fourteen

           “So while I was setting off fireworks and singing the national anthem with my slightly rowdy and intoxicated friends, you were hooking up with Lilah?” concluded Charlie, pausing our game of Madden so that he could focus on me.

           I rested my controller in my lap and said, “Yeah.”

           “That’s my brother! In for the kill! Using all those skills I taught him! Nice job, dude,” Charlie commended, holding his hand up. I slapped it with my own hand, and then listened as he continued with his extoling for my latest “achievement”: “Lilah Tov. Wow. She’s got to be what? An eight? Maybe a nine?”

           “A twelve,” I mumbled.

           “Sorry to break it to you, Will, but that girl is not a twelve,” Charlie laughed. “I’ve f*cked twelves. Lilah isn’t a twelve.” I begged to differ, though not aloud. “But she’s pretty hot, I’ll give you that. Oh, and I’m sorry about the first time I met her. I came in a little strong, even for me. I know that I hit on her pretty hard, but I’d never go through with it, Will. You like her, and she obviously likes you. I know how the Bro Code works.”

           “Wow, that’s real considerate of you, Charlie,” I mocked.

           “Isn’t it?” he agreed. “Now, tell me, Will, was she a good kisser and did you do anything else?”

           Here was the part where I decided which details I wanted to tell Charlie and which I wanted to keep for myself. I elected on a simple, “She was a really good kisser,” and kept it at that.

           “How long did you two go at it?”

           “A while.” Even if I had tried to give the osculation a timestamp, I probably wouldn’t have been able to. Because when we were actually, like, kissing, I wasn’t thinking about how long it was. I was just kissing, and trying really hard not to think.

           “Anything else important?”

           “Not that I’m telling you.”

           “Oh, c’mon, Will! Don’t be that way!” Charlie complained. “I’ve told you about all the girls I’ve been with—in detail—and you can’t tell me about one girl?”

           I shuddered at thought of some of the more graphic stories Charlie had told me about his conquests. Every girl Charlie slept with was like another animal head to mount above his fictitious fireplace. She wasn’t a girl—she was reduced to an accomplishment for him to share. I never liked that. Even if when I hooked up with girls for the sole purpose of the story, I always felt shitty about it afterwards. But Charlie didn’t feel shitty. He felt proud. And that was kind of bad, but it was also Charlie, so maybe possessing the male equivalent to nymphomania (it was, like, satyriasis or something) was a just his way of dealing with an over-privileged and slightly neglected childhood. Or maybe he was just being Charlie, and being Charlie, he happened to like sex. A lot.

           “She’s different, Charlie,” I told him, knowing that I was bound to encounter an enormous amount of teasing.

           “Oh, shit, Will. How many times do we have to go over this?” Here it came—no pun intended. “If you have sex with a girl, it does not mean that you have to fall in love with her. In fact, you don’t even have any obligation to call her the next day, or even the next week! Dad would probably disagree and call me the nice word for a dick, but it’s true. Don’t give in to the female agenda.”

           “We didn’t have sex, Charlie,” I sighed. “Lilah’s just…different than the usual.”

           “Oh, no. She’s already inside your head. Will, don’t let her brainwash you. You are a strong, independent man who is capable of making his own decisions! Remember that.”

           “Will do, Charles,” I assured him, “but seriously, don’t worry about me. I’ve had girlfriends before and I’ve kissed girls—”

           “Oh, I know you have,” he taunted, probably making some indirect reference to all of the other girls that I had told him about. Because, like, way back when he kissed his first girl in seventh grade, we made a pact to always tell each other about kisses and stuff like that. I knew about all his first sexual encounters, and he knew all the names of the girls I had hooked up with over the years. Rarely did our names ever overlap, but there would be the occasional girl who was either my age or in between our ages that would somehow manage to climb between the cracks and form a connection with both Brooks brothers. It was rare, but it had happened. Those girls typically weren’t “girlfriend material” to us, so they didn’t really matter, which sounded wholly awful, but whatever. It was the truth.

