Those Girls (4 page)

The song ended, and I realized I was smiling.

“Well,” Ned said. He looked at Pete, then at Fernando, slapped his guitar, and nodded. “I’m comfortable saying, you’re in!”

They liked me. I was good enough. I was in. It was too late to run.

S
am had his own little apartment in his basement. The walls were blue plaid and dusty, covered with sports paraphernalia. It was like our little windowless den of debauchery. His parents never went down there. Ever. We smoked, drank, fucked, everything down there; no one bothered us. Ever. It was terrifyingly liberating.

“I just think it’s weird that Alex would join a band and not have mentioned it, or even that she was thinking about it, before.” I groaned.

Sam’s stomach rumbled as I lay with my head in his lap. I hoped that this position would lead him to stroke my hair or rub my arm or perform some sort of gesture of affection like he once would have in this situation. Instead, he took this opportunity to spread his arms over the couch like vulture wings and use my hip as a place to occasionally rest his beer.

“Yes! All right!” Sam jolted forward toward the TV, knocking my head into his knee.

“Babe,” I barked without even turning around or moving from his lap, “are you even listening to me? Should I just stop bothering to talk to you?”

“No, babe. I’m listening. This is a great fucking game, though. Did you just see that steal?”

“Yeah, awesome.”

“Fuckin’ awesome!”

And he rested his beer back on my hip.

“So, you don’t think that’s shady of Alex?”

“It’s a fucking gay-ass band of public school losers, babe. Who cares?”

“It’s not the band; it’s that she didn’t tell us. She didn’t even tell
me
. I just think that’s weird. Why wouldn’t she have mentioned it before?” I snuggled up closer to Sam’s crotch and petted his thigh on top of his dusty khakis, hoping the movement would bring a comforting hand down to me. One stroke of my arm, cheek, anything.

“Maybe she’s realizing that it’s not necessary to consult you every time she takes a dump. Seriously, who fucking cares? Alex is getting a life. Good for her. Yes! Run, you motherfucker!” And he sprang forward, dripping some beer on my nose. I wiped it off and pretended to fall asleep.

A few minutes later, Sam leaned over me again, squishing my head as he set his sweating beer on the coffee table. He put his rough hand on the curve of my waist and squeezed my still-unsettled stomach.

“Ouch,” I said. “Be gentle. I’m not a fucking football.” I laced my fingers through his and guided his hand down my torso to show him how I’d prefer he just rub me lightly. I felt him stretch back and unbutton his pants behind my head.

“Gentle, huh?” he said, reaching into his pants with one hand and squeezing my ribs again with the other.

I flipped around on his lap to find his open pants and erect dick, which he’d so kindly already stuck over the elastic of his M&Ms boxers. The ones that had holes in them and were three sizes too small, but that he liked to wear so he could grab his crotch and say,
Melts in your mouth, not in your hand
.

“Oh yeah?” I said coyly as I began to stroke it.

“And go slow this time, babe—don’t fucking rush it. You always rush it.”

I rolled my eyes, but propped myself up and prepared for the task at hand. I decided this would be a good time to ask for the favor. “Babe, will you get a keg for Veronica’s party on Friday?”

He nodded.

SAM DIDN’T SAY MUCH
in the car on the way to the party, which made me nervous. I was wearing the pink miniskirt he loves, and he didn’t even mention it.

“Thanks for picking up the keg,” I said, staring out the dirty window, watching stone house after brick house after maple tree roll by. “I thought Veronica got a fake ID; I don’t know why she can’t get her own fucking keg.”

“She probably just wants to owe me so she can thank me by blowing me later.”

“You’re so hilarious!” I punched him in the arm. Hard.

His hair was getting long, was starting to look like it did
when we first started dating, all floppy and sun-bleached. I thought it was so cute then.

“Oh, come on, Veronica sucking a dick is like anyone else giving a high five or a handshake. And I hear she gives a great handshake.”

“Well, practice makes perfect.… Where did you hear that? Austin?”

“Austin, Parker, Davis, Phil Miller, Tim Miller. I think there’s a note on the urinal in the science lab.” Sam squeezed my knee and cracked himself up, as usual—no one laughed harder at Sam’s jokes than Sam. “Maybe she could give you a little tutorial, show you some new tricks? You could use some new tricks, babe.”

“Fuck you. If you want Veronica’s expert tricks of the trade, don’t let me stop you. I’d put in the order for the Valtrex now, though.”

