“No changing the subject, Mr. College Boy Subject Changer.”
I set my sandwich aside. Not even it could save me now. “All right. You can’t tell anyone. You can’t even let Calvin know you know.” When I was certain Lua understood and agreed to my terms, I said, “Calvin was sleeping with a teacher.” I immediately regretted breaking Calvin’s trust, but I needed Lua to know Tommy wasn’t the only complication between me and Calvin.
“Whoa,” Lua said. His mouth hung open. “Do you know who?”
I shook my head. And since I’d already spilled one of Cal’s secrets, I kept talking. “And he cuts himself. He used to. I don’t think he’s done it in a while. He might be depressed. Maybe.”
“But this isn’t all about him,” Lua said.
“What do you want me to say? That I still love Tommy and I don’t even know if I want to go to college, much less start something with Cal, because what if Tommy comes back?”
“Pretty much.”
“Fine. I said it.”
I’d lost my appetite. I wiped the buttery grease from my fingers and tossed my napkin on my plate. “Look,” I said. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me about Tommy, or that you can’t support me because you consider doing so enabling what you perceive to be my delusion, but could you not shit on me for it?”
Lua’s hard edges faded. He looked at me like I was one of those sad old dogs in a shelter that no one wanted to take home and would probably wind up euthanized. “I’m not shitting on you, Oz, but I don’t want you to trade your happiness now for some slim-to-nonexistent chance of happiness in a nebulous maybe-future.”
“Do you think you’re telling me anything I haven’t already considered?”
“Ozzie.” Lua reached across the table and took my hand. “Do you like Calvin?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to go to college?”
“Maybe?”
Lua rolled his eyes. “Don’t ‘maybe’ me, Oswald Pinkerton. You know you want to be one of those snooty intellectuals showing off your mad smarts by lecturing your classmates about the homoerotic subtext in Hemingway’s pompous shitty books. You’re the only person I know who gets boners writing term papers.”
I couldn’t help laughing. Also, Lua wasn’t wrong—not about the boner thing; writing essays didn’t actually make me hard—I loved books and learning, and I thought I’d love college and the freedom to study subjects I was passionate about, which included pretty much everything.
“Fine. I want to go to college.”
“Then do it!” Lua said. “Fall in love with Calvin and then dump his ass and go to college. We’ll take a road trip over the summer before I go on tour. Be happy, Ozzie. You deserve it.”
“But what about Tommy?”
Lua bit back the first reply that popped into his head—probably about how I was stupid and Tommy didn’t exist—and I appreciated his restraint. “If Tommy comes back, and he loves you the way you obviously love him, he’ll understand.” Lua squeezed my hand. “You’ve waited long enough.”
Lua made it sound so easy. Just stop waiting for Tommy and live my life. Maybe that included Calvin and college, maybe it didn’t. But my decisions had consequences, even if I couldn’t see what they were at the moment.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Good enough?”
“Not really. But it’s better than moping.”
Our waitress cleared our plates and replaced them with slices of wobbly chocolate cream pie and thick chocolate milkshakes, which consumed Lua’s and my attention until we’d devoured both, leaving nothing behind but empty plates and glasses.
“So,” Lua said. “How was it?”
“Delicious, obviously.”
Lua laughed. “Not the pie. Sex. With Calvin.”
“Oh.” I suddenly became interested in drawing lines with my fork through the thin smear of whipped cream left on my plate. “He’s got nice equipment, and it’s all in working order.”
“Nice equipment? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“You want a blow-by-blow account?”
Lua’s eyes grew wide and he nodded his head like I should have known better than to even ask. “Duh.”
“It was nice. And Calvin was really sweet.”
“Puke. Gross. That’s not what I meant.”
“What? You want to hear how he went down on me and I went down on him but we didn’t go all the way because we were in my car in his driveway, which made things logistically awkward?”
Lua’s fingers were covered with chocolate and he eschewed his napkin to wipe his hands on his jacket, which was already stained with blood. “That’s a decent place to start.”
“It’s a better place to end.” I refused to divulge all the gory details. “Sex is weird, isn’t it?”
“How so?”
“Well, I mean, when you’re into it, when you’re naked and kissing and doing all that stuff, it seems normal and awesome. But then, after, when you’re sweaty and sticky and exhausted, it’s like you just spent an hour in some bizarro world where it’s totally natural to stick your mouth in places you wouldn’t stick it under regular conditions.”
Lua might not remember, but he’d been equally inquisitive the night after Tommy and I slept together the first time. Lua had practically shoved metal slivers under my fingernails to force me to reveal the tawdry particulars.
“Calvin laughed when he . . .” I mimed an explosion. “You know.”
“He laughed?”
“Like a crazy person.”
“Is that normal? Are you sure you did it right?”
I shrugged. “I hope so.”
Lua nodded knowingly. “Jaime was all ‘don’t stop, don’t stop,’ and then he’d come and freak out if I even looked at his dick.”
“Hey, it’s sensitive down there.”
“Yeah, well, Jaime was a little too sensitive,” Lua said. “Most of the time I had to wait for him to leave so I could finish my business alone. You guys have it so easy. A couple of tugs and you’re done. For me, getting off feels like cracking a safe. Sure, I can let someone drill the lock and hope they pop it, but it usually takes time and finesse to do the job properly.”
Many lengthy and graphic conversations with Lua had given me more insight than I’d wanted into female anatomy, but it still seemed abstract to me. While there were definitely downsides to wearing my genitals on the outside—random classroom boners being one of the worst—Lua made the alternative sound much less appealing.
“Anyway, his laugh was demented,” I said. “I don’t know if he does it every time because we’ve only done it once, but it was funny. And his body did this weird spasm thing. It was cute and a little unnerving.” I’d decided not to tell Lua about Calvin also calling me a slut, because we’d sorted that issue and I didn’t want to give Lua a reason to hate him.
“Let me guess,” Lua said. “You’re all stone-faced and serious when your soldiers break formation.”
“I don’t really know what my face is doing. I’m usually too focused on what other parts of me are doing.”
“Well, I suppose I’m happy you finally got laid. You should do it more often, even if the thought makes me want to vomit up my perfectly delicious pie.”
“Thanks?”