Night Owls

by Jenn Bennett

  Andy looked mildly horrified by this statement, but she just laughed it off.

  Super. Just when I’d abandoned my nightmare vision of Jack getting it on with some hospital candy striper, I could now replace it with the image of Sierra the Runaway sleeping in some sort of weird cultlike housing, where she met Jack and exchanged sexual favors for enlightenment and pluots.

  If Sierra was clueless to the unease radiating off me, Andy sure wasn’t. From the inside of his mouth, he wiggled his labret stud around with his tongue. “The extension cord isn’t long enough for the projector,” he told Jack.

  “I’ll find a new one in a minute.” Jack steered me around Andy and Sierra and apologized under his breath as soon as we were out of earshot. “I didn’t know he was bringing her tonight. I guess she called him after she saw us in the tea lounge.”

  “Are they seeing each other?”

  “Sierra’s . . . a free spirit.”

  Loving her more and more.

  “Let’s go meet everyone else,” he said.

  He herded me around the decks, and as dusk began falling and small golden lights lit up the tiered backyard, he introduced me to the partygoers. They included his rich friends from school, his poor friends from the Zen Center, his quirky friends from judo class (news to me that he knew judo, but maybe it explained all those muscles), and some nerdy kid who lived down the block, David, who was painfully shy and had busied himself with setting up the projector. And it was the pressing matter of the too-short extension cord, along with the request from—get this—catering-service people for Jack to sign off on their work order so they could leave, that left me standing alone in the middle of these motley strangers.

  At the far end of the main deck, facing the white sheet, a gas fireplace built into a stone wall was roaring, and around it was an L-shaped bank of bench seating. Sierra stood in the middle, removing all the cushions from the seating and tossing them in a pile on the deck. She saw me watching her and smiled. “Those benches are super-uncomfortable. We can all stretch out on the floor.”

  I sat down on the cushionless bench. She wasn’t wrong. A girl I’d met earlier sat down next to me, untucking a long, dark brown ponytail from the back of a sweater she was pulling on. “It’s getting chilly. Someone needs to turn on the heat lamps.”

  I glanced to where she was pointing and spotted a couple of standing lamps that looked like the ones on restaurant patios, just nicer.

  “Lala,” she said when it was clear I didn’t remember her name.

  “Sorry,” I replied.

  “No worries. I wouldn’t remember them all, either.”

  But I did remember her story: a girl originally from Brazil who went to school with Jack. She was willowy, pretty, and friendly, and she was dating one of the Abercrombie & Fitch blonds. She lifted her plastic cup of alcoholic fruitiness.

  “No, thanks,” I said, waving it away.

  “Hunter tried to get a mini keg from his brother, but no go. We did, however, score two bottles of Fernet. He’s running to the store to get ginger ale.”

  I had no idea what Fernet was.

  “Tastes like old-timey medicine,” Sierra said, making a face. “You have to chase it with ginger ale, or it’ll come right back up. All the local bartenders drink it.”

  Whoop-de-freaking-do. Heath was the drinker in my family, and I’d hit my once-a-year vomit limit that first day at the anatomy lab, so I’d be passing, thank you.

  “How long have you and Jack been dating?” Lala asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer that question. Sure, he’d vandalized a museum for my birthday, but dating? Dates were things you planned. You asked someone out. You didn’t just say, “Hey, it’s sunny and you’re standing here, so let’s go to the park.” But even if I knew in my heart there was something more between Jack and me, it wasn’t definable—not in the way this girl was asking. So I answered, “We’re just friends.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Sierra said. “Andy told me Jackson’s in luuurve.”

  My cheeks warmed. Had Jack told Andy that, or had Andy just said it? You couldn’t be in love with someone you’d never even kissed . . . could you?

  “Um, I don’t know about that,” I said. “But you guys dated?”

  Sierra pointed at herself. “Me and Jack? Is that what he said?”

  “No, that’s what you said at the tea lounge.”

  “You told her about that?” Lala said.

