Girl Meets Boy (5 page)

Max blinks at the computer screen, the cursor blinks back at him. His belly aches. Below his belly aches even more.?

> want to meet

Alex sent the words moments ago. No question mark. Just a simple statement of desire. That’s what it was: desire. Right?

Max tells himself he’s crazy to be getting together with somebody he met online. He’s heard all the warnings. But they don’t matter now. He wants to meet. He has to. It’s a matter of survival. That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

> want to meet

> YES! / when?

> the arrowhead, nine, tonight i’ll be wearing jeans with a tear above the left knee and a t-shirt that says i am one of the people your mother warned you about

> shoes?

> one on each foot

> what kind?

> max, that is such a weird question / do you have a shoe fetish

> never mind

> don’t get testy / we haven’t even met / okay, i’ll be wearing mocs

> mocs? you don’t hunt do you?

> no way. my old man does, though. i hate him / the deer-slayer / should i not wear mocs?

> no, wear whatever you want / you know what i look like, i’ve told you enough times. still don’t get why you’ve never told me what you look like

> don’t want to get hung up on the physical

> why are we getting together then

> down, boy

> sorry. it’s just, i feel like we’ve gotten to know each other, our souls, like, and i can’t help wondering what the package for the soul looks like and if maybe we’d want to

> nine, the arrowhead / glad you didn’t finish that sentence

> i would have if i hadn’t hit send by mistake / nine / i’ll be wearing my bunny slippers

> lol. hey, max, i hope i won’t disappoint you

> you couldn’t

> don’t be so sure / just be open okay?

> okay

What was that supposed to mean? What if he is one of the people your mother warned you about? What if he’s a serial killer who will lure you back to his mirrored, crushed-velvet bedroom for amazing sex and sudden death?

Max shakes the thought out of his head. He is going to meet Alex. Alex.

> funny how we both have x names: me alex, you max

> x-rated?

> x / a sign of the times / our parents’ times, when they named us

> x-rated?

> MAX!!!!! you have a one-track mind

> not really. i just / truth?

> please

> i’m lonely is all. i don’t know anyone like me / except you

> alex, are you there? say something

> want to meet

> YES! / when?

> the arrowhead, nine, tonight

“Max? Max, where are you going?”

“Out. I’m meeting a friend. I’ll be back by eleven.”

“Who are you meeting? It’s a school night.”

“I know that. I’m not new to the planet.”

“Don’t be fresh. My, don’t you look nice.”

“Mom, stop.”

“Is it a girl?”

“I told you. I’m meeting a friend.”

“But you look so nice.”

“I can only look nice for a girl?”

“I just meant—”

“Give us a kiss. I’m going to be late.”

“Don’t be fresh.”

In the car, his thoughts fly so fast he gives up trying to catch them. His dad would kill him if he knew where he was going. His mom, well, she might be okay once she got used to the idea. Isn’t he her darling baby boy? Still, ever since his brother got married in August, all she can talk about is when is
he
going to meet a girl, he’s seventeen and never dated, surely there’s
one
girl at Wilson, and what about that nice girl at Michael’s wedding, Carly’s cousin. Lindsay, wasn’t it? She even
called
the next day.

It was so bizarre. Michael had been on this campaign the whole weekend of the wedding to get him and Lindsay together. He’d even pressed some
condoms
into Max’s hand at the reception. Condoms. Max didn’t know what they were until he looked, and then he about died of embarrassment.

“She’s checking you out,” Michael had said for the tenth time, arching his eyebrows in the direction of his bride’s second cousin. “C’mon, take these. You might get lucky.”

My kind of lucky isn’t your kind of lucky,
Max had thought. It didn’t occur to him until the next day to wonder why his brother had been carrying condoms at his own wedding. Heteros were so
bizarre. He’d taken the condoms, but he wasn’t saving them for Lindsay.

It was a couple of days after the wedding that he met Alex online. They’d been chatting for a month now. He couldn’t believe it when Alex told him he lived about ten miles up the road. Funny that they’d never talked about meeting until tonight. They’d talked about everything else—music, movies, school, what they believed in and hoped for and dreamed about, what it was like growing up feeling different and alone. Alex had asked tons of personal questions, but he didn’t always answer Max’s. Curious but shy, was how he’d described himself to Max. Maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he was a serial killer. Maybe he was middle-aged and greasy. Maybe he was seventeen, like he said, but had the face of a gargoyle. Or maybe he was just ordinary and insecure. Like Max.

