I push my fingers into the padding. Soft as it is pretty. I rip the tag off the bra and unhook the clasp. It’s okay to try on here, alone. I take off my shirt and the bra I’m already wearing and toss them on the floor. I turn my back to the mirror on my bureau and start sliding my arms through the straps, but they need some adjusting. I fight with them for a minute, almost ruin my manicure trying to slide the little piece of plastic down. I adjust the cups, feel what little breasts I have settle inside. I do the clasp up. It’s a little tight.
I face the mirror.
My heart races in a weird way, like I’m doing something I’m not supposed to be doing, but I’m allowed to do this. I turn to the side and I like my profile even more, the way the bra holds me. I’m so used to being flat but the bra lifts and brings my breasts closer, forcing a kind of curve between them that resembles cleavage. It looks—good.
But I can’t wear it.
If something happens—I don’t want to be wearing it.
I put the pink bra away and pick up the other from the floor, slide it back on. I put on a skirt and then I make it cargo pants. I add a long-sleeve shirt and I’m sweating. I switch out the sleeves for an off-the-shoulder tee and the cargo pants for a pair of shorts. I did my nails earlier, so all that’s left is to reapply my lipstick and then I’m ready.
I sit on the step and breathe the stale air while everything that’s ahead of me turns my empty stomach. Mom is at her job—she cleans an office building every other night—and Todd is at the hardware store buying storage containers for leftovers from the move. They both think I’ll be at Swan’s because I didn’t tell them otherwise. Me on a date with a boy. I didn’t want to see what that looked like on their faces because however they gave it back to me would come from some place I don’t want any part of.
I hear the low rumble of Leon’s Pontiac before I see it. He rounds the corner and takes the street slowly, eventually easing up to the curb. He turns the car off and gets out. He’s wearing dark blue jeans and a gray V-neck T-shirt that hugs his body in all the right ways. He shoves his hands in his pockets, which is okay by me because his hands are forever distracting, all the things they could do.
“Parents around?” he asks, staring at the house.
I stand. “You want to meet them?”
“I thought I’d go for a good impression.”
“They’re not around.”
“Too bad.” He looks me up and down and frowns, reminds me of how busted up my legs are because I’m letting them heal out in the open now, all scabs. “What happened?”
“I ate track in Phys Ed. Not a big deal.”
“Looks like it hurt. You a good runner?”
“When I’m not falling on my face.”
“Fair enough,” he says, and smiles. “Ready to head out?”
No. I nod and follow him to the car. The air conditioner is on but the radio is off and I sink low in my seat as we make our way out of Grebe. I don’t want anyone to see me with Leon. I don’t want him to be a question in anyone else’s mouth.
“So where are your parents?” he asks.
“My mom has this cleaning job and Todd—her boyfriend—he’s out.”
“Boyfriend? Your mom and dad divorced?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“My dad kind of walked out. I don’t think he signed anything.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not.”
It’s awkward for a minute and then Leon starts telling me about how his parents live in Godwit. They had Leon pretty late in life. His mother is a visiting professor at the university there, his father is a dentist. He tells me how he lives on Heron Street in a basement apartment he rents from an old woman who looks after her granddaughters every Sunday. She makes them cookies and always sets aside a dozen for him. He can’t bring himself to admit to her he hasn’t really got much of a sweet tooth.
He tells me how his sister, Caroline, is twelve years older, that she’s a dentist like their father. She and her husband, Adam, a pharmacist, are expecting their first child. They want Leon to move in, rent-free. All he has to do is look after the baby and the house when she goes back to work. It’d be a chance for him to save up for whatever he wants to do next instead of giving his money away to someone else. I wonder what his family would make of mine. My mother, one failed marriage behind her and a boyfriend too broken to work. And me. What am I? Dentists and pharmacists and professors … I pick at the thread on my shorts and stare at my knees, wondering why I didn’t cover them.
“Are you going to do it?” I ask.
“Not sure. Not a big fan of babies. I can’t think of anything less thrilling than looking after one all day and then heading to Swan’s for the night. Might cut into my insane social life.” It makes me laugh, a little. He grins. “Be nice to get ahead, though.”
The path to Wake Lake flies by Leon’s side. Shortly after, we pass the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING GREBE sign and I sit up and watch the houses beside the road give way to farmland.
“What are you saving up for?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. All I know is everything costs something.”
Can’t argue that.
we turn down a private lane where the houses are spaced far apart from each other and they all say money in a way that pretends to be modest, but if you added it up, you could send a kid or two to college. None of the flowerbeds out here are dying and the lawns are green, but the weather hasn’t changed—it’s as hot as it ever is—so that says it all.
Leon drives us to the last house at the end of the street, tucked into woods just waiting to be razed for more houses. I hear music, a steady beat my heart sets itself to. Leon slows and finds a spot to park between two much nicer-looking cars. My palms sweat. I rub them on my thighs.
“You don’t have to be nervous,” Leon says.
“I’m not.”
He smiles and gets out of the car. I take a deep breath and do the same. He meets me at my door and wraps his fingers around mine, and he takes me up the driveway and around the house before I can even really think about his fingers, wrapped around mine.