Fml

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  Stella and Ewan had disappeared from the living room, and I didn’t see them dancing, either. I maybe felt a slight pang of jealousy as I imagined where they might be and what they might be doing. But it passed and I genuinely hoped that if Ewan turned out to be Stella’s first kiss with a guy, that he made it a damn good one.

  As I searched the first floor of the Castillo house room by room, my courage began to flag. Cassie was nowhere. Not by the pool or in her parents’ room, which was occupied by a group of kids who looked kind of shady, like the types who rummage through other people’s medicine cabinets for pills to steal. But they weren’t my problem. Finding Cassie before my spine turned to jam was my one and only goal.

  My focus was so myopic that I nearly walked right by Cassie on my way upstairs. She was sitting in the courtyard, this little space in the middle of the house that’s open to the outside. An oasis, Ben had called it. Tonight it was decorated with Japanese paper lanterns that cast long shadows on the walls and across Cassie’s face. She was sitting on a bench almost facing me. It was like she was looking just past me. Her dress had slid up her leg to reveal a smooth, touchable thigh. But I wasn’t thinking about that. Not at all. I was thinking about what I was going to say. So far, I hadn’t come up with much.

  My breaths came quickly and I wished I’d taken another shot for luck. I didn’t know why I was so scared, though. Nothing I had to say should come as a shock to Cassie. She couldn’t have been blind to the fact that I’d loved her since day one. Cassie probably knew how I felt better than I did.

  I guess that I wasn’t scared of telling her; I was scared of what she’d say after. I was scared she’d laugh. Or tell me to go to hell. Or kiss me and tell me she loved me back. In some ways, that last one was scariest of all. No matter what, it was a gamble I’d been scared to take for far too long.

  With clammy hands, I turned the handle and pushed the glass doors open. The words were in my mouth before I even looked around. Cassie glanced up, but she wasn’t exactly happy to see me.

  “Cassie, I—”

  “Sy, you know Eli, right?” Cassie looked past me again, and this time I looked with her. Eli. He was sitting across from her, staring at me with naked annoyance.

  “Yo, Simon.” He gave me a chin nod and said, “We’re having a private conversation, dude. You mind?” His tone wasn’t mean, it wasn’t rude, but there was no room for argument. I was being dismissed, and if I didn’t turn around and leave immediately, Eli would likely stuff me headfirst into one of the potted birds-of-paradise decorating the courtyard.

  “Sorry,” I said. My declaration of love turned tail and ran, just like I did, making sure to shut the doors behind me.

  Living the Dream

  Ben and I stayed out of the way, watching Coop treat Cassie’s knuckles with ice and quietly lecture her about fighting. It was admirable that Cassie had stopped Blaise and his idiot friends from forcing Freddy to chug the cup filled with tiny pours from dozens of different drinks, an act that would have surely sentenced the kid to a night dancing the porcelain ballet, but Blaise was a dick and he could have seriously hurt her.

  Which was probably what Coop was telling her in the corner by the sink. The last thing I wanted to do was get between Coop and one of his little lectures. While it was true that Coop would always be there to help pick up the pieces in the aftermath of whatever crazy scheme his friends got tangled up in, the price of that help was a long-winded treatise on everything we’d done wrong in the history of ever. And right now, Cassie was getting an earful.

  “Think we should rescue her?” I asked Ben.

  “What?” Ben looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time that night. He’d been somewhere else and I didn’t know where.

  “Cassie?” I said, pointing.

  Ben shrugged. “I’m not getting in the middle of that. Besides, Bruiser’s proven she can take care of herself.”

  I wished that I shared Ben’s confidence. If anything, Cassie’s uncharacteristic outburst proved how unstable she was, how much she needed help. Maybe Coop’s help, maybe mine.

  “Wipe the drool, Simon,” Ben said. I brought the world back into focus and found that Cassie was staring at me staring at her. She rolled her eyes and I caught a flicker of a smile before she turned back to Coop, nodding in agreement—which was pretty much the only way to shut Coop up once he got rolling. “I asked if you knew Chuck Bell,” Ben said.

