8. Fourteen Years Ago
PENNY
I didn’t get a call or email from Gavin the next day, but I did see Ling the day after that. It was Friday, my dance conditioning day. It’s basically a four-hour workout. No dancing, just strength training and stamina exercises. Joey was MIA of course, the piece of shit. Doug said he’d find him and let him know he was on thin ice, but I knew it would piss off Joey even more.
Ling was in the workout room, staring at all the male dancers while I finished barre squats.
“So, hot mama,” she said as we walked into the locker room. “Looks like that Blind Kiss study wasn’t so bad after all.”
I was stuffing my dance crap into a bag on one of the benches. “Yeah, Gavin’s pretty hot. He’s a good kisser, too. I just don’t have time for boys right now. I have to train hard until the end of the year and get the rest of my grades up. But, yeah, he’s cool.”
She was blinking at me through her glasses like she had no idea what I was talking about. “Um, helloooo, earth to Penny. Hot Kissing Machine is sitting on the curb outside, waiting for you. You didn’t know that?”
“He is?”
“Yeah. I asked what he was doing and he said, ‘Waiting for my BFF to finish conditioning.’ ”
“Oh my God.” What is he doing here? “Oh Ling, I totally stink. I can’t go out there. I mean, I smell really bad. I can’t see him right now.”
“I doubt he cares. Look at you.” She waved her hand up and down my body. “Anyway, I thought you didn’t have time for boys?”
“I don’t. I need a way out. What are you doing tonight?”
“Going to a party in my building. You want to go to a stupid party with a bunch of my psych friends instead of hanging out with Hot Kissing Machine?”
“No. I mean yes. I want to go to the stupid party.” I couldn’t be alone with him; I knew that.
“Okay, suit yourself. Come by at eight. I live in those Greenwood Apartments with the red doors. Number twelve on the first floor.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Cool,” she said. “Have fun with your BFF. I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
“I’m not—”
She ignored me and left humming the “K-I-S-S-I-N-G” melody. My heart was racing. I walked out as Gavin was taking one last puff of a cigarette. He had an eye closed against the smoke.
“Hey, PIP,” he said. “I missed you.” He stubbed the cigarette out in the planter and stood with his arms out for a hug.
I stared at him, stock-still, with my bag slung over my shoulder.
“Friendly hug?” he said, still holding his arms out.
“I smell pretty bad.”
“Me too. We’ll be perfect together. What did Doug call it? Alchemy?”
I hesitated and then finally gave in and hugged him, sort of the way I hug my dad: with my face in his chest, one arm slung over his shoulder and the other around his waist. The awkward one-armed hug.
He patted me on the head like a dog. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll take it.”
I didn’t want to lift both my arms and unleash my horrendous body odor. He was holding me when I mumbled into his shirt, “I just worked out for four hours, and I was gonna take a shower at home because the heater is broken in the locker room, and it’s freezing in there, and I didn’t feel like getting hypothermia on a Friday night, so I decided that I would just . . . you know take a shower later—”
“You’re rambling, Penny Lane.”
I pulled away to take him in. His hand was wrapped up and it looked like there was grease on the bandage. His longish hair was going everywhere and he was wearing black faded jeans, black boots, and a black T-shirt with a hole in the shoulder.
“Did something happen to you. Did you get hit by a car?”
“Ha ha, funny girl. No, I just came from work. I don’t have class on Fridays so I usually work all day Friday. And now I’ve got the whole night free for you.”
Oh God. “What happened to your hand?”
“Oh, nothing. I just had to cover some fresh ink.”
“Huh?”
He grinned. “A new tattoo.”
“Do you have a lot of tattoos?”
“I have a few. My roommate Mike is a tattoo artist.”
That threw me. Not too many students I knew were living with tattoo artists. “How’d you meet Mike? Does he go here?”
“No. Ha! Mike is forty. We’re in a band together. Nothing serious, just kind of a hobby band.”
Who was this person? He was like a college mascot meets Eddie Vedder. “What do you do in the band?”
“I sing a little and play the guitar.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was looking through me again.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“So what’s the tattoo of?” I asked, pointing to his hand.
“I already told you what I was getting. Your email and phone number, silly.”
Oh, he was laying the charm on thick now. “I don’t believe you.”
