He’s all, “We should get together again.” What do you say to that? Not if you were the last dude on earth, bro? So I said, “Yeah, sure.”
And truthfully I don’t really get what the big deal is, or why my stomach heaves, or why I’m being such a pussy, as Dad would say. So my first time sucked ass. Big deal. But my stomach jumps and my body starts its shaking at the hands and I can’t wait for Kevin to get the hell out of there. I excuse myself from the truck and Jordan is all helpless and I try to be nice about it but sometimes a dude just needs to warrior up. So I leave, hoping Jordan can figure shit out without me for a few minutes.
I barely make it to the garbage can behind the burrito truck. That’s where I hurl. I close my eyes, not wanting to see the contents of my stomach as they are sprayed into the trash. I throw up once, open my eyes, spy a chunk of something green and square that I cannot recognize, and spew again, and once I’m emptied, my head spins and I lean back against a big, shady tree while I catch my breath. Then I cup my hands around my mouth and inhale, and it’s nasty. How the hell am I gonna go back to work like nothing just happened?
How the hell can I not? Jordan isn’t gonna be able to do everything by himself for too long.
So I walk back, trying to slow my heartbeat. Wondering why the hell I just threw up like some weak-ass dork, not like Super Max at all. I have to be able to control my body. What kind of dude can’t even do that?
I climb onto the back of the truck and quickly grab and swig a cold bottle of water before Jordan even notices I’m there. I breathe into my T-shirt and sniff surreptitiously. A little better at least.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I held down the fort while you did whatever.”
Is there a little attitude in his words? Jesus. I ask Jordan to do one thing ever, and he gives me shade. I decide to pretend I don’t hear it, because if I think too much about it, I’m gonna go off on him.
“Thanks,” I say, and I pop a piece of Trident gum into my mouth, wash my hands carefully, and get back to grilling chicken. And soon I’m feeling more like myself, and Jordan and I are back to being a team.
I get this idea. At first I’m like, no way. Because like a minute ago I was barfing. But sometimes you just want to get back to normalcy as quickly as possible. So as we start our cleanup, I ask.
“What are you up to later?”
“Why?” Jordan asks, and I laugh. He can be so weird. It’s like he never had lessons in social cues. He showed me his poem. I drew him a picture. We have moved past the We’re just coworkers phase, and truthfully? I like him, okay? I like him.
“I was just thinking. We should go get some fresh prickly pear.”
“Huh?”
“We say locally sourced. It’s all working. Let’s actually pick some prickly pear and use it in the lemonade.”
He sighs dramatically. “Can’t we just continue to lie?”
“I guess,” I say, crossing my arms. “But. Um.”
He stops cleaning out the blender and looks at me. “What?”
“Are you really going to make me say it?”
“Say what?”
And I realize: He actually doesn’t get social cues. Like, at all. We were getting along so well, and all day I was thinking how it would be fun to actually do something, like not on the truck. And he has no idea. Wow.
“I like hanging with you,” I say. “Okay?”
He drops the sponge he’s been holding in his left hand. “Oh.”
“Do you want to do something? Like prickly pear hunting?”
“Oh. Um. Yeah. Sure.” He swallows a smile, and then, on the way down, he finds he can’t hold it in. I feel myself blushing because Jordan is so. Damn. Sexy. And totally oblivious about that fact.
He drops me off at home so I can shower, and around four I pick him up in my Durango. He climbs in smelling of soap and sweat, and he juts his face in front of the air-conditioning vents, which are on full blast. My dashboard thermometer says 121 degrees.
“Jesus,” he says, and I accelerate down Curry.
“Too hot for ya?” I ask, and he snorts.
“I refuse to have conversations about heat or humidity,” he says.
“So we just ignore weather from here on in?”
“Let’s just say, ‘That’s a lot of pasta.’ That will be our stand-in for any and all weather-related discussions.”
“You’re weird.”
“You’re just figuring that out?” He points out the window. “Slow down.”
I slow a bit. “Why?”
He points again. “Prickly pears, silly.”
I keep driving slowly, trying to figure out what it is that Jordan is thinking. That we’ll go in people’s yards and pick fruit? First off, not many houses have them. We pass many lots with tall saguaro plants towering over ranch houses, some at precarious angles, like a strong wind could blow it crashing onto the roof. Fewer yards seem to have the small cacti that we’re looking for. Second, that’s just. No.
“Stop!” Jordan says, and I tentatively pull over next to a pink tract house with a dirt yard filled with various cacti.
I stop the car and look over at Jordan. “You are aware that you’re not supposed to, um, trespass, right? Like going onto someone’s property is not allowed?”
He shrugs. “Do you think they’re really going to miss a few green bulbs?”
I stare at him for a bit and finally shake my head and put the car in drive.
“What? Why?”
“Jordan. Dude. You ever have someone pull a gun on you for trespassing?”
“No. Have you?” He crosses his arms in front of his chest and pouts a bit.
“No, but also I don’t want to. Folks are crazy. You never know who has a gun and who is all, ‘Get off my lawn or I’ll blow your head off.’ ”
“Fine,” Jordan says. “But just know that you’re being ridiculous. It’s cactus. We would be relieving them of little green bulb-y fruits from cactus plants. We’re not stealing hubcaps. Jesus.”
I don’t respond. Unspoken in this argument is the fact that when your skin is brown and you live in the suburbs of Arizona, you don’t stroll onto some stranger’s property to pick prickly pears. Maybe if you have white skin you can. But I don’t want to discuss that. Instead, I turn up the radio. Daft Punk comes on. Jordan sighs dramatically and turns the tuner knob.
“Are you really messing with my radio?”
“Are you really defending Daft Punk? They don’t even have faces, Max. They are faceless musicians. Unacceptable.”
I don’t know how to argue with that sort of twisted logic, so I let it go. I turn west on Elliot and head toward South Mountain. I think about Betts and Zay-Rod. Right now I could be relaxing with them in Betts’s living room, sipping a Pepsi and eating some Poore Brothers jalape?o potato chips. Instead I have this enigma of a new friend whose very presence makes me both inexplicably excited and nervous, who doesn’t approve of faceless musicians. Who puts on some weird ’80s shit, that ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s channel that old people listen to like my mom.
“So who was that Kevin guy?” Jordan asks, and my stomach drops. I don’t respond.
“No answer,” he says.
“It’s private,” I say.
“He your boyfriend?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Someone you hooked up with?”
I punch the steering wheel, and the horn wheezes slightly from the impact. “Jesus. None of your business. Stop asking.”
“Okay then,” Jordan says. “Sorry.”
We get quiet again, and again I’m thinking it was a mistake to make this plan. It’s like I only like part of Jordan. The fun part. The part that doesn’t ask a million personal questions like we’re on some talk show. I don’t want to talk about that. How is that not clear to him?
We don’t say a word to each other until we park on Desert Willow Drive in Ahwatukee. There’s an opening in the fence that leads to a path through the desert that, if you take it all the way, leads to South Mountain. I turn off the ignition and we hop out into the unforgiving heat of the hottest part of the afternoon.
“Sweet gay Jesus,” he says. “What was I thinking?”
I laugh. “I like it.”