Against the World - 3. Chapter 3

“Your fucking mom should’ve let you fucking rot in fucking juvie,” J.C. told me, the moment I walked through the door of his house. “What the fuck did I tell you? ‘Don’t Fucking Do Stupid Shit.’”

I closed my eyes. It had been a long day.

It was just after three o’clock in the morning.

I had to sneak back out of the house after my mom went to bed. Because I had a text from J.C.

Nine texts, actually.

All a variant of: “If you don’t come to my fucking house the second you’re back, I’m going to slit your fucking throat in your fucking sleep.”

J.C. was a poet. A fallen angel.

The facts: I had spent the bulk of the night sitting in the police station, waiting for my mom to come and get me.

I had stolen a bike.

Well, attempted to.

A candy apple red Schwinn, locked outside the Moreno Valley Post Office.

Like the one my dad got me for my 15th birthday.

Which had been stolen the day before. Someone had taken bolt cutters, sliced right through the chain-links on our backyard fence, and carried it off.

“No, you need it,” Dad had said. The white bow on the glossy paint.

The best gift you can give someone is hope.

It was five weeks after he died, the day the bike was stolen. The beginning of December. The desert had just begun to grow cold, at night, in the mornings.

I put on my jacket and went outside.

My new jacket--an olive bomber from Abercrombie & Fitch. $120.

“A business expense,” Matt Barber had assured me, at the mall.

There was a hole in the chain-link fence where my bike had been.

The only thing going through my head? “No.”

On repeat.

“No, no, no, no, no.”

And that was the moment I started crying.

Uncontrolled tears, pouring down my face.

A loud cry, a sniffling sob, and I couldn’t help myself. Like a dam of emotion had burst, rushing through a dry river bed.

I fell onto my knees, onto the dewy grass. Through my hazy eyes, I looked at the gigantic, gaping, unfillable hole in the chain link fence.

Nothing there. Gone. The bike, gone.

I want you to have something special.

And I sobbed, I didn’t know how long I sobbed, and I never found out if my mom or Nicky ever saw me. If anyone ever saw me.

But the wave of emotion crested. Promise me you’ll be strong.

And I stood back up, brushed off my wet knees, and went back inside to call a taxi to take me to school.

“And that’s another thing,” J.C. told me, pacing around the living room, “don’t fucking order cabs to take you around like you’re Bill-fucking-Gates, okay? First thing anyone’s going to say: hey, maybe the poor kid who suddenly starts tossing money around is up to no good.”

“‘Don’t Fucking Do Stupid Shit,’” I repeated.

“That’s right, ‘Don’t Fucking Do Stupid Shit,’” he told me. “What the fuck was going through your head? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen if you keep fucking up? I’m going to wind up in fucking jail. And it won’t be for fucking twenty minutes like you just did.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to tell you?”

“Nothing,” he says, his anger dying off. He hung his head. “Look, Kev. My dad died too. I know it sucks. And I know you were close to him.” He paused, looked at me uncomfortably. “Do you want to talk about it and shit?”

“No.”

J.C. looked vaguely relieved. “You’ve got to look forward, you know? Be a man and all that shit. Take care of your mom, take care of your brother. I know you’re in the fucking dark right now, but you sell for a few more years, you get your smart ass out of fucking Colton and become a lawyer or a doctor or shit, and you never look back.”

Promise me one thing.

“I will. I promise.”

“I don’t want your fucking word,” he tells me. “This isn’t a fucking gentleman’s handshake. I want you to Stop Fucking Doing Stupid Shit. Or else. You won’t like jail, believe me. And you won’t fucking like going through life with a felony record, either. And your dad’s ghost is gonna come back and fucking haunt both of us if you get arrested again.”

Matt Barber cornered me at my locker the next morning after first period.

I was bleary-eyed and, despite J.C.’s orders, I had called a taxi to take me to school. Not to my house--to suspicious, and J.C. lived across the street and I knew he’d be watching--but to the Sav-On parking lot, a mile away. Took it to Dante’s Pizza, and walked down the hill, walked onto campus, like I was anyone else, like a kid who actually lived in Moreno Valley. In an Abercrombie jacket.

