Chapter 23
Andrew
I wasn’t thinking with my dick. I wasn’t thinking with my dick. I wasn’t thinking with my dick. Goddammit. I slam the heel of my hand into the steering wheel.
I was thinking with my heart.
A horn blares, and I realize I’ve just run a stop sign. I’m driving too fast. I ease off the accelerator. The last thing I need is to get pulled over minutes after committing a felony.
Seventeen. Ah, fuck. I slam the steering wheel again. I had this all figured out. PG-13. PG-13. PG-fucking-13. I made the rules; it took me barely twenty-four hours to break them. How did I let that happen?
I keep asking myself that question as I speed through the dark streets. Still driving too fast. I back off the accelerator again.
The truth is, I already had one foot over that line when I got back to my apartment. I know that now. Was it seeing Robert ignore me in class? Was I trying to prove to myself that he really wanted me, that I wasn’t some old-fart teacher with worn-out soles on my shoes and stains on my pants?
And he brought me flowers. How was I supposed to resist a beautiful guy who brought me flowers, a beautiful guy who just needed to be touched?
Because he’s not just a beautiful guy, asshole. He’s a student. Your student. And that’s a sacred trust you do not violate no matter what he says, no matter what he needs. No matter how he feels about you, or how you feel about him. You do not violate that trust.
Panic rises in me again. I can salvage this. It will never, never, happen again. But can I trust Robert to keep his mouth shut? He’s a fucking kid. And he has every reason in the world to be pissed right now. And if he goes shooting off his mouth, I am fucked.
I don’t even know I’m headed there until I pull up in front of Maya’s house. It’s dark, but I need to talk to someone. Who better than my best friend in the world? The one who knows me better than I know myself.
I call before I get out of the car so I don’t scare her to death knocking. A lamp flips on in the house. I’m waiting outside the door when she opens it.
“Hey, Drew,” she says sleepily. She brushes her hair back from her face and studies me. “Are you okay? What are you doing here? It’s almost midnight.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
She steps aside and I make my way to the small family room. Even in the dark I could find my way around the house. It’s just as it was when I moved out. There are new throw pillows on the couch, and the rug is new, but otherwise not much has changed. I drop onto the couch and stretch out on my back. “Is Kiki asleep?”
“Uh-huh.” She picks up my feet and settles on the opposite end of the couch, then pulls my feet back into her lap like she used to do when we were married, and before. It’s comfortable, and safe. “She’s got that Dalmatian gripped so tightly around the neck he’d be one dead dog if he’d ever been a live dog.”
“He’s a she.”
“He’s a cross-dresser. Kiki insists he’s a boy dog.”
I smile. “Did she have a good day at Ms. Smith’s Village?”
“It was okay, I think. She’s having a harder time lately. I think the two-year-old room is a little rough. There’s a lot of sparring over the Chatter Telephone and the Corn Popper. But she’ll be all right. I have a feeling you didn’t stop by to ask about Kiki’s day, though.”
She stretches out her legs on the couch, too, and we trade off foot rubs just like old times.
“If anything happened to me, you and Kiki would be okay, right?”
She gives me a puzzled look. “That’s kind of out there. Did something happen?”
“I’m just asking. You know, if something did happen to me, you’d have Doug. You’d get married. Kiki would grow up with a dad. He’s financially stable. He could give her everything. Send her to college.”
“Okay, first of all, you’re being a little weird. And second, I don’t know if Doug and I are really headed that way. He’s kind of . . . a work in progress. I’m not so sure I want to be the one to civilize him.”
I snort a laugh. “A work in progress?”
“Yeah.” She wrinkles her nose. “This is just between you and me, right?”
I don’t even have to answer that question. We’ve always been each other’s confidante. She trusts me; I trust her.
“Okay,” she says. “He wears this scented deodorant that makes my eyes burn. And he sleeps in his socks.”
“Okay, so buy him some unscented deodorant and tell him to take off his damn socks.”
“And he likes to wear these white Fruit of the Loom briefs like he’s four or something.”
I smile at her across the expanse of the couch. I love this girl. I always have. “Come on, Maya. Aren’t you being a little hard on the guy? Buy him some sexy underwear.”
“Why are we talking about this anyway?” Maya says, then suddenly she becomes alarmed. “Oh my God, are you sick, Drew? Is something wrong?”
“No. I’m not sick.”
She relaxes. “Then why are we talking about what ifs. Something’s going on.”
“I’m just wondering.” My cell phone signals a message, the third since I got here. I take a quick look at the number.
“Is that your friend?” Maya asks.
“No. Some gibberish. I’ve been getting a lot of it. I think someone spammed my phone number.”
“Here,” she says, reaching for the phone, “I’ll block the number for you.”
I slip the phone back in my pocket. “I can do it later. So tell me what else about Doug drives you crazy?”
“I don’t want to talk about Doug anymore. I want to talk about you. Are you having some kind of breakdown, some kind of midlife crisis at twenty-four?”
I smile. “No.”
“Does this have something to do with your new boyfriend?”
“No new boyfriend. It just didn’t work out.” The fact of this statement hurts.
“I’m sorry,” she says gently. “You know, this is the first guy you’ve been interested in since Kevin.”
