by Lisa Henry
Jai is the king of bad decisions again today. Because why the hell not? Nick’s cute. He’d be cuter if he could shut up at some point, but it’s not a deal breaker. And it’s ten weeks. Nick will be off to college and Jai will hopefully be off to Argentina. Why the hell not pass the time with a fuck buddy? Or at least a BJ buddy.
Nick looks up again and quirks his mouth. “So, um, you haven’t said no.”
“Still trying to pick through your word salad.”
Nick grins again, color rising in his cheeks. “Yeah, I kinda do that.”
“I noticed.”
Nick’s flush deepens, and he appears suddenly shy. “Sorry.”
Jai shrugs. “It’s okay.”
“I’m just a bit distracted,” Nick says, gesturing. “With, um, your towel. And your general hotness.”
“Right.” Jai tightens his grip on the towel. “I should probably get dressed.”
He heads down to the basement before Nick can suggest he shouldn’t.
Nick’s in the living room when Jai reappears. He’s checking out the framed photographs on the bookcase. There are so many photos that it’s impossible to read the titles of the books behind them. Most of the photos are of Caden and Noah. When her grandkids arrived, Janice pretty much demoted Kat and Jai to also-rans. There’s at least one picture of Jai on the bookshelf though. He was twenty-one, and crouching beside a gravestone in Belgium. His dad’s grandfather had died there during the First World War. It had felt like something Jai had to do. To let him know the family hadn’t forgotten him.
“Wow, you had incredible hair!” Nick says. “Dreadlocks, man!”
Jai scrubs a hand over his head. He gets his hair buzzed whenever he gets home, but tends to let it grow out when he’s traveling. The dreads were a one-time thing though. He picked up lice in Paris three weeks after that photo was taken, and never again.
Nick squints at the photograph. “Where is this?”
“Waregem,” Jai says. “Belgium.”
“Wow.” Nick jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Cool. Do you travel a lot?”
“As much as I can,” Jai says. “I work summers, and travel the rest of the year.”
“How many countries have you been to?”
“Around forty?”
Nick’s jaw drops. “Really? That’s incredible!”
Jai raises his brows.
“Dude, I’ve only left Franklin, like, four times in my life, and three of those times were to visit my grandma in Michigan. The other time was Disney World and Universal Studios in Florida when I was ten, which, cool, but they didn’t even have Harry Potter World then.” He pulls his mouth down at the corners. “I would totally be in Gryffindor, by the way. I did a test on BuzzFeed. Like, three times until it stopped saying Hufflepuff, but I got there in the end.”
Jai’s not sure if he wants to laugh or strangle him.
Nick scratches his nose. “So, um, it really sucks you lost that job, I guess.”
“Something will turn up,” Jai says with a shrug.
“Cool.” Nick digs his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. “So, um, okay, I turned up and apologized, and that went pretty well, I think. So now I want to give you my number so you can text me when you want to hook up and stuff.” He unlocks the screen of his phone and hands it over to Jai. “So, yeah, just put it in there.” He snorts. “Your number.”
“You ramble a lot,” Jai says, entering his number in Nick’s phone.
“Yeah,” Nick agrees.
Jai hands his phone back. “So text me and I’ll have your number too.”
“Okay.” Nick flushes again, and shoves his phone back in his pocket. He shuffles his feet for a moment, then edges toward the front door. “Okay, so yeah, text me or call me or whatever.”
“Okay. See you around, Nick.”
“See you, Jai.”
Jai almost laughs when, a few seconds later, Nick comes into view out the front window, punching the air in victory. He even does a weird little dance.
“I can still see you,” Jai calls out the window.
Nick freezes like a raccoon caught in a porch light, then very slowly turns around to face the window. He gives Jai an awkward wave.
“Bye, Nick.”
Nick reaches down and picks his bike up off the grass. “Bye!”
He rides off without looking back.
Holy shit.
