The Pick-Up

by Miranda Kenneally

  Is this what college will be like? Sometimes I forget I’m eighteen and don’t have a curfew anymore. At eighteen, I’m already an adult, and adults do things like sleep over. I, me, T.J., can invite a girl to spend the night.

  I mean, not at my house where my parents live—that would literally get me murdered by the aforementioned parents—but I could ask a girl over to my dorm in college.

  It surprises me that Tyler would have a woman over when I’m staying here. Maybe he’s finally starting to see me as more of a friend and not just his little brother.

  Using the glass I handed her, Krysti pours herself some water from the Brita filter.

  “You can have some coffee, too, if you want,” I say.

  “Oh, thank you,” she replies, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “That would be great.”

  As I’m pouring us each a cup, she asks, “What are you doing today? Heading back to Lollapalooza?”

  I stir milk into my coffee. “Yeah, tonight. First I’m going to breakfast and the beach with this girl I met yesterday.”

  Krysti raises her eyebrows as she sips from her mug. A door opens down the hallway, and Tyler emerges in a pair of basketball shorts and no shirt. At the sight of my brother, Krysti stands up straighter and begins mussing her hair.

  Tyler yawns, then looks up to find me standing with Krysti. Suddenly his eyes open as if we startled him awake.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he asks.

  “T.J. made coffee,” Krysti says, nudging my brother with a laugh. “You should try it sometime.”

  He laughs, but it sounds forced and nervous. He scrubs a hand through his hair. “You still going out with Mari today, T.J.?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “If you want, you should come by my boat later,” Krysti offers. “Well, it’s my parents’ boat. But I’m using it today. And you can come, too,” she says to Tyler with a hopeful look on her face.

  He gives a little shrug as he pulls another mug out of the cabinet. “I’m planning to go back to the concert.”

  When he says nothing else about making plans for today, she goes off down the hall shaking her head.

  Once she’s out of earshot, I ask, “Are you going out with her?”

  He scratches the tip of his nose. “Not exactly… That’s what she wants… But that’s not what I’m looking for right now. But damn, she has a boat.” He cocks his head. “Hmm.”

  Tyler pours himself a cup of coffee and drinks. He sticks out his tongue. “Man, T.J. Your coffee is absolute shit.”

  I laugh. “I’ve gotta get going to meet Mari.”

  With a grimace, Tyler takes another sip of coffee, then sets it on the counter. “Wait, let me get you some more condoms.”

  “No,” I blurt. “I mean, I didn’t even use the ones you gave me yesterday.”

  “Why not?”

  Is he kidding me? When would we possibly have had time to do it? And where? “There was that whole we-got-separated thing? Also, we just met, you know.”

  “I know,” he says with a shrug. “But you like her. You should go for it.”

  I don’t understand how it’s so easy for Tyler. How he can just do it like it’s no big deal, and with a person he barely knows?

  I guess it’s different for everybody. The only thing I know is that while, yes, I want to have sex (obviously), I also want to get to know Mari better.

  I don’t know if I’d want to do the booty call thing. I want more than that. I want someone to talk to and spend time with.

  Tyler takes a carton of eggs out of the fridge. “Want some food before you go?”

  I’m tempted, because he’s a great cook. All I can make is a lazy-ass grilled cheese. I’m too lazy to make them the right way—in a frying pan with butter, so I toast two pieces of bread, then slip a slice of cheese between them and microwave it for thirty seconds. Voilà. A lazy-ass grilled cheese.

  Right now Tyler is using the same hand to perfectly break three eggs at once. He lets them drip into a bowl. If I tried that, I’m sure I’d drop little pieces of shell into the pan.

  If I want to keep eating well for my strength training at the gym, I need to learn how to do this sort of stuff before college. Mom won’t be there to cook breakfast for me every day like she does now.

  I’m starving, but I need to leave if I’m going to make it on time. “I’m out—I’m meeting Mari in half an hour.”

