by Blake Nelson
I didn’t say anything more. A new song came on, but nobody got up to dance. Nicole spotted someone she knew in the kitchen. She began waving wildly, and jumped up and launched herself in that direction. Phoebe, left alone with me, said nothing and continued to study her phone.
A few minutes later, though, Phoebe put her phone away. She actually smiled at me for a moment as she did. Then she scooted a little closer and casually put her arm along the top of the couch behind me. I could feel her fingers graze the side of my face when she did it. We sat like that for a few moments, watching the dancers, her hand behind my head. Then she began to touch my hair and the back of my neck.
Suddenly, I wasn’t so drunk anymore. I wasn’t sure what she was doing. Her fingers burrowed down to my scalp and began to massage the base of my skull. It felt amazing. I glanced over at her once; she grinned. I grinned. She began to do it more, stroking my hair, caressing my neck. It sent warm shivers all through me.
She wants me to kiss her, I thought. I had to do it. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t hesitate. I turned toward her. She was already looking at my lips. I leaned in. Our mouths connected. Our lips touched, and then our tongues. And just like that it was happening. I was making out with Phoebe, right in the middle of this huge party.
It was heavenly. But I was too excited. I was going too fast. Phoebe was going slower; she was more of a delicate kisser. I followed her lead. I slowed down. And then it got even better. Her lips were so soft, and yet firm, and they fit so well with mine. And the feeling of it, the idea of it: this beautiful girl, this wild girl, with her pretty face and luminous skin. Phoebe, the girl I thought I’d never even talk to, she was right here in my arms!
After a minute or two Phoebe pulled away. It took me a second to open my eyes, and when I did, I saw that she was sitting back. So I sat back too. She wasn’t looking at me now; she was staring at the dancers. I did the same. My whole body was humming, electrified, but I did my best to continue my original strategy. Nothing happening here. No need to talk. No need to do anything.
Some new people were dancing. Others were standing around. Phoebe lit a cigarette and checked her phone. I remained focused on the dancers and the other people. I noticed an older guy across the room, staring hard at Phoebe and me. He looked pissed off, or maybe jealous. I wondered who he was.
Nicole came back to the couch and said something urgent to Phoebe, who instantly stood up. Before I could react, the two of them had crossed the room and disappeared into the kitchen. The guy staring at us had left too, I noticed. I wasn’t sure what was happening, so I stayed where I was. Probably they would come back. And anyway, it wouldn’t have felt right to jump up and chase after them. My super-chill approach had worked so far. I felt like I better stick with it.
But after ten minutes passed, with no sign of them, I wasn’t so sure. After fifteen minutes I casually got to my feet, went into the kitchen. I looked around. They were not in the kitchen.
I moved toward the front of the house. There were clusters of partiers in different rooms. I calmly checked each area, but there was no sign of them. I began to move a little faster, and when I’d covered the whole house, I returned once more to the playroom. No Nicole. No Phoebe.
I went outside. The bonfire had died down. The food table was still there, but even more trashed then before. I scanned the grounds, the fields, the cars parked along the edge of the woods. No Phoebe. No Nicole.
Okay, I said to myself, so she left. Was that so bad? The important thing was: Phoebe and I had made out. And I hadn’t done anything stupid. Which meant that she knew me now, she would remember me, we could possibly make out again . . . if she didn’t have a boyfriend. I hadn’t asked anyone if she did. That would be good information to have.
I walked back into the barn. The band was taking a break, but there were still people standing around or sitting on hay bales. I spotted Tyler and Justin, sitting on the ground along the back wall. “Hey,” I said, kneeling on the hard dirt.
They raised their plastic beer cups in greeting. “Where you been?” said Justin.
“In the house,” I said. “You’ll never believe what just happened to me.”
“What?”
“I made out with Phoebe!”
They both stared at me. They didn’t seem as excited as I thought they’d be.
“Phoebe? Phoebe Garnet?” said Justin, sitting up slightly. Tyler sat up too.
