Hey Kade. Had to go, I understand that you have family issues to deal with. If you need me again, I’ll be happy to serve. Rita
I smiled lightly and folded the piece of paper in half. Rita and I had found each other at a strange time in my life. We were one year apart in high school. I was a junior when she was a sophomore, and yet she was in many ways the more mature one. What started off as a friendship grew more sexual, and from the beginning she allowed me to vent the darker side of my passions without judgment, without anything other than acceptance and enjoyment. We never had feelings more than just friendship, however, and had willingly gone on and off as we tried other relationships. She and I both had times when we turned the other down sexually due to that, and it never hurt our ability to just hang out and chill when we wanted to.
It took me a while that day, however, to get over what Rita had done. She had heard, even before I did, Alix come into the house. She said nothing as I hurriedly pulled on a set of shorts I had lying on the floor, and only sat quietly as I left the room. While I hadn’t specifically asked her not to leave the room, she knew that I didn’t want Alix to see her. Yet there she was, not a minute after I’d left, walking out with little more than a silk bathrobe on and sashaying down the hallway.
Thankfully, the place had one hell of a hot water tank, so I was able to wash the tension away. By the time I got out, I was in control of myself again, and I felt my control reestablish itself more and more as I put on my clothes. By the time I had my shirt tucked in and my belt buckled, I was ready to face Alix.
I knocked softly on Alix’s door, hoping she was still there. “Alix? Can I come in?”
“Come on in, Kade,” she called, and I opened her door to find her sitting on her bed, a novel open face-down on the covers. “Nice change of clothes.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Uhm, I suppose you’d like to talk about Rita?”
“Another time, actually,” Alix said, giving me a smile. “Kade, I don’t understand it all, and maybe there will come a time that I might. But for now, let’s just say that it confirmed quite blatantly something you and I joked about yesterday. You are most certainly not gay.”
I grinned in relief. Maybe I could get out of this without being embarrassed too much after all. “Yeah, but after yesterday, I thought you might have questions.”
“Oh, I do,” Alix said, picking up her novel and putting it on her bedside table before getting up. “Like how you and I are going to enjoy spending a little time together this evening. I was kind of thinking that maybe we could forget about what happened and have some fun. Before our little incident yesterday, I was having the best time with you that I’d ever had.”
Her words were like cool water to a parched man, and I grinned. “How about we just stay in tonight? As much as going back down to the ocean would be nice, I’d feel more secure just hanging out here. Would you happen to know if there are any Indian delivery places around here? I’m still looking for naan bread and some butter chicken curry.”
Alix laughed and came over. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Give me a few minutes to find the yellow pages, if they still have one around here.”
For the rest of the night, I felt like I was in Wonderland. When we found the yellow pages, she used her greater knowledge of the area to help me pick out the closest restaurant, while still giving me the choice on foods. As we waited for the delivery, we sat outside on the back patio, enjoying the late reddish purple of the sunset.
“Alix,” I asked as we sat, “why didn’t you ever go to college?”
“I haven’t yet,” Alix said, “mainly because I knew I had to devote my time to my modeling career. Now that I’m three years removed from high school, though, I guess the idea of going back scares me a little. I wasn’t the student you were from what I remember, and besides, I’ve really gotten a lot of personal education just through my experiences.”
“Still,” I replied, “I’m just saying that you have all the smarts needed to get through college. Honestly the biggest challenge is just working hard. If you can get through what modeling has put you through, college isn’t any more difficult. Maybe a different type of difficult if you want to think about it.”
Alix smiled and looked over at me. “Maybe I could, but I know I couldn’t do it down here in Los Angeles. Way too many people who know me, I’d feel too out of place. When the time’s right, maybe I could go to school up in Oregon. Do you know any universities I could go to?”