He ripped the bandage off, and sure enough, he’d gotten my email and phone number tattooed onto the palm of his hand in my own handwriting. “Are you kidding? Is that real? Why would you do that?”
“I told you I would. I wanted to and I’m not a liar.”
“But it’s permanent.”
“I didn’t want it to wash off.” He blinked and looked down at the ground. Was this Gavin being embarrassed?
“Well, you didn’t use the number or email. I thought you’d call me?” I was trying to catch him off guard.
“I didn’t have to because I saw your car and figured you were in there practicing. I thought I’d hang out here until you were done. See how the Honda’s doing.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
He shrugged. “An hour or so.”
My eyes went wide. He had been waiting on the curb outside the dance studio for an hour. “The Honda is good, but that’s not why you’re here. I still can’t believe you tattooed my number on your palm. What if my number changes?”
“I’ll still call it just for fun, and tell whoever owns it that it used to belong to the most beautiful girl in Fort Collins.”
“Oh geez, here we go.”
“Do you want to go out with me tonight?”
“I actually have plans. I’m sorry.” I was so glad I didn’t have to lie. “I just told Ling I’d go to a party at her apartment.”
“Really?” He was serious, like I had broken his heart with that information.
“Yes, really.”
“Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to try again some other time.” His voice was low, almost a whisper.
“You have my number,” I said.
He chuckled. “That I do. Can we at least grab a coffee or something before you go home? I’ll have you back here in an hour.”
“A coffee?” I said, squinting.
“A beer?”
“Okay, a beer sounds more like it.” I needed the liquid courage. I wasn’t blindfolded anymore.
“We’re gonna get along, Little P, I can tell. We can go to New Belgium and share a flight or two.”
“Okay,” I said.
I left my things in the Honda and hopped into Gavin’s car, where we were immediately greeted by The Smiths on the radio. Gavin knew every word to “This Charming Man,” and he also had a pretty decent singing voice. There’s something about a man who can sing and isn’t too shy to do it in front of a girl he’s just met.
“You sing pretty well.”
“I can’t actually sing that well on my own. It’s like I can only do impressions or something. That’s why our band does a lot of covers. Hey, do you mind if we run by my apartment so I can grab a T-shirt? One that doesn’t have a giant hole in it?”
“That’s fine,” I said, though I was feeling a little uneasy about going to his apartment.
When we got there, I was surprised to find a very clean, two-bedroom upstairs apartment with big windows that looked out onto the street in front. I followed him into the living room as he pointed things out. There was a little dog following us, nipping at my heels. Some kind of terrier.
“That’s Jackie Chan, Mike’s dog. You can pick him up; he’s nice.” I’d always wanted a dog, but my mom wouldn’t allow it in her pristine house. “Mike’s not home so make yourself comfortable. Kitchen’s there, bathroom’s there. This is my room.”
I stood in the doorway and looked in. There were three guitars in the corner: two acoustic and one electric. “You said you’d play that one song for me.”
He was looking in his open closet for a T-shirt. “You already forgot our song?”
I hadn’t, though I had a feeling he had. “ ‘Just Like a Woman,’ ” he said as he glanced over and smirked. “I’ll play it for you soon enough. We need to get those beers first.”
He did remember.
When he tore his T-shirt off, I almost passed out. He was built—thin but defined, and he had random tattoos everywhere.
His jeans were hanging low and I couldn’t take my eyes off his waist. Grabbing a T-shirt off a hanger, he turned and faced me as he pulled it over his head.
“Whatcha lookin’ at, P?”
Oh, just your perfect body, and your jeans hanging off your hips. “Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?”
“Well, actually, I’m wondering what all your tattoos mean?”
“A lot of different things,” he said. He pointed to the word Kimbird on his chest. “This one was a mistake.”
“Are they all about girls?”
He laughed. “No. Are you kidding? That would be a lot of girls. I feel like you’re getting a bad impression of me.”
“Well, I know nothing about you.” Which begs the question . . . why am I in his apartment staring at his half-naked body?
“This one is definitely about a girl.” It was the word Carissa in script on the inside of his arm, just below his elbow. “The only girl I’ve ever loved.”
“What happened between you and Carissa?”
“Do you really want to talk about my exes?”
“Well, I’m asking about you.” And yes, I did want to talk about his exes.
Taking my hand and pulling me toward the door, he said, “We can talk about Kimber and Carissa over beers—that’s fine—but you have to tell me everything about you, too.”
