Nathan

When I arrived home, they were playing "Spin the bottle". I didn't know kids these days even did that anymore. I think Lena might've suggested it once when we were seventeen, but she'd said we didn't need the bottle part and had just started kissing me, out of nowhere, like she'd done many times before. I never knew why she did that, or what she meant by it. Then again, I'd never asked. I probably wouldn't have liked the answer. Friends, we were, and yes, sometimes we kissed or slept together, but she never wanted to put a label on anything.

Suddenly, I began to worry. What if Sam and June...? They were way too young, and they'd definitely screw up their friendship in the process. My eyes raced over all those excited young faces, to find Sam looking up in awe to this brunette girl who was making a show of kissing another girl. Oh, man... I should've never allowed him to have a mixed sleepover... What was I thinking? That he'd invite maybe one or two other shy kids and they'd watch a movie — definitely not this. At least, Sam seemed like he was enjoying it.

Okay, I definitely didn't want to be here anymore, and I definitely didn't want to know what my little brother was thinking right now.

Where was June though? She was nowhere to be seen.

Oh, fuck.

I didn't want it to be the first thing coming to mind, but it was. I left the teenagers where they were, deciding it wasn't my problem, and went to look for her.

I found her sitting with her back to my bedroom door, arms around her knees. She was staring into the distance, dried tear tracks on her cheeks, lips shaking. She heard me and startled — for a second, she moved to wipe away her tears; when she saw it was me, she didn't bother. "Oh, hi," she said, voice quavering. "You're back."

I sighed, running my hands through my hair. I didn't like seeing her like this, defeated, finally brought down, when she was usually so strong and confident. Gingerly, I sat down beside her. She was all warm from crying; I could feel it even though we weren't touching.

"How's Sam?" she asked.

"Well, he's certainly enjoying himself."

She laughed a little. "Good."

"You're not enjoying yourself, though."

She avoided my gaze. Her left hand was clenched into a fist, and the other was clutching her leg with such force I wouldn't be surprised if it hurt. "No, I'm not. They didn't... they didn't want me to play." She breathed in deeply, almost desperately, and her fingers clawed in her leg with more force. "Not that I wanted to play, or anything. I mean, it's a crappy game anyway. But it's the underlying meaning, you know? It hurt."

I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell her something consoling, something meaningful. Only, I had never been that great at stuff like that. "Of course it hurts," I said. "But it's just a couple of young kids anyway, June. It's not always gonna be like that."

She let out a shaky breath, then turned her eyes towards me, big, brown, and currently teary. "Would you kiss me?"

I stared at her, a rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins, urging me to run — did she just...? No, she couldn't mean... could she?

"I mean, not 'kiss me now'," she added quickly, almost tripping over the words. "More hypothetical. Like, would you kiss me if I was older and not Sam's friend? Not necessarily as you, just as a guy."

Oh, thank god. That made more sense. The flight response disappeared as fast as it had emerged, and I relaxed, inspecting her blotchy face, the little drops stuck in her long lashes, her lips, swollen from crying. The long, curly hair cascading down her back, her figure, a bit wider at the hips, small at the waist. And well, she had breasts alright, and just this once, I should take them into consideration. Let's not forget her smile, either. It wasn't anywhere to be seen at the moment, but I could picture it with ease. "Yeah," I said, "yeah, if you were older, and you wouldn't have been Sam's friend, and I would have met you then... Yeah, you'd be a girl I'd want to kiss."

A flicker of a smile, and for a second, I thought she was leaning into me — then she rested her head against the door. "Okay," she said, in a small voice.

I wanted to say something else, something comforting, even though I wasn't comfortable myself — nineteen-year-old guys should certainly not be talking to their younger brother's friend about kissing them. But this was June. This was different. I cared about her, and I didn't want her to feel like she was some near-human being, while in fact, she was one of the best human beings I knew.

I looked at her again, when suddenly, I noticed the bottle of whiskey next to her. "Really, June? Some wine every now and then, okay... but whiskey?" A knot of concern tied itself in my stomach. Of course, she was going to be upset, that was only natural. To fix it with whiskey, though, was not a good habit to form, and definitely didn't work anyway.