  He fist-bumps me and gives me a big grin. “Good luck, man.”

  I gulp the rest of my coffee, throw my beach towel over a shoulder, and head out. I’m all smiles as I jog down three flights of stairs to the lobby and out to the street, which is surprisingly empty. No cars, a few pedestrians. My brother’s apartment is on the South Side near where he went to school at the University of Chicago. Kids probably haven’t come back from summer break yet.

  I catch a Ryde up to the Gold Coast area, where Mari said her dad lives, to meet her at a cafe near Washington Square Park. It’s close enough to the beach to walk there after breakfast.

  On the drive, I check various apps on my phone. IG, ESPN, Twitter. In my feed, I see that If We Were Giants retweeted a post from a Chicago radio station:

  Want to go backstage at #Lollapalooza and meet If We Were Giants? Play WTGP Radio’s LollaScavengerHunt! Two lucky winners will go backstage on Sunday. Follow WTGP for prompts throughout the day. Details here!

  Shit! It would be amazing to meet those guys. Not only do I love their music, I love the cover art on their albums. Their bass player, Adam Tracy, designs them. It’s something they’re known for. I’d love to talk to him about his art and how it fits into his life. Clearly it’s not his number one job, but he manages to do what he loves all the same.

  I click on the Twitter link to read more about the contest. The radio station will be tweeting Chicago landmarks throughout today. People are supposed to go around Chicago, find the landmarks, and take selfies to prove they were there. For a chance to win, you have to find all the landmarks. Creativity is encouraged.

  With a click of my thumb, I follow the radio station’s Twitter account and set my account to notify me when there’s a new post. I doubt I’ll have time to take all the selfies, but I can at least try.

  For the rest of the Ryde trip, I call up my sketchpad app and pull my stylus pen out of my pocket. Tyler said he wanted a hula girl tattoo? I begin to sketch a hula girl. She has a green grass skirt on, but I give her purple spiky hair, a nose ring, and a cute pair of glasses like Mari’s. I add tiny pink tulips to the ends of her grass skirt.

  I smile at the drawing. Then I feel that itch. That pull. The deep one inside me, luring me to spray paint this punk hula girl on the concrete underpass next to my green alien.

  I dream of it until my Ryde pulls up in front of the Newberry Library by Washington Square Park. I love this part of the city. It’s so green and there’s a lot to do here.

  As I climb out of the car, I use my phone to give the driver a tip and rate him five stars. For the safe ride, but also for karmic purposes. When I look up from my screen, Mari’s waiting outside under the cafe’s awning, kneading her fingers together.

  She hasn’t noticed me yet and it’s creepy I’m standing here watching her, but I don’t know if I should hug her, or maybe side-hug her? Kiss her cheek? Give her a wave?

  Why didn’t I ask Tyler what to do? Not that it would’ve mattered. He’d have just said something like, “Do what feels right in your gut.”

  My gut doesn’t know shit.

  “T.J.”

  I snap out of it to find Mari hurrying my way with a tote bag bouncing against her side. When she reaches me, both of us suddenly stop. At night, I didn’t hesitate to pull her into my arms. Out here under the sun, she can probably see the hesitation all over my face.

  Before I can make a decision, she gets up on tiptoes and wraps he
r arms around my neck. “Good morning.”

  I return the hug. “Good morning,” I murmur into her dark, curly hair. It smells so good. This feels unreal, like I’m starring in a movie about a much luckier guy’s life.

  With a smile, she asks, “Hungry?”

  My mouth waters at the smells of bacon and sausage. “Let’s go.”

  Mari leads me inside, where a host seats us in a booth with retro leather benches the color of red M&Ms. Warm morning light beams through the window.

  Mari adjusts her glasses to read the menu. “I’ve never been here, but Sierra says it’s good. She said we should order the french toast.”

  “Sure, but we’re getting bacon and eggs too. And an english muffin.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “I eat a ton,” I admit. “It helps me in the gym.”

  After we order, the server brings us steaming hot mugs of coffee.

