“Hey,” I said. “What you up to now?”
Dave’s pale nose and throat were lit up by the floodlights of the gas station. “Going home. Why? Is something happening?”
“We could keep hanging out.”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Yeah?”
I put a hand on the door and hopped into the cold air.
Each night before she leaves, my mom opens every single window, so when I got home the apartment was dim and drafty. But I turned on the heater and went around closing the windows.
“Just sit anywhere.”
“Hey,” Dave said, “do you have a towel?”
I saw his point: sand and salt were dried into my hairline and the folds of my eyes.
I blinked. “To sit on? Yeah.”
But I didn’t get the towels right away. Instead, I fiddled around with the stereo in the corner, tuning in to a Top 40 station. I bounced up and down on my heels as the music played, then stuck my head into the linen closet. Our apartment was tiny. After my dad died a few years ago, we’d had to leave our house, but my mom hadn’t wanted to move to a cheaper town, because the school district was so good, so we’d gotten this place instead.
“You could just borrow some clothes,” I said. “I’m not that much bigger.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea. I’m so gross. On the beach it doesn’t matter, but the moment you get off the beach, it’s like, why would anyone ever kiss me?”
The music still played dimly as we went into my room, and when he went through the door his eyebrows went up.
“This is kind of a collection.”
The walls used to be covered in old movie posters I’d found in a stationery store: Kill Bill, Scarface, The Godfather. I’d watched some of them but wasn’t really a movie guy. I just wanted to bring Avani back to something other than blank, bare walls. Then Avani had laughed at me for having such a guy’s room, so I’d torn down half the movies and replaced them with girlier ones: Mean Girls, High School Musical, When Harry Met Sally. Now my room was exactly half and half.
“There’s a story behind that,” I said.
I jumped on the bed. By now my clothes had dried, and I didn’t really care about the musty smell. He went through my closet.
“Most of the ones in that pile on the floor are clean too.”
“Umm . . .”
He picked up a pair of khakis.
“No,” I said. “Those are so torn.”
“Err . . . ,” he said. “Do you have any, like, normal clothes?”
“What?” I said.
Leaning over the side, I picked up a pair of jeans. “These are normal.”
“They’ve got butterflies all over them.”
“What’re you, a homophobe? I feel very microaggressed right now.”
His face froze, and Dave didn’t relax until I smiled. I tossed him the jeans and some other clothes. “Hey, you can change in the bathroom.”
While Dave was gone, my body odor wafted through the room and finally reached my nose, so my armpits got a once-over from some deodorant and I swapped out my clothes too, pulling on a red T-shirt—it showed two unicorns having sex—and a pair of dull brown pants.
Shower sounds had started in the bathroom, so I felt safe to fish out my secret supply of whiskey and mix it in the kitchen with some apple juice. The alcohol spread through my toes and fingers, and I became euphoric and relaxed and ready to gossip.
When he came out, I asked immediately, “So what did you think?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, haha, sorry. Here.” I offered him some whiskey, and he shook his head. I took another gulp. I threw the living room’s couch cushions on the floor and sat amid the pile. “Did you at least have fun? We’re gonna do this again, you know that, right? Now you’re, like, one of my peoples. I marked you as a peoples of mine.”
“Uh . . .” He nodded slowly. “Maybe that ought to offend me, but . . .” He shrugged. “I’m a born follower. I’ve always known it.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What’re you talking about? You’re definitely not a follower.”
“I am. And I don’t care. I just wish I had a better leader.”
“You are so drunk right now.”
He laid his head against my side, and my hand reached up, sort of touched his chest. His other hand was uncomfortably close to my crotch, and I wriggled to one side.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I texted with Avani all week trying to get together a nice and chill day at the lake house. But Pothan ruined everything. They’re in a fight, those two—a fight for the soul of the Ninety-Nine. All Pothan cares about is getting drunk on the beach. But Avani wants so much more, and I keep trying to help her, but she doesn’t notice.”
The Ninety-Nine, or T99 for short, was what I called all the kids at our school who shone brightly: the ones who had courage and style. As opposed to the rest, the Twelve Hundred, who were sort of like nameless background characters in the video game of life.
“Have you ever told her that?”
“No. She’s afraid of honesty. Everything has to be delicate and indirect.”
“I bet she’d want to hear your real feelings. I really bet she would.”
Our voices got lower and hazier as we talked about what we’d seen that night. Then, halting, unsure, I mentioned how they’d found me hanging out by myself on those blankets.
“You looked great.” His husky voice blew hot air across my neck. “Just totally satisfied with yourself.”
“I didn’t look, err, sort of lonely?”
“What?” he said. “No! Of course not. The opposite. You were like, Fuck this party, I’m doing my own thing.”
I impulsively put an arm out and hugged him close, surrounding myself with the smell of shampoo and soap. “Thank you.” I struggled for a better way of putting it. “Thank you.”
My eyes closed as a sad woman wailed over the radio. “This song is perfect. . . .” I hummed along quietly, then pitched into a falsetto. I jumped up, grabbing for Dave’s hand, and he stared haplessly at me.
“I’ve never heard this song before.”
When he wouldn’t get up, I gave a try at flinging my hair and staring at him shyly over my fingertips, like Avani would’ve done, and Dave didn’t seem repulsed. Suddenly I boiled over laughing and flopped down next to him.
“Hey . . . ,” he said. “Umm, you seemed kind of upset earlier.”
“No. I don’t know.” My hands covered my face, remembering the college girls I’d run away from the moment things turned weird. “I hate feeling so pathetic.”
“Well, if you’re pathetic, then what am I?”
“No, no, you’re fine. I’ll help you.” I exhaled and uncovered my face. “You’ll learn to ignore that voice.”
Now I reached out, took his hands, and my thumb rubbed small circles on his wrist. “You know,” I said. “If we were girls, and this was a movie, I’d teach you how to kiss.”
He looked away.
“I mean, that’s it, right? You’re too nervous. But your first kiss . . . you just have to go for it.”