Max’s fingers trace the outline of the condoms in his pocket as he tries to picture Alex. All that appears on his mental screen is a pornographic version of himself. His brain is set to sex 24/7, but he isn’t even sure that’s what he wants.

> x-rated?

> down, boy

What does he want?

To be calm. That’s what he wants. To be calm inside himself.

To find a friend.

And maybe—he should be so lucky—to fall in love.

The light changes. A car honks behind him. Max lurches through the intersection and pulls off Route 17 into the parking lot of the Arrowhead Diner before he can change his mind. He kills the ignition, glances at his watch. Four minutes. He’ll wait in the car until it’s exactly nine, then go in.

He closes his eyes, feels sick and excited. Tonight, at last, he is going to meet another boy who likes boys.

When he walks into the Arrowhead, it is nearly empty, as it usually is at this hour. Not that he hangs out here much. There’s another diner that’s closer to where he lives. And even though some of the locals eat here, it’s mostly a pull-off for travelers, people heading up from the city to get a taste of the country or maybe just passing through. Max has heard stories about rest stops along this road where men get together for sex, one of them not far from here. He thought about going there once, about a year ago, but it made him kind of nauseous to picture it. What did these guys do, anyway, leave their families sitting in the car while they went inside for a quickie? What was wrong with these guys? Maybe homos were as bizarre as heteros. Maybe they all had sex on the brain too much. Maybe we’re all sick, Max thinks. Men, he means.

He hates that he thinks like this. Here he is waiting to meet Alex, and all he wants is to feel calm inside and find a friend and maybe fall in love. All he wants is for Alex to be a nice person, somebody with a good face and clean hands, who can talk about what it feels like to be who he is, and won’t judge Max for who he is. But who is he? A sex-starved nut job. Maybe he’s one of the people his mother warned him about.

“You need a menu?”

Max looks up. The girl is at most a year older than he is. She’s got a baby on the way and no ring on her finger. She looks like she hasn’t washed her hair in a week, even though she tries to keep it neat, the few stray strands tucked behind her ears. Max feels sorry for her. He has the ridiculous thought that he wants to put his arms around her and assure her it’s going to be okay, even
though one look at the lines already growing deep in her face tells you her life is going to be anything but okay.

“Didja need a menu?”

“Sorry. I’m waiting for somebody. I’ll just have coffee for now.”

She nods. “I’m married,” she tells him. “I can’t wear a ring because my fingers are all swole up.”

Watching her walk away, Max is surprised that she knew what he was thinking. Then he wonders if she tells all her customers the same thing and if she really is married. He imagines she cries every night when she gets home from work.

The door opens and Max’s stomach does a flip. A man with a beer belly and a hunting cap walks in, kind of rough looking and mean.
Shit,
Max tells himself,
what if this is Alex?
He reaches for his wallet. He’ll leave a dollar on the table and get the hell out of there before the guy can say anything. But then a woman comes in and starts talking to the guy, and the pregnant waitress says hey like she knows them, and she seats them at the other end of the diner in the booth next to the stand-up fan and the sign that says
Today’s Specials.

To occupy his mind, Max starts watching the desserts revolving in the display-case, trying to figure out how they make them so tall and what they would taste like if you actually ate them. He thinks they are the most disgusting things he ever saw and wonders why he thinks that, considering that they’re somebody’s idea of beautiful and a whole lot of people must like them because you see them in just about every diner in the world.

Not that he’s been in so many diners. Not that he’s been anywhere, really. But he’s pretty sure he’s right.

The waitress—whose name, Max notices from her tag with the American flag stuck behind it, is Sally—arrives with his
coffee. She spills some into the saucer as she puts it down in front of him. Her hands are shaking bad, so he doesn’t say anything. He wonders if she has parents and if they’re going to help her with the kid when it gets here. He wonders why men are so crazy for sex that they do anything to get it, even make girls pregnant and leave them to work late shifts in diners to pay for Huggies and day-old bread.