In a low, hushed voice, Matt said, “Dude, what happened yesterday?”

I was too tired for any of this shit, to play dumb, to ask him how he knew I’d been arrested.

“Family issue.”

“Family issue,” he repeated, incredulously. “Harry Kwan saw you carted off in handcuffs outside Wendy’s, and everyone in first period was talking about it. They think you got busted.” He lowered his voice. “Did you get busted?”

“No,” I told him. “It’s a long story.” That clearly wasn’t good enough for Matt Barber, arm akimbo. “I tried to steal a bike.”

Matt Barber’s eyebrows shot up, disgusted at the ostentatious display of poverty. “Dude, you’re wearing a $120 jacket. You tried to steal a flipping bike?”

Logic had not entered the bike equation until long after it happened.

Because, yes, the clothes on my back at this precise moment probably cost the same price as a used Schwinn, like the one stolen from our backyard.

The one I had tried to steal from outside the Moreno Valley Post Office.

No rational explanation. It had not been a rational act.

After I discovered the bike stolen, I took a cab to school. Went to class, sold shit by the payphones at Dante’s, nothing out of the ordinary.

Matt went home. And I walked back down the hill towards school to contemplate how I’d get home.

And there it was. Leaning up against a wrought iron planter outside the Moreno Valley Post Office.

My bike.

Well. Not my bike.

Not the one my dad had bought for me. Glossier, maybe. Shinier. But still: my bike.

It’s too much. No, you need it.

The next bit was a blur.

Really, people in Moreno Valley had to learn to lock their shit up.

The wind in my hair.

The feel of the pedals on my feet.

Tires singing along the grooves of the street.

And suddenly, it was five months ago, and I was my dad was saying, “How’d she handle?”

Everything was fine. Placid. Normal. In its place.

I was okay.

Two blocks later, a cop car cornered me in a Wendy’s parking lot.

“Well, it’s done,” I said to Matt Barber. “We’re just going to have to move on.”

“I’m so disappointed in you,” my mom had said, when we walked out of the police station.

“You don’t get to be disappointed in me,” I had told her. “Not with your track record.”

“It’s not done,” Matt replied, icily. “People think you got busted.” He punctuated each word. “Do you have any idea what it’s going to take to convince them that you’re not, like, wearing a wire?”

It seemed ludicrous to think the police would go through a CSI: Miami-caliber drug bust to snag a white teenager who sold weed to about a half-dozen upper-middle-class high school kids.

But for Matt Barber, who had probably never seen cops anywhere but marching in a Fourth of July parade, I could feel the palpable tension in his voice, see it on his face.

I was concerned only with the financial aspect. The potential loss of customers.

Because I had fourteen dollars in my pocket, no reliable way of getting to and from school, and an overdue electric bill.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

“Literally, I’m paying you to convince people to buy our product,” I told him. My voice wanted to rise in volume, but I was cognizant that we were in the locker row. I settled on a punctuated rasp. “Seriously. I put my ass on the line every single day, and you have one thing to do and you can’t even fucking even do that. So why am I giving you a cut in the first place?”

Matt Barber’s face twisted in sudden anger. Like he was going to strike me.

But he didn’t. He slammed his fist against the locker and, without saying another word, turned his back on me.

The next time I saw him, at lunch, he was all sunshine, in that chipper kind of Mormon way. Told me that we were meeting Vivian Chung and Brad Graham at Dante’s Pizza, three o’clock.

I didn’t know what Matt Barber told them. But he did tell them. And there we were, selling four eighths.

One half.

In sum.

I took another taxi, to the Colton Sav-On, and my mom was waiting for me at the kitchen table when I got home.

“Sit,” she commanded. She looked like she had aged a year in the six weeks since my dad died. She had always been pretty; she looked like she aged a year. “I want to talk to you.”

I specifically did not want to talk to her.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I tell her. “What’s done is done.”

She doesn’t say anything.

But I also knew that I didn’t have the strongest moral high-ground at the moment, considering I had been arrested about twenty-four hours ago.

I sit.

