“Quit whining!” Scott yelled at me while we stopped at a red light. He ran his fingers through his blond hair while smiling at me. Then placed his hands back on the stir-wheel.
“Why am I here, Scott? I don’t even like Kiran.” I said from the passenger seat.
“‘Cause you’re my best friend and I said pretty please?”
Mike laughed on the back seat along with Louise. Bill commented, “Where’s Faye, by the way?”
“Grounded. She got a piercing on her lip and mommy and daddy didn’t like it.” I answered.
“Faye can be such an idiot sometimes,” Louise said.
Yeah, she kind of can. Her mom told her she could get a tattoo or a piercing once she was eighteen, but Miss Burton couldn’t wait that long, no sir.
We headed downtown to the Marina Hotel. The party was to be held on the first floor with a professional DJ, professional catering and about thirty liters of Coke-Cola that someone would bring to life with rum. Except for one thing, I don’t like rum. I don’t really like alcohol in particular. Back then I didn’t even like beer, I drank because my friends asked me too. I gave into pressure, basically. Nowadays, I can take a cold beer after a long day and relax, or maybe even a few shots of tequila at a reunion, but that’s pretty much it.
The party was a Sweet Sixteen for Kiran Michaels, and as you can imagine, I didn’t like him. He didn’t do anything to me, but two years before the party, he put gum on Faye’s hair and I spent the whole afternoon trying every single home remedy for it. In the end nothing worked, so Faye cried for the huge chunk of her hair I had to cut off.
I don’t really know what happened to Kiran as we grew up. I heard he went to New York for school, dropped out after a couple of years and started a car wash business. But I also heard he overdosed. People tell stories I guess.
When we arrived, Scott handed the keys to his 2000 Honda Civic to the valet, a car he had bought by working at his father’s dealership for almost six months. He didn’t spend a dime of his salary for six months. One day he parked in front of my house and yelled “Check out my new wheels!”
Louise had to repeat to me that we were just going in so we could be nice people, because Kiran didn’t really have any friends. He was a rich kid with a bad sense of humor but a good heart. Or so Louise said. I had to stop myself from telling her, for the eighth time, “The gum in the hair, Louise. The gum in the hair.”
Kiran might not have friends, but almost every kid going to our school went to his party. Mostly because of the DJ and the free gifts for guests, which included an iPod and back in the day, the iPod was the bomb.
As soon as we stepped inside, Scott went to speak to Gabby, a short brunette he had had the eye on for almost two months and the reason he insisted on us going. He thought he’d had a chance if he showed up with friends other than alone and a clear agenda. Bill talked boys stuff with Mark, and Louise abandoned me when she found someone she liked. So I was left alone. After twenty minutes of drinking by the bar and nodding to songs I had never heard before, I decided I wanted to take a deep breath, go outside, relax, and forget I had crappy friends.
I went out and sat on the sidewalk for about five minutes before a beautiful, tall, blond sat a few feet away from me. She pulled out a cigarette and smoked the whole thing before looking at me and asking me “Enjoying the party?”
“Not really. My friends forced me to come. I don’t even like the birthday boy.”
“You mean my cousin?”
Oops. “Ohm, well, I mean…”
“That’s fine. I don’t really like him either. He has this nasty sense of humor.” She smiled and I couldn’t help but smile back. “Nice to meet you,” she said extending her hand “Rosie Carroll.”
I took her hand and replied “Riley Brenan.”
I don’t know how long we talked, but I couldn’t have enough of her voice and the way her cheekbones marked when she smiled. Rosie was nineteen, went to college in Portland and wanted to study to be a doctor; surgeon. She liked Michael Jackson and her favorite movie was Bambi.
“How can you like Bambi?” I asked.
“How can you not?”
“It broke my heart!”
“Exactly! That’s how good the movie is!”
“I was eight! You’re not supposed to run into death in a movie when you’re eight! You’re supposed to know death because your grandpa dies, or that little hamster you thought would last longer but you forgot to feed. Not through a freaking animated movie about a deer!” I exclaimed.