A FEW MINUTES later, we pulled into the parking lot of the New Belgium. “I’ve never been here. Do you think they’ll kick me out for wearing sweats and slippers?”
“You make sweats look good. Anyway, look at me. I’m a grease monkey. And it’s a brewery: they don’t care.”
Once we were seated, we ordered a flight of beer to split. “So tell me about Kim and Carissa.”
“Kimber? Well, that tattoo was a mistake for sure because we only dated for five minutes. Impulse purchase, I guess you could say.”
“Next week you’re probably going to say that about my phone number on your hand.”
He smiled. “Never.” He swiveled on his barstool and turned to face me while putting his hand on my knee, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Carissa was different. I would have married that girl, but we were young. She broke up with me on my twenty-first birthday. She invited me to a restaurant for my birthday dinner and—”
“Wait, when is your birthday?”
“November eighth. I’m a Scorpio, can’t you tell?”
It was true, I would have guessed that. “Yes, Scorpio, I can tell. I’m a Taurus.”
“We’re perfect together!” he shouted, practically loud enough for everyone in the brewery to hear.
“No, I actually think those two signs are totally incompatible,” I said.
“Anyway, so she invited me to a birthday dinner, and when I walked into the restaurant I found her sitting at a table alone. I thought she’d invite some friends to celebrate, but it was just her. She was also wearing a do-rag, which I found peculiar.”
He was looking up at the ceiling in deep thought.
“And then what . . . ?” I asked.
He took a sip of beer. “And then she said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you. I’m wearing this do-rag so you won’t be attracted to me and won’t be sad about us breaking up.’ ”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah, I swear. That’s what I loved about her. She was a freakin’ weirdo.”
“So how did you react?”
“I just stood up and walked out, and then I went and got drunk and showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night. I thought I would serenade her with my guitar, but she called the police on me.”
I started laughing but his frown didn’t crack. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“She ruined me. I mean, really broke my heart. I have no idea why she did it; she just said we were too young.”
“How old were you?” I took a sip of beer.
“Twelve,” he deadpanned.
Beer literally came out of my nose. “What?”
“I told you, it was my twenty-first birthday. Don’t you listen?” He handed me a napkin. I wasn’t even remotely embarrassed for some reason. He went on, “She graduated and wanted to move to Denver. She’s a writer . . . so she’s totally whack. She got an English lit degree and wanted to be a performance artist in the city. She’ll probably write about how she broke my heart. Then she’ll reenact it onstage dressed as a fucking grasshopper or something.”
“I still don’t get the whole do-rag thing.”
“That was just Carissa. Everything had to be for the sake of something else. I’m telling you, she’ll write a book about it. This extremely feminine and beautiful girl shows up to her boyfriend’s birthday dinner to break up with him while she’s wearing a dirty wife-beater, paint-splattered overalls, and a do-rag. She just wants to be able to tell the story over and over again with all the embellishments, you know? And, like, who the fuck does that?”
“And you liked this girl?”
“I loved her. The only one so far.”
Maybe Gavin didn’t have the best taste in women, which had me wondering what he thought of me. I needed to be responsible. I was not his type.
“I hate that Ouija board game, just FYI.”
His eyes shot open. “Where’d that come from?”
“You mentioned it earlier. See, I do listen.” He stuck his tongue out at me. “I think you might have me pegged wrong. I’m not this dark, interesting person. I basically have no hobbies, and even fewer friends—which is why I have to leave soon to get ready for Ling’s party; it’s already six, and I don’t want to miss it.”
“But you haven’t told me enough about yourself to even peg you. That whole Ouija board thing was just about your look. Anyway, I can drive you home and then to Ling’s, if you want? You probably shouldn’t drive anyway. And aren’t you starving? I’m starving. Let’s grab a quick bite.”
He was a fast talker, but not in a bad way. I loved that about him. I wanted to spend more time with him, but I didn’t do well eating around other people. “I don’t know . . .” I said.
“I know a burger place—”
“I don’t eat meat.”
“Are you a vegetarian?”
“No, I actually just don’t eat red meat,” I told him. My plan was not working. I needed to give in and just go with it or else I wasn’t going to have enough time to get ready for Ling’s party.
“Pizza?” he asked.
“Okay.”