  Mari stirs in cream along with several fake sugars, while I pour milk into mine. I stop pouring when it changes from black to my preferred murky brown color.

  She sips from her mug, crinkles her nose, and dumps in another fake sugar. When she tests it this time, she smiles, apparently satisfied with her mix. She’s beyond cute. How will I make it through breakfast without leaning across the table to kiss her?

  As casually as I can, I adjust my shorts, trying to hide that I’m turned on. I doubt anybody’s checking out my junk under the table, but you never know. There could be creepy junk-checker-out-ers around.

  Mari keeps one hand on her mug and uses the other to push her hair behind her ear. “So we didn’t get to talk much last night.”

  “Kind of hard when you lose each other for two hours.”

  She laughs. “It was good luck that Sierra secretly took a picture of us.”

  “I know. Normally I have bad luck when it comes to girls.”

  “You? Really?”

  My face burns. Not sure why I blurted that out. “Yes, really. I honestly can’t believe I’m on a date right now… This is a date, right?”

  She raises her eyebrows as her cheeks turn pink. “When was your last date?”

  I scratch behind my ear, wondering if I should make something up. But I like Mari so much, I want to be real with her.

  I decide to tell her the truth. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Mari

  It can’t be that embarrassing.

  “Tell me about the date,” I say.

  T.J. crosses his arms on the table, then reaches up to scratch his head. “My best friend Ethan was planning to go to senior prom with his girlfriend, Reese. He had everything planned. A limo, dinner, a hotel room.”

  “Okay,” I say, wondering what this has to do with his last date.

  “But at the last minute, Ethan got the chicken pox.”

  “The chicken pox? For real?”

  T.J. shrugs. “He never had it as a kid, and his parents didn’t get him the vaccine, which wasn’t smart. Anyway, he didn’t want to let Reese down—she had this dress she wanted to wear, so he begged me to go in his place. Reese and I took Ethan’s limo and used his dinner reservation, but uh, not the hotel room obviously.” T.J. coughs into his fist. “I didn’t even have a tux, and it was too late to rent one. I had to borrow a suit from Tyler.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re close to his same size.”

  T.J. grins at that. “I wasn’t always his size. I used to be a lot skinnier. I’ve been working out a lot this year.”

  I try to picture him smaller. Did he look like Steve Rogers before his transformation into Captain America? I scan T.J.’s chest, swallowing hard. Most guys I know wear slouchy tees with baggy sweatpants. He fills out his gray T-shirt just right. It makes me want to know what’s under that T-shirt.

  Is it hot in here?

  Our server appears next to the table, balancing plates of french toast, eggs, bacon, and fruit. She slides the food in front of us and tops off our coffees.

  Steam wafts up from my mug. After pouring syrup on my french toast, I pick up my fork to dig in. “So you didn’t have a date to prom already?”

  He shakes his head. “I wasn’t planning to go. There wasn’t anyone I wanted to ask.” His eyes meet mine. “Too bad I hadn’t met you.”

  I take a deep breath. This boy is dangerous.

  I glance up at T.J. He’s still watching me closely. It should make me uncomfortable, but I feel safe with him, like it’s okay to be real.

  “I haven’t dated much,” I admit, which is mostly true. I haven’t had an official boyfriend, but I did make out with Austin, and before him, I’d kissed two guys when I was younger. I’ve never been on a date before.

  T.J. pauses with a forkful of eggs on the way to his mouth. Then he nods, before finishing the bite. He stares out the window as he continues to dig into his food.

  I’m not sure what to say next.

  He was honest with me about how his prom date situation embarrassed him, so I wanted to be open as well. But now I’m worried I’ve scared him off by basically admitting I’m a virgin.

  What if he’s looking for a weekend fling with a girl who has experience?

  “That doesn’t bother you, right? That I haven’t dated much?” I ask quietly.