She laughed but didn’t reply anything. I grinned back and we stayed quiet looking at the stars. Or at least I was. At around eleven, Scott, Mark, Louise, and Bill came out of the party. Scott, as always, was the first one to talk.
“Man, this party blows!” he said standing next to me.
I stood up and shook the dirt off my butt, “You got rejected, huh?”
“I wasn’t rejected. I was just… told to try harder.”
“With… rejection.” I said with a mocking smile.
“Fine, I was rejected. You happy?”
“Kind of, yeah,” I replied, with my grin widening.
Scott snorted at me and said “I don’t know what else to do, man. I’ve tried everything. I’ve complimented her, bought her roses, gifts, asked her out, asked her out again and came to this stupid party to see if I can score.”
“Haven’t you thought that maybe you’re trying way too hard?” Said Rosie catching our attention.
“And who are you?” Louise asked.
“I’m Rosie. You see, hmm…”
“Scott,” Scott replied finishing her sentence.
“Scott. Women are complicated creatures. I’ll be the first one to admit to it, I date them.” She said it like it was nothing, like it wasn’t a coming out, because it wasn’t. She had gone through that a long ago and was fine with it. Me? I had known I liked girls my whole life but had never come to grips with it. I thought it was an overwhelmingly desire for friendship; bullshit. But Rosie, she said it like it was the most common thing in the world “But complicated doesn’t mean impossible to understand. Women like attention at the beginning, feeling special. Then, just a bit of mystery, something that makes them think they are getting into something deeper. So ignore her, but not in the asshole way. Be distant but educated, say hi to her on the hallways and keep walking. Take it like a mature, confident, reassured man.”
“But I’m none of those.”
“Exactly. Which is why she’ll see it as a surprise and boom! She’s interested in you.”
Scott tilted his head, not trusting Rosie too much, but after what happened at the party, I think he was willing to try everything “Thanks. Anyway, let’s bail, guys.”
They headed for the valet to get Scott’s car and I was left with Rosie. She smiled and I smiled uncomfortably. “So… I… It was nice meeting you.” I mumbled, which only made her grin twist higher.
“Here, give me your phone.” She grabbed my phone and entered her number, but didn’t dial, she added herself as a new contact and gave it back to me “Call me. Portland it’s a three-hour ride so I come home every other weekend. We should hang out.”
“Yeah, that’d be awesome.”
“Yo! Ry! Are you coming or what?” Scott yelled from his car with everyone already inside.
I said goodbye and got in.
I didn’t call her. I spent hours on my bed, with the phone on my hand thinking if I should call her, but that thing she said to Scott about being mysterious after the first sign of interest. I was divided. If I don’t call her, she might think I don’t want to see her again. If I do… am I ruining my chances with her? Like Scott with Gabby? Of course, at the time I didn’t admit my romantic interest on her. I did what I always do, called it friendship.
I miss those days. Teenage days; when the only thing that mattered were who you wanted to date, doing well at school and not getting caught when you weren’t doing well at school. I was never a great student, but I wasn’t a bad one either. Average, I guess. Not because I couldn’t do better but because I didn’t want to. Kids who are better at school get bullied. That’s the way it works. People don’t like people who are, my father used to say, exceptional. So I would finish the pop exam quick, and then would pretend that I was still thinking about it. I would even answer questions I learned by heart wrong so I could maintain a B-. You might wonder; why so much work on pretending you are not smart? Because when I was eleven, my parents took me to a psychologist because they thought I was too quiet, too unfriendly, too reserved. To which the psychologist answered of course, that I was just quiet. Some kids are extroverts, some are introverts, and she also told them that introverts tend to be smarter than extroverts and my parents took that too seriously. So they had me doing an IQ test. My test revealed my IQ was 142. I was a genius, literally.
And like every genius, I did the stupid thing. I told my classmates at school and they began bullying me for it, trying to prove that I wasn’t that smart, trying to put me down. I became so insecure after that, that I never mentioned my IQ test again and I started failing tests on purpose. At the beginning they laughed at the genius that wasn’t such a genius anymore, and then, they forgot.