"I didn't take it. It was that bitch Jennifer, along with Hayley. I haven't had a single sip, I swear."

Mm. June was an excellent liar. I'd become equipped at seeing through it, but right now, her eyes told me it was the truth. "Jennifer the one with her tongue shoved down some girl's throat?"

She giggled, then stopped quickly for some unknown reason. "Probably. It sounds like her. Sam must be loving that sight."

I frowned. "Oh yeah, he is. I wish I'd never seen it."

This time, she laughed out loud, head thrown back, the little lights visible behind the tears in her eyes. I didn't know what was so damn funny. It didn't matter anyway. Because in that moment, I didn't need to inspect her body to decide if she was kissable: any boy who didn't want to kiss her must be a massive bastard. Good. Natural protection. At least I had to worry less about guys taking advantage of her.

Softly, I nudged her in the side. She turned towards me, looking up at me with the remnants of her smile, and I couldn't help but smile back. "You'll be okay," I said. "You know what it is with the Jennifers of this world?" She shook her head. One of her curls fell in front of her eyes, and she tucked it behind her ear, with fingers that didn't move the way they were supposed to but moved nonetheless. It did the job, and wasn't that the most important? "The Jennifers of this world attract lots of guys. They're flocking after her, waiting to be picked. Those Jennifers, they got so much to pick from, that they won't know what is good for them, and often pick the wrong ones. It's much harder to find the real thing if you're conventionally attractive."

"Are you talking about Jennifers or Nathans?"

She was teasing me again. That was a good sign. This pep talk was working. "Nathans are a whole other category," I said. "They're even worse than the Jennifers."

"That's not true!"

It was like I had offended her, instead of myself. I chuckled, wondering how in the hell I'd ended up here, talking to this wonderful, but so young girl about love and attraction, pretending to be an expert, while I was awfully inexperienced compared to other people my age. I didn't really care why, and I didn't really find it strange either. If I were to be friends with a teenage girl, then so be it. Who cared? June was different anyway. She was a great liar, yes, but there was also no one else who could shove the truth in your face like she did. I needed someone like that, and I had been needing it for a long time.

"But it is," I said, while she kept shaking her head. "At least, the Jennifers try. The Nathans don't, and they end up regretting it."

She examined me as if I was this open book ready to be interpreted, and all at once, I didn't understand why I'd said that. "Sam said you and Lena were friends, like him and me. He missed something, didn't he?"

Of course, she'd realized. She wasn't like Sam; you could cry in front of him and he would still not notice you were miserable. June read people. I supposed it was a skill you needed to develop if you had disadvantages like her and you wanted to survive in this world. "Yeah... Sam misses a lot, luckily."

"So... she was your girlfriend? The real thing?"

Lena. My girlfriend. They called her that, but always in a mocking tone. Never serious. "She wasn't my girlfriend, no. I didn't have the courage. Missed my chance."

She was quiet for a while, and I realized this was the first time I had ever admitted that out loud. It was surprisingly unexceptional. "I think," June started to say, and by the look of her, her head held high, I was going to get a plate of truth served to me again, "what's even worse, is that you're still beating yourself up about that. You loved Lena. And then she died. And that's awful, and it shouldn't have happened. But it did. And I think you... deserve to try again. With someone new." She was gazing right at me, fearless. "And truthfully, from what Sam told me, she didn't sound like the type to settle down anyway."

I'd been staring at her for what could've been a minute before I identified the roaring feeling speeding through my body as red-hot anger. Why the hell was I letting her say things like that? Why was I talking to her about Lena anyway, when she had no idea, couldn't possibly understand, had never even known Lena? I wanted to say all those things, I wanted to end this conversation and go to bed, away from all those teenagers, when it hit me.

The only reason I was mad at her was that she was handing me the truth, once again. Instead of saying something, I grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took a large swig. Why was she always right? Where had she learned to evaluate people like this? That ability to not lie, to blatantly speak what was on her mind, was she born with it, or was it a skill your parents were supposed to teach you?