“I guess so,” I said. “You know, Phoebe, Nicole’s friend.”
“Yeah,” said Justin. “That’s her.”
“Phoebe Garnet,” said Tyler, without enthusiasm. “Yeah. She’s hot.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “She’s totally hot.”
“Where was this?” asked Justin.
“In the house,” I said. I was getting excited as it began to sink in. I’d hooked up with the hottest girl at the whole party.
“The only thing is,” I said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
Tyler looked at Justin. Justin looked at Tyler.
“Do you guys know if she does or not?”
“I don’t know,” said Justin.
Tyler shrugged.
“Some older guy was staring at us,” I said. “He looked jealous.”
Neither Tyler nor Justin said anything. I didn’t understand what their problem was. How did they not see the importance of this?
But whatever. I didn’t care. I stopped talking and took a seat next to Tyler, leaning against the wall and looking out. I stared into the rafters of the barn and thought about the taste of Phoebe’s lips, her distinctive kissing style. And the way she’d caressed the back of my neck: That was definitely a serious move, an adult move. It had felt incredible. I should have done it back to her. I would next time. If there was a next time.
“You got any more of that whiskey?” I asked Justin.
“Nah, dude, we’re tapped out,” he said, showing me the empty bottle.
That was too bad. I could have used one last shot to calm me down.
A country-western song began to play over the PA speakers. I didn’t know the song, but I nodded my head to the rhythm. The lyric was about falling in love. The sweet pain of it. The helplessness. I immediately went into a kind of trance, sitting there on the hard dirt, in the barn, my heart filled to bursting with the idea of Phoebe Garnet.
22
I was in a strange mood at the car wash on Monday. I did my work. I vacuumed the cars and swept the office. During breaks I sat with my coworkers but didn’t speak. I guess I was excited about Phoebe. But I was also a little in shock. What had happened exactly? And what did it mean?
At noon I walked down to Freezie Burger and got everybody lunch. Later, when I finished my shift, I slipped out and walked to the coffee shop and got a caffe mocha. I sat by the window and watched the people walking by. These were tourists mostly, forty-year-old parents, their ten-year-old kids, the ages when nothing really happens in life. Not like the age I was now, when everything happens, everything important at least.
The skinny guy who made the sandwiches saw me as he was wiping down the tables. He’d seen me at the party. He gave me a little head nod, and I nodded back. But I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to think about Phoebe.
This went on for the next couple days: my body numbly going through my daily routine while my brain immersed itself in the concept of Phoebe. Oddly enough, I had no desire to actually see her. That would break the spell. For now, I just wanted to think about her.
I made up conversations in my head, long talks we would have at some time in the future. I thought about dates we could go on (did a girl like that even go on dates?). Best of all, I replayed every detail of our time on the couch: her fingers in my hair, the look on her face as she came in for the kiss, the smell of her, the warm softness of her slender body.
Occasionally I’d have to interact with other people. This was an annoyance. To talk to Aunt Judy or Justin or the customers at the car wash required that I shut down my Phoebe dreams a
nd refocus and listen to what they were saying. This I found highly irritating. And what they wanted was never important anyway. Nothing was important except Phoebe.
* * *
And then one night, as we were closing, Emily and Jace pulled into the Happy Bubble. The sight of Jace’s car snapped me back to reality.
Emily came into the office. “Jace and I are going to the Sandpiper,” she said. “Do you want to come?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Sure.”
I hadn’t seen Jace since Kelsey’s birthday party. I hoped this meant we were all going to be friends again. Despite the Phoebe stuff, I missed hanging out with the two of them. They had become my two best friends, in a way.
I finished my closing duties and went out. I got in the back seat of Jace’s car. “Hey,” I said to Jace, making sure to catch her eye in the rearview mirror.
“Hey,” she said, looking back at me. Our eyes met and held for a moment. It appeared we were back on good terms. Which was a relief.
