Pete's Vagina -90- In the Pocket

“Trust me,” he murmured.

Lee followed me into my room, and I immediately pushed him toward the bed. “Sit down, tall person,” I said.

He sat, and I plopped down beside him, making our heads more on a level than when we were standing. I snuggled against him and turned my face to look up into his brown eyes.

He kissed me, and I kissed back. He put an arm around me, and I melded closer to his side.

I sighed.

He nibbled gently on my lip, his hand behind me falling to my waist.

Out in the backyard, I could hear Wug interrogating a gopher hole in the dark. The room was well-lit, but I could see the moon and some trees through my only window.

I could smell his aftershave in the hollow of his neck—spicy, cool, earthy.

“What?” he asked. “You’re not really relaxing much.” He didn’t sound concerned—more like he was almost amused.

“I’m not sure I should be enjoying this as much as I am.”

He laughed softly. “You’ve invested so much in your tomboy image?”

“Something like that.”

“Mmm?”

“Mm.”

His hand moved down to my hip, and then he pulled me toward him, and it seemed reasonable that now I was sitting in his lap. The bed complained about our weight being so much all in one place.

We kissed again. His cheeks and chin were stubbly but not unpleasant against my neck… my face… my hand.

I reached up to trace the angle of his jaw. “Lee?” I whispered. “Do you like how I look in….” I didn’t say it.

Another kiss.

“In dresses?” he suggested. “Yes, I do, but baby, you’re beautiful whatever you’re wearing.”

He stopped me from challenging that opinion with another kiss. I wanted to bite him — suck on his flesh. like a vampire. Leave a mark.

I shivered.

“Trust me,” he murmured. “I’m a photographer. It’s my job to know what looks good.”

I giggled at that, and he hummed with his teeth against my jaw where I could feel the vibration in my skull. “Tickles,” I protested.

We both heard someone out in the hallway and pulled apart a little.

Knuckles touched the door—not a knock, yet. “Punkin?” Daddy’s voice called softly.

I slid off Lee’s lap and stood up, both of his hands around my waist now. I smoothed at my dress. “I’m here, Daddy,” I called back. “We’ll be right out.”

“Remember, you’re supposed to be in Phoenix at eight in the morning,” he said. “Two-hour drive.”

“I know.” I turned and helped brace Lee to stand from the awkward low sitting position, his stiff leg making one soft thump on the floor.

“That?” Daddy asked.

I laughed. “Just my clumsy boyfriend, Daddy.”

I glanced in the mirror over my desk before stepping up to open the door, Lee behind me now. “See, Daddy?” I said. “Nothing broken.”

“Mmf,” he agreed. Lee smiled at him, and he reluctantly smiled back. He stepped out of the way and motioned down the hall toward the living room. “Go say good night to everyone. Lee and I need a word.”

I moved around him, a little tickled at the attitude he was so suddenly displaying. I reached back to touch Lee’s hand before I left the two of them there.

*

Mom and I made the trip to Phoenix alone this time, Mom driving while I dozed with a sweater over my face. Half an hour of that was enough. I’d gotten almost six hours sleep after the party, and the closer we got to the city, the less I felt like snoozing. I sat up, checked to see that Mom still looked wide awake, and slipped the sweater back on the regular way.

“Did you and Lee have a good talk in your bedroom last night?” she asked.

I glanced at her sideways. “Talk?” I said. We both giggled. I never used to giggle, but anymore it seemed a necessary mode of communication.

I pushed my bangs around — they were going to take some getting used to. “I like him a lot, Mom,” I said.

“High school,” she said. “You know, he’s already going off to UCLA come January. He’s going to graduate early and get a semester or two of work in before the fall. Get all his general education requirements out of the way as soon as possible.”

I looked at her. “How do you know that, and I don’t?” I asked.

“I talked to his mother. I mean, we actually talked.” She didn’t quite smirk at me.

“Wuf,” I said. “Maybe I should take early graduation too.”

“You haven’t got a college all picked out, like Lee has. Of course, with your grades, you can apply to Arizona State and get in automatically.”

“My grades aren’t that good.”

“You only need a C average.”

“Oh.”

“But if you wait for fall, you can go to State and have a guaranteed room in a dorm.”

“I didn’t know that,” I admitted.

She sighed. “Do you never talk to the counselors at your school?”

I shook my head. “If I ever did, would I be playing football on the boys’ team?”

She snorted.

Outside the windows, the Eastern Arizona desert fled before our headlights. On my side, telephone poles, bushes and hillsides streamed past. Mom had the pedal to the metal, and we would be at the studio well before our eight a.m. scheduled arrival. And we’d pass the road to Tempe on the way, not quite getting a glimpse of Arizona State University campus before we turned west toward Phoenix. If I went to State, I’d be less than ninety minutes from home.

I stared into the moving darkness. I wasn’t going to get a football scholarship to play on some college team somewhere else. But I’d never planned on that, anyway. I was a good running back at the high school level, but I really needed more muscle to play football in college.

And a dick.

I must have made a noise. Mom took one hand off the wheel and reached out to me. I put my hand in hers, and we traded squeezes. “I’m not going to know what to do with myself after football,” I said.

“There’s a whole world that exists somewhere besides a strip of grass with goal posts at each end.”

“I guess,” I said.

We didn’t say anything for a while. The noise of the road came up through the wheels and the frame of the car, and I felt it hum inside me. What did I know about the world outside of football? Who was Gayle Peterson when she wasn’t number 17?

Who did I want to be when I couldn’t play football anymore?

I think I’d had a vague idea that I would go to college, take some business courses, come home and help Dad run the dealership, until… well, until what had happened to me on the night of October second, just about five weeks ago. And in another five or six weeks, or sooner, football would end for me, whether we went to the state playoffs or not. By Christmas at the latest, there would be no more pigskin for me to carry.

Girls don’t play football. Well, not American football. Maybe I could go out for English football, soccer, in college. Did State have a women’s soccer team? I had no idea. Why would I? Until that very moment, the idea of playing some other sport in college hadn’t even occurred to me.

“I’m an idiot,” I said out loud.

And Mom grunted in agreement.