by Dalya Moon
He muttered, “But I wasn't joking.”
When I got back inside the classroom, I wanted to tell Cooper what Mr. Stryker had said, but he was talking to some of the other artists, so I slipped in, handed him the can of grape soda and returned to my seat.
Mrs. Cooper called the group together and we all got back to work.
She asked me, “Do you mind if I sketch your face? While you're drawing?”
I told her she could, and then regretted it, because I had to be careful to hold my head up so as not to get a double-chin from the side angle. I'm so vain!
At the end of the class, or session, or whatever it was, Mrs. Cooper gave me the charcoal drawing of my profile to keep. It was so lovely, I almost cried. Instead, she held her arms out and I gave her a big hug. I felt like we'd just been through something together.
Cooper disappeared to put his clothes on, covering all of his nice body. I don't want to sound shallow, but I had enjoyed looking at him, from his sparse, golden chest hair to his muscular calves, and everything in between. Remember how he'd alluded to a private-area piercing when we'd had dinner? That had been a joke, after all. I'd seen everything, and there were no piercings.
“Thanks for the refreshments,” he said as we walked out of the community center into the chilly night air.
“Thanks for the show!”
I expected him to say something cheeky to me on the way out to his car, but he was unusually quiet.
“Your mother seems nice,” I said.
“She's pretty cool,” he said. “She's self-taught, no formal schooling.”
We got in his car and I relaxed, enjoying the electric seat warmer. I held all my drawings on my lap, careful to not crinkle them.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“I'm fine,” he said.
When we pulled up to my house, he got out of the car and walked me to my front door. When he turned to leave, I said, “You're not coming in?”
“I'm tired.”
“But … you came over to see my art. My new Forgotten Creature.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and remained about four feet away from me. “Kinda late.”
“Anything else?”
He cleared his throat and said, “The other night ...”
“When I kissed you? I'm so sorry. That was so embarrassing. Total mistake. Not appropriate at all.” I pretended to shoot myself in my head with my finger as a gun.
Over our heads, a pair of moths noisily threw their bodies against the porch light.
“I'm sorry about this evening,” he said.
“Don't be! I had a great time.”
He stuffed his hands even deeper into his pockets and wiggled his toes in his flip-flops. “That was weird, even for me.”
I sensed there was something he wasn't telling me. Up until that point, Cooper had been quick to speak his mind, the same as me.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.
“No.” His answering speed told me it was the truth.
So, he didn't have a girlfriend, and he hadn't said anything about getting me and his friend together. I wondered if he was gay. If he was, that would explain why people always complain about the best-looking ones being gay, because he was really hot.
“Maybe we can go out again,” I said. “If you'd be into that.”
“Maybe,” he said, dragging the edge of his flip-flop along a seam in the porch floor.
He darted in, gave me a hug, and then left.
As he drove away, his red tail lights disappearing down the street, I didn't know what I was feeling, exactly, except that it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for me to get less of a guy whenever I wanted more.
Back inside the house, I went to my room and called Haylee for a video chat. She spent the first minute setting up her desk lamp so her face would be attractively lit.
“It's just me,” I said. “I'm not recording this, are you?”
She fluffed her newly-colored golden hair and made a duck face. “I have to see myself in the little screen, and if I don't look good, my self-esteem suffers.”
I pretended that actually made sense and adjusted my desk lamp to do the same. We talked for over an hour, one gorgeously-lit girlfriend to another, as I caught her up on the pot-eating incident with my brother, my movie night with Marc, and then my drawing night with Cooper, even showing her the sketches.
“Pick the guy who's the most into you,” she said.
“Haylee, you're not listening to me. They're both being ambivalent. I thought girls were supposed to be the hard-to-figure-out ones. Why are these boys being so strange?”
“Welcome to dating!” She made a duck face again, her eyes focused on her own image.
“I don't want dating. I want someone to make hot, sweaty love to me.”
“Post that as your Facebook status update and see which one answers first.”
“You're not helping. I should call Courtney. That's how much you're not helping!”
In another window, a message popped up from Marc. I screamed. Irrationally, I feared Marc's instant message would somehow link him into the video chat with Haylee, so I slammed shut my laptop.
When I opened it again, Haylee and I had a good laugh. I rearranged the windows so I could open the text chat window with Marc and read his messages to Haylee for analysis in real-time. Ah, modern flirting.
Marc: Today I got that skinny guy as my waiter and not a cute girl.
After I relayed this to Haylee, complete with the fact he'd implied a question but not had the decency to use a question mark, Haylee said, “Oh, he's definitely flirting with you. Ask him why he brought his skanky ex to your place of work.”
Instead of that, I typed: In the right skirt, Nigel would make a cute girl.
Marc: Not as cute as you.
I gasped with my hand over my mouth, then read it to Haylee, who said, “Sounds like he wants to introduce you to his pool boy. And by pool boy, I mean his penis.”
“But I don't like Marc anymore,” I said. “He's all moody and weird, and Cooper's fun and simple. I thought Cooper was too hot for me, but he keeps wanting to hang out, sooooooo …” I let my voice trail off in that gravelly vocal fry that drives Haylee nuts.
