Sway (15 page)

“Attaboy,” I said.

“You can be a real asshole, you know that?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

The house was a disaster—the ubiquitous red Solo cups covering every surface, girls dancing badly on the couch, and the detritus of a respectable home scattered on the floor—but people seemed still sober enough that things were mostly under control.

We were only about a dozen steps into the house when Carter's voice boomed across the open living area. “A-yo!” he called out. He was a full head taller than anyone else in the room and from his vantage point he had seen us right away. The crowd parted and Pete fell into step behind me as I made my way to Carter's side. Once I was within reach of Carter, he pulled me into a tight hug—not a man hug, a real hug—giving me a slight shake before letting me go. “Hey, Sway,” he said as he steadied me on my feet.

“Hey, Carter,” I said, and pulled a dime bag from my inside pocket and palmed it to him. “My compliments.”

“Man, I love this guy,” Carter said to Pete, who was now standing beside me, trying to appear casual and failing miserably because his mouth gaped in astonishment at the sights around him. The music was loud, Katy Perry it sounded like, though most of that shite pop music sounds the same to me. Girls were dancing with each other while guys stood around in a circle watching them, leering and making rude suggestions. Sadly, these were the guys who would end up getting laid that night. It's one of the laws of the universe that if you make a move on every girl you see, a certain percentage can be counted on to put out. Some guys are more into quantity than quality.

Two girls came dancing up to us as we stood talking to Carter, giggling and yanking the hems of their short skirts down, and the necklines of their low-cut shirts up. “Hey, Sway,” the shorter, prettier, blonder one said to me and then snaked an arm around my neck. Her breath had the sickly sweet smell of a malted beverage and her lip gloss was laid on like cake icing.

“Don't call me that,” I said, and twitched a shoulder to shrug her off.

“You have any X?” she asked me. “I want to feel sexy tonight.” As she said this, she rubbed herself against me like a cat.

“If you've got twenty dollars, I've got a hit of X for you, Maria,” I said.

She stuck her lower lip out but reached into her bra and pulled out two crumpled twenties. “I want two. Who's the freak?” she asked, finally noticing Pete, who was studying her cleavage so closely, I don't think his eyes had made it to her face.

“This is Pete,” I said. “He's my cousin. He goes to boarding school in Switzerland, but he fucked up his knee in a snowboarding accident so he came back stateside to recuperate.”

“For real?” Maria asked, now eyeing Pete with genuine interest.

“For real,” I said.

“Switzerland?” she said, talking to Pete now. “You rich or something?”

“No, Maria,” I said with a grin for Carter's benefit, “it's one of those charity Swiss boarding schools for poor kids.”

Pete still hadn't said a word but Maria detached herself from me and went after Pete, throwing herself on his wealth like a soldier protecting his platoon from a live grenade.

“I'm Maria,” she said, but Pete still hadn't looked up from her cleavage so maybe didn't catch her name. “Come on,” she said, and pulled him along by the arm as she walked away.

Pete looked to me, his eyes wide with uncertainty, but I just turned back to my conversation with Carter.

*   *   *

It was about an hour later, while I was looking for a bathroom that wasn't being used as a vomitorium, when I ran into Bridget at the bottom of the stairs. She had a red Solo cup in her hand but she seemed steady enough.

“Shouldn't you be home polishing your halo?” I asked her.

“I thought I told you, Jesse,” she said, deadpan, “I'm determined to like you even though you don't want me to.”

“You were serious about that?” I asked.

“Very. Pete talks about you nonstop—Jesse said this, Jesse did that—he practically worships you.”

“Yeah?” I asked, feigning some surprise. “Where is he tonight?” I was not taking any responsibility if she saw her baby brother out drinking with the delinquents.

“Home. My parents have a pretty strict curfew,” she said, her nose wrinkling slightly in distaste. “I'm staying over at a friend's house, the only reason I'm out this late. My parents would freak if they knew I was here.”

“They won't hear it from me,” I said earnestly.