On the way to the local pizza joint, San Filippo’s, he said, “So tell me about all your exes.”
I laughed. “That’s a short story. I’ve never really had a long-term boyfriend. I’ve just dated here and there. Anyway, like I told you, I’m not dating this year. It’s just too intense with dance and finals and everything.”
“You did mention that . . . like, five times. But here we are, Penny. Getting a drink and pizza . . . and now I’m gonna meet your parents in a few. I would call this a date.”
If I brought Gavin home to my parents, they would literally have me committed. He’d tattooed our phone number onto the palm of his hand! That would be enough to put them off, never mind his other random tattoos and the fact that he was basically sex on two legs. I guess my parents didn’t have to know that we met by sucking face blindfolded, though.
Once inside San Filippo’s, I ordered another beer and a slice of cheese pizza. I never ate like this, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by not eating. Gavin had a Coke. I guess he was committed to being my designated driver, but I didn’t want him to go to the party with me. Already, we had taken the day too far. Or at least I had let my imagination take it too far.
He was currently rambling on and on about something, but I wasn’t listening because I was fixated on the flexing muscles of his forearms. I imagined how they moved when he played the guitar . . . and did other things.
I remember having the conversation with my dad when I hit puberty. Naturally, my mom avoided the topic because she wanted me and Kiki to be her dollies forever. But my dad wouldn’t have his eldest daughter walking around with her head up her ass.
He sat me down and proceeded to drone on about periods and reproductive organs like he was giving a goddamn lecture at the university. It was all things I had learned in sex ed at school, but I appreciated the effort. It can’t be an easy conversation for a father to have with his daughter. But one thing I do remember vividly is that when the topic of sex came up, he stopped talking about chromosomes and things you’d expect from a biologist and started talking about responsibility, love, and keeping my guard up against the kind of relationships that can be exciting and explosive at first. He said those relationships always fizzle out too soon, and that’s why you have to use your brain when your body is sending you such loud messages. I understood exactly what he meant.
When I looked at Gavin, I knew he’d give me that explosive, mind-blowing kind of experience in the backseat of his old car. I knew he could light me up. He’d be professing his love for me by the end of the night, and then the next week he’d be onto the next, telling her how his palm tattoo was an impulse purchase.
“Penny? Are you listening? What’s going on? Where’d you go?”
“I’m listening, I’m listening.”
“So I moved back in with my dad in Fort Collins after leaving my mom in Hollywood. I saw enough of that place and enough of my mom for a good two years. She’s come out to visit twice since then, but she’s all swept up in her noncareer career . . . and booze.”
He was really pouring his heart out to me, but I was still thinking about Kimber. I actually liked him and didn’t want to be just a tattoo on his palm with a weird story behind it. Maybe I liked him too much already. Too much, too soon. Explosive.
“Gavin, we’re going to be friends,” I blurted out.
Jerking his head back, he squinted at me and then smiled. “We are friends, Penny. Best friends, remember? That’s why I’m telling you my whole life story.”
“No, I mean, for the first time in so long, I’m having fun. I’d like to keep it that way.” I loved dancing but “fun” wasn’t the word I’d used to describe the feeling of moving across the stage.
“Yeah, we can keep things fun,” he said with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes. I’d have to dodge his advances for a while, but eventually he’d get that I didn’t want more than this.
I was officially buzzed and suddenly feeling anxious about overeating. Gavin reached over and grabbed my hand. “You’re a really beautiful girl and you have a perfect body. I hope no one has ever made you feel otherwise.”
He knows exactly what to say.
“Thanks. . . . That’s really nice of you. Dance is just really competitive. And you don’t have to say that if—”
“I think you need to hear it.”
“You don’t know what I need. You just met me.”
“You need a friend,” he said.
My eyes started to water. I nodded. “I do.”
“I’ll be your friend, and . . . I’m going to take you to Ling’s party, okay? If you want me to stay in the car at your house, I will. If you want me to wait outside of Ling’s party, I will. I just want to be there for you. And when we’re done hanging out today, I’ll be there for you tomorrow, if you need me. That’s friendship.”
“So we’ll be friends? You’re not asking for more?”
“Yep. You know where to find me.” He gestured toward me. “And I know where to find you.”
Tied up in a nice little bow. I reached up, threw my stinky arms around him, and hugged him like I had known him my whole life.