  “Not really. Why?” Chuck wasn’t the kind of guy Ben associated with. He wore his oddness like a Boy Scout merit badge, proud to be different, happy to be a one-man freak show. I respected Chuck but I’d never hang out with him.

  “I’m betting he has a condom,” Ben said.

  “Go offer him something for it.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Ben said. He was getting his evil-genius look. The pinched-faced, distant expression he wore when he was calculating odds, mapping trajectories, and usually figuring out a way to drag Coop and me into a shitstorm of trouble. “If I flat out ask him for it, he’ll know that I want it and jack up the price.” Ben patted down his pockets. “Which would be trouble since I’m pretty much cleaned out. Ain’t got nothing left to barter with but my sweet, sweet ass.”

  “And we all know that’s not worth a charcoal briquette in hell.”

  “Ha, ha.” Ben punched me lightly in the arm, his heart not really in it.

  I’d been holding up the wall for the last five minutes and I stood up straight. For a second, I felt untethered and light, like gravity had relinquished control of my body. I chalked it up to the liquor I’d drunk earlier, but even I knew that most of that had run its course. “I’ll go ask him,” I said.

  Ben grabbed a handful of my shirt and yanked me back. I shoved him off and smoothed down my tee, making sure Ben hadn’t stretched the collar.

  “Do you want it or not?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ben said.

  “Don’t you want to get your freak on?”

  Ben snorted. “No one gets their freak on anymore, Simon. It’s no wonder you’ve never been able to hook up with Cass.”

  “Oh, burn,” I said. “But you have a life partner and you’re still a virgin.” I made an L with my right hand and held it to my forehead. “You must be so frustrated. All those nights, making smoochies, unable to seal the deal. If Coop was my boyfriend, we would have done it ages ago.”

  “Simon,” Ben said slowly. “That’s about the gayest thing you’ve ever said. And you’ve said some ridiculously gay things before. Sometimes, I think you’re actually gayer than Coop and me combined. Maybe it’s our fault. We’ve kept you from mingling with your own kind and warped your poor heterosexual brain.” He patted me on the cheek and headed over to the keg.

  While Ben flirted shamelessly with the girl who was manning the keg, I risked a glance back in Cassie’s direction and tried to read Coop’s lips. Cassie was smiling now, laughing a little, and I had a moment of panic imagining Coop telling Cassie all my deep, dark secrets, like the time I farted in his car and accidentally crapped my pants. It was only a tiny bit of poo, but the way Coop told it you’d think I had the Old Faithful of shit exploding from my shorts. But the fear passed when Ben returned and handed me a red plastic cup of beer.

  “I was serious earlier,” I said. “I’ll go talk to Chuck for you.”

  “No.” If he hadn’t said it quite so forcefully, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

  “Why?” I asked, suddenly more interested in why Ben didn’t want me to help him get the condom than in the topic of Coop and Cassie’s conversation. “Ben? Are you scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “Sex. Are you afraid to sleep with Coop?” But Ben didn’t need to answer because the answer was in his darting eyes, his flushed cheeks, his fidgety free hand. It was written all over Ben’s body. He wasn’t simply scared, he was terrified. I pulled Ben into the family room, where we could talk without being overheard. “But you’re always pressuring Coo
p to do it.”

  The fear that had been so plain a moment ago was replaced by a devious smile as Ben pushed me against the wall, invading my personal bubble. “It’s you, Simon,” he said throatily. “It’s always been you.”

  I struggled to shove Ben aside, but he had muscles that I didn’t even know existed. He licked his lips, which were so close that I could smell the beer on his breath.

  “So, this is weird,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.” Even though I knew deep down that Ben was messing with me so that he wouldn’t have to talk about what was actually on his mind, there was a fraction of a second when I thought he was going to kiss me. And it’s not like it would have even been the first time, but that had been a case of mistaken identity because he’d been drunk and I’d been wearing one of Coop’s hoodies. Then that moment passed, because it was Ben for Christ’s sake, and I knew better.

