Noah looked around. Even for West Hartford, Club Rosenbaum was pretty sad and pathetic. “Gonna be hard giving all this up next year,”
Noah said facetiously. He ripped a loose swatch of faux leather off the ancient barstool. A big football player at the end of the bar did a flaming shot to the delight of his teammates.
To Noah’s surprise, Dylan was nostalgic. “You say that now, but trust me, you’re going to look back fondly on these days.”
Walker felt the same way. He raised his bottle and toasted, “Here’s to the Class of 2012.” They clinked bottles and drank.
Just then, Lisa, a cute, short girl with curly brown hair, came up to Noah with her yearbook. “Hey, Noah, can you sign mine?”
“Sure,” Noah replied. He took her yearbook over to the ping pong table to sign it.
It was weird. After eighteen years of friendships, rivalries, afterschool fist fights, and random hook-ups, in the end, the extraneous feelings all sort of washed away and left only camaraderie. Like, We’re all in this together. And it showed in times like these as the final days of high school ticked down, when everyone signed everyone else’s yearbook without dwelling on the bad stuff. Maybe sometimes you had to dig deep to remember playing on the same little league team with Lucas Westerly, now a totally tatted-up gearhead. Or the time you skipped school with Tom Weaver in eighth grade to go see Superbad, before you two drifted apart. But no matter how tenuous or antagonistic the relationship was in the past, practically no one refused to sign a yearbook, if asked. And no one betrayed that trust by writing something mean.
Back at the bar, Dylan saw Walker staring across the room at a cute girl. Walker noticed Dylan eyeing him and asked, “Who’s that?”
“Don’t know,” Dylan admitted. “But she is hot as hell.”
Walker was salivating.
“Go talk to her,” Dylan suggested, though he knew that was about as likely as asking him to go pet a velociraptor.
“Yeah, right,” Walker scoffed predictably.
Dylan rolled his eyes, then, without warning, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The girl looked up and Dylan confidently motioned for her to come over to them… which she did!
Walker had good taste. This girl was gorgeous and had a kind of aristocratic look about her, with long, straight, dark hair that contrasted against her alabaster skin. She clearly didn’t go to Hall with them or Dylan would have bedded her years ago. She arrived at the bar with a big smile, curious and thankful to be noticed.
“Strange girl we’ve never seen before,” Dylan ad libbed, “this is Walker. 3.7 GPA, going to Brandeis next year, super sexy. He’d like to get to know you.”
Walker’s heart was racing. His instincts were telling him to get the hell out of there, but he fought them back and forced an uncomfortable smile. Then, to his surprise, this girl actually blushed a little. “Okay,” she said.
Walker couldn’t believe that just worked. “Sorry about him,” he said, uncharacteristically seizing the moment. “Hi, I’m Walker.”
“Patience,” she replied. Walker hoped it was her name and not some sort of cryptic message. He shook her hand.
“You want to get a beer?” he suggested and Patience nodded. Walker escorted her to the refrigerator, leaving Dylan alone.
But not for long. A random guy Dylan thought he might have had Algebra II with approached with a yearbook.
“Dylan! Sign my yearbook, dude.”
Dylan took it, confident he could piece together something to write by reading what everyone else had written in this guy’s yearbook.
Meanwhile, at the ping pong table, Noah finished signing Lisa’s yearbook and handed it back to her. Suddenly, a hand slid in from behind Noah’s back and covered his eyes. This person was clearly a girl, but she tried to use her best fake deep voice, asking gruffly, “Guess who?”
With her hand still over his eyes, Noah turned around and kissed her before guessing, “Mike?”
She lowered her hand and Noah pretended to be surprised at seeing his girlfriend. “Oh, my God. Sarah. I’ve said too much.”
