Free The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke Page A

gaze fixed on mine; she didn’t speak.
    â€œYou’re the only person in the world I want to be with,” I said. “I care about you more than my parents, more than Saber, more than anyone I’ve ever known. I’d do anything for you.”
    She was looking at me in a different way now. She placed her hand on my forehead as though I had a fever. “You’re such a strange boy. You want to believe bad things about yourself. That’s wrong, did you know that?”
    â€œWould you run off with me?”
    â€œDon’t talk foolish,” she said, taking her hand away. “I’ll fix coffee for you. We can make sandwiches.”
    â€œI don’t want any.” I stood up.We were almost the same height, her face inches from mine. I could feel her eyes go inside me. “I want to be with you forever, Valerie. We could go to Louisiana. I could work in the oil field. I know everything about horses and cattle, too.”
    I took her wrist and placed her hand on my heart.
    â€œAaron,” she said.
    â€œYou’re stuck with me. For me, there’ll never be another girl. I don’t care if Loren Nichols and his friends kill me.”
    â€œAaron, please.”
    I put my arms around her and spread my fingers over her back and smelled her hair and the heat in her skin. Her head was framed against the window, the late sun lighting the skein of auburn and gold strands in her hair, the shadows from the fan spinning like a vortex around us.
    Then I felt her step on top of my feet and mold herself against me. My entire body felt as though it were being lowered into warm water, my phallus rising, my fingers biting into her back. I walked with her on top of my feet into the living room, as though we were dancing. Then she stepped away from me, and I felt my head reel as if I were floating away on the wind, alone, like a balloon with a broken string.
    â€œDid I do something wrong?”
    â€œNo, of course not,” she said. She took my hand and led me up the stairs to her bedroom. The window curtains were open, and I could see the top of the pecan tree in her backyard and clouds that were like streaks of blood in the western sky. We were both trembling as we undressed. My words clotted in my throat, and I can’t remember what I said to her when I saw her naked. I had never seen a woman undress, and I had never been to a burlesque club, and I had never done more with a girl than kiss her, and that was at the drive-in movie.
    She pulled back the covers and lay down and waited, her arms at her sides, her fingers curling and uncurling with anxiety. I kissed her on the mouth and eyes and breasts and stomach, my head hammering, the cuts on my knuckles from the fight streaking the pillows and sheets like wisps of pink thread. When she took me inside her, I put my face in her hair and swore I could smell the ocean and hear windblowing and feel myself slipping into an underwater cave filled with gossamer fans and electric eels, each tidal surge taking me deeper and deeper into a place I never wanted to leave.
    Then I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to the fates, and saw a single bottle rocket rise into the sky and burst in a shower of stars that floated down through the ceiling onto our bed.

Chapter
6
    I RODE THE CITY bus home. My father had come home from work late and gone to the icehouse. He did not know of my absence from the supper table. My mother met me at the door, her face like a piece of crumpled paper, a mole peeking from the deteriorating makeup on her chin. “I’ve called all over town.”
    â€œI went to see a girl in the Heights and lost my ride. I called twice. The line was busy. I’m sorry.”
    â€œWhich girl? Your father doesn’t want you in the Heights.” Her eyes were jittering, her hands clenching.
    I started for my room, exhausted, wanting to lie down on my teester bed; I wanted to sleep as if I’d been swallowed by a hole in