Rabbit Ears Read Free Page A

forehead. Your body nestles itself against him and he responds, lowering his lips to yours.
    “You want to go for a walk?” he says in your ear.
    He pulls you to your feet. The two of you start off down the beach.
    Dreadlock girl calls after him. “Hey. Where you going?”
    “Just a walk,” Adam shouts back.
    The tide has receded a bit, and you walk at the water’s edge, stopping now and then to kiss in the moonlight. As if from a distance, you watch yourself standing ankle-deep in the ocean, with a gorgeous guy’s arm hooked around you, his lips soft as whispers, his tongue sleek in your mouth.
    This is how it’s supposed to be, you think. This is perfect. You walk with your hand on his bare waist, feeling his muscles flex as he walks, feeling how strong he is.
    You are so caught up in your vision that you hardly notice that you’re leaving the beach, walking through the band of trees, coming out on the road. Before you take in that that’s where he’s leading you, he’s unlocking his car.
    You don’t even hesitate. You get in, but you watch yourself doing it, nervous anticipation thick in your limbs.
    When he gathers you into his arms, your stomach flips right over and electricity shoots straight into your crotch. You tense and squirm away a bit. He sits back and grasps your shoulders.
    “Let’s go to my place,” he says, his voice the tenderest thing.
    “I … I can’t,” you say. “I have to get home.”
    Abruptly, he lets go of you and starts the car, pulls out. “Which way?” he says when he reaches the main road. He follows your instructions and makes the left turn. He doesn’t go far, though, before he turns down a dirt road, pulls over and turns off the car.
    “No need to go home this instant,” he says, and kisses you again, with a lot more tongue than before. His hand grasps your breast for a moment, through your dress, and drops to your thigh. It feels heavy now, tentacled, and it starts to crawl up your skirt.
    All the electricity is gone. Your body is on lockdown.
    You manage a muffled but insistent “no” around his tongue. His hand retreats.
    Relief, of a sort, washes through you—until you hear his zipper. Your right arm drifts for the door handle. He pulls his face away from yours and looks down, and you follow his gaze to his crotch. At the sight of his erect penis, you snap your lids shut.
    “Come on,” he says, his voice thick. “You don’t want to leave me like this, do you?”
    You open your eyes, and he reaches out, works his fingers into your hair and pulls at your head. You push back against his hand and turn your face toward that door.
    “Tease,” he says.
    That’s it. That’s all he has to say. You let him pull your head down and you do what he wants.
    You watch yourself performing the act, and something clicks into place inside you. The romance in the shallows, the moonlit kisses, none of that is you. It never has been.
    Anyway, “the act” doesn’t take long at all. He lets go of your head right away and you rear up and stare straight ahead, filled with a kind of tarry darkness, a miserable calm.
    “I’ll drive you home now,” he says then, and you turn to look at him. The moonlight is still streaming into the car, flooding him now with cold white light. He reaches for thekeys. You wipe your face with your sleeve. Loathing leaks into that big calm space inside you.
    “No,” you say. “I’ll walk.”
    You thrust the door open and tumble straight into the ditch, which is full of brambles. Up the other side you go, scrapes and scratches burning, trying to keep your breathing quiet, trying to muster a shred of pride.
    He gets out of the car and walks along the ditch. “Hey,” he calls. “Come on. I’m just going to drive you home.”
    “I said I’ll walk,” you call back.
    “What’s the matter with you?” he shouts. Then, a long silence.
    At last he gets back in his car and drives along slowly. Eventually, he’s off the gravel, onto the