  Sierra gave us both a dismissive wave. “You make it sound like we banged each other’s brains out. Jackson was going through a rough time, and I provided some cheer.”

  “You can keep your cheer away from Hunter,” Lala warned.

  I truly did not know what to say to any of this.

  The last of the three other girls at the party appeared from nowhere and plopped down in the middle of Sierra’s island of cushions. “I’m not finished, Nicole,” Sierra complained.

  “Work around me. I’m too buzzed to stand.” Nicole threw her arms back and stretched like a cat, long auburn hair fanning around her head like a pinwheel. She had a natural, girl-next-door kind of vibe, and I would’ve pegged Nicole for one of Jack’s Zen friends, but he’d said she went to school with him. “Who are you guys talking about?”

  Lala slurped her drink. “Sierra’s bragging about giving Jack a blow job. In front of his new girlfriend.”

  Wait—what? This was her idea of “cheer”? All my insides twisted into knots.

  “Ugh, Sierra. Shut the hell up,” Nicole said, closing her eyes.

  “I wasn’t bragging,” Sierra argued. “But while we’re on the subject, lemme just say, damn. That boy is packing, amIright?”

  She was seriously saying this to me? “Um, we’re just friends,” I repeated.

  “Really? I’m sorry. You mean, you guys haven’t—”

  “Jesus, Sierra,” Nicole said. “No one wants to hear about your stupid erotic adventures with the entire population of San Francisco. Don’t listen to her—” Nicole looked up at me from the cushions, her face upside down. “What’s your name again?”

  “Beatrix.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Beatrix. Her grandmother was a Haight hippie, and she thinks this gives her some kind of free-love club card.”

  “At least I’m not all hung up on sex,” Sierra argued. “We’re all just bodies. It’s not a big deal. And if you want my opinion, I think it’s weirder he’s going around telling everyone he’s tripping over someone he’s just friends with,” she said.

  Um . . . what?

  Nicole shooed her away. “Why don’t you go bounce on Andy and leave us the hell alone.”

  “Whatever. This is why I don’t hang out with girls anymore. You’re all bitches.” Sierra threw down a cushion and stomped away.

  Nicole groaned. “Oh my god, she drives me nuts.”

  “Give her a break. She’s had a bad home life,” Lala said, gesturing with her cup. “Her mom kicked her out of the house for, like, three months. Can’t you see how screwed up she is? It’s sad.”

  Nicole propped herself up on one elbow and watched Sierra merrily jumping on Andy’s back. “I’ll play a tiny violin for her as long as she stops flashing her tits at every guy I’m interested in.”

  “It takes two to tango,” Lala said before glancing at me. “Don’t worry about Sierra. Jack’s a good guy. He’s just a little screwed up, thanks to Jillian.”

  My body tensed. Jillian must be the sister in Europe. Was digging up firsthand gossip from his friends any better than snooping around for secondhand info about Jack’s family online? I didn’t know, but I was too curious to let it pass, so I feigned innocence and said, “Who’s Jillian?”

  Nicole and Lala glanced at each other. “Jillian is the Vincent family’s dirty little secret,” Lala said.

  I didn’t have time to ask for clarification before Nicole elaborated.

  “Wouldn’t we all be a little screwed up if we’d been through what he has? I sure as hell woul
d. So, big deal, he’s never had a steady girlfriend.” She raised her chin at me. “I think you’re lucky, being his first. Just look at him. He’s gorgeous and funny, and he’s got that cool retro-rockabilly thing going on. And he’s just plain sweet.”

  “And those eyes,” Lala said.

  “So unfair,” Nicole agreed. “Who cares if he’s a man-whore. I mean was, not present tense. Sorry, Beatrix.”

  Lala laughed. “He’s not a whore, Nicole. Where’d ya hear that?”

  “Well, Sierra, for one.”

  Lala shook her head. “Sierra never went all the way with him. That’s what I was saying about Jillian—she really screwed him up. Sierra said Andy told her Jack’s a—”

  A what? A WHAT?

  Part of me knew that listening to all this wasn’t as bad as reading gossip about Jack’s family online; it was way, way worse. So why wasn’t I getting up and walking away?