  He shakes his head. “Not at all. I’m just surprised. You’re so confident and nice and beautiful…” He suddenly crams a big bite of french toast in his mouth and chews. “I haven’t really dated either.”

  I laugh nervously. “That’s not what I figured.”

  He smirks a little. “Why? What did you think? That I’m some sort of lothario?”

  “Yup, that’s exactly what I thought. That you’re a sex fiend.”

  “C’mon. For real, what did you think?”

  “Just that—” I take a deep breath. “That you must have lots of experience. I mean, the way you were dancing with me last night… It was like you know what you’re doing. Like, reeeeally know what you’re doing.”

  His eyes lock on me. “That’s all because of you.”

  * * *

  While T.J. uses the bathroom before we head to the beach, I check my phone to find messages from Mom and Dad, both telling me to go home to Dad’s apartment RIGHT NOW.

  Shit. Dad dragged Mom into this?

  I ignore the texts, then try to ignore my guilt. I don’t want to worry Mom or piss her off—she’s already angry enough I came to Chicago. I shiver when I think of how she yanked on my ponytail. How she yelled at me. I don’t want that to happen again.

  And I’m pissed at Dad too. How dare he suddenly start acting like a parent, telling me I’m not allowed to date?

  I’m not giving up this time with T.J.

  I’ve never lacked for friends, and if I go to a party or school dance, there’s always someone to talk to. But everyone’s usually interested in someone hooking up with or dating someone else.

  I’ve never experienced this: a guy I’m into, who’s wholly into me, and I can definitely fool around with him if we both want to.

  A text from Sierra pops up:

  Sierra: David’s pissed.

  Me: Can you get Dad to call off the attack?

  Sierra: No. He’s really upset with you. I’m surprised he hasn’t called the cops.

  Me: Ughhhh. Why does he care?

  Sierra: He’s your dad. Obvs. I told him TJ is nice and to leave you alone… I don’t think it worked.

  Me: I love you anyway.

  Sierra: I love you toooooo! I’ll try to get David to back off so you can boink TJ

  Me: BOINK?!

  Sierra: Boink!

  Has my stepsister lost her mind?

  A text from Leah pops up next: Your dad and I are looking forward to spending time with you this weekend. Let me know when?

  Her message makes me feel even guiltier. But not
guilty enough to go back to my dad’s place.

  The bathroom door swings open, and T.J. comes out. He looks over at me, stops walking, and smiles. His blue eyes focus on me for so long, it’s like he forgets to move. A server rushes by, jostling him out of his trance.

  He approaches the table and gently touches my shoulder. “Everything okay?”

  “My dad wanted to spend time with me today.”

  His eyebrows pinch together. “Do you need to go?”

  I shake my head.

  He pulls his sunglasses down over his eyes. “You ready to hit the beach?”

  The sun beats down on us as we walk toward the lake. To get to the beach, we have to go down a set of concrete stairs and cross under Lake Shore Drive through a tunnel.

  It’s gross in here. Lots of mud puddles full of trash and floating discarded plastic bottles. I want to get through here as quickly as possible without getting my feet dirty. I hold my breath so I don’t have to smell any gross smells.

  T.J., however, flips his sunglasses up on top of his head and stops to look at a graffiti mural on the concrete wall. It’s a portrait of Obama wearing a Chicago Cubs uniform.

  “Oh, that’s cool,” T.J. says. He pulls out his phone and snaps a couple pictures of the mural, as well as some of the other graffiti down here. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. But what really captures his attention is a beam of sunlight shining through a grate onto a bare section of concrete, surprisingly untouched by graffiti. He looks back and forth from the sunbeam to the wall, then steps up and touches it, like it’s a blank canvas.

  Is T.J. a graffiti artist? I want to ask, but that seems deeply personal, not to mention illegal. Even if I ask, he may not feel comfortable telling me if he’s into it.

  As soon as we climb the steps on the other side, I let out the breath I was holding. The smell didn’t seem to bother T.J. Maybe he’s used to hanging out in gross tunnels, doing graffiti.