by Lisa Henry
It’s his dad’s turn to hum.
“Good,” Nick lies, because his mom deserves at least the semblance of a conversation, right? She’s trying so hard, he almost feels embarrassed for her.
Her smile ratchets up a few more uneasy degrees. “Oh, that’s great! What did you learn today?”
Um . . . that he’d rather slit his own wrists than become an accountant?
“Like phone stuff?” Nick says hesitantly. “And Charlene showed me how to schedule appointments and stuff.”
None of it was exactly rocket science, but Nick still screwed most of it up at least once. He’s sure Charlene is dreading tomorrow just as much as he is. There is nothing spiritually redeeming in office work. Even the free office supplies can’t make up for the soul-crushing horror that is an office job. Except what else is there? Nick is allergic to the sun and the outdoors, and despite his crazier fantasies of completing his criminology degree and getting a job in law enforcement, what are the chances he’d not accidentally shoot himself with his own firearm? Nick knows his limits. He’s just not so sure of his strengths.
“That sounds good, honey,” Marnie says, and pushes the dish of beans toward him.
Nick can take a hint. He scoops some onto his plate.
“Um, so can I get my car back now?” he asks. “Devon’s having a pool party on Saturday, and it would be cool if he didn’t have to swing by and pick me up first.”
His dad glances at him. “We’ll see.”
Which is probably as good an answer as he’s going to get.
Nick nods and eats his beans.
And then fucks everything up after dinner.
Everything.
He’s on Skype with Devon, and he thinks his parents are downstairs watching TV. And he forgot to close his door.
“It was horrible, Dev! I thought I was going to die of boredom! Seriously, twenty years from now, if I’m as boring as my dad, you have to promise to kill me quick and put me out of my misery, okay?”
“Nick—”
“I’m not even kidding!”
“Nick!” Devon looks horrified.
“What?” Which is right when Nick’s attention is caught by movement in his own little Skype screen. He spins around on his chair just in time to see his dad stepping back from the doorway, his expression tight. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck.”
“Bro,” Devon says, and then sighs. “Fuck, bro.”
Fuck indeed.
Nick: My dad hates me.
Devon: Did u talk to him?
Nick: No! ARE YOU CRAZY?
Devon: Ignoring it won’t make it go away, Nick.
Nick: I literally asked you to kill me if I turned out like him. There is no good way to spin that.
Devon: Don’t spin it then. Just say sorry.
Nick: I don’t think that’s going to cut it.
Devon: Dude, u can’t just ignore it.
Nick: Can I come and stay with u?
Devon: . . .
Nick: He HATES me and I’m a horrible person.
Devon: You’re not a horrible person.
Devon: Mostly.
Devon: Sometimes.
Devon: ILY.
Nick: Also, Mom said I don’t need to go to work with him tomorrow, so I think I won?
Devon: That’s not winning, bro.
Nick: Just. I don’t know when it got so bad with us?
Devon: Ur dad isn’t as bad as you think. I will swap u for Lewis.
Nick: Lewis isn’t as bad as YOU think.
Devon: I will swap u for my real dad.
Nick: No thank you.
Devon: See? Ur dad isn’t so bad. So man up and apologize before he grounds u for the weekend and u don’t get to rub yourself all over Jai in my pool.
Nick: Good point. ILY too, Dev.
Devon lives east of the river, a few streets away from Franklin High School, on Clearbrook Drive. It’s the sort of uniform suburban neighborhood that Jai kicked back against so hard when he was growing up, and he still feels a prickling sense of something like claustrophobia when he turns onto the street. He wonders if it’s the proximity to the high school—a place he’s avoided successfully since graduating—that brings those old feelings up again. Or the fact that he’s going to a party for teenagers.
Yeah. Probably the second one.
The party is in full swing by the time Jai arrives. The house is packed with kids holding red Solo cups. The pool is even more packed. There’s music thumping from the stereo, and it’s kind of chaotic. Jai finds Nick hanging by the snacks. He straightens up when Jai approaches him, eyes already a little glazed.
“Hey, Jai! You made it. That’s awesome!”