I don’t want to talk about Kevin. The very mention of his name makes my skin crawl. But she’s right. There hasn’t been anyone since my college freshman crush five long years ago. I can tell from the way she’s looking at me that she still believes Kevin broke my heart. I’ve never told her that he’d done much worse than that. He’d taken my innocence, and then he’d broken me. And now I’ve broken Robert.
“Have you ever thought about moving back, Drew?”
Her question comes out of nowhere and leaves me unbalanced. My first thought is no. We’ve been down this road before. It didn’t work then; why would we think it could work now?
She retrieves her feet and sits up, folding her legs under her. “We could do this. Kiki misses her dad. I miss my best friend. You could save that rent on the apartment. You could buy a better car.” She’s talking fast now, animated, like she’s been thinking about this for some time. “Your room is just like you left it.”
My room. Her room. Kiki’s room. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. “We tried this before, Maya. It didn’t work out so great. You want something I can’t give you.”
She laughs a little, then props her elbow on the back of the couch and cradles her cheek in her hand, her expression pensive. “You know, I’ve been getting that for a while now, and I’ve decided it’s a little overrated.”
No, it’s not overrated. And maybe that’s the reason I’m already clutching at the offer, letting it reel me in to safer waters.
She’s still talking, working out the details as she goes. “It’s not like we’re going to get married again. And you can still have your own life. You can still date. Go dancing. Bring a guy over for dinner.” She smiles and reaches for my hand. “And I can still have my life too.”
She says the last like she’s just throwing it out there to seal the deal. I pretend like she means it.
“Come on, when does your lease expire?” she asks.
And suddenly I’m in tenth grade again, running for cover behind Maya’s American Eagle jeans and Aéropostale T-shirts. And I can’t believe I’m actually considering her offer. Or is it really a lifeline?
“I’m on a month-to-month. I just have to give them thirty days’ notice.” I can’t believe that I’m actually saying this, that I’m actually thinking about doing this.
“Then what’s stopping you?”
Nothing at all. “If I can get a U-Haul, I can move back in tomorrow.”
She jumps up and does a little happy dance right in the middle of the living room floor. “I’ll get your room ready.”
“Are you sure about this, Maya?”
But what I’m really asking is, Am I sure about this?
Robert
“How was your date?” Mom asks.
She’s laying a clear plastic liner on the bottom shelf of a cabinet above the counter. A quick survey of the kitchen confirms what I suspect—she’s continuing the systematic undoing of every improvement made to our house in the last year, including those made in the last few weeks.
I shrug.
Even though the cabinet held coffee and filters and mugs just this morning, I know it as the glass cabinet. Mom takes the glasses from me one by one, and places them on the shelf. Each time she turns to me for another glass, I feel the scrutiny, and I’m aware of my rumpled clothes.
She’s asked me the sex question before, and I’ve truthfully denied it, but there’s always a first time, right? Maybe she can see it on my face. Maybe she smells it on my shirt despite the cotton barrier of my hoodie. Maybe there’s something in my eyes that screams broken in.
“Are you okay?”
I nod and fix my eyes on the shelf above, trying to remember what used to be there. Plates. They’re stacked next to the sink. I retrieve as many as I can carry.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, taking the plates from me.
“Can I say no?”
“Yeah. You can say no.” She pretends to straighten the plates, which are already nestled into each other in a perfect stack. “Can I say I’m a little surprised? I didn’t think you liked Nic that much.”
Tears prick at my eyes. “What next?”
She points to a matching set of bowls. “I’m really sorry, Robert, that . . . you know . . . that I never had the talk with you.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t suppose your dad did either?”
“I know everything I need to know, Mom, okay?”
I finger the paper flowers that Nic’s mom dropped off yesterday morning before the funeral, along with a pan of tamales. Nic didn’t come. He told me he wouldn’t. I wonder how long it took him and Krystal to make the flowers and what kind of grade he got on this project. God, when did I become so cynical? Maybe the gesture was sincere. Maybe I should be more appreciative of the effort. But I just can’t muster it. Nic doesn’t really care about me. Nic cares about himself. And I can’t help but believe that the flowers are more about how great he is than anything resembling sympathy for me or my family. It’s funny that the only flowers in our house that mark Dad’s death are fake flowers.
“How long have you had an iTunes account?” I ask, scanning down the list of songs on her computer. I turn up the volume a little.
Mom smiles and steps down from the three-step ladder she’s been using to reach the higher shelves. “About, um”—she glances at the time on the microwave—“fifty-two minutes.”
It looks like she downloaded the top forty. I doubt she’s even heard of the artists. She’s moving on.
“Robert, we haven’t really talked about your dad. Do you want to . . . ?”
No. I don’t.
I change into a fresh T-shirt before getting in bed, but I keep the one I wore to Andrew’s, the one he mopped my stomach with, next to me on the pillow.
I can’t help texting him, even though I know it’s a one-way conversation:
You had my heart inside your hand.
I wonder where you are tonight.
I’ve never called Andrew, but by two AM and after dozens of texts, I can no longer help myself. But I think even as I retrieve his number and press Call, I know.
The cell customer you are trying to reach is not available.