  Lala’s ice sloshed against the rim of the plastic cup. Nicole sank lower into the cushions. I glanced up to see what they were staring at and spotted Jack at the edge of the fireplace nook. He’d heard. I could tell by the anguished look on his face. And at that moment, I wanted to die.

  18

  THE GIRLS SCATTERED LIKE DANDELION SEEDS, DISAPPEARING into the crowd that was now gathering around Hunter, who had apparently lived up to his name and successfully hunted down ginger ale.

  “They’re just drunk,” I assured Jack when everyone was out of earshot. I wanted to tell him that none of it mattered to me, all the things they were saying that I only half understood. I felt guilty for listening to all of it. Doubly guilty that he’d overhead—exactly how much, I didn’t know.

  “Do you want to go home?” he asked in a low voice.

  “No,” I answered over the thickness in my throat. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No!” Then more softly, “No.”

  Loud laughter billowed from the drink-mixing table. Jack glanced back at them. “Let’s . . .” He scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s talk. Not here.”

  I followed him over the smallest deck and into the guesthouse. As he closed the door, muffing the drunken laughter outside, I looked around. It wasn’t much bigger than my dining room, but he had room for a double bed and a sofa at the foot of it that sat in front of a TV screen and several game consoles. Everything was tidy. His bed was made. (Mine wasn’t.) A shelf held a small green ceramic Buddha and a few other trinkets—an altar of sorts—and I recognized the meditation cushions from the Zen bookstore. Being here felt as if I’d opened a door on the side of Jack’s head that led into his brain.

  Looking around, I noticed a door to a bathroom, next to which several odd portraits hung on the wall. They looked almost childish and were brightly colored. One of them was an alien woman. “Your work?” I asked.

  He shook his head but didn’t say anything else, so I continued my surveying, passing by a desk with an expensive computer and stopping at his drafting table, where a built-in shelf on the wall above it held a small fish tank. Beneath the white glow of its hood lamp, a single intensely blue betta with lacy fins rippled through a miniature town of tiki huts sitting among a forest of live aquatic plants. A school of tiny gray fish was the betta’s only company.

  “He looks a little like your tattoo,” I said.

  “Mmm.”

  Well. He was certainly in a black mood. Couldn’t say I blamed him. I wanted to ask him about everything—his sister, Sierra, what the girls outside were all gossiping about. But I didn’t know where to start.

  My gaze slid over sketches pinned to an oversized corkboard. Alphabets. Dozens of them. All drawn by hand with pen and ink and markers, the occasional telltale pencil lines showing behind some of the letters. “You did these? They’re incredible.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is this a page from your comic?” It looked like a story board, illustrated with what I assumed were Andy’s drawings and Jack’s lettering. The hero seemed to be some sort of martial arts expert slash mechanic. “What’s the story about?”

  “I’m a virgin.”

  I froze. “Excuse me?”

  “What they were saying is true. I am.”

  “Oh.” How in the world was I supposed to respond? High five? “So, blow jobs don’t count, then, I suppose?”

  He closed his eyes. “That was one time and, no, I don’t think it counts.”

  I disagreed, but then, I wasn’t a blow job expert.

  He sighed heavily. “And, no, I haven’t really had a girlfriend. A couple of girls came and went before the incident.” The break-in? Or his sister being shipped off to Europe? I wanted to ask for details, but he kept talking. “There was one other girl. I guess we started seeing each other around Christmas. She’s the one I sort of mentioned to you in the park. Pretty early on, she found out about my family’s so-called dirty little secret, as Lala put it, and got freaked out.”

  “And Sierra,” I reminded him.

  “Sierra was a mistake.”

  “Not to hear her talk about it,” I said, toying with a comic inking pen on his desk.

  “I’m not saying it wasn’t fun—”

  I glanced up at his face.

  “Wrong word,” he muttered. “And it was the absolute wrong person.”

  “Oh.” But what I meant was “good.”

  After a long moment, he said, “It’s not like I’m saving myself or anything.”