Sarah laughed along with his lame ruse. Sarah was a pretty girl with wavy blonde hair and a curvy body to match. She had big breasts and liked to wear tight tank tops that made them look even bigger. Not that Noah ever complained. It had been nine months since they got together, almost their entire senior year, and for a teenager that was an eternity. Noah first hooked up with Sarah at Scott Wheeler’s house right after the Jewish holidays. Then they just kept hooking up with each other and no one else, when one day in October, Sarah changed her Facebook status to “In a Relationship.”
Things were great—better than great—for a long time. But it was hard work maintaining a serious relationship for their entire senior year of high school. There were all sorts of temptations to hook up with other people that Noah and Sarah had successfully avoided. But there were also a million other things pulling them in different directions, from friends to extra-curricular activities to college applications. Lately, there was also a growing restlessness that they both felt, a need to prepare for the future in which they were free to explore the world on their own. And, of course, there was graduation itself, a bright-line, fatal cutoff date marching ever closer.
In high school, you think that every relationship is the one. Not counting random or even repeat hook-ups, of course. But when things turn serious, both parties assume it’s love and destiny and God smiling on them. Sarah certainly felt this way. And so did Noah. Until it stopped being fun. But Noah didn’t have the benefit of years of relationship experience to know whether this truly was a doomed relationship or just growing pains that all couples have to work through. Who’s to say they weren’t supposed to figure out how to make it all work and live happily ever after? It didn’t sound so crazy after all. The truth was Noah just wasn’t sure.
But Dylan had been hounding him for months to break up with Sarah. True, Dylan didn’t believe in relationships in the first place, but he was persuasive when he said, “If it’s not fun anymore, what’s the point?” Noah had been broaching the subject with Sarah for weeks by delicately asking what they were going to do after graduation. But deep down, Noah didn’t want Sarah to be like those karate classes he took at the Y in third grade, where he just gave up after it got too hard. Maybe he was supposed to be a black belt today and he changed the cosmic timeline by quitting too easily.
So when Noah turned to Sarah and said, “Hey, babe. One more week,” it was an immediate downer.
Sarah’s smile faded and she just muttered, “Yeah.”
Suddenly, it was awkward. Avoiding eye contact, Noah asked, “So are we going to talk about this?” He glanced over and saw Dylan giving him a look of moral support.
Sarah put on her game face and took Noah’s hand with a smile. “Do we have to do this now? It’s a party.”
“If you call it that,” Noah replied. “Look, I just think we need to figure things out before graduation.”
Maybe Sarah was in complete denial about their impending doom. Or maybe she just wanted to avoid the heartache for as long as possible. Whatever the reason, Sarah pulled out her trump card and said, “Not now. I’m horny.” She knew no guy was going to say no to that, and she smiled seductively as she led him toward the stairs. Maybe she had only delayed the conversation for another day or two, but for now Sarah was pleased with herself, and inside she was gloating about the power girls had over guys.
As he ascended the stairway to heaven, Noah locked eyes with a visibly disappointed Dylan. Noah’s look said, What can I do? I tried.
Dylan just shook his head. What a chicken-shit.
With Walker chatting up Patience on the couch, Noah off with Sarah, and Pike in a cloud of smoke in the work room, Dylan was alone now. He swigged the last of his beer and left the empty on the bar. A cute sophomore girl was walking toward him. She looked young and had an insecure vibe about her, as if she was overly self-conscious about even being at a senior party. Dyla
n was sure he’d seen her in the cafeteria before, but there were a lot of cute girls at Hall High and Dylan couldn’t keep track of all of them. As she was about to pass him, Dylan stopped her without missing a beat.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dylan said, pointing to her chest and sounding serious. “You’ve got ‘updoc’ all over your shirt.”
The cute girl took the bait. “What’s ‘updoc’?”
Dylan put his finger to his mouth and did his best Elmer Fudd: “Shhh! Be vewy, vewy qwiet. I’m hunting wabbits.”
She actually laughed at this, as Dylan had no doubt that she would. He grinned, with a smile that was time-tested and well-honed for perceived sincerity. “Hi, I’m Dylan,” was all he needed to say to seal the deal. Looks like all those years of watching old cartoons really paid off.