At the Sandpiper, we talked about their Fourth of July adventures. They’d gone to a party in Astoria but a thick wall of fog had rolled in and ruined the fireworks.
I mentioned that I’d hung out with Justin and his friends, but I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t mention Phoebe. I didn’t know what they would think. Besides, I didn’t want to make Jace jealous. Not that Jace and I were going to be together. We were obviously in “friends” territory now. But still.
When we were leaving the Sandpiper, Emily went to the bathroom, and Jace and I waited by the cash registers. As we stood there, Jace turned to me. “There’s something I wanted to ask you,” she said. “It’s sort of a weird request.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Would you want to have dinner with me in Gearhart? At the Pacific Grill?”
That was a weird request. “Dinner?” I said. “Is it a special occasion?”
“No. I’ve just always wanted to go there, and I never have.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’ve got some money from working at the library . . . and that’s what I want to blow it on.”
“And it’s in Gearhart?”
“Yeah. The Pacific Grill.”
She could see I was still confused.
“It wouldn’t be like a date or anything,” she explained. “I just want to go. I asked my parents to take me for my birthday. But they didn’t want to.”
“Why not?” I said.
“They thought it would be too snobby.”
“Oh.”
“It is kind of snobby.”
“Yeah, if it’s in Gearhart,” I said.
“That’s why I figured you might want to go. You’ve probably been to places like that.”
I wasn’t sure I had been. But then I thought about it. I’d been to Harrison’s a few times, which was Eugene’s most expensive restaurant. And I’d been to the Arbor, the other fancy place that people liked. These were usually celebration dinners, involving some career success of my mother’s.
I looked at Jace, who was staring at the pies in the counter display. “Yeah, okay,” I said.
“I mean, you don’t have to,” said Jace. “But if you feel like it.”
“No,” I said. “That sounds fun.”
* * *
After the Sandpiper, we went to Newport, another beach town a couple hours to the south. They made a special saltwater taffy there, which was Emily’s favorite.
Jace drove. The two of them talked. I sat in the back seat and thought about Phoebe. It was so fun to do that. To just go somewhere quiet, somewhere with something interesting to look at, and drown myself in thoughts of Phoebe. Was it possible that I was already in love with her? After one night, one kiss? And who exactly had I fallen in love with? And what would it be like, the two of us together? Like on a day-to-day level? It felt so satisfying to ponder these questions. To stare out the window at the passing trees and the endless ocean, and think about her face, her lips, her eyes.
In Newport, we went to the candy store and got the special taffy. It didn’t taste any different from the taffy in Seaside, I noticed. But Emily was like that; she had to have her special things. We sat on the bench outside the candy store and chewed the taffy and watched the tourists. Newport was more elegant than Seaside, more historical. I wondered if Phoebe had ever been here. Maybe she and I could go there together.
* * *
Driving home, Jace and Emily were talking about different couples they knew and what happened when people had sex or lost their virginity. I joined into this discussion, arguing with Emily mostly, about what a boy “owed” a girl if they had sex. Jace and I were both saying that nobody “owed” anyone anything, you just had to figure it out within the relationship.
This got me thinking about Kate again. I was still pissed she wasn’t my first. Instead, it’d been Lindsey Clarke. She was this wild-child prep girl—her father was a big-deal physics professor in Eugene. We were smoking weed one night at a friend’s house, when I made a joke about still being a virgin. Lindsey got very excited and took my hand and led me upstairs to the parents’ bedroom. And that was the end of my virginity.
Lindsey and I tried going out after that. We went snowboarding a couple times. But we didn’t have enough in common. And she didn’t want a steady boyfriend anyway. She was super nice about it, and we stayed friends. But it still felt disappointing.