“It’s really too bad she’s such a slut,” he said. “She’s so hot. Usually only ugly girls need to whore it out like that.”

“God, you’re an asshole.”

“It’s why you love me.”

I waited in the car while Sam dealt with the heavy lifting, and we drove the rest of the way to Veronica’s in relative silence, listening to the radio—some angry, thrashing, noisy nonsense that I pretended to like. I wondered if Sam really thought Veronica was that hot. If everyone really thought she was that hot. I didn’t think she was
that
hot. She was skinny and had big boobs, fine, but her face wasn’t
that
great. Her eyes bugged out, and her hair was weird. Thin, frizzy. She wasn’t
that
fucking hot.

I
always get nervous before parties, even if someone else is throwing it, which seemed to never happen anymore. I was wearing my yellow Paris dress, the sparkly backless one, because it had brought me good luck with the Greek guy over the summer. First party of the year, no harm in being superstitious, right?

Alex and I sat on my patio and ripped tequila shots before people arrived. I figured I’d take this time to tell her about Austin and how I was trying to make him my boyfriend. I wasn’t going to tell her about him coming over the night before, because I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, because I was trying to be mature this year—girlfriends don’t go around telling their friends every little detail about every little time they have sex with their boyfriends, because who cares, right? But I decided maybe I should, because I wanted to be sure that Austin wouldn’t mention his visit to Sam, who’d mention it to Mollie, who’d then call me out for being shady, which I guess I had been, but whatever. Sometimes being shady is just way simpler and can save everyone a lot of melodramatic conversation and Mollie the opportunity to start with all the
Veronica’s
a slut
jokes. Why were we legally obligated to report all our actions to each other, anyway? I’d tell Alex that he came over and we hooked up.

I skipped the part about how I’d spent the entire afternoon cooking for him. I’d become a pretty avid watcher of Food Network in all my newfound time home alone, so I’d gotten into experimenting in the kitchen. I’d made myself coq au vin and beef bourguignonne, and learned how to julienne and render—whatever took time. I’d never been able to sit through movies or a full hour of homework or a book or anything, but I’d found that cooking was enough activity to keep me engaged. And then afterward, there was an actual reward! Eating! Eating legitimately way more delicious food than the Lean Cuisines and take-out Chinese that had been what I’d come to call dinner since middle school. I’d been begging Mollie and Alex to come over so I could cook for them, but obviously that never happened. They had mothers who cooked for them. Mothers who were big on things like dinner and curfews. Eventually, I got so lonely (and, okay, good enough that I wanted to show off to
somebody
) that I called Austin, Sam’s friend who I’d hooked up with a few times last spring. I asked him if
he
wanted Veronica haute cuisine and to maybe watch a movie or something. He said he did.

Of course, he showed up at like ten and told me he’d already eaten. Of course, I told him that it was no big deal and that there were leftovers in the fridge if he wanted me to heat anything up or anything. Of course, he said he just wanted to watch the movie.

We were twenty minutes into some zombie nonsense before his tongue was down my throat and the condom was on. I know that
come over and watch a movie
is international code for come over and hook up, but I thought maybe since we’d already hooked up a few times (and everyone knew about it thanks to the Whole Foods parking lot debacle) and he wasn’t so humiliated by it that he was still occasionally calling me that maybe he’d be interested in hanging out for a little or at least trying my freakin’ Thai curry halibut. Operation: Date Austin was not off to a good start.

“You’ve gotta stop putting out for these lax assholes,” Alex said. And then she said, “Heeeey…” and she dragged the
eeeh
out in a suspicious way. “Why don’t you hook up with Drew?”

Drew? Her Drew? Guys like Drew weren’t interested in girls like me. And I wasn’t interested in guys like Drew—or was I? I wasn’t getting anywhere with Austin Markel popular, athletic types. Did I like Drew? Maybe I did. Or, at least, maybe I should.

“Why? Did he say something?” I asked.

“Just that you looked good when he saw you at tennis the other day. No pressure, just something to think about.” She poured us two more shots. “I think you guys could be fun together.”

Fun
together. So Drew probably just wanted to get laid. But he didn’t seem like the type to just want to get laid. Had he ever even gotten laid? He’d known me for years; if he’d wanted to hook up with me, he’d have hooked up with me already, right? He was the kind of guy who likes girls for being funny
and interesting. But he was also a guy, can never forget that fact when thinking about guys. No matter how many sappy movies they watch or long books they read, they are all, in fact, still guys. And guys like tits and blow jobs more than they like funny and interesting, which I’m not when you compare me to girls like Alex, so I had to rely on the boobs and BJs thing. And, thank god, I seemed to have been able to make a name for myself in both departments.

