Under The Covers

by Baker, Max Q.

  "Oh, shit," I shouted, startled.

  Robby's girl was giggling. She was wasted and ready for anything. Robby added, "That bed is big enough for four, and maybe we could ALL put it to good use. I'm just sayin'."

  Mags glared at him. "Get out, Robby!"

  He held up his hands and backed out, telling his girl, "C'mon. We'll find some other place." Before he shut the door, though, I heard him saying - loud enough for us to hear, "The four of us coulda been hot, though!"

  Opportunities for threesomes and foursomes had come up before, but it wasn’t my thing. I was willing to try a lot of stuff, but I drew the line somewhere. Robby didn't even know a line existed.

  After the distraction, I started thinking of Bo. I wondered where my Japanese schoolgirl zombie was at that moment. Robby had distracted and annoyed me enough that any hope of being in the mood with Mags was completely lost. I told Mags I was two sheets to the wind and needed some air. She felt rejected and riled up and tried to persuade me to stay. It was a matter of personal pride for her, as much as anything. She tried to get me back in the mood, and on any other day, she would have succeeded. But my head was in such a weird place that I really needed to stop. I realized that I was having complicated conflicting feelings for Mags and Bo, and was having some doubts about everything.

  Mags stopped trying to make me succumb.

  Instead of getting pissy like I had expected, she grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

  "Love, Actually" was playing on a cable channel, a little way into it already. She cuddled up to me and said, "You said you wanted to see a movie with me sometime."

  And that was how we spent the next 90 minutes. We cuddled in her bed, watching a movie about unlikely people finding love. It was nice. I had never felt that intimate with Mags and we weren't even doing anything. It was as if she had taken off the dust-jacket of her cover and was letting me see inside, at least the copyright and disclaimer page, but that was way more than usual.

  When she finally fell asleep in my arms, I was afraid to move. There was something so sweet and trusting about it, I didn't dare disturb her.

  [ Unexpected Information ]

  A few hours later, when Mags had rolled away, I got up and walked around her house to make sure everything was still standing, and to look for Bo. (Sure, I guess I was kind of a crappy boyfriend. But I wasn’t a boyfriend. Not really. I didn’t know what the hell I was.)

  Not everyone had gone home, but no one had told them they had to. That was the point of the empty unsupervised house party. If people didn't feel safe to drive, or didn't want to leave, then they were welcome to stay; till they were asked to leave, at least.

  Chris was still awake, locked in a heated PlayStation battle with some other guy I didn't know. They had crazed bloodshot eyes, as if they had been at it intent and competitively for hours.

  Amane and her red-haired roommate, Rayne, were still there, in a corner of the living room, locked in a deep dark conversation about the inevitable destruction of the world by human negligence. When Rayne saw me coming, she seemed to realize the time and peeked out the window. The sky was the off-black color that occurs before dawn. She announced, "I'd better go. It's getting late."

  Amane walked Rayne to the door then she came back to me.

  I asked, "Have you seen Bo?"

  "She and Ryan left hours ago. Have you seen Robby?" she asked in return.

  "He stumbled in on me and Mags," I admitted.

  "That must have been interesting."

  "He probably got a good look at my ass, so hopefully he didn't get too turned on by that," I joked.

  "I doubt it," Amane replied, quickly adding, "Because I think he's more into girls. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your ass."

  "Thanks," I told her, smirking at the thought that Amane might think I had a nice ass. It was hard to imagine her thinking in sexual terms.

  I was pretty sure that Amane liked Robby, so I left out the part that he had been with yet another girl that wasn't Amane.

  Then I asked her with a big grin, "Wanna know what Mags and I just did?"

  She gave me one of her best 'you've got to be kidding' looks, and answered, "Do I EVER ask you what you and Mags just did? I’m not sure why the two of you even came out of the closet."

  I chuckled and told her anyway. "We didn't fool around. We cuddled and watched a movie together." I don't know why, but this was a really big deal to me. And I thought it would change people's opinion of Mags a little.