The other girl I’d had sex with was Haley Ross. This happened over spring break at a hotel in Mexico. My dad had taken us there, since Mom was at her fancy rehab in California. Dad figured if she was getting the spa treatment, then we should too. Haley was from Illinois, and her family was rich, it sounded like. We met at the pool and ended up making out on the roof that night. She had a strange personality. She didn’t like to talk. If you asked her questions about herself, she got very nervous. The morning after the roof, when I saw her at breakfast, she wouldn’t even look at me. Later, though, she called me on the hotel phone and wanted to meet back up there. This time we had sex, on one of those chaise-longue chairs, in the bright Mexican moonlight. I think she cried afterward, though she denied it. I could tell something was up with her; you could see it in her face, some sort of psychological issue. Dr. Snow and I talked about it.
So yeah, that was it, my entire sexual history. A couple times with Lindsey who was more just a friend. And once with Haley. It was fine, I guess. And there was nothing I could do about it anyway. People have sex for a million different reasons, sometimes with people they barely know or care about. So I wasn’t that different from anybody else.
23
The next day was cloudy and cold. Not much was going on at the Happy Bubble until Carson and Wyatt pulled in, in the Camaro.
They’d never come in when I was there. They wanted a car wash. They were old friends of Justin’s, and since Kyle wasn’t there, or Uncle Rob, Justin ran them through for free. When they came out of the other side, Justin let them use the vacuum as well.
Carson and Wyatt seemed more normal to me this time. Not like people I would actually be friends with, but more like ordinary stoner dudes. We had plenty of those at my high school. They were usually nice enough guys. They’d flunk their biology tests and then laugh about it over bong hits in the parking lot.
“Yeah, you missed the big Fourth of July party at the Andersons’,” said Justin. There were still no customers, so we were standing around the Camaro while Wyatt tried to fix the broken armrest on the driver’s door.
“I heard you kicked some guy’s ass on the Promenade,” said Wyatt, kneeling and inspecting the open door.
“Oh, yeah,” said Justin with casual humility. “We got into it a little.”
“Who started it?” asked Wyatt.
“Some dude. He came at Nick here,” he said, nodding toward me.
I blushed slightly.
“We took care of it,” said Justin, shrugging. “We kinda had ’em outnumbered.”
“What happened at the Anderson
place?” asked Carson, changing the subject.
“Nothin’ really,” said Justin. “They had the band going . . . the usual crowd.”
“They were rockin’ to the oldies,” I said, since I hadn’t said anything.
“Dylan’s mom got up there,” said Justin. “Sang a couple songs.”
“Buncha old farts,” said Carson.
“Sweet home Al-abama,” sang Justin.
Everyone chuckled.
“It was all right,” said Justin. “There were some younger chicks too.”
I waited for someone to say something about Phoebe and Nicole. Maybe Justin would tell Carson and Wyatt what had happened to me. But suddenly Wyatt, who had been gently tugging on the armrest, broke it off completely.
“For fuck’s sake!” said Wyatt, holding the armrest in his hand. “I knew that would happen.”
“Dude,” said Carson.
“Did you mean to do that?” asked Justin.
“No,” said Wyatt.
We all stood watching as Wyatt studied the screw hole that had rotted out. A dry yellowy substance was leaking from it. He touched it with his finger.
The door panel was in pretty bad shape, as was the rest of the Camaro. The rips in the seats were duct-taped. The worn out floor carpet was covered with mismatched pieces of household carpet. The entire car was a patchwork.
Wyatt shifted into a full sitting position and stared at the door, considering his options.
“Did you hear Ryan is finally selling that old Mustang?” Carson told Justin.
“No way,” said Justin. “That rusted out piece of shit?”
“I know,” said Carson. “He claims it runs, but it’s been sitting there since his brother bought it.”
“That thing’ll never run,” said Wyatt.
“I guess he found some tech guy from Seattle,” continued Carson. “The guy’s gonna drive down and haul it back up there and restore it.”
“Wow,” said Justin. “I wonder how much?”
“Ryan said two grand.”
“Two grand?” gasped Justin. “For that?”
“I wouldn’t give you two hundred,” said Wyatt. He was still poking at the door with his screwdriver.