She did a fake shiver. “You need to pin him down. Wait, who's on your chat? Not the one who you saw naked today?”
“No, that's Cooper. Try to stay on top of my love triangle, would ya?” I joked.
“Ask him right now if he wants to de-virginate you.” She squealed and bounced up and down. “I want this so bad for you. And for me, to experience vicariously through you, of course.”
“Let's try a more subtle approach.”
I typed in: Who are you calling cute? Sounds scandalous. I thought we were “just friends.”
Haylee howled with despair that her battery was running out, and ran off to find the power cord for her laptop.
There was no answer from Marc.
I typed in: Hello?
Again, I feared he'd somehow been linked in to the video chat, even though it was in a completely separate window. Could a bit of sound have come through?
Several minutes later, Marc finally sent: I have had some beers. I am going to bed.
I typed a few things, but kept editing, and before I sent them, Marc logged off.
Haylee got her power cord in and I caught her up on what had just happened.
Her boyfriend Andrew's big, goofy face popped in upside down at the top of the screen. “Have a threesome with both of them,” he said before Haylee pushed him away.
“I would if I could!” I said.
Haylee gasped.
“Of course I wouldn't,” I said. “I'm a virgin, not a porn star.”
Just out of clear microphone range, Andrew said something about porn, Haylee, and the laptop's web cam.
“Tell me he's joking,” I said.
“He's delusional,” she said.
I thanked her for all the coaching. We went over everything Marc had said,
a dozen more times, but didn't get any closer to knowing anything. We said goodbye and I got ready for bed, more confused than ever.
I brushed my teeth for fifteen minutes while staring at myself in the mirror.
Some of the dark brown dye had washed out of my hair—even so-called permanent color isn't that permanent—and I looked like myself again, whoever that was.
My eyebrow piercing was healing nicely, right on schedule. I thought about Sunshine, with her blue hair and her adorable eyebrow tattoo. She was so close to both Cooper and Marc, and I wasn't.
I should befriend her, I thought.
Should I? I entertained the idea for a full minute, even considering emailing her a piercing-related question, then I decided against it.
I crawled into bed, bringing my rabbit-eared Creature with the bottle cap eyes, hugging him against my chest. Normally I thought of my Creatures as female, but this one had a male energy, despite being mostly pink.
I closed my eyes and thought of Cooper's nude body, complete with all his boy bits. Why had he seemed so shy after the nude modeling? Had I stared at his genitals too much? Or at his nice chest or adorable buns, with those little buttons on the small of his back?
“Oh, Cooper,” I said to the darkness of my room.
The next day at work, Donny and Toph listened eagerly as I told them about my naked date with Cooper and asked if they thought, in their guy opinions, that he liked me as more than a friend.
“Did he pop a boner when he was doing the poses?” Toph asked.
I covered my face with my hands. “No! Don't be disgusting.”
Donny's feelings seemed hurt by my horror over the possibility of an erection.
Donny said, “It's not disgusting, it's natural. And you have to react positively when you first see a man naked, or he can be scarred for life.”
Toph and I exchanged a look, and I wondered what traumatic incident had happened to poor Donny in the past.
I said, “There's no way guys are as hung up on their appearance as girls. Come on. Guys don't get cellulite, and they don't have to worry about how their boobs look out of a bra. Are they saggy? What about that one nipple that's inverted?”
“Some guys have eating disorders now,” Toph said.
Courtney came in through the back door of the kitchen just in time to hear what Toph was saying.
“GAWSH!” she said in exaggerated frustration. “Can't women have anything to themselves?”
I said to Toph, “That thing about the inverted nipple, that wasn't me. Just so you know. It's a friend.”
“Guys don't care,” he said.
I held my hand out to be clear. “But you understand it's not me, right?”
In response, Toph pretended to lick his fingers and rub his nipples.
Donny started composing an original song, about penis acceptance. “Maybe it's got a little curve,” he sang. “That don't make me a perv.”
Toph and I exchanged an amused look.
Donny continued singing, “I didn't break it from over-play, baby I was born this way.”
Toph laughed like it was his real job to encourage Donny's creativity and chopping vegetables was just something he did between songs.
As Courtney tied one of the server aprons around her waist—black and minimal, with pockets for pens and paper pads—I caught her up on my romantic entanglements.
“I'm so glad I don't have to play games anymore,” she said, walking out to the dining area.
I followed, feeling defensive. “I just don't want to make a mistake and date a terrible person,” I said, thinking of Britain.
“Once you have someone you love, you won't care what the rest of the world thinks about your relationship,” she said.
“Why stop there? People with lobotomies don't care about anything.”
Ignoring me, she spritzed the black chalkboard and wiped off the previous day's specials, the damp bar cloth turning from white to gray.
I should have dropped the subject, but I couldn't. What was I supposed to do about Courtney dating someone who hated me? Could a person dislike me and still be otherwise decent? How could I accept that as a truth, and if I did, what did it say about me?
