This is Okay
by Dee Nelson
This time, when he moves to unbutton her jeans and wriggle them down her fleshy hips, she leaves her hands on the back of his neck. She cups them there and gazes into his eyes, which dart about like a wild animal’s as they at last fall upon the white of her thighs.
He leans over her and buries his face in the pillow alongside her as he wrestles with his own zipper. She kisses his neck—smelling of musky aftershave and tobacco spit—but he doesn’t seem to notice.
Headlights wash over the wallpaper and wink out. This is okay, she tells herself. She’s been seeing this boy for almost three months. He’s been patient, as understanding as can be expected—a gentleman. And besides, what she feels for him might almost be love.
His hairy legs press against the sheer of her own, and she even begins to enjoy herself. His knee is bony and hard between her legs, but she doesn’t recoil, a sexless knee not enough to breach the levy behind which the darkness swells.
His fingers creep over her soft hip. He pauses, asks if this is okay, and she grabs his neck again and presses her lips to his, the way she imagines an unbroken twenty year old girl might.
She feels only his touch and his heat and the gentle way his fingers toy with places of her body even she avoids touching. And this is okay. She feels sexy, or something close to it, until the taste of French fries bubbles up her throat and escapes through her nose, and she thinks of all the food used to keep herself from situations exactly like this. And with that, his fingers rappel down the shelf of fat she’s tucked away on her stomach and seem to grow claws through her pubic hair.
He’s trying to make her feel good as he touches her there, she knows that, and she moves her lips silently, telling herself these are not the hairy knuckles of her stepfather, that it’s only Coke on this nice boy’s breath, that if she can just go through with it this one time she’ll have forever beaten back the tide. But despite what she tells herself, she can’t find a way to keep her eyes closed.
He’s kissing her tummy now, and without willing it she poofs out her stomach like a startled blowfish, trying to scare him off, but his lips keep going lower. She tugs his ear, the unspoken signal they have for when she wants him to stop.
But he doesn’t stop. Instead, his head’s between her thighs and she shivers and lurches, but he’s got her hipbones pressed to the bed. She almost cries out, almost screams “Daddy stop!” but she swallows those words and her body is rolled by waves. She balls the sheet in her hands and pinches her eyes tight and feels nothing but him, the boy she might love, as she lets him do what she’s never allowed of anyone else, and this is okay.
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The Molotov Cocktail 