“I want you to know,” my mom told me, a twitch of a smile coming on her face, years suddenly falling off, “that the man whose bike you stole isn’t pressing charges.”

That I was not expecting.

I know I’m smiling. “Are you serious?”

Suddenly, everything. Gotten my life back. No criminal record, no jail, no chaos. No permanent scarlet letter.

“I found his number in the phone book,” Mom said, her smile growing. “And I called him. I had him over for coffee, and I just talked to him. About you, and I told him about your dad, and the tough time—”

“No.”

“And how Dad bought you the bike—”

“No!” I gasped. “How could you tell him that?”

“He was also an Army guy,” she continued, her smile falling a bit, her voice growing shakier, stuttering, as she continued down this script. “Desert Storm. Like Dad.”

I was a blur of emotions, except all of them were anger.

And she, she was still trying to smile.

Proud, like she had painted the fucking Sistine Chapel, but oh, I was angry.

“Why would you bring Dad into this?” I asked, standing up.

Her smile evaporated. She aged again. “What?” Her voice had suddenly gone warbly. She hadn’t expected this reaction, and she didn’t quite understand what was happening.

“You shouldn’t have brought him into this,” I said. “That’s the last thing he would’ve wanted. To be used like some get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Linda’s mouth was agape. “He would’ve done anything he could to keep you out of jail.”

“I’d rather be in jail. Then use him like this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “He would’ve done anything to keep you out of jail--and you know what? He would’ve been devastated--devastated--if he got that call from the police department. If he knew I had to go down to the police station in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail. For stealing a bike.”

“Don’t pretend like you knew him at all. He hated you with every fiber of his being.”

I continued to stand, looking down on her. In silence. For maybe a second, two, three.

Her eyes moved, independently of herself, to the clock over the microwave.

It was 4:38. It was her newest thing, after spending the week after my father’s death in a stupor: she only drank between 5 and 8, and believe me, she did not start at 5:01.

“He’s not here,” she said, her voice attempting to roll back the conversation. “I know you miss him. I miss him too. And the man whose bike you stole lost his father too, and he knows what it’s like to go through—”

“I’m not going through anything.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, her voice pleading. Her voice cracked: “We can’t go crazy.”

Her eyes glanced back at the microwave.

Like Duncan, she was betrayed by her eyes.

A person was always betrayed by their eyes.

“We’ll be fine,” I told her. “We’re going to be fine. I’ve got it under control.”

I knew she wanted to ask me where I was getting the money where I could suddenly pay rent, with a stack of twenty dollar bills.

I knew she wanted to ask me, but I knew she wouldn’t ask me.

Her eyes abandoned me again, for the microwave clock.

“We have to stick together,” she told me, without looking at me. “I love you.”

I stood up from the table. “Is that it?”

“Is what it?”

“So you got him to drop the charges,” I told her. “Is that it?”

She didn’t say anything. “And I want you home right after school for the next two weeks.”

“Fuck off,” I said. And I crossed the kitchen to go back to my room.

But then I turned back, threw open the refrigerator door. "It's five o'clock somewhere."

 

We had cut out red construction paper hearts that day.

Kindergarten. February 14, 1993.

One, two, three hearts.

One for Mom, one for Dad, one for Nicky. Traced each of their names in practiced block lettering.

“You fucking cunt!” A roar, from the other side of my bedroom door. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Sharon usually does pickup.” The plea. Her voice always sounded so meek when she was pleading, when they were fighting, when she was drunk. They always had to fight when she was drunk and she always had to plead when she was drunk. “She called me and said her battery was dead. What was I supposed to do? Just leave the kids in front of the school? They’re five, Mike.”

“So, let me get this entirely straight,” he spat, his voice seething, his anger threatening to boil over with each staccattoed word. “In the warped-fucking-lunatic world of Linda, you actually thought being a good mom meant: Getting in the car shitfaced. Driving to an elementary school with our three-year-old in the backseat. Picking up our five-year-old and someone else’s five-year-old, and driving them home. Drunk as a skunk. That’s you being a good mom?”