  “Get off me or I’ll tell everyone about your secret stash of My Little Pony DVDs.”

  Ben busted up laughing, but it was forced. Everything about Ben tonight was too much. His smile too big, his voice too loud, his movements too wide. “I had you going for a minute,” he said.

  I gulped my beer. It was barely cold but it felt amazing going down. “If you don’t want to talk about why you’re afraid to sleep with Coop, just say so.”

  “I love him.” Ben’s whole carefully crafted facade crumbled with the words and I saw the real Benjamin Kwon. Not the guy who hid behind jokes and pranks, the guy who ate up compliments, always craving more. Just Ben, my friend. Stripped down, acoustic.

  And then he was gone again. But the words, they were out there. The words I’d never heard him say before.

  “Shit,” Ben said. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

  I put my hand on his arm but he pulled away. “It’s cool,” I said.

  “They were meant for Coop.”

  “They’re words,” I told him. “You can say them again. It’s not like you’ve wasted them.”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “I’m not a moron. It’s just—I’ve been saving those words for Coop. Saying them over and over in my head, waiting for the perfect moment to unleash them. I thought tonight was going to be it. We’d find a condom and a quiet room. Cassie told me about the spare room off the garage that no one uses. I bartered everything I brought for candles and flowers and shit, and I even paid a kid to set it all up for me. I was going to tell Coop—you know—and then we’d fuck like bunnies.”

  I held up my hand. “Thanks for the unnecessary yet horrific visuals.” I peeked around the corner to make sure Coop and Cassie were still occupied. The lecture portion of the night appeared to have passed, and Cassie was wearing her bruised knuckles like a prom queen crown. I wanted to ditch Ben and join them so badly my teeth hurt. But it was rare that Ben needed me. “What’s stopping you?”

  “You were right,” he said. “I’m scared. Terrified.” He paused and scrubbed his face with his hand. “I applied to MIT without a safety school, Simon. I jumped out of an airplane. But sex with Cooper Yates is the scariest thing I can imagine doing.”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “You don’t get shit,” Ben said. “You think you know things, you think you love Cassie, and you think everything in your life is going to turn out like a movie. You know fuck all about love, Simon. Less than.”

  I’d rather Ben have slapped me in the face. His words hurt ten times worse. But I came back swinging. “I’m not stupid,” I said.

  “You’re worse because you don’t even know how dumb you actually are.”

  “Drop it,” I said. Anger was bubbling up and the last thing I wanted to do was get into a fight with Ben.

  Dropping things was not Ben’s strong suit. “You don’t know what love is. You’re hanging on to the memory of a night you almost kissed her. That was over three years ago. Do you think Cassie remembers? Do you think she even cares?”

  “Fuck you, Ben.” My voice became ice, I became stone. But I couldn’t deny the truth of what he’d said. Cassie probably didn’t care. She most likely didn’t remember that night despite the fact that I remembered every second of it in such painful detail that I could describe each individual dimple on the blue golf ball I used to win our bet at the eighteenth hole. I sat on the floor and hugged my knees to my chest.

  “Cassie’s my friend,” Ben said. His voice had softened but it still had an edge. “And so are you. It might be kind of cool if you two hooked up.” Ben sat on the floor beside me. “But you have to stop living in the past. You have to figure out who Cassie is and stop worshipping who she was. And if you still love her after that, then good for you.”

  It was a lot to take in, more to think about than I had the brain-power to compute. I finished off my beer instead. “Coop loves you back,” I said. “He says it all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “That’s what freaks me out the most. The moment I say it back, it becomes bigger than him, bigger than me.”

  “It already is,” I said. I checked to make sure Ben was paying attention. “There aren’t many constants in this world, dude, but you and Coop are one of them. Say it, don’t say it. Have sex or don’t. But Cooper Yates is always going to be sickeningly, maddeningly in love with Benjamin Kwon.”