“Thank you,” Max says, wishing he could give Sally a twenty so she could take the rest of the night off.

“Huh?” says Sally, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ears. “Oh, sure. Let me know if you need anything else.”

She is starting to move away when Max hears the door again. He tries looking past the waitress, but can’t see anything right away. His hands are like ice.

When Sally goes behind the counter, Max makes out that it’s a girl who’s entered.

She’s small and thin and kind of nervous looking, glancing around like she’s there to meet somebody, too. She’s got a jacket on, which is odd because it’s a hot Indian summer night and the Arrowhead’s A.C. isn’t exactly up to the job.

Max glances at his watch. It’s almost ten after. He figures he’s being stood up, and on the one hand he’s pissed, but he’s relieved, too. Anyway, he can’t blame Alex. What they’re doing is scary. Maybe next time he’ll show. He reaches for his wallet a second time.

“Max?”

He notices the beaded moccasins and the tear in the jeans before raising his eyes. The girl is standing there at the side of the booth.

“Okay if I sit?”

It’s not registering. “Um, well, I’m kind of waiting for somebody and … how did you know my name?”

“I’m Alex.”

She opens her jacket:
I’M ONE OF THE PEOPLE YOUR MOTHER WARNED YOU ABOUT.

“You’re a girl,” he says.

“Does that mean I can’t sit down?”

It takes Max a minute to realize his mouth is hanging open. He’s probably drooling into his coffee. He doesn’t have a clue what to make of this. Alex—his Alex—the guy he’s been confiding in for a month, telling his secrets to, even talked dirty to one time, this Alex is a girl.

Finally, he says, “I guess you can sit down.” He feels his cheeks burn from embarrassment and confusion.

“Please don’t be angry with me, Max,” the girl stranger says as she takes off her jacket and slides into the booth opposite him. Glancing at the jacket, she tells him, “I thought I might chicken out when I got here. I didn’t want you to know right away it was me.”

“The boobs would have been enough of a cover,” Max tells her, then says, “I’m sorry. I don’t usually talk like that. It’s just … is your name even Alex?”

“Oh, yeah. Alexis.”

“Are you seventeen?”

She bites her lip. “Sixteen.”

“Oh, great.”

“Next month.” She looks at him with puppy-dog eyes and he finds it hard to be mad. It’s the embarrassment he feels more than
anything. Like, what is she? A girl with a thing for gay boys? A spy checking out the queers online to get all their dirty little secrets, and now what is she going to do? Blackmail him or something? She doesn’t look the criminal type. But you never know.

“What are you doing here?” he asks her.

“Duh. Meeting you.”

Max is all set to say, “Well, it’s been nice meeting you,” and leave, but there’s something about the girl’s face that stops him. Even though it seems like she’s the one in charge, she looks even more confused than he feels.

“You want coffee?” he asks her.

She shakes her head, then says, “Do you mind if I eat something? I get hungry when I’m nervous. I mean, real hungry. I could eat a horse.”

Max raises his hand to get Sally’s attention. “I don’t mind,” he tells Alex. “I just wish you’d—”

“I don’t need a menu,” Alex says. “I know what I want. A burger deluxe with onion rings, no fries, and a cherry coke. You hungry? I recommend the fries.”

“Why aren’t you getting them then?”

“I get them all the time. I live just down the road.”

Sally is standing next to them. Max repeats Alex’s order and asks for an order of fries for himself.

“So,” he says as Sally shuffles away.

“So,” Alex says back at him. “Look, I’m really sorry about disappointing you. For what it’s worth, I never told you I was a boy.”

“Alex, it was a
gay
chat room, okay? I’m a guy. It’s a fair assumption that the person I’m talking to in a gay chat room is also a guy.”

“I know. I’m sorry, all right?”

Max shakes his head. He should just get up and leave. It’s all too weird. He almost feels dirty, like he’d gone to one of those rest stops.
Used,
that’s what he feels, but he doesn’t know why. He looks over at Alex’s hands resting on the place mat in front of her. She has delicate fingers, but the nails have been bitten down to nothing.