We walked out into the hallway. “I can’t go back to class,” I said.
“Me neither. What do you want to do?”
“Let’s ditch and go sit in my car and wait for Rusty,” I said, and turned to walk outside.
“That’s a sexy name. Rusty. I like how it sounds rolling off of my tongue. Rusty,” she laughed, saying it again under her breath. “That was pretty cool what he did, though.”
And it was. It felt like more than anyone had ever done for me in my entire life, including Sam. “You helped out too.”
“I just wanted to have a good reason to hit Pat. He’s such an asshole,” Cher said, acting like she was punching him in the face.
When we got to my car, we sat down low inside so no one would see us. I texted Rusty and let him know where we were and told him to meet us when he got done.
“Do you think they’ll expel him?” I asked.
“Who? Pat?”
“No, Rusty,” I said.
“Absolutely not. Pat’s always picking fights,” she said as she lit a cigarette. “But he might get suspended.”
“Do you think it would help if I went and talked to the Dean?”
“We tried. They don’t care about kids like us. They only give a shit about kids like Pat because he brings home state championships. That’s why they’ll never expel him,” she explained.
“So what do we do?”
“Nothing. Maybe Rusty scared the shit out of him and it won’t ever happen again.”
A few minutes later, I saw Rusty walking towards our car. He was holding a white towel up to his face.
“Hey,” he softly called out.
I got out the car and ran up to him. “What happened?” I said, looking under the towel to find a dark bruise below his eye. I tried to touch it but he flinched.
“We got suspended for two days. And the Dean’s going to call my mom and tell her I have to be enrolled in anger management classes before I can return. She’s going to kill me,” he said.
Rusty looked around me and saw Cher sitting up in the car, listening to our conversation. “Hi,” she said, shyly. “I’m Cher.”
Rusty smiled but I could tell he was upset. “Can we get out of here?”
We got in the car and I asked Rusty where he wanted to go. He explained that his mom had dropped him off for the last half of school and then she had gone back to the hospital. “I’m on my own for the rest of the night so we can do whatever,” he said as he pitched the towel out of the window, “as long as it gets us away from this shithole.”
I pulled out of the parking lot and started driving as Cher asked Rusty a thousand questions about where he was from and what it had been like in Boston. She even asked him if he had a brother.
We drove around for a long time, until Cher said she had to go home because she was going to work with her mom. When we got there Ruth was standing in the front yard, watering plants. Cher introduced Rusty to her mom and said, “This is Danny’s lover.”
We drove away and Rusty looked over at me. “I hate that word, lovers. It sounds so sexual.”
“Maybe we will be,” I smirked.
“Maybe.”
“Thanks Rusty,” I said.
“For what?”
“You know for what. For today. For beating up Pat.”
“For the record, I didn’t beat him up. We both have black eyes and suspensions, so no one really won.” He looked in the side view mirror at his eye, flinching again as he touched it.
“That’s not the point. You protected me. No one’s ever really done that before except for Sam.”
“I told you if Pat ever messed with you again I was going to beat his ass,” Rusty said. “And I meant it.”
“I know. I just didn’t really think you would.”
Rusty reached over and kissed me. “He won’t be fucking with you for a long time. Not as long as I’m around,” he said, checking the time on his phone. “It’s early. We have the rest of the afternoon. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, my mom’s not home.”.
“And?” I asked, sarcastically.
“No one’s home,” he said as his lip curled into a smile.
“And what does that mean?”
“Let’s go to my house.”
“OK,” I smiled. He reached over and squeezed my thigh and then slipped his fingers under the edge of my shorts. He didn’t go any further, he just let them rest there, lightly grazing my thigh.
“What are we going to do when we get to your house?” I asked.
“I have an idea that you already know the answer to that question,” he laughed. “But first I need to clean up my eye. It stings really badly.”
“What will your mom say when she sees it?”
“She’s gonna be pissed. This isn’t my first fight. We kind of have a deal.”
“What’s the deal?”
“No fighting,” he said blankly, looking out of the window. “I just don’t like her worrying about me. She has so much to worry about already.”
I then remembered what Mom had said to me about coming to her if I ever needed her help. “I think I might have an idea.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Never mind. I’ll tell you later. Let’s just get to your house so we can take care of your eye.”
Rusty nodded and tried to smile, but winced from the pain.
When we got to his house, no one was home, but the smell of arepas lingered in the air. Rusty locked the door behind us and immediately walked up the stairs into his bedroom with me right behind him. We lit candles and a stick of incense, waving the smoke around the room. He turned on the record player and held up an album; Nico Chelsea Girl. “Do you like Nico?”
“I’ve never heard of her,” I said.
He smiled and put the record on. “Side B is my favorite. I love the song Chelsea Girls.” He sat and watched the record spin as the folksy song started slowly, a lone flute accompanying her voice.
“I like it. It reminds me of something, but I’m not sure what.”
Rusty walked over to the bed and pulled me down with him. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I said, smelling his scent of cedar again. “You always smell so good.”