  “It’s not a Zen thing?”

  “No. The only rule about sex is not to misuse it, which basically means that you shouldn’t do something that will harm yourself or someone else—like, literally, of course, but emotionally, too. It’s pretty broad, and you’re supposed to figure out what works for you. But that doesn’t mean . . . it’s not because—”

  “Look, you don’t have to explain.”

  “I just don’t want you to look at me like you did out there.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like you pitied me.”

  I stared at his inked alphabets for a long moment, not knowing what to say. It’s not like I cared one way or the other about his experience or lack thereof, and he could’ve just lied and I never would’ve guessed differently; he certainly seemed much more experienced than I was. But he didn’t lie. He told me the truth, and I had to think it took a lot of guts for him to admit it, which made me like him even more. It also made me want to be up-front in return. “I’m not, you know—a virgin, I mean. Is that weird for you?”

  “How many?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Four.”

  “Four guys?”

  “Four times! One guy. Well, one and one-half guys, if you count Lauren’s anti-prom party, but we didn’t actually, uh, you know, and”—I shook my head, secretly wishing lightning would strike me down—“it really wasn’t anything.” Definitely not a blow job, but I didn’t say that.

  “Oh.” He looked greatly relieved.

  “Would it have been an issue if it was four guys?” After all, I’d known plenty of guys our age who’d slept with twice as many girls. Double standards were the worst.

  “Intimidating, maybe. But, no, it wouldn’t matter. Were things serious? With the one guy—not the half guy,” he clarified, one side of his mouth quirking up.

  “With Howard Hooper? God, no. I didn’t even like him toward the end. He was kind of an ass. And the sex was disappointing, if you want to know the truth. At least, it was for me. He seemed to enjoy it, and that really pissed me off.” Talking too much again. What was wrong with me? Was I trying to out-honest him with the embarrassing confessions? “Anyway, I overheard him calling Heath a fag, which was a deal breaker.”

  “I hate this Howard Hooper already.”

  I laughed a little. Things got quiet again.

  “I’m not screwed up,” he insisted.

  “I’ve never thought that.”

  More silence.

  “I’m not a monk, either,” he said. “And I don’t just want to be friends with you.”
r />   Well then.

  “What do you want?” My voice sounded strange. I wished my heart would slow down. It was hard to breathe through my nostrils.

  “What do I want?” His fingers brushed over loose strands of hair near my temple. “I want to call you every five minutes. I want to text you good night every night. I want to make you laugh. And I want you to look at me like you did that first night on the bus.”

  Oh.

  My pulse was out of control. I was so overwhelmed, I couldn’t meet his eyes. Couldn’t even respond. His head dropped until our cheeks were touching. I turned my face to his, and his mouth hovered over mine—just for a moment. Long enough for me to feel his arm circle my waist, and one warm hand slide up my back. Long enough for chills to bloom across my forearms.

  And then he kissed me. Slowly, softly. He tasted like he smelled, sunny and warm, but the sweetness lasted all of five seconds.

  My hands snaked around his back, and he pulled me closer. And then he was kissing me like we were both on fire and he was trying to put the flames out, and I kissed him back like an arsonist with a pocketful of matches.

  We were both frantic and fevered, and it was the first kiss I’d ever had that felt like a fight. And the way he made my body ache made me think I’d been doing it all wrong until now.

  We broke apart for air, but our hands didn’t stop moving.

  “Jack,” I whispered against his lips. I wasn’t sure whether I was thanking him or begging. But before I could figure it out, my back was against the door, and I could feel every hard line of his body pressing into me, including what pressed against my stomach. When I pushed back, he picked me up until my toes left the floor and he didn’t have to bend to fit his mouth to mine. And then my legs were around his hips and he was pulling me against him in exactly the right spot.

  Maybe he was trying to prove something—I wasn’t sure. And frankly, I didn’t care, because it was the best kiss I’d ever had in my life. And the way he looked at me when he broke away for air, with his eyelids all heavy and those double lashes fanning . . . damn. It almost made me moan.