Jai really shouldn’t keep looking, but he can’t help himself. He also should have known better than to open the notebook Nick accidentally left behind, but he’s too shocked to castigate himself over that right now. He can’t stop turning the pages.
Holy shit.
Jai’s Ass: A sonnet (abandoned)
Jai’s ass is like the most incredible thing
I want to do things to it with my mouth
I look at it and heaps of angels sing
And (something that rhymes with mouth goes here)
He flips to the next page and discovers a limerick.
There once was a man called Jai
Who was the world’s most hottest guy
And I’m shit out of luck
If we never fuck
I’ll scream, “Why Jesus why Jesus why???????”
Jai can’t hold back the laugh that bursts out of him, half amusement and half horror. By rights he should feel outraged . . . but it’s also hilarious. Nick is insane. He has to be insane. Who does this? More to the point, should this be raising any red flags? Because it’s not. As much as Jai tries to imagine Nick as some creepy stalker, he can’t. Nick’s too . . . awkward? Hopeless? Ridiculous?
Jai flips through a few more pages before he closes the notebook. He carries it, and the mug of pens, down to his basement room. The last thing he needs is for anyone in the family to find it lying around. God knows there’s enough blackmail material in it for Kat to use against him for years.
He sits down on the folded-out couch, avoiding that one spring that always jabs him in the spine, and reaches for his phone.
He already has a text from Nick: Hey, it’s Nick.
Jai saves the number to his contacts.
Jai: You left your notebook here.
Nick: SHIT! DON’T READ IT!
Jai: Too late.
Nick: JGKWNEIKAFUFAJDSKEKK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jai: You’re ridiculous.
Nick: Noted. Still want me to suck ur dick again?
Jai: Yes.
Nick: YASSSSSSS! :D :D :D
It’s a special sort of torture having to wash the car he’s no longer allowed to drive, but Nick does it. He tried to argue that a little bit of mud gave his car character, but his dad very quickly shut that down with a “Whose car?” Okay, so his dad had paid for it, but come on.
Nick’s parents have left a list of chores he’s supposed to finish, and Nick’s half-assed his way through most of the list already. He’s also supposed to clean the pool, but, if he’s honest, that’s probably not going to happen. He has more important things to do. Like get on GayTube and study blowjob techniques. Because Jai Hazenbrook is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and Nick is going to not waste the fuck out of him.
He finishes washing the car, and puts the bucket and sponge back in the garage, then heads inside to microwave a Hot Pocket. He drops half of it on the living room couch, encourages the dog to clean it up, and then turns the cushion over to hide the stain.
Afterward, grounded or not, he decides to go visit Devon because he’s bored. And also because he’s not just waiting around for Jai to text him, okay? Even though he’s been in a state of perpetual horniness ever since he got Jai’s number.
Being grounded is not that big of a deal to get around. Especially not since both Nick’s parents work. They don’t know how to use the Find My Friends app on their phones to stalk him, so Nick just diverts the house phone to his cell phone and basically goes wherever the hell he wants. As long as he’s home by five, he’s golden. Also, he’s eighteen. What can they do, seriously? They ha
ve to know this punishment thing only works because Nick is going along with it. Or pretending to, at least.
Nick rides his bike to Pizza Perfecto, the pizza parlor where Devon works. Devon is working a lot of day shifts to make some money before college starts. Devon is going to Cedarville, not Ohio State. It’s a Christian college. His stepfather, Lewis, is paying. Nick knows Devon is pissed his dad didn’t offer to help him out so he could have gone to somewhere less Jesus-centric, but it’s not the first time Devon’s dad has dropped the ball. It’s kind of his thing. He’s a douchecanoe.
Cedarville is only a bit more than an hour away from Ohio State, but Nick’s already feeling the first pangs of separation anxiety. How is he supposed to survive without Dev? Hence his spending every day sitting in a booth at Pizza Perfecto, hanging with Devon when there’s a break between customers.