He pulled my shirt off over my head and then I pulled his shirt off. He started to take Sam’s watch off, but I stopped him.
“What?” he asked.
“It was Sam’s. I only take it off at night.”
Rusty nodded and fell onto his back. I traced the line of dark hair around his belly button with my finger and started unbuttoning his shorts.
“Slow down,” he laughed. “We’re not in any hurry.”
He pulled me down on top of him and I could feel the warmth of his body under me. We kissed and explored each other as the songs faded into each other in the background, one after another until the record was done.
Rusty stood up quickly and walked over to the record player. He pulled out the album I had bought him, realizing it had four records. “Which one is best?”
“Start with Just Like Heaven,” I said.
The song started and Rusty stood up. He smiled at me and started dancing slowly to the guitar riffs going up and down with the chords of the keyboard. As I started singing the words I had known almost all of my life, Rusty started unbuttoning his shorts, finally letting them drop to the floor. He stood there, swaying side to side, in a pair of Hanes briefs, obviously excited. His curly, black hair flopped crazily on his head while he danced.
I laid back and put my arms over my head, singing the words to the song and watched the best show I had ever seen. It felt like we were the only ones in the whole world, trapped in some idyllic dream inside of his bedroom, filled with wild beast stuffed animals and sandalwood incense.
Rusty jumped on the bed and pulled my shorts and underwear off, leaving me completely naked. Instead of feeling exposed, I felt extremely comfortable, turning on my side and letting my legs slide under
his cool sheets. Rusty joined me under the sheets and took off his underwear, tossing them behind him as we started kissing. His body pressed up against mine. I closed my eyes, and realized that it didn’t feel forced. It felt natural. It felt right.
His body felt perfect next to mine. I liked the feeling of his hairy legs intertwined with mine. I liked knowing that he was excited because he was with me and nobody else. I stopped kissing him and touched the bruise under his eye. “I never took care of your eye.”
“Yes you did. It doesn’t hurt at all anymore,” he said, smiling and then he started kissing me again.
We spent the rest of the afternoon discovering each other’s bodies; the similarities and the differences. We found out what felt good and what didn’t, but most of it felt good. And just when I didn’t think we could get any closer to each other, we found new ways to get closer. The only thing that lasted between us was the truth of how we felt about each other.
When it began getting dark outside, Rusty turned to me, “Did I meet all of your porno fantasies?”
I laughed, “All of them.”
“Really?” he said.
“I mean, there’s still stuff I want to do, but we can wait.”
“What stuff?”
“You know,” I said, turning the other way.
“No, I don’t know,” he teased, pulling me back towards him.
“I’m not going to say it just because you want to hear it out loud.”.
“But what if I don’t know what you want and I never do it because you don’t tell me?”
I laughed, “You’re an asshole. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Maybe,” he laughed backed. “Is that really something you want to do?”
I nodded. “I think so. Honestly, it scares me. But I’d like to try it with you.”
“How do we know who does what?” Rusty seemed nervous for the first time that day.
“Why can’t we just figure it out as we go, like we did today?”
He smiled, “You make everything seem so easy.”
And then we were back at it again, until my phone started buzzing on the floor. I grabbed it and saw I had three missed calls from my mom. “I should probably call her,” I said, sitting up, immediately self-conscious of calling my mom while I sat there naked.
She asked me what time I was going to be home and asked if Rusty wanted to come over for dinner. I told her yes and that we would be home in an hour.
“Just enough time to figure out some of the answers to your questions,” I said, turning the record over. As the speaker started pumping The Cure’s Icing Sugar, I looked at Rusty. “Sit back. Now it’s my turn to dance.”
Chapter Twenty
Rusty was concerned about what I would tell my Mom about his eye. “The truth,” I said as we pulled into the driveway. “She already thinks I’m bullied all of the time, so at least she’ll think someone’s looking out for me.”
But that wasn’t what happened at all. “Rusty! Do you know how bad you could have been hurt?” she semi-screamed. Rusty blinked painfully as Mom applied ointment to his bruise. “I do not tolerate violence.” She looked up at Alex who just shrugged his shoulders.
“Did you get him really good?” Alex inquired.
“Yeah,” Rusty said.
“Atta boy,” Alex jested, cracking open a beer can. “If you can’t beat em, then beat em up.”
“Alex!” Mom shouted. “Do not encourage these boys to fight, especially not with your track record.”
Alex laughed and nodded.
“Did you used to get into fights?” Rusty asked Alex.
“I had to.”
“You did not have to,” Mom interjected.
“No, you’re right. If I wanted to continue to let your mom protect me and cause a scene every day in the cafeteria shouting at the top of her lungs, then I wouldn’t have had to fight. But I just got sick of it.”
I thought about Cher and how she had come to my rescue. “What happened?”
“Yes,” Mom laughed, “tell them.”
Alex sat down on one of the stools at the kitchen island. “I was tired of being picked on. It was relentless. Every day I was called names, tripped in the halls and pushed into lockers. They even vandalized my car. Teachers never did anything about it,” he said, taking a sip of his beer. “Your mom even made me talk to my counselor about it, but she told me to get over it, that a little bit of teasing would just make me stronger. Can you believe that? A little bit of teasing.”