  She pieced together the pieces of the story she already had heard and added, "With your bare ass in the air."

  I explained as hurriedly as I could, "We were going to but..."

  Amane cut me off. "Don't want to know."

  I continued anyway. "Until Robby interrupted us..."

  She held up a hand. "Still don't want to know."

  "And then instead of actually doing anything, we cuddled."

  "How nice for you," She said with her usual expressionless glare. "Thanks for sharing. Ryan was so proud of himself when he just cuddled with her too."

  I did a double take. “Ryan?” Had I heard something wrong? That couldn’t be right? “Ryan and Mags?” I was sputtering.

  “They used to date. Before Bo. It didn’t last long.” It was not meant to hurt me. But it was definitely unexpected information.

  “Bo knew about this?” I was beside myself, having a hard time processing that Ryan had had an intimate connection with the two most important girls in my life.

  “Of course she knew. Ryan was too embarrassed by Mags’ image as he advanced his professional career, so he dumped her for Bo. At least that’s my version of it.”

  My jaw dropped. I had disliked Ryan for some personal reasons before, but now it was worse. My gut was a stew of bad feelings. He was a shallow, heartless manipulator. He was a high-class Robby.

  And then it hit me. How was I any different? What did that make me?

  I hated myself.

  I felt like Luke Skywalker when he was fighting Darth Vader and discovered that Vader had a mechanical hand too. He was following in Darth Vader’s footsteps; down the path to the Dark Side. Except in my case, Ryan was Vader, and his light saber was something a little more personal. With that mental image, I had less desire for Mags. The knowledge of Ryan haunted me.

  And if it affected my feelings for Mags, how could it not affect my feelings for Bo? I had never cared about things like this before. People had sex all the time and had their histories and partners. Robby and I had had the same girls, at different times. Sometimes it just came with the circle of friends you were in, everyone trying to find that one endless love, or love for the one endless night. And in the end, sex wasn’t much deeper than any other physical contact. But it bothered me with Ryan. It gnawed at me.

  Amane shrugged and we changed the subject.

  I nodded in Chris's direction. "He looks like he's having fun. Who's he with?"

  Helpful as ever, she answered, "Some guy."

  "Oh." I didn't try to hide my own sarcasm.

  “Have you seen Robby?” she asked, hopefully.

  As if on cue, an Asian girl came running downstairs in only her bra and panties. "I have the major munchies!" she announced as she darted for the kitchen.

  Robby pursued her wearing only his boxers. He grabbed her inside the kitchen and started sucking on her neck, before they began scavenging for sweet and salty snacks.

  I wasn't even sure if that was the same girl he was with when he busted in on me and Mags.

  Amane sighed, disappointed. “Up until now, I thought maybe he just didn’t like Asians. He would probably fuck Chris before he would consider me.”

  “I’m pretty certain that isn’t true.”

  “You know what I mean.” She glanced away sadly and buried her face in her hands, sinking into the couch.

  I sat next to her, concerned. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  She made an indistinct sound that vaguely resembled
a zombie.

  I asked hesitantly, "Have you EVER done it?"

  “Why? Are you offering your services?”

  I fumbled awkwardly. “No. I mean. I was just .." I had no idea how to finish that sentence.

  Without further prompting, she admitted, “I had an awkward encounter at camp when I was 17. I'm not sure it ever made it inside."

  "Whoa." I was too stunned to say anything else.

  She turned the tables. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “I guess you earned it.”

  “Would you have sex with someone if you loved someone else?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was propositioning me, or what her angle was. “You mean like cheating on someone?”

  “No. Let’s say you’re with Mags, but you love someone else. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  “Hypothetically speaking.” This was already hitting too close to home.

  “Does it make you feel wrong, not being with the one you love? Do you feel like you’re cheating on the one you love?”

  I thought hard about that question. But I already knew the answer. Yes. It did. On some deep personal emotional level, it felt wrong. But at the same time, the reality was, I was not with the person I loved. And in the meantime, I had my life, and she had hers. Guilt, confusion, jealousy. It was all part of the package I had bought. The unwanted Service Plan that left a bad taste in your mouth.