The only two people in my life who still know or remember are Scott and Faye. That’s apart from my parents.
The day I saw Rosie again was on Friday, two weeks after the party. I was bored at class and Faye was taking notes of everything the teacher said. When I got tired of drawing animals and funny cartoons of Mr. Johnson, our Math teacher, I folded a piece of paper and threw it at Faye, who was three seats away from me.
She turned to me immediately and I laughed. She picked up the piece of paper from the floor and unfolded it.
The new Call of Duty is out. Wanna play?
She grabbed her pen, answered and folded the piece of paper again before throwing it at me. She was pissed when I managed to catch it in the air instead of it bouncing off my head.
You damn right! Let’s go to buy it after school. Then… sleep over at my house?
Faye stared back at me as I gave her a thumbs up. Then, we focused on class again. At two when we got out of school, Faye and I talked about all the wonderful things that were supposed to come with the new Call of Duty, like the zombie mode and the new graphics and how you could use that weapon and that other weapon. We were walking out of school when I heard my name been called out. When I turned I saw Rosie, parked across from our school, leaning on her car with a huge grin on her face.
My heart stopped beating for a moment. She straightened up and approached us.
“Hey!” she said.
“Rosie, hey.” I turned to Faye who had one brow up. She was surprised there was someone in my life she didn’t know of “Faye, this is Rosie. Rosie, this is my best friend, Faye.”
“Nice to meet you,” Rosie said gently.
“Likewise.” Faye’s answer, on the other hand, was distant, hostile even.
Either Rosie didn’t notice, or she gave her little importance “You free? Can I take you guys somewhere?”
Faye rushed to answer “No, no. Thanks.”
“Actually,” I contradicted “We’re going to The Gaming Alley to pick up the new Call of Duty. Can you take us?”
“Sure, get in.”
As we walked up to her car, Faye gave me that look, the one she gave me the last time I saw her before I got on that damn bus. That silent, angry, yet sad stare that makes me feel guilty. She wanted me to back her up back then. It was supposed to be just the two of us and I had ruined it. I wanted to see Rosie again, but not that Friday, that Friday was Faye’s. So as we stopped at The Gaming Alley and Faye bought the game, I talked to Rosie.
“Listen, I really wanna hang out with you, but today… I promised Faye we would… kind of…”
“You don’t want a third wheel.” She answered for me “I get it.”
“But I really do wanna see you again.” I regretted the ‘see you again’ part as soon as I said it. But Rosie just smiled again.
“Okay, then call me. For real this time.”
“I promise.”
“Let me take you guys home.”
Rosie dropped us at Faye’s and I promised I would call her again, really call her. As we walked up to her front door Faye asked: “Who was that?”
“Oh, Kiran’s cousin. I met her at the party.”
“You’re friends with Kiran now or what?”
“No, but she’s cool and I said I’d called which I didn’t so…”
Faye fished the keys out of her bag and unlocked the door. “So what does she do? She looks a bit older.”
“She’s nineteen, she goes to college at Portland, she likes Michael Jackson, Bambi and her favorite Powerpuff girl is Buttercup. Oh, and she’s gay.”
We entered the house and Faye dropped her bag on the couch, but as soon as she heard me say the word gay, she flipped around like a crazy person and with eyes wide opened asked: “She’s gay?”
I frowned “What? You’re homophobe now?”
“No! No, no. It’s just that… that explains a lot.”
We headed for her bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Burton must’ve been at work. Faye gets home at around three every day. They get home at around six, so every afternoon Faye spent it alone, unless I was around, of course.
When we walked into her bedroom and I left my backpack on the floor, next to the stereo I asked: “What do you mean it explains?” As if that sentence had just been processed.
“Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you didn’t see it. She asked you to call her, went to pick you up at school and then offered to ‘take us somewhere’. She’s all over you, man.”
“No, she isn’t,” I said not really believing it myself.
“Yeah, she is.”