She laughed and poked me in the chest playfully and,
Jesus,
I had to fight the urge to grab her and cover her mouth with mine. “Who are you here with?” she asked.

“I came alone,” I said, hoping Pete didn't choose that moment to make an appearance. “What about you?”

“I came with Ken,” Bridget said just as he walked up behind her, his eyes widening when he saw she was talking to me.

“Hey, Alderman,” Ken said as he put a hand on Bridget's hip and then let his hand slide down so it rested on the rise of her perfect butt cheek.

“Hey, Ken,” I said, studiously avoiding even a glance at his hand while my blood simmered.

“I was just telling Jesse that he's become Pete's new personal hero,” Bridget said wryly as she turned into Ken's embrace and leaned against his perfectly cut torso.

“Is that right?” Ken asked, his tone friendly enough but his eyes narrowing with suspicion as he studied my expression.

There was a sudden commotion in the room as people started to chant encouragement for a guy who was shotgunning a can of beer. Ken was distracted by the activity but I caught Bridget's sidelong glance of reproach. She and I exchanged a look full of meaning while Ken laughed loudly at the spectacle.

Ken moved to join the crowd cheering on the douche bag as he shotgunned the beer. “Good times,” I said.

“Yeah,” Bridget said with a sigh. “I guess. I never really came to parties like this until I started hanging out with Ken.”

“I didn't know you and Ken were ‘hanging out,'” I said casually. “Are you seeing each other?”

“He's been helping me at the Siegel Center with the kids so, yeah, we've sort of been … seeing each other.”

“I thought you were only interested in dating ugly guys,” I said. “Ugly guys with a good heart. Isn't that right?”

“Yeah, okay, Ken's good-looking. But he's also a good person. At least he's not afraid to tell me how he feels about me. You know, it doesn't really matter if a guy likes you if he doesn't
tell you
he likes you.” She delivered this challenge with a sweet smile.

We played the silent game again.

Seriously, I was usually a world-champion silent-game player. But I lost. Again.

“What's that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“I'm just making conversation,” she said, all innocence.

“You know,” I said, “you might like to think you know me, but you don't. You're not as smart as you think you are.”

“I know enough,” she said. “I'm not as naïve as you like to think I am,
Sway
.” I hated the sound of my nickname in her voice.

“I don't like to think about you at all,” I said.

She opened her mouth to respond but before she could get a word out Ken interrupted her. “Hey, Bridge!” he shouted, and I found myself bristling at the unflattering nickname he used for her.

For a few heartbeats she hesitated and I thought she might ignore him and stay with me. Ken called her name again and waved for her to return to his side. Ken was unsteady on his feet, swaying slightly as he held on to the couch and waited for Bridget.

“I guess I should go,” Bridget said.

“Is Ken driving you?” I asked.

“This is just a Coke,” she said as she tipped her cup at me. “I'm the DD.”

“I wasn't worried,” I said. “I'm just making conversation.”

I winked at her and continued up the steps in my search for a bathroom.

 

TWENTY-TWO

By about 2
A.M.
, the party had wound down to the slow-dancing, date-rape part of the event. Once Ken and Bridget left I went in search of Pete since I hadn't seen him for a couple of hours. I finally found him in the master bedroom, lying spread-eagle on the king-size bed, asleep but, thankfully, not dead. His eyelids fluttered open when I nudged his leg and he looked at me, dazed, maybe not remembering where he was.

“You loaded?” I asked.

“I think so,” he groaned, “unless the room is really spinning.”

“Let's get out of here,” I said, helping him to locate the missing articles of his clothing and get dressed. I supported his weight as he stumbled down the stairs.

Carter was waiting for us—I had said I would give him a ride home—and he smiled broadly when he saw Pete struggling to keep his feet.

“And a good time was had by all,” Carter said.

“I don't feel so good,” Pete moaned.

“You'll feel better after some breakfast,” I said as Carter took Pete easily under the armpit and together we steered him toward the door.

Carter deposited Pete in the car, then folded himself into the front seat.

“Oh, God, I can't even think about food. I think I'm going to throw up,” Pete said as he started to roll down his window.