Jai doesn’t drink that much—he prefers to get stoned when the opportunity arises—but he takes the cup of beer that Nick offers him, and reflects for a moment on his life choices. Even when he was a teenager, he didn’t party like this, so what the hell is he doing here now?
Is it possible he’s a twenty-five-year-old curmudgeon?
Then Nick grins at him, and something inside him eases a little.
Jai knows a few of the guests from working at Pizza Perfecto with Devon and Ebony, but most of the crowd seem to be from Devon and Nick’s graduating class. Listening to them, Jai gets the impression that Nick wasn’t exactly popular in school. Everyone loves Devon and seems to sort of tolerate Nick.
“Who is that guy?” one kid asks when Jai’s not quite out of hearing range. “No fucking way is Stahlnecker banging someone like that!”
Jai doesn’t think Nick heard, but he puts an arm around him just in case, because fuck that kid.
Nick grins up at him, nose wrinkling. “Hey.”
“Hey again.”
Nick snort-giggles. It’s ridiculously cute.
The heart of the party seems to be the pool, but there’s a secondary group in the large living room. The walls are papered in something hideously floral, and a velvet painting of the Last Supper takes up most of the wall above the TV. Someone has taped a pair of black-rimmed glasses to Jesus’s face.
“It’s bullshit!” Ebony exclaims as they approach the group.
“What’s going on?” Nick asks.
Ebony rolls her eyes. “These guys want to play Seven Minutes in Heaven.” She rounds on the group. “We’re supposed to be adults, not high school freshmen!”
One of the other girls grimaces. “It’s just a bit of fun, Ebony!”
“Fine.” Ebony picks up the two mixing bowls full of scraps of paper. She tips the contents of one bowl into the other, and mixes them around. “Who wants to play now?”
“I’m still game,” the girl says, hands on her hips.
The first two names drawn are Stephanie and Anna. The girls in question look at one another, shrug, and head for the closet. Ebony sets the timer. A few of the kids chatter excitedly, but Jai figures there’s nothing happening behind the closet door apart from two straight girls counting down the clock.
Hipster Jesus doesn’t look impressed.
Nick takes him by the hand and leads him toward the kitchen. “Did you ever play Seven Minutes in Heaven?”
“No.” Games like that are one of the big reasons Jai avoided high school parties. Forced interaction with another person with the added bonus of potential humiliation? Not something Jai sought out. “I never went to many parties.”
“Really?” Nick screws his face up. “But you’re hot!”
“And curmudgeony,” Jai tells him.
Nick grins and bumps his shoulder against Jai’s. “No way, dude. You’re all Zen, and you, like, exist on a different plane from the rest of us. We’re all these soulless robot consumers, and you’re sitting somewhere contemplating the sunset and the meaning of the universe. Or the meaninglessness. Jury’s still out on that one.”
He’s an idiot. Jai kisses him for it.
“Nick!” someone yells as they enter the kitchen. It’s Devon. He’s drunk too, or well on his way there. “Nicky!”
They h
ug like it’s been years since they saw one another, instead of, most likely, minutes.
“Hey, Jai,” Devon says with a brilliant smile. “It’s cool you made it, man! I was worried Nick would be a total wallflower, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed the decor, but the last thing this house needs is more fucking wallflowers.”
Jai snorts at that. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“Ugh. My mom’s taste is terrible.” Devon grins again. “Have you guys seen Ebony?”
“She’s in the living room, hating on Seven Minutes of Heaven for being heteronormative, I think,” Nick says. “She mixed all the boys’ names and girls’ names together.”
Devon’s smile softens into something sickeningly smitten. “She’s so incredible.” Then his smile vanishes and he grips Nick by the neck of his T-shirt. “Am I a fuckboy?”
“What?” Nick slurps at his beer.
“You know. A fuckboy.” Devon chews his bottom lip for a moment. “A bro.”
“You’re my bro,” Nick says staunchly.
They fist-bump, and then Devon looks accusingly at his hand. “But seriously, like, am I a fuckboy? Like look at me. I’m white, I’m middle-class, and I’m from Ohio. I could not be more of an entitled douche, right? I reek of privilege, dude! I also say ‘dude’!” His eyes grow wide.