“I didn’t have any other choice--”

“You could have killed them!” He struggled to find the words, maybe. “You lied to me. You said you’d never drink when you were home alone with them. I ought to call the cops right now. Make it so you can never see the boys ever again.”

There was a clatter. Something whizzing towards my dad’s head, knocking the lamp to the ground.

And a thump. My mom being thrown against the bookcase.

I couldn’t see what was going on from behind our closed bedroom door.

Somehow, I knew exactly what happened.

“Nicky,” I whispered. “Do you want to color?”

Nicky looked at the door, then looked at me, gave me a toothy smile and a slight nod.

“God forbid you should ever lift a finger to help me at home, you worthless piece of shit asshole!”

“Okay, go to the desk,” I told Nicky. “I’ll get you something good.”

“Take care of the children. Don’t fucking drink. I bust my ass every single day, and you have two fucking things to do and you can’t even fucking do that.”

Nicky tottered over to the desk, climbed up on the chair. And I took a coloring book off the shelf.

My favorite coloring book. Power Rangers.

“You get a blue crayon,” I told him, glancing back towards the door, as if the chaos could spill over into us at any given moment. “Because I’m the Red Ranger, so you have to be Blue. Okay?”

Nicky placidly accepted the blue crayon, and I put the coloring book on the desk, over the three red construction paper hearts, and flipped open to a clean page.

“It’s just me and them, all day. You were gone a fucking year-and-a-half, and you’re still never here. I have to do everything. And I can’t get just one fucking moment of peace, ever.”

“They fight evil,” I told Nicky, as I started coloring in the Red Ranger. “Like Daddy did in Kuwait.”

“No, we absolutely can’t just put this behind us. I don’t love you. I hate you. How could you let this happen? How could anyone be so fucking stupid?”

“The Red Ranger’s the leader,” I told Nicky. “But don’t worry: the Blue Ranger’s the second-coolest.”

Nicky was very bad at coloring.

Couldn’t color in the lines, couldn’t identify the correct characters.

A wide abstract on his side of the page. The Black and Pink Rangers drowned in a swirl of blue.

“How could you let this happen?” I scolded, softly. “You warped-fucking-lunatic.”

Nicky smiled vacantly.

I kissed him on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Nicky,” I told him. “It’s only for a little while.”

Turned to another fresh page, the figures outlined in black-and-white, staring back up at us.

We began to color again.

There was nothing for a long time. No sound.

And then our door opened, and there was my dad, standing at the door in his fatigues, the rouge of anger only just beginning to drain from his face.

He came over, put his hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the forehead.

“Power Rangers, huh? Wow!”

I looked up at him, smiled, and nodded as proudly as I could.

He wouldn’t want to know I had been listening.

“I’m the Red Ranger,” I told him. “Nicky’s the Blue.”

“That makes sense to me,” he said. “Which one should I be?” He plucked up a yellow crayon. “Can I be Yellow?”

I giggled. “Daddy, the Yellow Ranger is the Chinese girl!”

He laughed at that. He had a great laugh, a big, bawdy laugh, a celebration. I lived for making him laugh.

He pulled a corner of the red construction paper hearts, unearthed the bounty. “Wow, did you make these in school?”

“I made one for everyone,” he said. “For you, for Nicky, for Mom.”

“You did a great job, bug,” he told me. “But you only need to make one for Mommy. Boys are only supposed to give girls Valentines.”

“Oh.”

“But I like mine anyway,” he said. “And I know Nicky and your mom are going to love theirs too. I’m going to hang all three on the refrigerator.”

 

Peter Adam Becker wasn’t the kind of guy you’d give a Valentine to, either.

Commitment! Romance! Homosexuality!

V-Day passed, unremarked upon, the Wednesday before Mardi Gras 2007.

Though, to be fair, we weren’t dating then. Not officially.

We had hooked up one, two, three times. Just oral, though not by my choice.

We had sexted a few times. We had sexted a lot of times.

All scattered across two months, which meant quick bouts of passion. long stretches of preoccupation. I hadn’t seen him in about a week.