Ebony is cool too. She brings him free sodas and doesn’t judge him too harshly.
“You and Devon are disturbingly codependent,” she tells him as she slides into the seat opposite him.
She doesn’t always judge him too harshly.
“He’s my best bro,” Nick tells her. “When I was eleven and my first dog died, he turned up at my house with a sleeping bag and a tortoise, and didn’t go home for a week.”
“A tortoise?”
“He thought it would help. My mom made him take it back to the pet shop.” Nick jabs his straw into his soda, breaking up a clump of ice. “Point is, it’s not codependency, it’s true love.”
Ebony’s smile reveals a slightly crooked canine that somehow just makes her look cuter. If Nick were straight, he’d probably be all up in her lady business. “Well, how can a girl compete with that?”
“You totally can’t,” Nick says, then: “What?” His jaw drops. “You want to compete with that?”
Ebony is saved from answering by the arrival of the lunchtime rush.
“You could totally compete with that!” Nick shouts at her.
Devon, behind the counter, sends him a suspicious glare.
What?
If Nick’s going to have his best summer ever, why shouldn’t Devon?
Nick flashes him a grin and slurps on his soda.
Yes.
This is going to be the best summer ever.
Nick’s best summer ever takes a nosedive when he gets a puncture in his bike tire on the way home, and is late. His stomach sinks when he sees his dad’s car already in the driveway as he wheels his bike down the street. Clearly the universe hates him.
He dumps his bike in the garage and heads inside. His dad’s nowhere to be found. Then Nick realizes the back door is open, and he heads outside to find his dad, still wearing his tie, scooping leaves out of the pool with the net.
“Hey,” Nick says. “I was totally going to get to that.”
Chris levels a stare at him. “No, you weren’t.”
He doesn’t even sound angry, which makes Nick feel worse. “Dad—”
“Don’t,” Chris says. “I don't want to hear it.” He turns his attention back to the pool, dragging the net roughly through the water.
Nick has no words.
Whatever this is, it’s new.
Not . . . not his dad’s disappointment. Nick’s used to that. It’s never actually bothered him much, which he supposes makes him a terrible person, but usually his dad is disappointed about things that really don’t matter at all to Nick, like failing a math test, or leaving the milk on the counter overnight, or things going in one of Nick’s ears and out the other. Nick’s dad totally sweats the small stuff, right? The stuff that doesn’t count.
But this isn’t disappointment. This isn’t a lecture on how Nick needs to stop messing around and get serious. This is something new. This is weariness. This is Nick screwing up in so many ways that Chris is done, and Nick didn’t even know things were anywhere near that bad. It was just small stuff, wasn’t it?
“Dad?” His voice is suddenly shaky.
“I said I don’t want to hear it, Nick.” Chris slams the net onto the side of the pool so hard that the plastic edge cracks.
Nick goes inside again.
He goes upstairs to his bedroom and closes the door behind himself. He sits on the floor in the gap between his bed and the wall, and tries to process what just happened. He feels like a little kid again. He wants to cry, sort of. Except that would be dumb. It hurts though. It hurts that his dad must think he’s so selfish that he doesn’t give a fuck about how far he’s pushed him, when Nick just didn’t know. He thought they were okay.
Why didn’t anyone tell him they weren’t?
His gaze falls on the corner of the pages his mom printed out for him about housing at OSU. It seems just as complicated as the day she presented them to him, months ago now. Like he was supposed to decide where he was going to live from that? And not just shuffle the papers and randomly choose one, which is what he’s done. He still hasn’t read through them all, but his mom seemed okay with the one he picked, so. He drags the papers out with the toe of his shoe. He stares at them for a while, and then shoves them back.
He’s supposed to be thinking about college.
He’s supposed to be thinking about what courses he’s going to take, and what meal plan he wants, and what to pack . . . And all of this is supposed to make him excited, or something. He still hasn’t figured out the appropriate level of enthusiasm to show when his mom drags him to Walmart on yet another expedition to find clothes and storage boxes and sheets and towels.