  “You should get some sleep,” I told her, avoiding the question. I stood up to leave.

  Amane leaned forward and called out. "Chris! Bus is leaving! If you want a ride, come on."

  "Ok, in a minute," he blurrily replied, ignoring her.

  Amane settled back down and went to sleep on the loveseat, knowing full well that Chris was not going to be ready in a minute.

  [ Amane and the Karaoke ]

  Another couple weeks had passed and it was Amane's turn to choose where we went for the evening. She picked a karaoke bar, and we all thought she was kidding. But she wasn't. She even said that the rule was that everyone had to go up on the stage and sing at least once. Nobody wanted to do this, but she pulled the "It's my night to pick" card. We all agreed that we were going to need to get lit before we went there. So we ordered another round.

  When we arrived at the karaoke bar, Chris asked Amane, "Do you even sing?"

  She said, "My name - Amane - means 'Sounds of Heaven'."

  Robby asked, "And that means you can sing, because ...?"

  Ryan interjected, "Since she suggested this location.” He added, “And she has obviously volunteered to be the first victim, I mean, singer." It was too cliché a joke to be funny.

  Even if it were the funniest comment in the world, I could picture him fucking Mags and Bo, and that alone made my stomach churn and killed any sense of humor I had. Rich prick. Privileged piece of shit.

  Undaunted, Amane put her name in for a song, and waited her turn, challenging us to do the same. We didn't tell her, but we secretly agreed to do a song as a group. She never said that we all had to be on the stage separately.

  But as it turned out, we never got our turn. What we didn’t know was that Chris had already snuck his name in, even ahead of Amane. That boy was constantly surprising us.

  When Chris’s name was called, Amane (and everyone else) stared at him, stunned. He pulled out a pair of sunglasses – seemingly from under his beard - and a clip-on pink bowtie as he awkwardly hopped to the stage with surprising enthusiasm. As if that weren’t weird enough, he had chosen Psy’s once-popular “Gangnam Style” for his song. Not only was Chris a naturally bad dancer, but he had memorized every move from the song’s music video and did them with equal goofiness. That beard was flapping as much as his hands and legs as he pretended to rope and ride horses and do other embarrassing moves with mock sexual innuendos. And if that weren’t enough, he either fluently spoke – or had memorized – all of the lyrics in Korean and sang them flawlessly. Not musically, but flawlessly from a language perspective.

  We were shouting and cheering him on. He was great. The rest of the audience was on their feet too, encouraging him and laughing. His lack of awareness of people’s opinion had made him a visual juggernaut. Bo and Mags even ran onto the stage and started acting as his sexy backup singers, trying to be the straight routine to his deliberately silly front. It was the surprise hit of the night. When he was done, he took off his sunglasses and bowed. He left the stage to a roar of cheers and pats on the back. Chris was in his glory as he muttered, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  The only problem with his performance was that it was so good and so well-received, that when Amane was called as the next singer, she got up on the stage and choked.

  The music she had chosen was Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.” She stood there, stiff as a board, staring at the audience like a hypnotist, leaning forward with eerie glazed eyes. The music whispered on, with its haunting, plaintive synthesizer beats, but she did not sing. At first people thought it was part of her act, since Cyrus cried silently for a few seconds at the beginning of the song in her music video.

  Amane looked like she was going to hurl. She was holding back tears. She wanted to break out and sing, but she couldn’t. She leaned toward the audience and outstretched her arms like a ghost from some bad Japanese horror flick. Instead of singing, and instead of using the words to the song, she suddenly began reciting random thoughts in a sharp monotone voice. "Dark roads. Troubled Spirits. Love. Fleeting with the night. Forever. Friends. Lost without a fight. Driving. Rain. Tomorrow never knows. Hearts broken. New hearts heard. Pain. Drove. The victim shows. We can never be the same. It claims us. One by one. Love hurts. Hope dies. The birds come home."