“Well, looks like Operation: Get Our Pledges Laid Over Mardi Gras is coming along nicely,” Brett said, the Sunday before Mardi Gras, when he noticed Eddie Darien sitting with an attractive blonde across Bruff Cafeteria. “Connors, done. Darien, done. Becker, done. Fontenot, done, done, done. Callender, Revis, in progress.”

I froze.

For a split second, I wondered if they knew something.

I wasn’t altogether opposed to that. It would be quick, wouldn’t it, like a band-aid?

But clearly, they did not know.

“Becker got laid before Baker?” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “Who owes me five bucks?”

Rowen and Tommy Pereira both laughed.

As they did.

Baker scowled at me for throwing him under the bus.

As he did.

Tommy’s plastic knife sat on the table between us.

I wondered what would happen if I took the knife and plunged it into his hand.

But, of course, I wouldn’t do that.

That was not my thought. An obsessive-compulsive one. An errant thought from the either that I knew didn’t have to be acted on, wouldn’t be acted on.

But what if it did, if I did?

I took out my little bottle of hand sanitizer, squirted some into my hands, gave them something innocuous to do.

“Well, not laid yet,” Tommy told me. “But they’re going out on a Friday, and everyone knows a Friday date is guaranteed sex. She’s hot too. Jackie Hughes--the one from Veronica’s high school that she brought around to all those Iota Chi parties in the fall? Tri-Gamma pledge?” He looked at me. "You're so OCD that you're washing your hands in the middle of meals now?"

I never understood how OCD could become shorthand for cleanliness, a sunny Danny Tanner sort of disorder. OCD was filthy.

I rubbed my hands together more theatrically. "Sorry I'm not a slob like you, Tommy."

Of course, it was a plastic knife. It would probably break.

Chris was ignoring us, still ruminating over the sexcapades of Peter Adam Becker.

“See, I told you all, Becker’s just picky when it comes to girls,” he said. “I know he had a thing for Michaela Birdrock. He was holding out for a hot chick, and now he’s got one. Case closed.”

Sure, Chris. That was it.

“Are you picky too, Baker?” Brett asked him. “Is that your problem?” Chris gave him the finger.

“Unfortunately for Baker,” Rowen added, “it’s the girls that are too picky.”

That morning, Becker had texted me, “I want to put my lips around your big cock.”

I wondered what he had texted Miss Jackie Hughes.

And I knew shouldn’t have done it, but I did. I angled my phone away from the group, and typed: "I hear you have a date with some chick?”

There was no response for maybe thirty seconds.

Then: "It's complicated."

"No," I replied. "It's really not.”

I thought that was a sufficiently biting way to end it.

It’s not that I thought Becker and I were boyfriends. It wasn’t that. It was the thought of him fucking me on the side, while he strung along some poor girl.

It was like Jenna. How could you do that to a person?

I wouldn’t be complicit this time. I wouldn’t be complicit in destroying some girl because her boyfriend couldn’t be honest that he liked dudes.

I had planned a much longer freeze-out of Becker, but I saw him thirty-six hours later.

Lundi Gras night. After midnight: officially Mardi Gras Day.

I had come off eight hours of my shift at Bistro Napoleon, a server job I worked just long enough each week to sell pot to the rest of the waitstaff.

Jamal had gotten me the job. My hookup in New Orleans. Friend of J.C.

Friend or relative: J.C. had described Jamal as his cousin, but Jamal was black and J.C. was a very pale Mexican, so I didn’t know how literally to take it.

Becker was already drunk when I got to Pat O’Brien’s, cornered me at the patio bar.

He snatched my drink away the minute the bartender had given it to me, held it out next to him, and then gave me a disfiguredly drunk smile. “Still mad at me? Am I forgiven yet?”

Becker was not the kind of person who saw a lot of consequences.

Which made freezing him out punative justice, really.

Plus, I was too tired to have this conversation.

I really just wanted my drink.

“Look, I’m not going to pursue things with that girl,” he told me, his voice falling to a very faint whisper. “I don’t want to be with her. I want to be with you.”

“I just served rich people cocktails for the last eight hours,” I told him, paying the bartender. “Can I please have my drink?”