Back on the couch, Walker was making headway of his own. Patience really seemed into him. You could tell by her body language, the way she leaned in to face him, laughed at his lame attempts at jokes, and even touched his arm. Unfortunately, Walker failed to notice any of this.
“I’m visiting my friend Tracy,” Patience explained. “I go to Choate. Well, I used to. God, it’s so weird to think we already graduated.”
She leaned forward and Walker tried his hardest not to look down her shirt. After all, his strategy was to appeal to her mind, not insult her with base leering. “Where are you going next year?” he asked.
“Wellesley.”
Walker saw his in. “Wow, I’m going to be in Boston. Well, just outside. Brandeis. We should exchange emails.”
Patience smiled. Tragically, Walker thought things were going great. Like maybe after he got her email, they could become Facebook friends. Then, after they got to know each other over the summer, he’d arrange a meeting in Boston in the Fall once they were settled in. A dinner date, maybe a movie, and before you know it, they’d have that magic first kiss.
Unbeknownst to him, Patience was growing bored. She had been giving him the signal from the moment they met that she was looking for a meaningless hook-up, but this guy kept talking and talking. Ugh, what does a girl have to do to get laid these days?, she thought behind that smile.
Next door, in the concrete-floored work room, the stoners were sitting on a ratty old plaid couch passing a bong. The stoner crowd was usually a mix-and-match group of potheads with an occasional “respectable” teen getting high on a lark. Today it was just the core group: Pike, Ned, Suzanne, Olaf, and Diaz.
Suzanne was kind of cute, with scraggly strawberry blonde hair and freckles. You might hook up with her if you were high, and since everyone here usually was, everyone here had.
Olaf was a foreign exchange student from Norway and immediately befriended the group. Back home, practically any gorgeous Norwegian girl would have sex with you just to be polite, but smoking pot, it seemed, was still kind of a taboo. (This confused Ned for the first several weeks after meeting Olaf, because Ned mixed up Norway and The Netherlands.) So, naturally, when Olaf came to the U.S. for the year, he wasn’t as interested in hooking up as he was in getting baked. And he took it as a personal challenge to become the best at it. Which he was.
Whereas Olaf was welcomed with open arms by the other stoners, and frequently provided some of the most hilarious lines when stoned (like the time he said, “Ja man, this bud is sweeter than my mother’s teet.”), Diaz, on the other hand, just kind of latched onto the group without any invitation, formal or otherwise. Truth be told, no one really liked Diaz. He never said anything funny or worthwhile, he mooched off of everyone else and never provided his own weed, and frankly he kind of smelled. Like cheese. Furthermore, he looked like a troll. Pike saw him in the boys’ locker room shower one day and swore he had a tail. But stoners aren’t haters and unlike their violent, aggressive counterparts in the world of teenage binge drinking, everyone was welcome to partake in a bong hit. Even a troll.
Pike took a hit and passed the bong to Suzanne. As he held in the smoke, Pike stared at the work bench with its rotary saw. He exhaled, then slowly looked over at the power tools hanging on a peg board above the work bench. As if a powerful revelation had come to him, he asked the group, “Did you ever really look at all these tools?”
Ned repeated, “Tools,” and guffawed.
But Pike felt like he had hit upon something here. Maybe something important. “No, seriously. I mean, like, think about it. One day some guy just said, ‘I’m going to invent like a drill.’”
The five of them thought about it for a second, then burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
In Marco’s parents’ bedroom, Sarah and Noah were making out like crazy. Noah often wondered where Marco’s parents went all the time. Marco’s dad was rich and Marco’s 29-year-old step-mom had just had his half-brother, Jaden. They must take the baby with them on vacation or something. He didn’t spend too much time thinking about it though, because at the end of the day he didn’t really care. Still, he wondered if he and Sarah had more sex in this bed than Marco’s parents.
In between kisses, Sarah told Noah, “I’ve been waiting for this all week. I am so stressed out over finals.”
“Why do you care?” Noah reassured her. “Wisconsin isn’t even going to look at these grades.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sarah replied.