Nick slings his arm around Devon’s shoulders. “Devon, you are not a fuckboy. You’re an overthinker. Fuckboys don’t overthink anything. Fuckboys don’t think.”
“Are you sure?” Devon asks.
“Totally sure,” Nick promises. “Also, maybe you should drink some water, okay?”
“Okay.” Devon still looks a little anxious, but he pats Nick on the back. “Thanks, bro.”
He heads off toward the living room.
“I should probably drink some water too,” Nick says.
“Probably,” Jai agrees mildly.
Nick stares into his cup for a moment. “After I finish this, I will.”
Then he takes Jai by the hand and draws him upstairs.
“So, this is Devon’s room,” Nick announces, slapping his palm around on the wall near the doorframe until he finds the switch and the light flickers on.
“Are we supposed to be upstairs?”
“Please,” Nick says, drawing Jai inside and shutting the door behind them. “I’m totally allowed in Devon’s room whenever I want.” He crosses to the dresser and hauls the bottom drawer open. He reaches over and pulls a T-shirt out, holding it up for Jai’s inspection. “This is mine. I practically live here.”
He bundles the shirt back into the drawer, closes it with his foot, and sets his cup of beer on the dresser. Then he reaches forward and tries to hook his fingers through Jai’s belt loops. He misses, shrugs, and grabs Jai’s hips instead, urging him over toward the bed.
Jai lets himself get pulled onto the bed, ending up lying on his side with his legs tangled in Nick’s. He lifts a hand and places it on the side of Nick’s face and kisses his beer-bitter lips. Nick sighs and his mouth falls open under the gentle pressure.
“I was totally going to ask if I could top you tonight,” he whispers when Jai breaks the kiss. “Then I had some beer for, like, Dutch courage, and then some more, and now I’m so courageous I’m sort of seeing double, and I think if you had two asses I wouldn’t know which one to aim for.”
Jai laughs.
“I said that aloud, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Whoops.”
Jai kisses him again. “’S’okay. We’ve got plenty of time for you to top me when you’re sober.”
“We have like weeks,” Nick says, eyes widening. “That’s hardly any time at all. Then I’ll be at college, and you’ll be . . .” He wrinkles his nose. “Abyssinia?”
“Argentina.”
“Close?” Nick hedges.
“Not even.” Jai curls his hand over Nick’s hip and rubs a circle with his thumb.
From downstairs and outside, the sound of the party is muted. The bass is a dull thumping heartbeat, and the shouting and laughter seems almost distant. It’s quiet and peaceful in Devon’s room, and Jai thinks he could probably fall asleep like this, with Nick curled against him. Then Nick is moving, a careless elbow hitting Jai in the chest. He’s twisting off the bed like a cat mid-fall. A moment later he’s back again, leaning against the headboard of Devon’s bed with a laptop balanced on his stomach.
Jai sends him a questioning look and rests his head on Nick’s shoulder.
Nick opens the laptop and enters the password.
“You know his password?”
“Please. We share the same brain.”
“Huh.” Jai watches the screen as the laptop boots up. “Who’s using it at the moment?”
Nick laughs.
There’s a folder on Devon’s laptop labeled NO, NICK, NO!
“Straight porn,” Nick says as the pointer hovers briefly over it. He selects the next folder instead: MOVIES. “Dev’s got my back.”
He clicks on a movie.
It’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Jai has seen it before. It’s okay. He’d never tell Nick that he’s at best ambivalent about it, of course. That’s sacrilege in Nick’s world. And it’s sort of fun to watch Nick watch the movie. Jai can see the tension ease in him the moment the Shire comes into view. He’s rapt, his eyes wide. His mouth is hanging open a little, his bottom lip damp. Jai wants to lick it. He settles for shifting up and putting an arm around Nick instead, and letting Nick lean into him.
“I wish I lived in Middle Earth,” Nick mumbles a while later as the hobbits set off on their quest. “I wish someone would come along to me and say, ‘Nick, you need to do this thing. The fate of the world depends on it.’ It would be good to have a purpose, you know? To be important.”