“No,” he said. “I need you to forgive me.”

Becker was not the kind of person who saw a lot of menial labor, either.

I sighed, dramatically. “You’re so high-maintenance. Look, it was really just work. All week. My world does not revolve around you, Peter Adam Becker. It does not. And yes, now I’m just legitimately pissed at you. Because we're having fun with this whole thing, and you're like, 'Oh, maybe I'll date some girl, even though I'm gay.'"

When he was drunk, his retreats into himself were even more pronounced.

Terrified that, at a crowded bar, someone had overheard me.

No one had. There was no one from Tulane within earshot.

I was exhausted, in every possible way.

And he had stolen my drink.

“Okay,” he said, apparently convinced that we were in safe territory. “So let’s pick back up where we left off.” He smiled again, that same drunk smile. “I’ll let you fuck me tonight.”

An hour later, horizontal.

I grabbed Becker by the calves, pressed his knees to his shoulders, and leaned my dick against his ass crack.

The kid was a natural.

Wrapping his legs around me like he’d done this a million times before.

And yet, clearly very nervous.

I moved my lips to his jawline. I burrowed into his neck, and he moaned.

"I'm going to fuck you so hard," I whispered, my lips a breath away from his neck. "Take that bottom virginity. Fuck you all night long."

"I want you to fuck me," he told me.

Confidently. He meant it. Even if he wasn’t sure if he meant it.

“Tell me you want me inside you.”

"I want you inside me.”

I lubed up my dick, and Becker was staring at me, eyes wide. Observing the wildlife.

"That much?" I said.

"You're going to thank me in about thirty seconds," I told him.

Becker’s knees were still on his chest. Afraid to move.

His pink asshole, framed by a light dusting of hair. Winking at me.

I placed one lubed-up finger against him, and he squirmed.

“Man up,” I whispered. And he did. He stopped squirming.

He was resolute. Not going to disobey me. Not when I was so close to taking his bottom virginity.

I pushed my finger in deeper. Felt his prostate. And Becker knew I felt it, because he let out an involuntary moan.

"Yeah," I whispered, as I probed his hole with a second finger. "I knew you'd like it when you got used to it."

Becker’s ass clamped down on the second finger.

"Too much," he said, severely. "No, too much."

I didn’t take it out. "You ever take a really big shit?"

"That's the last thing I want to think about right now."

"I just mean, your ass can handle something a lot bigger than this."

"But that's outbound," he told me, though he seemed to be relaxing--I could feel him relaxing. "This is running counter to the flow of traffic."

Becker was always going to make excuses. But I wanted to be in his ass and I wasn’t going to let him explain his way out of this one.

So I waited for him to relax again, prodded his prostate, he moaned, grunted, was breathing heavily.

"You'll take it like a champ."

It took more than a couple tries. No great city was built in a day.

And fuck. That virgin hole was the tightest thing I’d ever stuck my dick in.

Like a glove.

God. Fuck.

"You're so tight.”

He grunted in pleasure, with the rhythm of my hips.

Then, “Fuck me.”

And he didn’t have to tell me that twice.

When I fucked an ass, I liked to fuck an ass.

Use it. Punish it.

Becker was in ecstasy. Those eyes: rolled back, glazed over. Lost in a trance, but not lost in his own head; he was lost in me.

My hips picked up speed. He was moaning again. He was saying things like, “Fuck me. Fuck me harder.”

And I gave him harder.

By the end, I was giving him as hard as I could, taking my dick out and ramming it back in, and Becker was squeezing me in close, wrapping his legs tightly around my waist. Like he wanted me as close to him as possible.

I leaned down, I kissed him, but I didn’t stop fucking him and he didn’t stop pulling me in, until I was finally about to fall over the edge.

“I’m getting close,” I said, but I barely had time to say that, because I felt myself spontaneously erupting in the condom. And Becker was too--suddenly spewing cum across his chest, as if he we were both on a timer.

God.

So fucking good.

I collapsed on his chest, I kissed his cheek. “Good job.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know if this qualifies as ‘I’m going to fuck you all night,’” he told me, with a smile. “Big talk.”