I didn’t insist, I just wanted Faye to cut it out and by replying something she would have an excuse to keep on talking about Rosie.
I sat on the bed, took off my shoes and felt the immediate relief. I breathed in and turned to look at what Faye was doing at the wrong moment. She was taking her shirt off and changing into pajamas, which she always does, but I’m always looking away when she does it. This time, however, I turned around just in time to watch the silky skin of her back and her glowing shoulders. How she moved slowly, calmly, like the world had stopped spinning and everything that mattered was… her.
When I caught myself looking at my best friend in a very inappropriate way, I closed my eyes, shook my head and then grabbed the bag with the game in it. I took off the plastic wrapping, opened the case and turned on Faye’s PS3.
As I slipped the CD in, Faye sat on the floor next to me, already in her PJs and went back to the Rosie thing “So, have you ever kissed a girl before?”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“What? Don’t be so frigid, Riley. I mean just a kiss, I don’t mean you like girls. Actually, I always thought you didn’t like anything.”
As the game started and Faye and I selected multiplayer, as we always did, to shoot each other’s faces off, the conversation continued and I started getting uncomfortable.
“I don’t like anything? I’m a cyborg now?”
“That’s not what I’m saying, but think about it. There was Jaime, he was nuts over you and when he asked you out you said, and I quote, ‘No, thanks.’ Then, there was Noah, who you kissed as a dare. He tried to seduced you afterward―”
“Seduce me? You’re not in the eighties, Faye.”
“Seduce you,” she insisted. “But you were too busy painting dicks on Scott’s head because he lost a bet.”
“Yeah, but that’s not…”
“Then, we have Milo. The one guy you actually seemed to like. A bit geeky but in a cute way. Smart, funny, followed you around like a lost puppy and you guys dated for what? Two weeks?”
“Yeah…” I said bored.
“And remind me… why did you guys break up?”
“Because I realized I liked him more as a friend than anything else.”
“It’s a good thing his family moved away. That poor guy was crushed.”
“What’s you point?”
“My point is you’ll never know you don’t like something unless you try it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You know you don’t like girls and you’ve never kissed one.”
“Which is why I’m curious about kissing one.”
Faye won the first Call of Duty match. Eight deaths to six. The second match was a tie and the third match, I won because she thought my character was dead and she was already celebrating, but the guy was still alive on the ground, so I shot her and boom; winner Riley. We decided to untie things the way we always do. Stupidly. We went to the kitchen, grabbed two cans of wiped cream and drew a dart board on each other’s stomachs. The game consisted of using Ping-Pong balls to try and hit the target, which was the wiped cream board on each other’s stomach, while the other person was lying on the bed.
One catch. Your eyes had to be blindfolded and you had to spin on the spot twice before throwing the ball, so chances were you weren’t even aiming in the right direction. She was up first. I was lying on the bed while she spun twice, or one and a half. She was dizzy by the time she stopped but she’s too stubborn to admit to that.
She tried to focus, breathed in and measured her strength, aimed as best she could and the Ping-Pong ball left her fingers just with the right intensity. Except for one thing.
When she heard the ball hit the TV she took off the blindfold. She wasn’t even looking in the right direction and, of course, I could see that. She stared at me with those frustrated eyes and I started laughing.
“That’s not funny.” She said.
“Yeah, it really is. Come on, let me try.”
We switched positions… wait. Does that sound wrong? Anyways, I was standing about five feet away from her, and she was lying on the bed. I turned around twice, or well, what I thought were twice. I couldn’t really be sure and Faye wasn’t making any sounds, so even if I threw the ball with the right amount of strength, I might not be aiming at her. So I got an idea.
“Hey, Faye… wanna hear a joke?” I wondered.
“What?”
“There you are.” I turned left about forty degrees and then threw the ball. It hit her right in the stomach, in the center of the wiped cream dart board.
“Hey! That’s cheating!”
I took off my blindfold and replied “No, honey. That’s called being smart.”