“Consider me thinking about it,” I said, and we clinked our shot glasses. She took a swig out of the bottle after she threw back the shot. Alex drank like a rock star, yet always seemed to be the most sober of all of us at the end of the night. I swear, I’ve gone shot for shot with her, yet at the end of the night, she’s smoking weed and making up songs on the piano, and I’m barfing in a bush wearing one shoe and no bra. She ran her fingers through her long hair, from root to tip, and blew smoke rings to the sky, which was starting to turn an electric shade of pink. Almost party time.

Drew showed up first with his stoner friends, then the seniors, then the soccer guys. I played my usual hostess game, made the rounds, greeted everyone, thanked them for coming, and pointed them toward the booze and the bathroom. I chatted, flirted, and kept an eye out for Austin, who’d promised he’d try to stop by.

“You throw the best parties,” Drew said as he plopped down by me on one of the pool chairs.

“We all have our skills.” I crossed and uncrossed my legs and dished out a smile.

“Why don’t we hang out more?” he asked.

It occurred to me that he and Alex might be up to something, but I figured I’d just sip my Solo cup of vodka and smile along until I figured it out. What could she be up to? It’s not like she was Mollie or something.

“Keg is here, bitches!” someone screamed from somewhere by the patio.

Mollie, Sam, and a few of his cronies rolled out of the bushes like a chain gang: Sam carrying the keg over his head like Conan the Barbarian, Austin nowhere in sight. I excused myself from Drew and skipped across the lawn and over to Sam to direct him to the trash can that I’d already filled with a garbage bag and ice.

“Happy now, whore?” Mollie scowled, playing with her phone as usual. “You have no fucking idea what I went through to get this.”

“Don’t worry about it, Collins,” Sam said, patting my bare back with his wet hand.

“I’ll give you cash,” I said.

He looked me up and down and replied, “I’d prefer a beej.”

Mollie rolled her eyes. I giggled and called him disgusting or something like that. It was unfortunate that Sam was so fiercely good-looking. Like, actually handsome, chiseled in a way that boys were just not these days. He looked like a young Robert Redford, if Robert Redford had had a gym membership and drank protein shakes in the seventies. He was always in some form of Crawford Athletics gear, as if the fact that his neck was the same size as his waist wasn’t a clear enough indicator that
he was a jock. It was a shame he was such a creep, and it was an even bigger shame that that only made him hotter.

In middle school, we all used to watch him make out with Stephanie Black and her blond ponytail at dances, and dare one another to cut in. We were obsessed. I even cut his picture out of the Crawford yearbook and put it on my wall. Like he was Leonardo DiCaprio or something—god, I was such a loser. I wondered if Mollie remembered that and had told Sam; that would be embarrassing. It’s not like she didn’t used to call him and hang up or pretend she was a telemarketer just like the rest of us.

The night charged on, bodies filled the pool, and Solo cups and beer cans littered my freshly manicured lawn. Boys did cannonballs, and I laughed and clapped and pretended it didn’t pain me to see Petunia, my blow-up pool dragon, defiled like that.

After a few hours and a few more cups of vodka and shots of tequila than I could count, I started to feel a little spinny. I asked Drew, who had been following me around all night, to hold down the fort while I stole a minute upstairs.

“You want company?” he asked.

“No, no, you stay,” I said. I needed, like, ten minutes to fix my makeup and maybe puke. “I need to pee,” I told him.

I turned to go inside, and Drew took my hand—I wasn’t sure a boy had ever held my hand before (not since nursery school anyway)—and pulled me in toward him. His hands were soft, almost like a girl’s. He didn’t tug or grab or pull me too hard or anything, just looked straight into my foggy eyes.
I found myself uncomfortable, nervous, twitchy. I knew what to do with my breasts when they were stared at, but my face was an entirely different story. I knew I was sweaty and that my breath probably smelled like booze and cigarettes. Then, just as I was about to burst or possibly throw up on him, he kissed me. Not with tongue or force, just a soft peck on my lips, seemingly for no reason.

“See you in a minute,” he said after that.

I got sidetracked on my way upstairs, something with the lacrosse guys and Mollie being drunk and freaking out. I saw Alex and told her about the Drew kiss. She seemed excited about it, but honestly, this was around the point in the night where things got hazy.