“I was really thinking more of your health. You know, I don’t want to crash that tight little asshole of yours on the test drive.”

And there were moments when Becker came out of nowhere, lifted the veil on the sexual being that he kept locked away, a princess in a tower:

“Fuck me. I can handle you.”

 

“Okay,” says Sébastien. “Never have I ever…” He pauses, looks down at his three outstretched fingers, resting on top of the bar top at Le Manifeste. “Never have I ever had sex with a woman.”

Everyone’s eyes go to Nina, who scowls, puts a finger down. “I can’t believe I’m playing with three men and I’m the only person who’s ever had fooled around with a girl.”

“I tried,” Sébastien says, with a shrug.

“I tried too,” I tell her.

“Dyke,” offers Aaron Ackerman.

Nina gives him the finger. “One girl, one time, and it was basically just rubbing.”

Aaron smirks. “Isn’t all lesbian sex just rubbing?”

Nina rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I’m not a lesbian. It was an all-girl’s Catholic high school. It’s like when you’re in prison and you wind up with another inmate because they’re the only option you have?”

“So you’ve been to prison?” Aaron asks. “That’s how you know this?”

Nina scowls again. “Never have I ever been arrested. Happy?”

Aaron’s eyes dart to me, and only Aaron’s eyes, because my Tulane reputation hasn’t quite made it to Paris.

I lower a finger.

“Story time!” Nina says to me, clapping her hands together eagerly. “You were in jail?”

“I was not in jail,” I reply. “I’ve been arrested but I’ve never been convicted.”

Nina is clearly enthralled by this, and I look the Aaron, who is smiling knowingly, to see if he’s going to tell her that I sold drugs in college, but he doesn’t.

“What you go down for?” she asks.

“Misunderstandings.” Debate whether or not I should tell the stories, and I decide not to.

Aaron looks like he’s about to say something, but I cut him off before he can get any words out:

“Never have I ever been to a bar mitzvah.”

“Oh, now you’re just being vindictive,” he replies, putting a finger down. “After I was so nice to you. Never have I ever had sex in this bar.”

Nina looks at me and Sébastien, as we both quietly put our fingers down.

“Why do gay guys have such outrageous sex?” Nina asks, as Sébastien quickly pulls out of the game to take a drink order from another customer down the bar. “I’m attractive, I’m single, I’m sex-positive. Where’s my invitation to an impromptu romp on the floor of a bar?”

“All gays want is sex,” Aaron replies. “Girls are always, ‘Oh, why are all the good guys gay?’ and girls would fucking die if they had to put up with being in a relationship with a gay guy. Gays are way too damaged.”

And I get stuck on that word. Damaged.

I’ve never thought of myself as damaged, but Becker would have.

“Never have I have ever had sex with a guy from Ivory Coast,” I say.

Aaron lowers his finger. “Fine. Be that way. I’m officially the winner.”

“Officially the loser,” Nina corrects.

“Losing at Never Have I Ever is aspirational,” Aaron says. “But what do you know, you’re too busy perving on Catholic school girls.”

Nina gives him the finger. “Suck my dick, Aaron.”

“With pleasure.”

Sébastien starts putting on his jacket.

“Not to end the evening now,” Sébastien says, as he zips it up. “But it’s 8:14, which means Duncan will be here in one minute.”

“Duncan sounds very,” Aaron says, “punctual.”

Sébastien gives him a well-worn smile. “Duncan is Duncan. This, and that. Exactly. Boom, boom, boom.”

The door to the bar opens, and it’s of course Duncan as the clock strikes 8:15.

Duncan: wearing dark blue scrubs underneath a camel hair overcoat, looking utterly exhausted. A whole day of delivering babies, maybe longer than a day.

He quickly makes his way over to us, giving me and Aaron a polite and exceptionally awkward wave.

Sébastien stands up, and they give each other a quick peck on the lips. Exchange brief words in French, and then Sébastien heads into the back room of the bar.

“I’m guessing you’re the famous Duncan,” Nina says.

“Sherlock Holmes over here,” Aaron replies. “This is our friend, the unfamiliar Nina.”