She stood up, pissed off, and grabbed the wiped cream can and started chasing me around her room trying to get wiped cream on my hair. We didn’t hear the door opening until Mrs. Burton cleared her throat loudly. Imagine the face of that forty year old woman when she walked into her daughter’s bedroom to find her shoving wiped cream down my shirt and on my hair while I pushed her away with my legs.
Faye and I stopped as soon as we noticed. She looked at us with a motherly-disapproval face that made Faye and I feel guilty. “Hey, mom,” I said.
“Hello, Riley.”
“Hey, mom,” said Faye.
“Hello, honey. You two have twenty seconds to clean this mess up and I’ll take those wiped cream cans from your allowance, Faye.”
“But mom!”
“You heard me. And Riley. I’ll speak to your mother to make sure she takes the money from your allowance, too.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
She closed the door. Faye and I looked at each other sadly and then we cracked up. We cleaned up her bedroom and then took a shower. I used to keep clothes at Faye’s because of the amount of time I spent there. If I didn’t spend a weekend there, there had to be something wrong.
After we were all cleaned up and ready, we went down for dinner. Mrs. Burton had made Mac and Cheese and by the time Mr. Burton got home, we had already eaten and his plate was on the microwave. Faye and went back up, played some games, saw a horror movie and fell asleep on her bed. Faye kicks when she sleeps. I think it’s endearing.
I got home past midday the next day. Mom was in the kitchen cooking, dad was outside in the backyard building something that would end up being something else. Normally, he started with a wooden project, then got some metal into it and then, not even he knew what it ended up being. Connor, my twelve year old brother, was sitting in front of the TV in the living room, watching Adventure Time, at least I think it was Adventure Time. I kissed my mom, who warned me Mrs. Burton had spoken to her. I kissed my baby brother, who said we should play football again. He was convinced he could make that twenty-yard catch. He would, eventually. My brother got taller than me before he was seventeen. But back then, he was twelve and adorable. I waved my hand at dad, who gave me an, “At ease, soldier” salute.
I dropped my bag on my bedroom floor, picked up my phone and did what I should had done a long time ago. I called Rosie. I felt my heart beating desperately in my chest from the moment the beeping sound came out of the speaker. And then, her voice.
“Hey there,” she answered before I even got time to speak.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Riley Brenan. Yeah. I’m not that popular. Plus, you’re the only unknown number that could possibly call me.”
“Oh, okay. How you doing?”
“Great, just finished lunch.”
“Oh. Uhm… listen, do you have plans today… maybe… I don’t know. Wanna do something?”
She stayed quiet. Was I too out there? Maybe it would’ve been a better idea for her to ask me out. That way I wouldn’t have looked so… interested in someone that, up until then, I still thought I just wanted to get to know as a friend.
But then Rosie laughed; sweet, quiet, tender “Sure. Actually, don’t tell anyone about this. I love my mom and everything but she can’t cook. So I give must of my food to the dog. Wanna go grab a bite? Or have you already had lunch?”
“No!” I yelled. If I could talk to sixteen year old me, I would say ‘Control your ovaries, Riley. It’s embarrassing.’ Of all the mistakes I made throughout my life… Rosie was the best one. “I mean no. I haven’t eaten anything.”
“Great. What do you wanna eat?”
“I don’t know. What do you have in mind?”
“Like Mexican?”
I laughed. “Who doesn’t?”
“Crazy people, I know, right? Anyway, there’s this cute little place my family likes. It’s called Mexicana.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve never been there but Scott said it’s amazing.”
“See you there in an hour?”
“Sure, awesome.”
What I felt after I hung up I had never felt before. I wanted to jump, yell, run in circles. I felt my heart warm inside my chest. And then it hit me. Oh, God, I should get dressed. I didn’t shower. I had just taken a bath at Faye’s but choosing what to wear was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done. Black jeans o blue jeans? Or maybe gray jeans. I must be honest. I don’t remember exactly what I wore to see Rosie that day, but for the purpose of this story, let’s go with my gray jeans, my black polo shirt, and my leather jacket.
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