Into the Great Wide Open by Kevin Canty Page B

her hand lacing through the short hair at the base of his neck, urging him on. She opened her legs for him, he knelt between them, but before he could come inside she stopped him. She brought a small tube of K-Y jelly from under the bed, opened the top, and out came a glistening clear drop. First did herself and then him and Kenny was lucky not to go off then, the feel of it … And then the other thought, of Junie making preparations, of where she might have learned about K-Y jelly, but this wasn’t the time. She laid the tube out of sight under the bed and pulled him down inside of her and he was partway inside her when he felt the stop.
    “Come on,” she said fiercely. “Don’t stop.”
    Then he knew what she meant:
a virgin
. Kenny was frightened, excited. Her hand was resting in the small of his back and now itmoved down, pulled him closer, urged him on. Eyes closed, he had a sense of falling, farther than he knew. More than you bargained for, more than you bargained for: it was his father’s voice going around in his head, fear and anger mixed in with this other thing, not quite pleasure, or a pleasure that was painful too … He broke through, came all the way inside her and went off at the same time.
    Rested on top of her with his eyes closed, quiet. Something had happened. They were each away inside, miles apart but touching. The slick, sweaty warmth of her skin. It was only, what? Eight-thirty or nine o’clock. The rain unimpeded in the trees outside. Kenny closed his eyes and rested in the warmth between them, bellies slick with come and blood, he didn’t want to look. More than you bargained for, his father’s voice said. Why didn’t she tell you?
    He drew away from her, inside himself again. She wanted things from Kenny. She had delivered herself into his care; her problems were going to be his own from now on. Entrapment: a simple fuck turned into a wedding. Really it was nothing so clear. Really it was this: Kenny had thought they were walking along on solid ground when really they were thousands of feet up in the air, walking a thin line. Now he saw how far there was to fall. It scared him. He was going to have to take care, take care of himself, of her.
    She stirred beneath him and he opened his eyes, found her face, tears standing in her eyes. Shit, he thought; felt again the urge to run away. She was so much heavier than he had thought.
Consequences, take your chances
. And then the second voice inside him saying all right, I can do it, I can take the weight.
    “What?” he said, and touched her cheek with his hand.
    She closed her eyes, shook her head, tears streaming down the sides of her face. “Shit,” she said. “I said I wasn’t going to …”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “It hurts,” she said.
    “Is that …?”
    “No,” she said; then started to laugh, tears and laughter, come and blood all mixed up into some nameless everything. Kenny felt the same. She said, “I mean, it’s almost enough. It
hurts
.”
    “I’m sorry,” Kenny said, and meant it, and she started to laugh harder.
    “Shit,” she said. “This is where we started, isn’t it? Apologies.” Smiled and wiped the tears out of her eyes and then lay there for a moment composing her face, eyes closed, like he was about to take her picture; and Kenny thought
I love you
and almost said it.
    Jesus, he thought. At the same time feeling like he had made a discovery, he had found the right name for himself and his certainty of her. He wanted to dare it, to say the word out loud, like the first words of a new language: I love you. I am your lover.
    “I love you,” Kenny said.
    “Oh, shit,” she said, and turned her face from him, trying to get away. “Don’t say that.”
    “I’m sorry,” Kenny said; but it was broken already; the exact wrong words, and he had said them. She shrugged him off and they both sat up and looked at the mess they had made, the red bloodstain—smaller than he thought—spreading