I said to Courtney, “That girl must have all kinds of skills to have you wrapped around her little finger.”
“What? Little finger? Is that a homophobic commentary on my sex life?” Courtney glared at me with her prepare-to-get-punched face.
“Eeps, no! Figure of speech. I only want what's best for you.”
She groaned and yanked open the little bucket of colored sticks of chalk. “You sound like my father.”
The light shifted, and we both turned to the door as the first customers of the day came in. I was relieved to have some company and other people to talk to.
The rest of the day, Courtney only spoke to me when I asked her a direct question. If I came back into the kitchen while she was goofing around with the other staff, she'd quickly leave.
So that was it. She doesn't trust my judgment, I thought as I grabbed the pepper shakers off the tables.
Trust.
Funny I was thinking about trust at that moment, as I was filling the pepper shakers.
The pepper doesn't go down nearly as quickly as the salt, so refilling the pepper shakers is not something I do often, but every time I do, I remember the prank Donny played on me my first day working at The Whistle.
He'd shaken up the big sealed bucket of pepper and handed it to me, telling me to crack the lid and take a good sniff to make sure the pepper hadn't spoiled.
I don't imagine you've ever sniffed a one-gallon container of pepper dust, because you're not as stupid as me, but trust me when I say it's not something you forget.
Donny had been horrified, saying he'd meant it as a joke and would never have said it if he thought I'd actually take a big sniff of the pepper cloud. I believed him, because he hadn't laughed at all during the ensuing sneezing fit. Courtney, on the other hand, had laughed until she cried.
Courtney is a jerk, I thought, trying to make myself feel better. Was she really, though? Maybe I was doing that sour grapes thing, and pretending what I'd lost wasn't so great after all. Either way, focusing on Courtney's imperfections made me feel better.
Courtney was energetic and fun to be around, but she was also selfish, and not just in the way we're all selfish.
Here's an example: when Nigel and I work a shift together, we pool our tips. Most of the other workers do the same, because it's a tiny restaurant, and we help out with each other's tables.
When we both began working there, on the same day, Courtney and I split our tips evenly. This was after paying out the portion to the kitchen staff, which is always a set percentage of our total sales. After a couple of weeks, she did some calculations and figured out she'd be making more on her own, since her tables generally gave her close to twenty percent, and I got fifteen percent most days.
When she suggested we cash out separately, I didn't argue, because I didn't figure it was worth fighting over.
Every person has their own little quirks. I mean, apparently, Donny has a dick shaped like a banana. Being cash-aware is not a bad thing, but Courtney had done other stuff, too, like driving her car front-first into a parking spot someone else was trying to back into.
The man had actually gotten out of his car and given her a lecture about how “people in this country” value manners. He didn't know she wasn't from Hong Kong, but had been born here in Canada, the same as me. I'd felt such shame, as a white person, for his racist rant, that I'd almost overlooked the fact she'd stolen someone's parking spot. It happened in the West End, where free street parking is almost impossible, but still, what kind of a jerk steals a parking spot?
I was better off without her. Or was I? I didn't really have a choice in the matter, so whether she was a bad friend or not hardly mattered.
My heart felt heavy in my chest.
Friendship over, I kept thinking every time I glanced over
at her. She just looked right through me.
Because I couldn't do anything about Courtney, I switched over to obsessing about Marc for the rest of my shift.
I hadn't received any messages from Marc, so I had no story for his flirty behavior the night before. Perhaps he'd heard from Cooper about the nudity and been jealous.
When I thought about Cooper with his clothes off, it made me smile. I'd be taking someone's order down and I'd think about the brown-gold trail of hair on Cooper's muscular abdomen.
I pulled out my phone and posted on Cooper's Facebook wall, for everyone to see: Art class was awesome! That model was HOT.
The hot part was true. Just thinking about the sketches made me eager to rush right home after my shift.
My joy seemed to spread to my tables, who laughed louder than Courtney's side of the restaurant, as though they knew it was a contest.
Donny said to me, as I was cashing out, “I should record that penis-acceptance song. Maybe a viral hit?”
“Ew,” I said. “Don't use penis and viral together.”
“I wish I knew a musician,” he said.
I tensed up, sensing what was coming next. “Parody isn't really my mother's thing,” I said.
He laughed. “What? You thought I meant your mother? Puh-leez. I said musician, not pop princess.”
I scowled at Donny. He could make fun of me all he wanted, but my mother was off-limits.
Toph rushed to my aid, saying, “I love Jade's music. She's really alternative, and alternative is totally coming back.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Is that true?” I listened to music, but I wasn't exactly up on trends, because I simply liked what I liked.
Toph said, “There's that song, We are Young. And, um, the cool one with the guy in all the body paint.”
Donny said, “Alternative's been coming back every year since forever, allegedly.”
I said, “What is alternative, exactly? I never understood that.”
Courtney, who had just came into the kitchen, said, “Duh. Alternative music is stuff white people like, like Vespa scooters and putting their kids in French immersion.”