I step back into the hallway, where Jessie is standing around gathering her senses.
“Bye Nate,” she says, her voice high and pretty for Kyle to hear, but her face taut and anxious at the weirdness of it all.
I want to take her in my arms, make that expression disappear and replace it with the smile that’s driven me crazy for the past few weeks, but now’s not the time. Now reality’s just burst in through the door in the form of a two-hundred pound best friend and brother. We knew it would end, but not like this, cut short and somewhat unresolved.
I try to look at Jessie with my old eyes. The eyes that saw her as a young girl, an annoying tagalong, and eventually a real friend, but it’s hard. She’s become something else now, and I’m not sure I can ever look at her like I used to.
“See you around, Jessie,” I say, somehow managing to turn away from her and close the door behind me.
15
Nate
“And that—” Kyle shouts, as he shoots, both of us watching the ball spin in the air and catch nothing but net, “is twenty-one!”
I scoop up the ball and follow Kyle as he walks backwards off the court, grinning smugly and shooting imaginary pistols at me.
It’s evening, that hour where the sun casts an ember glow through the L.A. smog, when time stops for a little while, the work day far in the past, the adventures of the night way in the future. Here at the courts, kids shout and teenagers flirt as Kyle and I go back to our bags at the benches to the side and allow our bodies to cool off.
“You’re not on your game, dude,” Kyle says, handing me a water bottle, “I mean, you’d lose anyway, but not by that much.”
I snort a laugh and suck down the cool liquid.
“Something’s up,” Kyle says, after eyeing me for a few seconds, “I can tell. Your mind’s somewhere else, dude.”
I shoot him a confused look.
“Nothing’s up.”
“Sure it is. Something happened while I was in London. You didn’t even make any videos.”
“I put one up last night!”
“Right, but you went over a week without one, too.”
“I don’t know. Slipped my mind, I guess.”
“Bullshit!”
I shrug and laugh.
“What is it?” Kyle says, his eyes shining with curiosity. “You got a girlfriend?”
Suddenly I choke on the water, spurting it out and bending over double as I wheeze and splutter. Kyle laughs and smacks a broad palm on my back.
“Jesus, Nate!”
“You think I got a girlfriend?”
“Come on! I’m not that stupid,” Kyle says, opening his thick arms wide.
“Neither am I.”
He laughs and slaps me once more on the back, this time for support.
“It was just work,” I say. “I had this weekend business trip, and then a bunch of stuff to do when I got back, everything all piled up. Didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone when I was home – least of all a webcam.” I also hadn’t checked my Bad Boy email in days, not to mention ignoring all the pleas for help and advice that were probably stacking up in my video comments, and which I normally tried to respond to. “I haven’t had much time to myself.”
“I get it.” Kyle nods sympathetically. “Plus you were keeping an eye on Jessie for me, and I know she’s a handful,” he adds, his tone deeply appreciative.
“Yeah,” I mumble, trying not to think about just how much I’d been keeping eyes on her.
“I got to thank you for that, dude.”
“It was nothing. It was…uh…cool hanging out with her. Been a while.”
“Did you notice anything wrong with her?”
I turn quickly to glare at Kyle, then try not to look as anxious as I feel.
“No…should I have?”
Kyle looks out over the courts where a couple of teenagers have started a game, and even from the side you can see the tension in his muscles, the piercing aggression in his eye.
“Something’s going on with her,” he growls slowly, his voice filled with suppressed frustration. “And I’d bet money that it involves one of her fucking loser exes.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask, sounding a lot more nonchalant than I feel.
“I just know. It’s the way she acts. I just wanna know what asshole it is.”
I watch the game for a minute, waiting for Kyle’s mood to change, but when I look back at him the ferocity is still there in his face.
“You know…people could easily say we’re assholes, too,” I say, gently probing.
Kyle laughs loudly then looks at me.
“We are assholes!”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Kyle looks at me like I just said something both incomprehensible and disgusting.
“Dude, Jessie’s better than us. She deserves better than us. Someone who’ll take care of her.”