Duncan smiles uncomfortably, looking between Aaron and me, as if trying to suss out what we’ve told our friends about our threesome.

It’s a Becker affect: the creeping suspicion that people are talking about you behind your back.

Though in this case, we’ve of course told Nina everything.

“Well, I’ll make a better impression when I’m not coming off a twenty-four hour shift, believe me,” he replies, neutrally, as if that’s what’s making this an uncomfortable introduction. To me, he adds, “Do I look as exhausted as I feel?”

“You look amazing,” I tell him. “Stay for a drink.”

Duncan glances out towards the street, then down at his watch. “Raincheck.”

“On the house,” Aaron offers. “We know the bartender.”

“No, we’re heading to my mum’s for dinner, actually” he says. “In Neuilly. My car’s idling outside.” He looks at me, with a faint smile. “I’m off Thursday, though. I’ll give you a call--we can grab a drink.”

That catches me just slightly off-guard, and I wonder what Duncan wants, exactly.

But.

“Sounds good.”

Sébastien comes out of the back room, bundled in his coat and scarf, messenger bag draped over his shoulder. “Thanks for the fun,” he tells us.

“Thanks for the free beer,” Nina replies.

And we watch them go.

Well. Nina and I watch them go: I’m very aware Aaron is watching me.

“What the hell was that?” he asks, the moment the door closes behind them. In an Irish accent, not an Australian one, he says, “‘I’ll give you a call, we can grab a drink.’”

“What.”

Aaron grins. “Kevin: you in danger, girl.”

I roll my eyes. “They have an open relationship and, either way, Duncan’s a nice guy. A drink doesn’t mean we’re going to begin some torrid affair.”

Nina shrugs. “I would. Do the two of them ever get with girls?”

“Not a chance,” I tell her.

“Well, you never know,” she says. “Maybe I’ll book an appointment with Dr. Duncan and see if he likes my chacha.”

“Oh my God, Nina,” Aaron tells her. “Please tell me you did not just call your pussy a ‘chacha.’”

“No chacha, no opinion,” Nina replies, lazily. She glances around the mostly-empty bar. “Well, now that our free drinks have gone off to a dinner party, what’s the plan?”

“Um, maybe our plan is ‘it’s a Monday and we should go do homework'?” Aaron replies.

“God, Mom,” Nina says. “I feel like I’m back in high school.” She looks at me, wags her finger. “Speaking of high school: remember that photo I put on Facebook last weekend of all of us at that gay club in Le Marais? Guess who messaged me about it?”

Considering Nina and I have exactly one person in common outside of Paris.

I can imagine the wheels turning in Matt’s head. That his world sprung a leak the moment he realized I’m friends with Nina.

And in a gay bar, no less.

And I can imagine how this conversation happened:

“Ha, I think that dude went to my high school. Small world.”

Followed by blatant attempts to determine what exactly Nina knows about him.

Matt always was very good at saving himself.

Also a Becker affect.

I give her a polite smile that I hope isn’t as pained as I hope it is. I try to downplay it: “Oh, that guy Matt from my high school?”

“Bing bing bing,” she replies. “He’s studying abroad in Florence this semester. Said he’ll probably make it up to Paris at some point. I’ll keep you posted--we can all meet up or something.”

There’s a roughly zero chance that Matt Barber wants to see me, let alone wants to see me with all of his friends and all of my friends.

Though it would be entertaining to see him spend an entire semester in Europe making up excuses for why he doesn’t want to visit Paris.

No. I don’t care what Matt does.

Because Matt does not exist outside of the past.

Like rereading an old book. You can relive the same sentences; you don’t learn anything new.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, nonchalantly. “I don’t really know him that well, but I guess that could be fun. Let me know when.”

And Matt sticks with me for the rest of the evening.

As I try unsuccessfully to write a paper.

His Facebook profile picture is him in front of an ornate Italian cathedral. Florence.

I only want you here, and I couldn’t remember how he said that bit. I only want you here or I only want you here.

Either way: Florence. Not far. But not here.

He just wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Is what I should remember.

Kevin: you in danger, girl.