“You have one, you just don’t want to tell me. I’ll tell you mine.”
My lip curled with hostility.
He laughed. “Say it together, on three. Ready?”
“No,” I shrieked.
“One. Two. Three. Casablanca.”
“Jurassic Park.”
He broke into a huge grin.
I flopped face-first onto the bed. “I’m going to die.”
“A modern classic,” he said, tickling my heel. “I remember seeing it in the theater and thinking, ‘Someday CG will be as real as real life.’ My favorite scene was when the girl—”
“If you start quoting,” I said into the mattress, “I will actually kill myself.”
He laughed again. His laugh was nice. Not mocking like Wesley’s, but giddy, conspiratorial. I glanced at him over my shoulder.
“Tell me everything about you.”
His laughter faded, but the smile stayed. He lay beside me, his fingertips tracing the curves of my back. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
So I wasn’t far off. He was fourteen when I was born. Maybe Wesley wasn’t far off with his theory, either. And so what? I’d f**ked guys older than thirty-two.
“Where did you go to college?”
“Northwestern.”
I peered over my shoulder again. “You from upstate?”
“Just outside Chicago.”
“Snob. Everyone says they’re from ‘just outside Chicago,’ like towns don’t have names up there.”
“It’s true. They don’t. Very confusing for mail carriers.”
He slid a finger under my bra strap and followed it up over my wing bone, cresting my shoulder.
“Why—” I started.
“My turn.” His finger moved slowly toward my breast. “Why did you talk your way into my class?”
Fate, I wanted to say. Kismet. It was in the script.
“I reserved it last year, actually. They messed up the registration.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going to film school.”
His hand stopped. He sat up a little. “Really? Where?”
“I don’t know yet. I mean, I have my top choices, obviously, but I’m trying to be realistic. Hopefully somewhere like USC, or UCLA. I’m kind of torn whether to focus on indie or commercial film. Commercial is safer, I think, because I’ll get a broad view of how the whole process works. But focusing on commercial shit can turn you into a philistine who just churns out garbage, so maybe I should focus on indie stuff. On storytelling, and art. But then maybe I’ll be really naive when it comes to actually doing the work. I don’t know.”
I was rambling. I glanced back at him. He had a slightly dazed look on his face.
“You’re serious about this,” he said.
I gave a half-shrug. “Well, yeah.”
“What do you want to do? Job-wise.”
“I’ll take what I can get. I’d love to be a PA, get a general sense of how it all fits together. Because someday, I’m going to direct.”
It was as if I’d said something enchanting, romantic. His eyes sparkled. “You’re a creator.”
I thought about that. It seemed too lofty for me. All I did was watch a lot of movies and daydream. But he’d given me an opportunity, one I hadn’t even really acknowledged because I’d been so obsessed with him: our semester project. I could actually make something. If it turned out halfway decent, maybe I could include it on my college app.
“I don’t know what I am yet,” I said.
An electric moment between us, balanced between honesty and fear. Because I was young. Maybe I had more drive than most kids my age, but I was still a “kid my age.” And you know that, Mr. Wilke, I thought. That’s part of what this is between us—the thrill of the taboo. Teacher and student.
“If you’re going to film school,” he said, “there’s something I need to give you.”
My heart skipped. “What?”
“An education.”
The first thing he taught me was how to make love.
Before you laugh, know that I’d always hated that phrase. It sounded so corny, so old. Hippies made love. People my mom’s age, though I preferred to believe I was an immaculate conception.
People my age hooked up, f**ked, had sex. We didn’t attach frilly ideas of oneness and eternity to a basic biological act. Most of us were from single-parent homes. Those who weren’t wished they were when their parents screamed and beat the shit out of each other. We grew up sexualized, from toddler beauty pageants to the constant reminder that adults were waiting to lure us into vans with candy. The invention of MMS gave us a platform for the distribution of amateur p**n .
That’s a lot of conditioning to break through.
The afternoon light got that long slant to it, slowly folding into dusk. Half a day had passed since I’d eaten and I barely felt hungry. I didn’t want to stop this thing, lying on a motel bed with this beautiful man, our hot skin always in contact, never breaking apart. He sat up and I sat in his lap, facing him, my legs wrapped around the long lean muscle of his back. I rubbed my palm against the bristle on his cheek. He wore a sleepy, smoldering look, his lower lip jutting out, and it completely worked on me. If he’d asked me to do anything right then, I would have. I kissed that sulky lip. I couldn’t tell the taste of his mouth from mine anymore. Only warmth, softness, pressure.