Summer of Seventeen (10 page)

I lay in bed with the curtains drawn back and the window wide open.

Not that it made a damn bit of difference. The air was heavy with a damp heat, and I could hear the sound of mole crickets, crackling like radio static. I was so used to them, it was almost white noise. But tonight, I couldn’t get the sounds out of my head.

I shoved the wrinkled sheet completely off my body, trying to find a cool spot on the bed, and wished again that Julia wasn’t such a bitch about having the air-conditioning on.

A couple of weeks ago, I casually mentioned that Mom used to let us have A/C in the summer, and my sister nearly took my throat out. Yeah, over-reaction much.

She acted like just saying Mom’s name was a blasphemy or something.

Sean said that I shouldn’t take Julia’s shit, and that half the house was mine, too. I hadn’t really thought of it like that until he mentioned it. But I guess he was right: I owned a house. Well, half a house. I imagined drawing a line down the middle. We could have half the bath tub each, but the toilet would be on my side, and I’d make her pay a toll every time she used it. But then that would mean she’d get the half of the house with the coffee maker and the fridge. Maybe I could get a used fridge for my half of the house, then I could have cold soda and leave the door open all night to cool my room, too. Or maybe just buy an air-conditioning unit and hope she didn’t notice the increase in the electric bill.

We’d have to share the computer because I needed it for school, and Julia used it for work. Mom had bought it two years ago, so it was kind of ancient now. Maybe I’d let Julia buy me out and I’d get a new one with that and the money left over from work. Then I could watch porn whenever I wanted.

Sean had a really good stash of DVDs that he’d borrowed from his brothers—the kind of borrowing where nobody knows that you borrowed it and you don’t give it back either. I had the stack of magazines that he’d finished with, too. Although I got a bit queasy at the thought of used porn mags. A guy’s gotta have standards, even if they’re low ones—and some of the pages were stuck together, which was kind of gross.

Not that I needed photos like that to get a boner. Seeing Yansi in that little yellow bikini today—that had given me spank-bank material for months.

She’d let her hair loose and it hung down to her waist, all thick and glossy. I imagined wrapping it around my hands and losing myself in her sweet, spicy scent.

Just thinking all that had me good and hard, and seeing as it didn’t look like I’d be getting to sleep anytime soon, I decided to go with the flow.

I kept a small bottle of lotion that I’d swiped from Julia’s side of the bathroom cabinet for times like now. I mean, you can use spit, but it’s not so good, and … you know … chafing.

So I reached under the bed and squirted some of that fruity shit onto my hands. It smelled kind of sweet, but I’d shower it off in the morning.

It felt good to touch myself. Hell, I’d been doing it since I hit puberty. When I was a kid, I imagined some actress off of the TV or a model in Julia’s magazines. Sean liked Pamela Anderson, and made me watch a ton of ‘Baywatch’ reruns. I’d always preferred brunettes, like Megan Fox. But these days, I couldn’t help but think of Yansi’s hands on me, imagining what it would feel like to have her mouth, her body around me.

Holy shit, that image always worked quickly. My legs stiffened, my heart rate went up and I was breathing hard like I’d just paddled out through a set of eight-foot waves. My dick was throbbing like a mofo and that amazing tingling sensation started shooting around my body. I broke out into goose bumps on my chest, and the head of my dick became super sensitive so it was almost too much to touch it on the up-strokes. My butt muscles clamped up and my toes curled. I could feel the cum welling up, like filling a glass with water until…

I jerked all over my stomach, thick trails of cum, and imagined doing that on Yansi’s chest. I felt a bit guilty for using her like that, but not really all that much.

I lay there catching my breath. It amazed me that a couple of minutes of beating the meat was more exhausting than half a day of yard work for Mr. Alfaro. Weird. Maybe God didn’t want you to enjoy sex too much, so it was rationed by how fit you were. They should tell you that in gym class—you’d have guys lining up for extra workouts.

