Free This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman Page B

trying to suppress his glee. “I love peeing with Audrey. Sometimes she holds my thing…”
    â€œYou’re an asshole,” said Audrey.
    He pulled his arms around her again and tightened his grip around her chest and waist and started to smother her neck in kisses.
    â€œBut I’m your asshole,” said Luke.
    Audrey tried to squirm out of his grasp, but then she giggled, and he caught her chin with one hand and turned her face to his for a long, too-long, movie star kiss.
    They were putting on a show. This much was clear. For his benefit. To torture him.
    â€œCome on, Jake,” said Daisy, tugging at him.
    â€œNo,” said Jake.
    â€œCome on, Jakey,” said Daisy, and she tried to kiss him on the neck, mimicking Luke.
    â€œNo, I said, no,” said Jake, pushing her aside. He pushed her so hard she flew against McHenry. “Leave me alone,” Jake said.
    â€œHey,” said McHenry, his hands flying up as if he were under arrest, as if he were saying, “I didn’t do it.”
    â€œJake!” said Audrey, in an admonishing tone, as Daisy began to cry.
    â€œI’m sorry, Daisy,” said Jake, reaching out, petting the air, then pulling his hand back to his side. “Goddamn it, I’m sorry. You’re just way too young.” He blurted this out.
    â€œI am not,” Daisy said through her tears, mascara running down her face. She looked and sounded ridiculous.
    Jake looked at her smeared mouth. He was the one who’d smeared it.
    â€œI am not,” she said again, and she stamped her foot.
    McHenry snorted and stamped his foot, and then everybody laughed. Everybody including Jake, including Audrey. Daisy’s face went bright red.
    â€œI gotta get out of here,” said Jake. He pushed his way through the party.
    â€œC’mon, we can share a cab,” McHenry called after him. But Jake didn’t stop. He didn’t stop until he’d climbed the stairs and walked out of the house and into the fresh, cool air. You could smell the trees out there.
    Outside, it was as if they lived in a real place, with houses and lawns, a place he could recognize. He climbed up the hill and walked to the highway. He didn’t stop walking. He walked and walked, all the way down the sidewalk that hemmed the highway and then down the hill and into Kingsbridge and then down, down, down the stairs into the subway. He waited on the platform and then he got on the subway and he took it home.
    B y the time Jake got back to the apartment, it was late. Way late. Way later than he’d ever been up or out before. The streets outside were quiet. He was lucky his mom wasn’t there to call the cops or something. His dad was already asleep. That was the good thing about his dad. He cared, but he didn’t. Jake knocked on his father’s door and his dad grunted and Jake said, “I’m home,” like he was trained to do, and his dad said, “I’m glad, son.”
    It was the son that made Jake weep. He lay on his bed and for a while he cried into his pillow. It was so fucked up. He felt all tangled and put out, like he didn’t know himself anymore and he couldn’t think of anyone on the planet who did. He didn’t belong here, in the city, in this apartment, at this school, or in this family, and he didn’t belong back in Ithaca anymore, either—he’d gone back over spring break and that had been kind of fun but kind of weak and pathetic, too; everyone was a little too nice to him, like he was a foreigner or a cripple. He’d hooked up in Ithaca, but not with a thirteen-year-old, with a sixteen-year-old, Johanna Shoenstein, a normal girl who was older. Not like that baby he’d been with tonight. Jake felt a hot wave of embarrassment and shame just thinking about Daisy, about his hand on her breast, on the outside of her bra—he was such an idiot! He thought about Luke and McHenry and Audrey laughing at him,