Going Back by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online

above the blotter.
    “Okay,” Daphne said
stupidly.
    Brad pulled an already open bottle
of wine from the desk drawer and tugged out the cork. Then he
turned off the overhead light, leaving most of the room in shadow.
He led Daphne to the bed and they sat together on it, side by side.
He filled two ceramic mugs with wine and handed one to
her.
    They didn’t talk. They sipped their
wine, sitting so close on the mattress that their thighs nearly
touched. Daphne stared at the small pool of bluish light the
fluorescent lamp spilled onto the surface of the desk. She wondered
why she couldn’t taste the wine she was drinking, why she couldn’t
feel Brad next to her. She wondered why she felt so
cold.
    Eventually, Brad set his mug down
on the floor beside the bottle. When he removed Daphne’s mug from
her hand to put on the floor with his, she didn’t protest. He slid
his arms around her, kissed her, and eased her backward on the bed
until she was lying underneath him.
    She wanted to enjoy it—or else to
block the whole thing out, to put her mind on hold and pretend none
of it was occurring. But she failed on both counts. She remained
painfully conscious of Brad’s weight on her, of his hands peeling
off her clothing and his, of his warm, damp breath tickling the
skin of her shoulder in a tortuous way.
    Daphne suffered from more than just
the constant, almost abrasive tickle of his breath. There was the
scratchiness of his unshaven chin as he nuzzled her neck. The pain
of his knee digging into the soft flesh of her thigh. The pressure
of his hard chest smashing down onto her breasts. The stinging
pinch at her scalp when his fingers got snared in the tangled curls
of her hair. His aimless kisses, landing here and there, without
purpose or effect.
    Yet she remained where she was,
doing her inebriated best to return his kisses and to shift out of
the way of his bony knees. She remained in the hope that things
would improve, that gradually everything would start to feel
better. She stayed because Brad had such beautiful eyes and she
hoped that somehow, perhaps, those beautiful eyes would transform
the experience into something equally beautiful.
    They didn’t, of course. It wasn’t
beautiful. It was embarrassingly quick and bad, and when it was
over, Daphne felt more sober than she’d ever felt in her
life.
    “I’m sorry,” she mumbled,
practically shoving him away from her and sitting.
    “Hey,” he said hoarsely, extending
his arm. “You don’t have to go.”
    “Yes, I do,” she insisted, too
chagrined to look at him. At that moment, she hated them both for
having done what they did—and for having done it so poorly. She was
unable to escape from herself, but she could escape from Brad, and
her only aim at that point was to flee from him before he found out
how much she hated him.
    His hand alighted
on her leg, but he couldn’t prevent her from leaving. She swung off
the bed, resenting her sudden sobriety because it forced her to
acknowledge the most peculiar details of his room, imbedding them
in her memory so she’d never be able to forget. The wine they’d
been drinking was a Mosel; the mugs had the college logo imprinted
on them; the book on the top of the pile on Brad’s desk was Volume
One of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or . Brad’s blanket was the
same heavenly blue color as his eyes.
    Another thing she would never
forget was that Brad didn’t beg her to stay. He didn’t even ask her
to stay. All he said was, “You don’t have to go,” as if the choice
were totally hers.
    If it was, she was willing to make
it. She left the fraternity house, went back to her dorm, took a
long, scalding shower and then got into bed, burrowed deep beneath
the blankets, and wept.
    That ghastly night had occurred in
late February, which meant Daphne had to spend only three more
months on the same campus with Brad before they both graduated and
went their separate ways. When they saw each other during those
three final months,