Yeah, I had some strange thoughts when I was spiraling down from having shot my bolt.

Sean said he had hallucinations, like someone was whispering in his ear when he was coming down. He said it freaked him out so much this one time that he thought someone had come into his room. He’d ended up slapping his school book across his stomach to hide the mess.

Two pages of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ got glued together so he never did find out what happened when Boo Radley went into Scout’s bedroom. I don’t think he cared either, but he had to tell Mr. Donovan that he dropped carbonara sauce on it. I don’t think Mr. Donovan believed him. Maybe he thought Sean was jerking off to ninth grade literature. Maybe English teachers would like to think that books turn students on that much.

It happens a lot in school. Not in the bathrooms so much, because they’re pretty disgusting. I’m just saying that if you’re a substitute teacher, look out for the kid sitting at the back, or the one whose desk is kind of away from the others. Oh, and sweaters lying over people’s laps when it’s pushing a hundred degrees in the shade. Not just dudes either. Macie Peters would do it and let you watch if you paid her $10. I didn’t have the money, so Sean cut her a deal: $15 so we could both watch. That was pretty nice of him, I thought. That’s when we were in eighth grade.

I didn’t tell Yansi that sort of shit: I wasn’t dumb. I mean, she probably knew, but it was in the bro code.

I was just falling asleep when Julia started moaning, her headboard thudding against the wall. I threw my pillow over my face. I
so
didn’t want to hear my sister getting nailed.

I made a mental note to sneak into her room tomorrow and move her freakin’ bed away from the wall. Sheesh. A guy shouldn’t have to listen to that in his own house.

Sean’s brothers had been back from college for a few weeks, and I’d been invited to go eat dinner with the family.

I’d known Sean since third grade, so I’d met his parents a bunch of times, although not really that many for the length of time we’d been friends. I never felt all that comfortable in their house, and Sean preferred hanging out at my place anyway. I’d always thought it was because his older brothers were ragging on him, but even when Patrick moved out last Fall, Sean still preferred my place.

I’d heard him complain about his parents enough times to know that they put a lot of pressure on all their kids. Plus, his older brothers had been lettermen and Sean wasn’t into that ego bullshit. He partied, he surfed. I guess that was one of the reasons we were friends.

The few times I’d had dinner at his house, it had always been kind of formal—like his mom insisted on setting the table with silverware and napkins. At my house, it was takeout, TV dinners or sitting on the rickety back porch while Mom charred something on the grill.

When Mom died, Mrs. Wallis made a point of coming over with a pot roast and meals to put in the freezer. Julia thanked her and made small talk; I watched Sean’s mom as she tried not to notice the peeling wallpaper or sagging sofa. I hated seeing my home through her eyes.

Sean had stood awkwardly, hands in his pockets, cringing when his mom offered “sincere condolences”. She’d met Mom maybe five times in eight years and they hadn’t really got along. Whatever.

I wasn’t sure why I was being asked for dinner now. Maybe because Sean’s brothers were home, or maybe Mrs. Wallis thought it was the right thing to do since Mom died.

But Sean was like my brother, so I wasn’t going to say no.

He had three real brothers, all older than him.

Dylan was 23, and had graduated in the same year as Julia. He was in med school at Florida State now and didn’t come home all that often. He was okay. He told great stories about anatomy class and what it was like dissecting some poor bastard who’d donated his body to medical science. He brought a finger home once when he was pre-med. Dylan didn’t do cool shit like that anymore. But you don’t want to know what happened to the finger; I’m just saying the next door neighbor’s dog was sick for three days—probably the formaldehyde.

And it didn’t seem so funny after Mom died.

Aidan was 22 and had graduated from U of SC in Business and Marketing. He’d just scored some fancy internship with an advertising agency in Chicago. I only knew that much because Sean had griped about his parents making a big deal of it. I don’t know, maybe it was a big deal, but I couldn’t imagine working in an office all day. I liked Aidan. He was the one who’d taught me to surf when I was eight, and we’d spent a lot of hours together catching waves. That’s why it seemed so weird that he was going to live in a city so far from the ocean.

