“How am I supposed to know that?” I ask her. I mutter, “Stupid bitch.”
“What did you call me?” she asks, petulant.
“Why do you call me Kent?” I’m sick of this. “My name is Kanen.”
“I thought Kent was your name.” She’s confused.
“It was, but my real name is Kanen.” I’m done trying to fit in with these hicks. “You can call me that from now on. But only when you’re talking about me because I think we’re done here.” I start to walk away from her, but she catches my arm.
“Don’t be like that, baby,” she says. “You know how I feel about that sexy butt of yours. But you’ve got to understand how things are.”
“Whatever,” I say. Something in me wants to punch people, or cry. I can do neither at this moment. I just shake her off, and tell her to go back to her squad. I don’t need the lust or the pity of any girl, even if she is the head cheerleader. That’s just not how I work. I’m on my own now, and I can support myself. I don’t have to make anyone happy.
When I hit oil on Mama’s property, it was a stroke of luck, but it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Mama was dying of cancer when we found that black gold. Stage 4, it was untreatable, and mostly just because we hadn’t had any of the money we’d need to fight it. Not that she would have won the fight for certain in any event, but she would have had a chance if I’d only done the jobs around the house she asked me to do a little earlier. Done the digging that led to the money. Then it might have still been treatable.
I can picture it like it was yesterday, doing that long put-off work for Mama when I first noticed it, the ground leaking a little bit of shiny blackness. And a little bit more. And more, until eventually they drilled and it was practically a geyser. It was way in the back of her property, where nobody ever went, and when we confirmed what it was, it was clear that we—well, I—would be set for life from then on. All from an ignored piece of land. Sometimes riches lie in the most nondescript places.
“Kanen,” she says to me very solemnly, looking at me with those faded, rheumy eyes that stood out in her newly gaunt, pale face. “You be a good boy with that oil money now. You promise me you won’t do anything sinful with it.”
Nothing sinful? Amazing. This coming from a cheap prostitute. How can a sane person even take her words seriously? But she was my mama, and I know she had been trying to support the family in the only way she could after dad left. I guess her ass was her only asset, and she sold it as many times as she could, to whatever takers came along so that we could occasionally have food in the cupboard and I could buy used running shoes for track. By the time she got addicted, which wasn’t long, she wasn’t exactly supporting us, anymore, just her habit. So for her to tell me not to do anything sinful with the money... well that was rich.
The only rich thing about her.
We pull down a rocky drive just as the sun is taking on the golden hue that means that the day is coming to an end. The place I’m taking her is very special to me. It’s the place I used to come to when everything was overwhelming. I was there the day after Mama died and the boys in the school made fun of me. They were le
d by Dillon, which was Dilly’s grown-up name. I used to love calling him by his kid name, even though part of me empathized with the desire to become something different. But what I wanted him to become was Dill Pickle, Dill Doe, whatever was the most convenient insult at the time, because that was what he was.
I can feel my mouth twisting up a little, caught in the memory, and a moment later, Chastity’s hand is in mine. It pulls me back into the present. I don’t know how to describe the atmosphere in the car at this moment, but it is somehow...soft. Her hand is soft, it holds mine softly, in the soft light.
I want to pull over and take her in my arms, and softly brush her hair out of her eyes. What the hell, I will.
I stop the car and she looks at me for a moment in concern. “We’re stopping here?” she says.
“Just for a moment, Chastity,” I tell her, taking her hand in mine. It’s trembling.
She unbuckles her seat belt, and it slithers back around her, while I undo mine. I move close to her, and put a finger under her chin. We’re so close, we’re nearly kissing already, but I’m enjoying the feeling of the electricity that we had felt in our hands and now is moving to between our lips, playing between us in the softly closing distance. It’s part of the energy of the universe, and it tells me that I’m in the right place.
Staring at my mouth, she moves almost imperceptibly forward, toward me, and I can’t stay still anymore. Our lips meet, our tongues twine together, and my hand tangles in her dark hair. It’s magic, this feeling—it’s almost too strong. We kiss softly, then quick, and everything in between: hard, slow, gentle, hurried, lingering. We’re feeling every millisecond of our contact and we kiss until I nearly pass out from the sheer sensation of finally letting myself kiss those wicked lips.
We try to pull away, but a couple little pecks, quick, questioning, answering, softly end the moment, and we lean our foreheads together, nearly panting.
“Kanen,” she breathes.
“Yeah, Chastity,” I say. I almost feel like that seventeen-year-old boy I used to be again, full of excitement and lusty innocence. The boy who thought everything was possible.
“That was... amazing,” she says. She blushes. “I’ve never been kissed like that before.”
“You should be kissed like that every day, Chas,” I answer. “You should be kissed like that every hour. You deserve it. And you deserve much more than that.”
“Like what?” she says quietly, after a moment, her eyes darting to meet mine and then breaking away. How can she even question?
“You deserve to be made love to, and fucked, wildly, and passionately, over and over, until you’re begging for mercy, or begging for more,” I say.
“Kanen!” She giggles and hits me gently on the arm. “Shame on you,” she says but her eyes are shining, her lips pursed.
“Well, I always tell the truth, Chastity,” I say. “I can’t tell a lie about something as important as this. It just wouldn’t be right.”