Max doesn’t say anything and I realize I just said an asshole-ish thing. So I say, “I just mean. No, I get it. There are definitely people I don’t talk about it in front of. Most people, really. Pam and Kayla are basically my world. Or they were. Until.”
Max smirks, and I redden. It’s a little much to put on him, given that we’re basically hanging out not on a food truck for the first time. But the truth is this is the first time I’ve ever hung out with a guy alone. Sometimes Kayla would bring this guy Matt Story with her to the mall, but this is way, way different. And that’s something Max does not need to know.
“I’d like to meet them,” he says, and the worst ever idea comes to me. And before I can allow myself to get all scared, which would basically be a normal reaction in this situation, I pull out my phone and text Kayla.
Me: You wanna meet Max?
Kayla: Who?
Me: The dude bro. From the food truck?
Kayla: Um. Ok?
Me: Yay. Pam there?
Kayla: Yep
“Drive,” I say, and Max looks at me like, what?
I laugh. I am literally high from sugar. “Sorry. Poor communication. Want to meet Pam and Kayla, like right now? They can’t wait to meet you.”
He shrugs, clearly more comfortable meeting people than I am. Because if he suddenly decided I had to meet these Betts and Zay-Rod bros, I would be like, Oh, I’m busy that day.
“You’re kinda awesome, aren’t you?” I ask.
“Fuck you,” he says, as if I’m insulting him. And in some ways I am. It’s like I’m commenting on the obvious: That he’s special and he knows it. But also I’m serious. Because he carried me to his car when I got overheated. And he ignored it when I got all dramatic when he said I was like my mom, and that was the perfect thing to do. And he pulled into Sonic and suggested a lemonade flight, which is pretty much the best idea ever.
And now he pulls out and we head to Kayla’s, and I put aside every fear I have about the oncoming train wreck.
It’s the kind of night where time is suspended. We must have spent six days in my truck, drinking more frozen lemonade than any two people have ever drunk in one sitting. And I don’t mean like time moved slowly, like I was bored and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, like one of those epic dinners at Uncle Guillermo’s. It was more like time ceased to exist, and the jokes kept coming, the laughter, and I kept thinking, I have to remember that one, and then I’d be three jokes later and thinking, What was that thing we were laughing about like an hour ago?
I have to think that’s special. When time stops, or you forget about the next thing, and when Jordan suggested introducing me to his girlfriends, I said, “Yeah. Sure.”
Kayla’s place is in one of those county island subdivisions down south of Elliot where lots of people have horses. Mom told me once that the huge properties down there are that way because of a law made years ago that prohibited the properties from being subdivided smaller than one acre or something like that. As we pull up, I can see that she has one of those backyards that could hold a football field, and I immediately imagine playing touch football back there with a whole bunch of people. That would be sweet.
But anyway. Kayla’s folks must have big bucks.
As it turns out, I recognize Kayla and Pam for sure. Kayla is white and blond and kinda cheerleader-y, wearing tight orange shorts and a white tank top as she invites us in with a “What up bitch?” Pam is slightly darker than me, with huge boobs and a smile that would stop traffic. Betts and Zay-Rod would definitely approve, and I wonder what it would be like to do a group hang, all six of us.
Really weird, I figure out very quickly.
“So what are your intentions with our husband,” Kayla says, and Jordan socks her in the shoulder, hard. She retaliates, harder, right into his chest, and he just about falls to the ground. He rubs his chest as if she might have actually broken a rib, which clearly she hasn’t.
I laugh. “Intentions?”
“Yeah,” Pam says. “He’s gay. You’re gay. We all know you guys can’t keep it in your pants. I mean, Jordan can, I guess, because he’s still a virgin. He almost kissed this one boy —”
This time Jordan smacks Pam, and when she steps to him, I intercede, because I am actually a little concerned about what a wallop from Pam could do to Stick Boy, if Kayla’s love tap nearly knocked him over. Pam has her some biceps.
“What’s with the violence, dude?” I ask.
“We are a violent people,” Kayla says. “In case your intentions are bad. Just know that.”
“The more you know,” I say.
Pam glances over at Kayla, and the two share a look. She looks back at me, smiles, and comes over and hugs me. “I like Max. I approve.”
They start saying stuff about ’80s bands that I don’t understand because I don’t know who the Thompson Twins are, or Missing Persons, and when I say as much, Kayla gives me this incredulous look.
“Dale Bozzio? Like the original Lady Gaga?”
I shrug. Not ringing a bell.
“What do you listen to?”
I shrug again. “Whatever’s on. Machine Gun Kelly. Train. Imagine Dragons.”
Jordan puts his head in his hands and shakes it vociferously. “No, no, no,” he says. “No self-respecting gay guy listens to that shit. That’s like dude bro shit.”
Pam says, “No self-respecting Mexican has ever listened to Imagine Dragons. Ever.”
“Um, okay,” I say, unimpressed with their logic or their classifications. I listen to what I like. Whatever the hell I want.
“What has killed more people? Trains or Train?” Jordan says, and Pam and Kayla laugh, and then Jordan puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “We’re just funnin’.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah. I’ve met you. I get it. The kids and their sarcasm and all that.”
Jordan gets mock stern and points at me. “You kids and your sarcasm. When I was your age, we were sarcastic sometimes, and other times we were serious.”
I laugh. “When I was a child, we walked three blocks to school,” I say.
“We used that one already,” Jordan says, and he turns to Kayla and Pam and says, “We’re working on a character. Stan the Somewhat Uninteresting Codger.”
“Curmudgeon,” I correct.
I glance over, curious to see Pam and Kayla’s reaction. It’s a mutual eye roll. Which makes me feel a little more at home. Betts and Zay-Rod? They wouldn’t even know how to react to that shit.
“So what are we gonna do?” Pam says. “So bored. Summer sucks so hard.”
Kayla’s eyes light up and she shouts, “Dream throwing!”
This apparently means something to them, because Jordan shrieks, “Yes!” He runs upstairs like he actually lives there, sort of like I’d do at Betts’s place. Pam and Kayla sprint up after him, so I follow along.
When I get to Kayla’s extremely girly-girl room upstairs, Jordan is already sprawled out on her pink-sheeted bed like it’s his own, and the girls are on the floor, tearing pieces of loose-leaf paper in half. Kayla grabs a coffee mug that reads You’re the Lorelai to my Rory from her desk and pulls out four colorful pens. She tosses one to Jordan, and then, when she sees me at the door, hurls a green one at me. It comes straight for my eyes, and I catch it.
“Wooh!” she says. “Athlete?”
“Yup,” I say back.
Pam gives me a side-eye. “Gay, hot, athletic. What’s the catch?” she says to Jordan.
“Dude bro,” he says, and they laugh.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m right here.”
“Broseph,” Pam says, mocking, and just like that I decide they are basically Betts and Zay-Rod but female. We trash-talk and don’t mean it. If Jordan likes them, they gotta be okay. And if they’re making fun of me, that has to mean they like me.
“Wassup, bro,” I say. “So I was kickin’ it with this ho and she straight up shot me down, yo. She was all, ‘Enough with the brobalization. I seen enough of you people, yo.’ ”
Pam laughs. “Serious, yo. That shit is sick!”
I say, “Straight up. What’s the haps?”
“What up, dog?” Kayla says.
“Oh my God,” Jordan says. “Is that really how you talk to your friends?”
“Naw. We just stick the word ‘bro’ in every sentence, and say ‘gnarly’ and ‘no way, dude’ and ‘for serious though’ and ‘bam.’ Like every other word. Bam.”