Patrick had just finished his first year at MIT and was planning to major in Aerospace Engineering. He was also a dick, and I was glad when he moved away. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him now. He used to beat the crap out of Sean until he grew big enough to hit him back.

But, like I said: family of over-achievers. Sometimes I didn’t envy Sean his car and allowance.

He was quiet on the ride over. I knew why and didn’t blame him. Hell, I’d be quiet with all that weight of expectation pressing down on me.

I don’t know if Mom wanted me to be anything. She always said she was happy if I was happy. But she was proud of Julia going to college. It was only community college to get her AS degree in Elementary Education so she could get a job as a teacher assistant, but it meant she was the first person in our family to study after high school. The money was shit: $10.23 an hour. Hell, if I went to college, I’d want to earn more than that—something that would make sitting in a classroom for years worthwhile.

I don’t think Sean had a choice about going to school. His parents started a college fund for him before he was born. The only choices he had were Florida State, where Mr. Wallis had gotten his bachelor’s degree; Ole Miss, where Mrs. Wallis went before she got married; or U of SC because Aidan had gone there. They already knew he wasn’t going Ivy League.

Sean had the air turned up real high, so I was shivering even though I was wearing jeans and it was 90 degrees outside and damn near 90% humidity, too. It was one of those evenings where it felt like you could wring out the air and make it rain.

But it was the tension in Sean that made me the most uncomfortable.

“You okay, man?”

He shot me a sideways glance.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

I shrugged. If he didn’t want to talk, that was fine by me.

“No reason.”

He looked like he was going to say something else, but then changed his mind.

He fiddled with his iPhone and tried not to wince as the car lurched toward the curb. The beat of ‘Damned If I Do Ya’ came through the speakers. It wasn’t music to slit your wrists by, but it was close. I would never admit it to Sean, but I preferred Jack Johnson.

“You seeing Yansi tomorrow?”

“Nope. She’s got church then family time.”

He pulled a face. “Fuckin’ family time. It’s overrated, bro. You’re better off without it.”

“Nice to have the choice,” I muttered.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Sorry, man. That was a shitty thing to say.”

I stared out of the window. “’Sokay.”

“Fuck, I mean it. You’re my brother. You’re more family to me than any of
them
. Hell, your Mom practically raised me. She was the one who taught me to hold the toilet seat up in case it fell when I was taking a wiz and cut off my johnson.”

I laughed out loud. “Mom said that?”

“Yeah! Freaked me out, too! I’ve never forgotten it. I was nine. I pissed in the tub for a month after she told me that.”

I had to hold my stomach, I was laughing so hard.

“Seriously! Your mom was a legend.”

The smile slid off my face, and I sighed. “Yeah. She was.”

We were both silent for a moment.

“You miss her,” he said at last.

I couldn’t take talking about her in the past tense anymore.

“You grow a vagina this week?” I snarked. “Because you’re talking like a pussy.”

Sean laughed. He knew exactly what I was doing, but he didn’t call me on it. It was times like this that I remembered why I put up with the sorry fucker.

When we got to his house, the driveway was full of cars. I felt a stab of jealousy that everyone in Sean’s family had their own rides, and then I wondered how come his other brothers all drove Beamers when he had a Toyota, even if it was a new one.

Sean must have guessed some of what I was thinking.

“You sure you want to hang with the bougies?”

I grinned. “You bet!”

Sean looked relieved. He probably thought I was going to bail on him, but if he lived at my place and knew that the only option for food was Cheerios or baloney, he’d be hittin’ up the Wallis house, too.

As soon as we were parked, Patrick and Aidan came around from the side of the garage, arguing and shoving each other jokingly. Patrick was carrying a basketball and threw it straight at Sean so it would have slammed into his chest if he hadn’t caught it in time.