“It was pretty bad,” Mom replied as she kissed Rusty’s cheek to let him know she was done.
“So anyway, this guy named Mike Shaunessy was the worst. He was kind of the ring leader,” Alex said.
“Mike Shaunessy. What an asshole,” Mom muttered.
“Yeah, Mike Shaunessy. He had this beautiful Saab that was his pride and joy. Anyway, he wouldn’t stop so I asked around and found out different ways to destroy a car. One day, while we were in class, I went outside and put sand in the gas tank, super glued his windshield wipers down and caulked all of his doors shut.”
Rusty immediately started laughing, “That’s perfect!”
“I thought so,” Alex said.
“Except someone saw him,” Mom chimed in. “and then he was expelled.”
“They expelled you for that?” I asked.
Alex nodded. “But not before Mike Shaunessy and three of his friends waited for me after work one day and beat the shit out of me, leaving me for dead in the dumpster at McDonalds.”
“Seriously?” I asked, surprised that I had never heard this story. “But I thought you graduated from high school with Mom and Dad.”
Alex shook his head. “Nope, I got a job slinging burgers and got my GED.”
“What happened after that? What happened to Mike Shaunessey?” Rusty asked.
Alex looked at Mom and they both started laughing. “My parents pulled some strings and got me into IU, I wrote a bestseller and now I’m sitting here with you.” He swigged his beer.
“Mike Shaunessey is the manager of the gas station by your high school,” Mom laughed to herself. “See. Some of the things moms tell you do come true.”
“My mom said I was going to become a lawyer, marry a nice Jewish girl and give her lots of grandchildren,” Alex laughed.
“It’s not funny. The outcome could have been worse. You could have ended up dead,” Mom said, slapping his arm.
“I understand that Alice, and we’ve had this conversation ten thousand times, but there comes a point when you can only take so much. I think if the schools and the parents aren’t going to do anything about it, then maybe we need to start teaching kids to fight back.” He patted Rusty’s back. “I’m proud of you kid, but she’s right, you could have gotten really hurt, even if that makes me sound like a complete hypocrite.”
“Well, I am going to do something about it,” Mom said.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But I told you if you ever needed help to come to me and now you’re coming to me so I’m not going to let you down.”
“Just please don’t make it worse, Mom. OK? I mean, don’t get Pat into more trouble because then it will just make it worse for me.”
Mom stood up and hugged me from behind. “Just let me take care of it. But, Rusty, I think you should stay here tonight since your mom is still at the hospital and all three of us can go to school together in the morning and talk to the Dean,” she said. “Call your mom and tell her you’re staying here tonight, in separate rooms, and let me introduce myself.”
Rusty and I looked excitedly at each other.
“Separate rooms,” Mom said again.
He dialed his mother and spoke to her in Spanish for a few minutes and then handed the phone to Mom. She walked into her bedroom and closed the door before talking.
“Do you guys want to order pizza or Chinese? Alex asked.
“I guess no one cooks in this family?” Rusty laughed.
 
; I responded, “My dad is the cook,”
“I could eat pizza every day,” Rusty said.
“This week, I feel like I have.” I laughed, rummaging through the refrigerator for a couple of Dr. Peppers.
Alex took our orders and called in the pizza. Mom walked out of the bedroom, shaking her head. “She’s not very happy with you. I’m getting the feeling maybe your mom isn’t as progressive thinking as I am?”
“Not at all. But she tries,” Rusty said.
“It’s hard.” Mom rustled my hair. “You just want your child to be safe. Anyway, she said she’d rather you stay here than be at home alone and she’s comfortable with me talking to the Dean. She explained to me about your sister. That’s horrible. It must be so hard on your family.”
“It’s hardest on my sister,” Rusty said, looking down.
“And your dad?” Mom asked.
Rusty looked over at me, unsure of what to say.
“His dad is still in Venezuela. Anyway, what is this, twenty questions?” I interjected.
Mom rolled her eyes. “I suggested to her that maybe we should all get together some time and have a family dinner. I couldn’t tell if she thought that was a good thing or not.”
Rusty smiled, but I could tell this idea made him nervous.
“Do you want to go for a swim before the pizza gets here?” I asked.
“Sure,” Rusty excitedly responded, wasting no time in standing up and changing the conversation.
We walked upstairs to change into swim trunks. While Rusty was changing, I walked into the laundry room to grab some towels and overheard Mom and Alex talking.
“This is really serious,” Alex said.
“I know. Did you see that poor kid’s eye? It’s going to be black for weeks.”
“I’m not talking about the fight, Alice,” Alex whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re in love.”
Mom laughed. “Alex, they’ve only known each other for a few days. They couldn’t possibly be in love.”
“Do you think love is measured in time?” Alex asked. “I’m telling you, Alice. Those boys are in love.”
“It’s just the first boy Danny has ever had a crush on. It’s not that deep,” Mom said.
The Before Now and After Then Page 13