Slide, the stretch between Montara and Pacifica where Highway 101 had been carved out of a cliff high above the ocean. The sharpest curves always scared Dinah. The guardrail wouldn’t keep a car from plunging over the cliff and onto the rocks where the surf crashed dizzyingly far below.
Will lived in a development where all the houses looked alike, stucco-sided and two stories on small lots mostly landscaped with palm trees, red or shiny white gravel and swaths of ice plant in bloom. Will’s mother had planted bougainvillea in their yard that climbed up to the second-story balcony and smothered the railing with purple flowers. Without that vine, if Will had parked in the driveway of the houses on either side, Dinah would have headed for the front door without noticing they were at the wrong place.
They left his bedroom door ajar so they could hear in case his parents came home early for some reason. Will flopped on the bed and drew her down atop him. They made out, his hands roving up and down her back and even squeezing her butt. But the moment came, as it always did, when he turned his mouth from hers and rolled to one side, so she no longer lay astride him.
“Um, maybe we should…”
She took a deep breath for courage. “Why do you always stop?”
He froze for what had to be ten seconds. Then, voice hoarse, he said, “You don’t want me to?”
Suddenly shy, Dinah shook her head, her hair falling over her face to shield the heat in her cheeks. “Not anymore,” she whispered.
His hand on her upper arm tightened. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “I am seventeen now.”
“Yeah. Wow.” He sounded dazed. “Have you ever…you know?”
She shook her head again and buried her face against his shoulder. “Have you?”
“Um…yeah. A few times.”
He still hadn’t made a move. Dinah mumbled, “If you don’t want to right now, that’s okay. I mean, I just thought I’d tell you…”
“Not want to? Are you kidding?” He rolled abruptly so that, this time, his upper body pinned her down and she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “I just thought…I mean, you seemed shy. I didn’t want to, like, scare you away.” He tucked her hair behind her ears, his fingers lingering. “I have some condoms down in my car. In the glove compartment. Will you wait here?”
Emboldened, she lifted her head and kissed his jaw. “I’m on the pill.”
“Really?”
“After I met you, I started complaining every month about my cramps. So Mom was okay with it.”
Will was still laughing when his mouth claimed hers. Almost immediately he began to tug at her clothes. She tried to help, and they whacked their noses against each other, both of them laughing again even though they had tears in their eyes, too.
Then he spotted his bedside clock and exclaimed, “Damn! We need to kind of hurry. It’s not that long until my parents get home.”
So they did, shedding clothes and eyeing each other shyly but with rapt interest, kissing deeply, Will thrusting his thickened penis against her. Even after she parted her legs, it took some fumbling on his part to find her opening.
When he pushed, Dinah felt first pressure, then pain. When she stiffened, he went still.
“Are you okay?” He was breathless.
She managed a nod, although her teeth were clenched.
“Because I can stop.”
“Do you want to?”
“No!”
“Then…then just do it!”
So he did, and she felt as if her innards were being ripped open. She panted while he pumped a couple of times, then jerked and collapsed on her. Even when his penis shrank and slipped out of her, she kept hurting.
Wounded and indignant, she thought, Why didn’t anybody tell me it was so bad the first time? Christina and Susan had giggled about losing their virginity! And “J,” the author of The Sensuous Woman—which they’d all passed around and Dinah, at least, had read with a flashlight under the bedcovers so her mother wouldn’t see the book—didn’t say anything about how you had to just lie there rigid the first time and hope sex wasn’t always like that. Because if it was, who’d want to do it again?
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I didn’t know it would be so hard to push through your, um…”
“What?” she snapped. “Or you wouldn’t have done it?” She rolled away to hide her tears.
He was quiet for a minute. Then, voice low, he said, “I wanted you so much. But maybe you weren’t ready.”
“I was!” she cried, turning back to him, her face wet. “I just didn’t know it would hurt so much!”
His eyes were a rich, dark blue, and so kind she cried harder. “It’s not supposed to hurt ever again.” Then he said, “Oh, crap!” and jackknifed to a sitting position.
Dinah heard it, too, the sound of the garage door being opened. “Oh, God, I’m a mess!”
She jumped up, grabbed her clothes and raced down the hall for the bathroom. There she cleaned herself up, got dressed and washed her face over and over. While using a brush she found in a drawer to smooth her hair, she stared at herself in the mirror in despair. Her face was still blotchy, her nose red and her eyes puffy. But she couldn’t stay in here forever!
Finally she just walked out. Will was already in the living room, talking to his parents like nothing was any different. Glancing over his shoulder at her as she came down the hall, he said, “I’d better take Dinah home.”
At the sight of him, lanky and reassuring and, oh, just Will, her eyes welled with tears again.
“I’m sorry,” she said to his mom and dad. Inspiration came to her. “I just…I heard this guy I knew in school was hurt really badly in Vietnam. And I was telling Will, and…” She fled back to the bathroom for a tissue.
When she came back out, they were really nice. That made her feel guilty for lying to them, so she cried again once she and Will were in his car driving away from the house.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” She mopped her tears.
“Do you wish we hadn’t made love?”
“No! That’s not it.”
But it was why she couldn’t seem to stop crying, Dinah realized. She had this huge iron cauldron of emotions bubbling inside her, and it was hard to separate one from another. She closed her eyes and imagined herself cooking a stew, skimming one emotion after another from the top. Disillusionment, because the experience had been pretty awful. And mixed in like pepper, stinging, was some fear that it had been such a comedown for Will, he wouldn’t want to be with her anymore.
In her mind, she kept skimming, trying to identify fleeting whiffs of emotion. Despite the tears, she