You brought it up, Noah thought, but then Sarah whipped off her shirt and jeans and hopped on the bed, erasing all prior thoughts from his mind. Sarah did the seductive “come here” finger.
Noah smiled. This was what was so great about having a real girlfriend. No mind games and no mystery, like, Am I going to get lucky or not? Noah knew he was going to have sex and that certainty was comforting to him. He took off his shirt and pulled out a condom before peeling off his pants. On the way over to the bed he turned off the lights.
Noah kissed Sarah with fiery intensity. Then he started kissing her neck while he cradled her head in one hand and expertly undid her bra with the other. Again, an advantage of having a real girlfriend: Noah knew her bra clasps by heart.
Sarah was really getting into it and Noah could tell by her little moans that his kisses were having the desired effect. Time to shift into second gear. He travelled little kisses down to her breasts on his usual flight plan, and his hand moved down to explore under her panties. Her little gasps and moans grew louder and quicker. She reached into his boxer briefs and pulled out his dick. Now it was Noah who was starting to moan.
This went on for a moment or two before Sarah couldn’t take it anymore. “I want you. Now.”
You didn’t have to tell Noah twice. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
Noah reached over to the condom and opened it up. He fumbled around with it for a moment. Sarah waited patiently. But this was taking a little too long. Noah was having some technical difficulties getting the condom on. Then, snap! Noah screamed!
Sarah sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“Condom broke.”
Click. Sarah turned on the night table lamp. Noah examined the condom, trying to figure out if he could salvage it. He wasn’t sure if it was a manufacturing defect or if it had gotten pierced by something in his pocket, but the condom was a goner.
Sarah was getting frustrated. “Don’t you have another one?”
“No,” Noah admitted.
“What happened to the Boy Scout Motto?” Sarah teased.
“I was in Adventure Guides,” Noah replied before throwing the broken condom aside. But Noah wasn’t giving up just yet. He opened the night stand.
“Wait. Here we go,” he declared triumphantly. He pulled out a condom and showed it to Sarah.
“Ewwww. No way.” Sarah was repulsed by the mere thought of it.
“What?”
“I’m not doing it with Mr. Rosenbaum’s condom inside of me!”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s gross.” She took it in her hand. “And look,” she added. “It’s lamb skin. What’s lamb skin?”
“That’s the kind that gives you HIV.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Noah countered, getting frustrated himself. “It doesn’t give you anything, and besides, I don’t have anything to give you! You’re the only girl I’ve ever been with!”
But Sarah put her foot down. “I’m sorry. We are not using this.”
Noah’s frustration turned to anger. “Jesus, Sarah. What’s the big deal?”
But before she could answer, there was a knock at the door.
“We’re in here,” Noah called out.
But to Noah’s surprise, it was Dylan’s voice calling back through the closed door. “Time’s up, home slice.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. Supremely pissed, Noah got off the bed and stomped over to the door, opening it a crack. Dylan was with the cute girl with the “updoc” on her shirt. Dylan whispered, “The baby’s room is empty.”
Noah countered, “Then why didn’t you just go there, asshole?”
Dylan smiled. “Because my friend…”
The cute girl piped up. “Ashlyn.”
Dylan continued, “Ashlyn deserves the best.”
Ashlyn smiled, actually flattered by this.
Noah rolled his eyes. But Sarah was already getting dressed and said, “Come on. Let’s go.” Noah put on his pants but carried his shirt and shoes out of the room with Sarah, as Dylan and Ashlyn entered.
As they passed each other, Noah gave Dylan an evil look reserved only for your cock-blocking best friend. Dylan just smiled.
In the work room, things had gotten really weird really fast. Pike and Ned were now reenacting the light saber duel from Star Wars, only they were using a live chainsaw and an electric hedge trimmer. Olaf, Suzanne, and Diaz sat on the couch cheering them on.
Ned spoke with his best Darth Vader voice: “When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.”
Last Stop This Town Page 3