The Beach House

Chapter 17: Ranting's Good for the Soul

            My heart feels weird. Like something is squeezing it through my ribs. It's all tight. I can't believe he cheated. He cheated!

           Again.

          But this time he took it further.

          Noah had kissed another girl before, but he was drunk and swore that he thought we were broken up. It was after a big fight over winter break. We'd had this giant screaming match, but never called it quits. Or at least I thought so. Noah swears one of us called it off. He's implied it was me and I blindly took on that responsibility without any memory of it. I forgave him because I believed him when he said he was just messed up from the fight. But this time there was no fight. He did this on his own.

            I look back at the photo in my hand and sink into my numbness. I don't feel pain right now, I don't even know how to feel pain. I drop my phone on the counter and walk mechanically to the sliding door. I must've slept longer than I thought, it's getting dark out.

            It's getting dark, there's a breeze, and he cheated.

             I slide the door shut behind me and walk to the sand. The breeze is chilly but it's no match for the numbness of my body. I plant myself on the dunes and hug my knees. I should feel cold. I wish I felt cold. I wish I felt anything.

             The breeze stabs at my icy exterior, hoping to zap my skin to life but it's like a mosquito pecking at an elephant.

              How could he? How could he?

               I think back to the girl in the picture. I don't recognize her but shes undeniably pretty. Strawberry colored hair, tan skin, skinny - the boney kind that i spend hours looking at in magazines. Beautiful. The opposite from pasty, squishy, ugly me. Just like in my nightmare. I look down at how I'm sitting and tug at my stomach. I stare at the way my clothes sit over my round rolls and feel an orb anxiety forming under my sternum. I don't know how I ever thought I looked cute in a bikini yesterday.

              The realization that he cheated again makes me question everything he's told me in the past. Did he really only kiss that girl last time? Or was that a lie, too?

              "Mind if I join?"

              The sudden noise catches me by surprise, but I barely jump. Everything feels like concrete.

               "Ok," I say dryly. I'm too busy in my self pity to even register who it is.

              "Still tired from all the shopping?"

              "Exhausted," I reply. And it's truly how I feel. Every inch of me feels utterly and completely exhausted, but not from the shopping.

               "You'd almost think that hiking was the easier activity from how tired you seem."

             "Are you saying I look bad?" I say sarcastically. My voice sounds robotic and monotone, even to my ears. I take the short pause after my question to turn and look at my pity-party-crasher.

             Soren is staring straight into my eyes, but for the first time, I don't blush or feel excitement. I don't think I have enough feeling left in me to circulate any kind of blood flow. He's wearing a sweatshirt and for a minute i feel the urge to ask him for it, but instead I stare him dead in the eyes without registering any details. Usually eye contact would take a lot of effort from me, but right now everything feels slack.

             "Nah, I could never say that," he says finally. He returns my gaze with the same steadiness. I'd normally be uncomfortable right now, but i can't muster up the energy to care. Eye contact isn't exactly my strong suit, but I don't even have the capacity to feel awkward about it. "What's actually happening? Why do you seem so... different right now?"

I look back to the waves and try to breathe deeply. It's almost as if I've forgotten how to breathe entirely.

              "It's nothing," I reply. How would he know somethings different? He doesn't even know me. I must look insane. I listen to Soren breathing next to me and sync my breaths with his. I can feel his eyes on me.

              "Spill," he says gently, quoting me from yesterday. His smile is so kind, I decide to just give him what he asked for. The truth.

               I let silence sit for a few moments before letting myself saying anything.

"Noah cheated, I think," I say flatly and then reconsider. "No. He did. Theres no 'I think'."

               "Oh. Wow."

               I give a humorless laugh. I can't help it. Sitting there, numb and heavy, I release all my thoughts onto Soren. I just need to thaw it all out.

            "It's just like... How many times has Noah been alone with me in my bedroom? And how many nights have we spent in his? And the times of unsupervised summers at the beach? So many times I, like, can't even count. And of all those times together, we never once had sex. Which is odd because when i was younger i always thought boyfriend plus bedroom equals sex. And it's not like I'm a prude. Yeah, I'm a virgin, but not because I'm waiting for someone or because I place any value on my so called 'purity'. In fact, I kinda think the idea of virginity was created to shame women into equating their worth with what men can get out of them. The kind of, 'i'll buy your daughter for eight goats,' mindset. So I think virginity is sorta fake and stupid. I don't change as a person because someone used me as their left hand.

          Yet here I am, years into a relationship and still a virgin. And still feeling pressured not to be one. I'm eighteen. Almost nineteen. I have friends. I have a committed relationship. Or... uh... sorta, I guess. But it all feels fake. Like, as much as I like to think I'm progressive and feminist and that virginity is a social construct, I know i put a lot of my value on how many men wish they could have sex with me. Noah having sex with someone feels like a lot more than cheating. It feels like he said, 'You are nothing. You're boyfriend would rather fuck someone else than initiate any kind of sexual relationship with you.' I know I shouldn't feel embarrassed about something he did. But it feels like a reflection of my worth."

              I say it all without thinking. It flows out of me like blood. I look over to Soren and see he's still looking at me with his eyebrows knit together. With anyone else, I would stop there. But with Soren, I feel like I can keep talking and be honest for once. Honest to him, but also with myself. It's not like he has a solid preconceived notion of me that i'm shattering. He could basically be a stranger to me. Which is kind of perfect right now.

            "If I'm being honest, sex isn't nothing to me. i say it is, i wish it was, but it does mean something for me. Sex is the measure of how valuable and how attractive I am. The longer I'm a virgin, the uglier I rank. I know I'm the last virgin of all my girl friends. And I thought Noah was the last virgin of the guys. And I know that this isn't a healthy way to view sex. Like, this is purity culture getting to me, i know. But him cheating confirms every bad thought I think about myself in comparison to everyone around me. It's like he's saying he thinks those things, too. And he's supposed to know me better than anyone. So that means it must all be true."

            I don't notice that I've started to cry until a stronger gust of breeze freezes the trails on my face. I reach up to dry my eyes but Soren's hand beats me there. He wordlessly uses the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe my tears before pulling me under his arm. It's not a romantic gesture, I can feel it's a gesture of silent understanding. The heat from his body emphasizes the coolness of the air and I gratefully sit in his warmth.