  There was an awkward moment after I’d finished talking where I didn’t know whether Ben was going to cry or try to hug me, but he shattered it by putting me in a headlock and raping my ear with a wet willy. His finger made a squicky sound as he dug it around my ear canal. It was the grossest thing to happen to me all night. Then Ben let me go and said, “Thanks.”

  I cleaned Ben’s spit out of my ear with the corner of my shirt. “Now get out there and find a way to get your freak on with my best friend.”

  Ben didn’t waste another second with me. He ran into the kitchen, pushing past anyone in his way. He swept Coop up and kissed him in front of everyone. A couple of guys catcalled and some of the girls whistled, but two guys kissing wasn’t the most interesting thing going on at the party. When the boys separated, Ben took Coop’s hand and led him from the kitchen. I hoped they found their condom.

  I waited a full minute before I got up and made my way to Cassie as she moved in the direction of the dance floor. The rage that had possessed her earlier seemed to have subsided. She actually looked a little ashamed when she saw me.

  “Nice right hook, Rocky.” Without asking, I took her hand and looked at her knuckles. They were swollen and purple and looked pretty painful. Worse, even, than the foot I’d stepped on earlier. “They hurt?”

  “They’ll heal,” she said. “Unlike Blaise’s face.”

  I laughed. “I think it’s his ego that really took a beating. Punched by a girl. He’s never living that down.”

  Cassie wavered between pride and embarrassment. “I’m no girl,” she said. “I’m a warrior woman. An Amazon. If Coop and Ben hadn’t stopped me, my parents would be picking pieces of Blaise off the ceiling fan.”

  “Cassandra Castillo, champion of freshmen.”

  “Seriously, that song was the worst.”

  “The song?” I said. “I thought you were pissed about Blaise making the kid drink that cup of swill.”

  Cassie nodded. “Sure, but that song was driving me insane.”

  I chuckled. “You surprise me daily.”

  Then she surprised me again. “Want to dance?” I didn’t know whether she’d forgotten what had happened in her parents’ room or if she’d forgiven me or maybe even just written it off as something regretful that had happened in the heat of the moment. Not that I regretted it, actually. But either way, I was willing to take what I could get. And maybe Ben had been right. Maybe I needed to forget the girl in anatomy, the girl at the mini-golf course, the girl Cassie had been. I wasn’t the same boy I had been, was I? I needed to get to know this Cassie, the one asking me to dance.

  I glanced at her injured toes. “Remember? Simon dance bad.”

  Cassie l
ooked down. “My feet are evil and must be punished.”

  “Then I’m definitely your man.” I took Cassie’s good hand and led her to the dance floor.

  For the first time that night, I could see DJ Leo. He was standing in the corner, dripping sweat. Except for the fight, the music hadn’t taken a break all night, and I guessed that neither had he. DJ Leo was the reason Cassie was smiling right now, the reason she had her arms around my neck.

  I didn’t know the song, but I jumped along anyway, allowing the rhythm and the sound to move my bones, shedding my insecurity, forgetting the past, letting the Cassie I’d built up in my mind fade away, to be replaced with the one breathing my air.

  We danced for what felt like hours, though it might have been only a couple of songs. The seamless way one became the next befuddled my sense of time, my ability to judge where I was or what I was doing. There was nothing but Cassie.

  I could have danced all night, but Cassie motioned that she needed a drink, so we floated off the dance floor. Instead of going for another shot, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and chugged it. The plastic made crinkling noises as she sucked it dry.

  “About before,” Cassie said when she was done. “What I said—”

  “Forget it. I was stupid.”

  Cassie touched my hand. “No, you weren’t. You were only being honest.”

  With Cassie touching me, it became difficult to keep my thoughts straight, but I struggled not to stutter or make an ass of myself again. “Yeah, but you were still right. I don’t know you.” I quickly added, “I want to, though.”

  It was a bold move. I hadn’t forgotten her other challenge, but I couldn’t prove to Cassie that I really loved her until I could get to know the real her. I expected Cassie to move on, to leave me like she’d left me twice that night already. But she started doing that thing with her tongue and her teeth again.