Jai looks at him questioningly. “You think you’re not important?”
Nick huffs. “I think I’m just the same as every other kid at this party. I think that when we’re little, they tell us stories about being heroes and saving the universe, and then when we get older, they tell us to grow up and stop believing in dumb stories anymore.”
“I don’t think you’re the same as every other kid here,” Jai says quietly.
It’s true. He flashes back to Kat—“You like him, like him!”—and ignores the burst of emotion in his chest that is half warm affection and half panic. Jai doesn’t fall for people. He likes people, and he messes around with people, and he stays friends with people, but he doesn’t fall for them. That’s not in the plan at all.
“I don’t know what I want to do,” Nick says, his voice growing fierce for a moment. “I don’t know what I want to be. I don’t even know who I am right now, I guess, and everyone else seems to have it all figured out.”
“I don’t.” Jai meets his worried gaze. “And I’m okay with that. Maybe one day I’ll find some place I want to settle down, get a long-term job or whatever, but if I don’t, so what? I like doing what I’m doing.”
Nick sighs. “I feel like . . . I feel like I’m stuck in some weird feedback loop. Like here I am trying to rage against the machine or whatever, except there’s nothing here to rage against. I get really angry and stuff, but I don’t even know why. And I’m not dumb. I know that college is a good idea, but I just don’t think I’m ready, and I don’t want to go. And every time I imagine actually getting up the courage to tell my dad that, I either imagine him totally losing his shit or, best-case scenario, he says, ‘Okay, Nick. If you don’t want to go to college, what do you want to do?’ And I don’t have the answer to that!” The corners of his mouth turn down. “And what have I got to complain about, really? Nothing. I’m lucky, and I know that, but lucky isn’t the same thing as happy, is it?”
“No,” Jai agrees.
“So what do I do?” Nick asks, eyes wide and imploring. “What do I do, Jai?”
“I don’t know.” Jai shrugs, and they sit in silence for a while as the hobbits are pursued by the Nazgûl. “I really don’t have
my shit together any more than anyone else, you know? I’m not Zen, and the only reason I started traveling was because my dad died and I was pretty much a fuckup for my entire adolescence. You think you’re kicking back against nothing? Jesus, you should have seen me. I thought that if I could get away from this town, it’d be a massive ‘fuck you’ to everyone from school, and that somehow I’d also figure stuff out.”
“And you haven’t?” Nick asks anxiously.
“Still working on it,” Jai says. “But that’s okay. I like traveling. It’s the journey, right, not the destination?”
“You’re totally Zen, actually.”
“I don’t think you know what that word means.” Jai elbows him.
Nick smiles. “Probably not.”
They lean against each other and watch the movie some more.
“Oh, this! This bit here!” Nick exclaims as the hobbits enter the tavern in Bree. “The first time I saw this, I was six, maybe? I totally fell in love with Strider.”
Strider inhales on his pipe, illuminating the planes of his face.
Nick sighs, and the laptop on his stomach dips. “So hot.”
Then, for some reason that can only be related to all the beer he’s consumed, Nick starts to giggle uncontrollably.
Jai’s not a fan of the movie, maybe, but Nick isn’t wrong. He takes the laptop off Nick’s wildly vibrating stomach and sets it on his own so they can keep watching.
Devon: Dude!
Devon: DUUUUUUUDE!
Devon: Bro?
Devon: I saw yu go upstars with Jai!
Devon: You’d bettr not be gettng jizz in my bed.
Devon: I am srious!
Devon: Nickeeeeeeeeee!
Devon: I need my bed! Not doing it with Ebony in my parnts bed!
Devon: I hate you sooooo much rigt now.
Devon: Lube ad condoms in top drawer.
Devon: I still hate you thogh.
Jai dozes off just as the Fellowship leaves Rivendell. Nick divides his attention between the laptop screen and Jai’s profile at first, but then it’s all about Jai’s profile. He’s so hot. And also smart. And also nice. Because he listened to all of Nick’s earlier word vomit about quests and college and not knowing who he is, and not once did Nick get even a hint of “What the fuck is this kid on?” in his expression.