  It was dark. Intense. Surreal. With Amane never moving. Just staring, reaching, wringing her hands, and chanting the edgy dark words that had nothing to do with the song itself.

  Even before it was over, she rushed off the stage, embarrassed; her feet not moving fast enough to get her away from the spotlight.

  As she passed a group of middle-aged people, having some after work party, one of them leaned toward her and mocked her. “Nice job! You piss yourself like that too?”

  Chris, to my complete shock, suddenly stopped, his face burning red with anger. He grabbed the man by the collar, stuck his face in the other man’s face, and with a surprisingly commanding voice, shouted, “I will kick your ass two ways to Sunday!”

  The man’s friends pulled the other man back, and I put my arms on Chris’s shoulders, guiding him away, but Chris stared him down as they separated; as if he were ready to kill.

  Amane thanked him, then told us, "You were right. This was a dumb idea," and she just kept walking, right out of the club. We followed her.

  Heading to our cars, Amane was bombarded with questions. "What was that?" “What were those words?" "Did you write that?" "Had you planned to do that?" "That was wicked cool, but intense."

  "No," she admitted. "I choked. I was going to sing, but I just couldn't do it. So I tried to say something inspiring, but I had nothing. So I kept saying random words, trying to rhyme. It was very scary."

  "I have it on video, on my phone," Mags said. She smiled supportively. "That's a keeper!"

  "Delete it," Amane demanded.

  Mags mashed a button. "Too late. Already posted." She smiled wryly.

  The rest of us, who had Smart Phones at least, admitted, "I have it too." "Yeah, so don’t I." "Got it right here."

  ***

  After that small fiasco, we decided we would regroup at a restaurant and have some dinner.

  [ The Truth about Mags ]

  Mags and I took her car. She was driving too fast as usual. Instead of going to the restaurant, she pulled out onto a secluded road, and then stopped along the side, making her own parking spot under an embankment of trees. She told me to follow her and the next thing I knew, we were lying in the grass at the base of a Mockernut Hickory, making out in the moonlight. She didn't care about
getting her clothes dirty or anything. She was all over me. And then I was all over her, forgetting about Ryan for the moment. Despite whatever past she had had, she was mine now.

  "I missed you," she told me.

  "I missed you too," I lied, but it felt like the right thing to say. I always enjoyed being with Mags, but I never found that I missed her when she wasn't there. (That would not always be the case, but it was still true at that point in our relationship.)

  She seemed to be way more comfortable with public sex than me, but I was Ho Shoe #17, so I could roll with pretty near anything. Almost. Within reason. And this was within reason.

  Driving back to meet our friends, I tried to make meaningful small talk, something deeper than foreplay. "So why did your folks name you Magnum?

  She didn't want to answer. It was obvious. But she tried. "My dad said he wanted to make me tough.”

  “So he named you after a gun?” I had heard worse names.

  Mags became serious and bitter. “No. It was more than that.”

  I could tell this was a serious topic for her that she never revealed, so I did not press.

  But for some reason, she wanted to speak. To me. Tonight. She wanted me to understand what she was willing to tell me. Because I cared, or seemed to care.

  Keeping her eyes focused narrowly on the road, her foot pushed slightly harder on the gas. I felt the car respond to the tension in her body.

  “My daddy wanted me to be strong, he said. Fearless, he said. The only way to overcome fear was to face fear, he said. So from the time I was a little girl, he started fabricating all these horrible situations and scenarios to put me in. He called them “inoculations.” He said they were like shots against diseases. You got a dose of the actual disease to build up a tolerance and resistance to the disease, in case you ever got the real thing.”

  Her foot was starting to gun the engine and the road was anything but straight.

  “He made me face them and do them until I didn’t cry or show any fear. If I cried, he threatened to take away anything I cared about or loved, whether it was a doll, a pet, or even a person I loved.” With venomous bitterness, she told me, “I hate having things I love taken away from me.”