere.”
“Is it?”
I sat up to look at myself. It was as though all my blood had come to the surface. I touched my legs to feel the heat. After a few more minutes, the heat slowly receded, and my normal color began to return.