He just . . . He doesn’t even know what he wants to do with his life. Is he supposed to? There are kids he went to school with who totally have all their shit figured out. What school they’re attending. What degree they’re getting. What career they’ll have. How old they’ll be when they find their partner, buy their house, and have their kids. Meanwhile Nick can’t even decide what to watch on Netflix tonight.
It’s weird.
When Nick was a kid, he’d sort of had a crush on Lee, his mom’s cousin. Lee was like eighteen or something when Nick was six. When Nick was six, eighteen had seemed very grown-up. Lee had a car and everything. And he was totally hot. Hot in a way six-year-old Nick didn’t really understand. He only knew he wanted as many wrestle-hugs as he could get. It wasn’t until years later that Nick actually understood what had been going on there. He still hopes to hell Lee doesn’t.
Point is, Lee was hot and grown-up and cool, and Nick had figured it was something that happened to everyone. That at some point you got tall and grew out of pimples and into the ability to understand what stock options are. So far, none of that has happened for Nick, and he’s starting to worry it maybe never will. Maybe growing up isn’t something that just happens organically. Maybe there’s something he’s supposed to do to make it happen. Like start watching PBS instead of the Cartoon Network? Which actually seems a little drastic, to be honest.
He just . . . There are things he cares about, okay? Like sometimes the world feels like such a shitty place it makes him want to scream, and other times it’s so beautiful he just wants to cry. Like last week, when he saw this little kid stop outside the dentist and point out a dandelion growing out of the cracks in the pavement. And the kid’s mom stopped too, and they both crouched down over the dandelion and looked at it. Then the phone rang, and when Nick looked out the window again, they’d gone. And all he could think was that if more people stopped and noticed dandelions, maybe the world wouldn’t suck so much. But when he wrote it down in the back of his notebook, it had just seemed sort of dumb.
A stab of embarrassment draws him out of his darkening mood.
His notebook. His notebook full of ass poetry that Jai has now seen.
Nick covers his face with his hands and groans.
Okay, so Jai wants to mess around even after reading Nick’s ass poetry, which is cool—which is beyond cool, actually—but still. Nick doesn’t have a lot of dignity, so he feels it’s important to treasure the tiny scraps he has. And now he has none
with Jai. Absolutely none.
He takes his phone out of his pocket and goes back through his messages from Jai, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
Nick: Noted. Still want me to suck ur dick again?
Jai: Yes.
Nick likes that yes. It’s unequivocal. Solid.
He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.
Okay, so maybe he’s really bad at adulting, but at least he’s going to lose his virginity before college, right? That’s pretty grown-up. Assuming Jai wants to go there, or course. But Nick’s watched a lot of porn. He’s fairly sure that eighteen-year-old virgins who are kind of good-looking, at least in a favorable light, are in high demand. And this way, by the time he gets to college, he’ll know what he’s doing when it comes to sex, right? Like, he won’t mess it up really badly and the whole campus will find out, basically.
He hears his mom’s car pull into the driveway and then, a few minutes later, the murmur of his parents’ voices downstairs.
He tries to imagine them when they were young. Tries to imagine that maybe there was a time in their lives when they did dumb things or almost cried about dandelions too. He’s spent his whole life with them as his parents. He wonders what they’re like as people. Once, at one of his dad’s work functions, his mom got drunk and led the whole room in a conga line. The craziest thing about it was that his dad joined in on the end, and Nick felt like he was watching someone else’s parents. Or maybe watching the people they were before they were parents.
It was funny. It was somehow sad too. And scary, maybe, in ways Nick can’t quite articulate. Like, does becoming an adult mean losing a part of himself? Or is he just being a fucking teenage drama queen?
Nick hauls his laptop down from the bed and opens it. He goes straight to Facebook and opens up a chat window. Devon’s online.