I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but the room was starting to tilt a little, and I knew I needed to get to my room before I fell asleep right there in the chair.
“It’s late. I need to turn in.” I rose from where I sat, but myhead was spinning. I took a step and immediately began to fall. Truman shot to his feet to catch me.
“Hold on, there,” he said, steadying me in his arms.
The phonograph started to play an enchanting melody, the kind that begged for dancers. Truman grinned and began to dance with me in his arms, but I wasn’t a good dancer, and the amount of sherry I’d consumed was making me even less of one. He started laughing when I stepped on his feet, and then I laughed, too, when he stepped on mine. We’d both drunk too much to manage even the simplest steps. The more we attempted to dance anyway, the more we stumbled. This was hilarious, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed like that. The sound of my own laughter spun white orbs around my thoughts. We circled to a stop when the song ended. When the next one began, Truman cupped my face with his hand.
“I wish I could go back to when I was seventeen,” he said. “You are so lucky, so lucky.”
His hand on my cheek felt so wonderful. Like the petal of a rose. “I don’t feel lucky,” I said.
“But you are. Think of it! You’re young and pretty and smart. And you have this amazing gift. You have everything.”
“I don’t think...”
He was staring at me in unmistakable awe and envy, one arm still around my waist. And then he bent forward and touched his lips to mine in a gentle and merely seconds-long kiss. It was my first. Truman’s lips were soft and warm, and his kiss instantly made my insides ache with an odd mix of desire and alarm. I tasted the whisky on his breath, tart and tantalizing. A ripple of unfamiliar longing sped through me as Truman pressed his lips to mine again, and this time he kept them there.
It was wrong, I knew this. A kiss from Truman was wrong, wrong, wrong. But it felt so perfect to be held like that and to bekissed like that and to be told I was smart and pretty and lucky. Everything I’d wanted Wilson to do, Truman was doing.
Before I knew it, I was kissing him back.
Truman’s arms circled my waist fully as he brought me closer and his kiss intensified. I knew I needed to break away. Truman was married to Celine. What we were doing was absolutely not a good idea, but I didn’t know how to stop him. I wanted to be kissed, and I didn’t know how to stop wanting it.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered into my hair, slurring the words a bit, but I didn’t care. He sounded like he meant it. I wanted to believe it.
My arms went around his neck as he kissed me again. The room was now swirling with color and sound and the novelty of being desired. It was like being on the roller coaster at Ocean Beach. The Big Dipper. I’d been on it just the one time, when I was twelve. It had been thrilling and terrifying at the same time.
Then Truman was lowering me slowly onto the thick rug in front of the fireplace, and a thousand sirens went off in my head.
“Wait,” I said, gulping for air and control. I seemed unable to grab hold of either one.
He was over me, kissing my neck as he slid his hands up under my blouse.
“I... I don’t... Wait, Truman,” I sputtered, and I felt like I was being devoured alive by both unrelenting desire and dread. “Stop.”
But he didn’t stop. The buttons of my blouse were suddenly undone, and his hands and lips were all over my body. He was covering me with kisses and his touch. I hadn’t known being touched by a man could feel like this. No one had told me; no one had yet touched me. Momma had only ever spoken in vague terms about the ways of men with women. I knew what sexual intercourse was, Momma had told me that much, but I hadn’tknown the act began withthis. This unstoppable, racing need to be wanted. Nor that it would make you feel as if you were flying.
But it was wrong. Truman had to stop.
Truman should not be doing what he was doing.
“Don’t, Truman,” I whispered, nearly choking out his name as he tugged at my underwear and then at his own trousers. But the room continued to spin with the effects of alcohol and his touch and the chilling horror that he was not listening.
Then Truman was above me and somehow inside me and I felt like I was being sawn in two as he moved. The room went golden with pain and heat and brilliance and desire that didn’t seem to belong to this world. The next moment Truman fell against me, and the scorching brightness faded, the fire in my body subsided. He rolled off and lay down next to me, breathing like I was, as if we had run a great distance. It seemed like we lay that way for a long time, but it was only seconds.
“I don’t know why we did that,” Truman said, breathless. He sounded perplexed.
We, I wanted to say.We?But my voice was frozen in my throat.
“Oh God. This... this can’t happen again. You know that, don’t you?”
I couldn’t think straight to answer him.
“Rosie?” Truman turned his head to look at me.
Still no words would come.
“We’re drunk. We made a mistake, okay? I let myself get carried away. We both did. This can’t happen again.” He swiveled his head to stare at the ceiling and run a hand through his hair.