“There's a plastic bag under the seat,” I said with a nod toward the passenger seat. “If you need to be sick, do it in there. Some cop sees you heaving out the window, you'll get me pulled over for sure and I'll be in jail until I'm too old to get accepted to a decent college.”

He fumbled under the seat for a minute, then spent the rest of the ride with the bag gripped in his lap, his eyes closed and head tipped back against the headrest.

I drove to Dan and Ethel's Diner, where Pete and I ate corned beef and runny eggs with coffee, and Carter ate a pile of pancakes smothered in an obscene amount of maple syrup. Pete put so much milk and sugar in his coffee, it might as well have been a milk shake, but the caffeine seemed to help him. Carter sat next to Pete, who was crammed against the inside wall of the booth with Carter's bulk filling three-quarters of the space.

“That was … incredible,” Pete said.

“Yeah?” I asked absently. “She let you into her lady cave?”

“They were both there. It was dark, the room was spinning. I'm not really sure what all happened, but I think I fooled around with both of them.”

“Oh, man,” Carter said. “The trifecta. It's every man's dream.”

“It's the X,” I said around a mouthful of corned beef. “Makes people horny.”

“But now they think I'm some rich kid who goes to boarding school in Switzerland,” Pete said as he carelessly wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and tossed it on the table. The first couple of times I ate across from Pete, I had been put off by the ever-present drool that pooled at the left corner of his mouth, but I was used to it now.

“So?” I asked. “What do you want to do, marry 'em?”

“Well, no”—and his face broke into a lopsided smile—“but I wouldn't mind doing it again.”

Carter and I both laughed and Carter pounded Pete on the back with the flat of his massive hand.

“What I'm trying to figure out,” Pete said as he shoveled another forkful of food into his mouth, “if that's what sex is like, why people aren't doing it all the time. Why do people do anything else?”

“One of the mysteries of the universe,” Carter said in agreement.

“Yeah, you're screwed now,” I said. “Won't be able to think about doing much else.”

“It's not like I was thinking about much else before I did it,” Pete said with a sly grin. “It's possible I hold the world record for jacking off the most times in one day—”

“I doubt that,” I said. “There are some sick fuckers out there.”

“—but now that I know what it really feels like to be with a girl…” His eyes started to glaze over and we were losing him.

“Eat up,” I said. “Sun will be up soon and I seriously don't need to have you in my car if your parents wake up and have the cops out looking for your disabled ass.”

Carter laughed. “Sway, you are one messed-up dude sometimes.”

“Why do you call him that?” Pete asked. “Sway?”

“Because he is sway,” Carter said simply.

Pete looked at me but I just shook my head and turned to stare out the plate-glass window at the deserted main street.

“But what does it mean?” Pete asked.

“You never heard of sway?” Carter asked, baffled by Pete's question.

“No.”

Carter shrugged. “Sway isn't something you can define. A dude who's got sway is the man—doesn't have to try to be cool, just … is. Jesse's as cool as the underside of my pillow. He's so slick, he could convince you that I'm white, have you believing it like it's gospel.” Carter turned his attention to me as he said, “I thought you were schooling this boy?”

 

TWENTY-THREE

It was bitterly cold by the middle of October. The sky assaulted us almost daily with stinging rain or sleet, and the gloom of a Massachusetts winter started to set in hard. The Wakefield microcosm was rocked by one of its worst football seasons since the Eisenhower administration. Ken, captain of the team, was too preoccupied with coaching the kids at the Siegel Center, and trying to get into Bridget's pants, to pay much attention to taking the team all the way. The first game against crosstown rival Buford High was a blowout. They delivered a punishment of 42–0.

Wakefield's star student, David Cohen, who after the midterm grade report would drop to a disappointing fifty-first in his class, fumbled the annual Battle of the Brains regional academic competition. David was too busy getting hand jobs from Heather in his dad's old Volvo to care about the academic reputation of Wakefield, a bafflingly dim reputation considering more than half the student population had at least one parent who taught at the college.