I laugh. “Back in eighth grade I convinced my mom to take me Goodwill hopping. We bought everything ’70s and ’80s that would fit in a bordello.”
He actually bends over and clutches his stomach, laughing. I watch him, unsure, but soon I realize I’m not the joke, exactly. I start to laugh and he glances up, sees me laughing, and comes over and sweaty hugs me.
“Oh my God,” he says. “This is seriously — I don’t know, dude. I kinda love it.”
“Do you?”
“I love it because it’s you. Would I love it for me? Hell no. Hey, is that a record player?”
I nod, and he goes over and picks up the arm with the needle. “I’ve seen these online. Badass.”
I go to my shelf and pick up Beauty and the Beat by the Go-Go’s, take out the album, and put it on side one. As “Our Lips Are Sealed” starts up, I hand him the jacket. He stares at the five women wrapped in bath towels, who are covered in face cream.
“You really love this stuff,” he says.
“This is everything,” I say. “They should have stopped making music after this.”
“The Go-Go’s?”
“Everyone. This one was nineteen eighty-one, the first year of the last decade for music.”
Dorcas, who must have been asleep because she didn’t greet us at the door, comes up to Max with a yellow stuffed-animal bird in her mouth. She always brings people her toys. He pats her head.
I point at my desk chair. He sits, and I sit at his feet and pull off his sneakers.
“What are we —” he asks, but he stops when I pull out the bottle of red nail polish. “Um. No. Absolutely not.”
“Come on,” I say, as the guitars for “How Much More” start up. “For me?”
He frowns. “Do we need to?”
“Look. You owe me this.”
“For real? This?”
I change my tone and my posture, looking up at him with demure eyes. “Well … I mean, if you say no, then no is the answer. But … I’d like to.”
He can’t help but crack a grin. “Fine,” he says.
“Yay!” I say.
I start by filing his pretty gross nails. I have never actually done this before. It’s not like it’s something I love to do, or even want to do that much. I think it’s more that I want him to let me do it to him. Once his toes are filed, I start with his big left toe. I apply a layer of cherry-red polish. It looks pretty against his dark skin.
“Do you do this? Like, with your foot?”
I shake my head. “Nah. Not my thing. Kayla tried it on me once. Decided it was part of the Gay Best Friend package. I was like, whatever.”
“So why did you want to do it to me?”
I shrug. “Kind of like the football thing, maybe? That you’d do something you don’t want to for me, maybe?”
He leans forward and puts his foot down. He scoots toward me, leans down, and kisses me on the lips. Then he looks deep into my eyes and says, “Anything for you.”
I blush, and he smiles wide.
I choose the pool as the place to tell Betts and Zay-Rod what’s up.
Mom’s at work and we’re a day away from having our truck back. The Amigos are hanging out on mesh rafts that keep them half in, half out of the water, and I have two noodles under me, holding me up as I sit.
“Kayla loves me,” Betts says, and I snort, and Zay-Rod snorts, and Betts splashes us in response. “She does. This is how it works with me. Girls act all annoyed, but the Betts system is in effect and fully deployed. You just watch.”
“Sure,” I say. “She loves you like I love snakes. She loves you like a menstrual cramp.”
Zay-Rod laughs. “She loves your ass like a canker sore.”
Betts makes this dramatic scoffing noise with his tongue. “Watch and learn, dudes.” Then he points to my foot. “You have one red toe.”
I roll my eyes. “Jordan,” I say.
He laughs. “Yeah. That girl Karen did that to me once.”
Zay-Rod paddles over to the side of the pool and grabs his iced tea and takes a swig. “Jordan is nice,” he says.
It’s actually the first real comment either of them has made about him, and I’ve been wondering if I should take that as a sign.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah. His poem was good,” Zay-Rod says.
“He’s okay. He hangs out with hot girls,” Betts says. “That’s like the one good thing about gay dudes. They bring the chicks. Except present company, I guess.”
I jump off my noodle, pounce on the side of his raft, and flip it. Betts comes up splashing, and then holds his breath, swims around me like a menacing shark, and then goes under me and lifts me up onto his shoulders. As he stands, I raise my hand in the air like I’m a rodeo cowboy. He stays up for a few seconds, then dunks and lets go of my calves. I swim away.
I sit on this little alcove seat in the deep end, and I savor the feeling of the broiling sun on my shoulders.
“So I gotta tell you something,” I say.
Zay-Rod says, “You pregnant, dude?”
Betts says, “Nah, Max is the guy.”
And for once, I say, “Cut that shit out. Seriously.”
“What?” Betts asks.
“That. That one of us is a girl and one is a boy. That’s fuckin’ bullshit. We’re both guys. That’s what gay is. Two guys.”
“Okay,” Betts says, jumping back up on his raft. “Sorry. Didn’t know that bugged you.”
“It doesn’t,” I say, half lying. “It’s just. When you always give me shit and nothing is ever serious, it gets old. Also I have no idea if you’re being serious.”
Zay-Rod says, “That’s what we do. That’s what you do too, dude.”
“Well, yeah. But maybe we could be serious once in a while too?”
It’s quiet for a bit, and my heart sinks. I count on the Amigos. So much. I don’t want to lose them. I’m about to take it back when Betts says, “Sometimes it bugs me that you guys think I’m stupid.”
“Wow. Look at the time,” I say.
He laughs a little. “Nice.”
“Kidding,” I say. “I don’t really think you’re stupid.”
Zay-Rod says, “Me neither. I mean, you’re not an intellectual and you don’t like a lot of book stuff. But you’re smart in other ways. You’re good at math. You come up with good jokes and shit.”
Betts keeps quiet for a bit, and then he says, “Thanks.”
“I got raped,” I blurt.
The pool goes quiet. Betts and Zay-Rod both sit up and look at me. The look is one of, Tell me you’re joking. I slightly shake my head.
“Jordan?” Betts asks softly.
I shake my head again.
“What happened?” Zay-Rod asks.
I feel weird, talking about this in a pool. I glance over at the turquoise Adirondack chairs where my mom and Jordan took me a few nights ago. I leave my seat and swim over to the steps. They follow, and we shake excess water off as we exit the pool. The tile around the pool burns our feet as we walk over and sit down in the plastic chairs.
“What happened?” Zay-Rod repeats.
I need to take a moment to look both my buddies in the eye. This is something we’ve never done before, and I need to know they can take it. They both hold my eye contact — first Zay-Rod, then Betts. So I take a deep breath, then another, then another. And then I tell them everything.
“Shit, dude,” Betts says.
“You okay?” Zay-Rod asks.
I shake my head. “Not really. I mean, yeah, I’ll be okay. But I have lots of nightmares, and when Jordan touched me around that area, I freaked the fuck out.”
Betts stands, walks over, and makes like he’s going to sit on my lap. I laugh, because I just told him I got raped and what’s the first thing he does? Invade my space. “Plastic chair, dude,” I say.
He stands and he lifts me up by my shoulders, and he hugs me tight.
“I’m sorry, dude.”
Zay-Rod joins our little huddle. It is, sex included, the most intimate moment of my life. They hold me tight, and I just close my eyes and breathe, thinking how glad I am they’re my buddies, and wondering why I was ever afraid to tell them.
Zay-Rod asks, “Does Rosa know?”
I say, “Yeah.”
He adds, “Jordan?”
I nod.
“Can I kill that dude?” Betts asks.
“Yeah,” I say. I quickly correct. “No, actually. Jordan already punched him.”
Zay-Rod pulls back. His eyes are shocked. “Seriously?”