June sighed, taking the bottle back from me with two hands, fingers grasping it so tightly the tops of them were white, before putting it down at the left of her, so I couldn't reach it. "Sometimes," she began, ignoring my annoyed scowl, "horrible stuff happens, and you need to change your plans a bit. No point in spending your days thinking about what could've been. You'll just end up regretting spending your days full of regret." She tilted her head, confused, then asked: "Did that make sense?"

I almost forgot I was supposed to be pissed off at her. "In a way."

By the way she frowned, I could see she was thinking hard. It was the same look she had when she was pouring over her algebra homework. "Take me, for example," she said. "You know, I wasn't always meant to be named June. My mom wanted to name me Felicia." She shuddered. "Horrible name, but she still likes the sound of it. She had been trying to get pregnant for years, so I was like a miracle to my parents. But then my delivery went south, and suddenly I wasn't such a lucky thing anymore, and my parents felt like it'd be cruel to call me Felicia. I was a disabled, female baby from Hispanic origins, so the one thing they wanted to give me to make my life even a tiny bit easier, was an English name. So, June it was."

"But you were born in February."

She smiled mischievously. "Yeah, try deducting nine months off of that."

Oh. Of course. I couldn't believe I never wondered why she didn't have a Spanish name, like the rest of her family. She was right, though. It suited her. I couldn't imagine calling her Felicia; it would've been like calling a cat Buddy. Then again, had there ever been someone whose name didn't fit them? Didn't you grow into your own name? "I like your name," I said. "When it's just June, it's like... how you're always just you. Optimistic and honest. And then you hear the rest, Mercedes Guevara Aranda, and it feels right as well. Like all the different complicated sides of you."

She giggled and patted me on the shoulder. "Are you okay? How much whiskey did you drink just now?"

"Not enough," I sighed, looking sideways at her. She was close to me, physically, and in a different way, a way I couldn't pinpoint. "How did it happen, though? Your cerebral palsy?" I had never wanted to ask before; it seemed inconsequential. It wasn't as if there was anything that could 'fix' it, as far as I knew.

Now she sighed deeply, inspecting her own hands like she had forgotten they behaved differently from those of other people. "Well, it turned out I was too big of a baby to come out of my mom the normal way — or she was too small. Either way, they didn't figure that out until I was trying to get born. She wanted to have me at home, but after a day of no progress, they took her to the hospital. There, my mom was offered an epidural, you know, anesthesia, and it turned out she was allergic to it, so it kind of paralyzed her lungs. I don't know exactly, I'm not a doctor, but this is what they always tell me. Anyway, the doctors panicked because my mom wasn't breathing — and forgot there was a baby there that couldn't breathe either, at the moment."

She stopped, frowning. I knew it wasn't difficult for her to tell me this — she'd accepted what happened and made the best of it. Still, I couldn't help but take her hand. She stiffened under my touch, probably without wanting to. I didn't let go, and soon after, she relaxed again. "It's always so weird that I don't remember this, you know? I mean, I was dying for a whole twenty-two minutes, you'd say it'd make a lasting impression on a person, don't you think?" She wasn't smiling, not this time. This was a serious question, something she might have brooded over many times before.

"But it did, didn't it? You're living with the consequences every day."

"I guess. I don't always remember it. Usually, I forget, until something like this happens."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm glad you didn't die." In my head, it had sounded uplifting; when I actually spoke the words, it felt like they were all wrong. She didn't seem to mind.

"Yeah, me too. At least most of the time. This life is really not that bad, on the whole."

We were quiet for a while. Downstairs, someone turned up the music. There was a wave of laughter, followed by excited shouting. On the one hand, I wanted her to be able to go back and have fun like other teenagers, on the other hand, she deserved something much better than a sloppy make-out session at a party, and I was grateful she was spared having to bury the memory of kissing some kid you definitely hadn't wanted to kiss.

I ran my hands through my hair, then turned to her. "You wanna watch a movie with me? Your pick."

"Yeah," she said. "Sounds good."

I got up, extending my hand to her. Realizing she had her own way of getting up, I wanted to drop it. Instead, she looked at my hand as if it was a challenge, and without a word, she took it, letting me pull her up, a little more unsteadily than usual, but successful. Another burst of laughter reached us from down below.

She only smiled at me, picking up the whiskey before entering my room.