           “I’m not an idiot, Charlie,” I summed up my point, “but Lilah is different.”

           “Tell me that in two months when you’re sick of her or you two young lovers need to call the whole thing off because of summer being over,” he scoffed pessimistically. I didn’t really want to dwell on the future at the moment, so I just focused on how amazing Lilah was and how nothing could currently change that—not even Charlie’s cynicism related to the female gender.

           “All we did was hook up, Charlie,” I said, needing to hear the words for myself, too, “that was it.” And that was it. Lilah and I didn’t do anything else. We just kissed for a (long, long, LONG) while and then talked a little bit afterwards. I was really hoping that it wouldn’t be a one-time thing, but if it was, then okay. We weren’t magically going to be in a relationship, because it was the summer and Lilah lived in New York and I was stuck in Massachusetts during the year and, again, all we did was hook up. Kids did that nowadays. They kissed and then sometimes nothing blossomed out of it. That was the harsh reality of life, and while I hoped that it wouldn’t be my harsh reality, if it were, then I could live with that. I was a realist; I knew how these things worked.

           “Fine,” Charlie relented, “but the second you feel like it’s something more, then you come to me, and I’ll take you to a strip club.”

           “I’m too young.”

           “So we’ll get you a fake ID!” There was his future embezzler coming through. “Will, getting you into a strip club is the least of our worries. In fact, we can go to one right now, if you want.”

           “I do not want to go to a strip club,” I said firmly, for the prospect sounded even more unappealing than spending an entire week alone on a deserted island with Riley Prescott. I had always associated strip clubs with desperation. The guys going to them were desperate, and though this was a shitty generalization, the girls who worked there were desperate, too. Like, why couldn’t the strippers get a nice degree or become secretaries? A secretary probably got paid more than a stripper, and it was just a less desperate job. Like, I knew that going to a strip club was supposed to be a dude’s fantasy, but it wasn’t mine.

           “Okay, I’ll take you to one after she dumps you,” Charlie assured me.

           “Firstly,” I began, “we’re not in a relationship, so she can’t dump me. And secondly, if we were in a relationship, what makes you think that she would do the dumping?”

           “Because you’re too nice to be the dumper, and I just have a feeling that she’ll get bored with you or something.”

           Upon hearing one of my deepest fears—that she would get bored me, not matter who “she” was—I tossed my controller on the ground and stood up from my bed.

           “Will, don’t be that way!” Charlie whined. “We can stop talking about this and just go back to playing Madden, if you want.”

           “I have to go,” I said, aware that one usually didn’t flee from their own bedroom to get away from a problem. I should’ve been kicking Charlie out instead of electing myself to leave, but I just couldn’t do that.

           So I went over to the door and left. My legs carried me down the stairs and through the front door. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but somehow I ended up in front of the Greens’ house. There weren’t any cars in their driveway, but I just had a strong hunch that the house wasn’t empty. Thus, I reached out my hand and rang the doorbell, which happened to be a relatively new experience for me, since I was used to sneaking around back or being let in immediately. Whatever.

           I rang the doorbell and waited a few seconds before ringing it again, because no one answered it. I was about to give up hope and ring a third time, but then the door swung open to a really attractive girl with whom I had had the pleasure of swapping spit. She smiled at me and then said, “William. What a lovely surprise! Want to go on a picnic?”

           “Uh, sure,” I answered, a bit confused with the odd inquiry.

           Lilah disappeared into the house for a brief moment and came back with a backpack of sorts in her hand. She swung the backpack over a single shoulder, exited the house, and then gently slammed shut the door behind her. Then she began to walk and I hesitantly followed, unsure of how everything was going to be in the aftermath of our, like, kiss. Actually, no. It wasn’t a “like, kiss,” it was a kiss, plain and simple. Even if it wasn’t so plain. It was a kiss, no “like” required. But my qualms were momentarily put to rest as Lilah reached behind her and grabbed my hand, pulling me along. We were holding hands. That had to mean something. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it meant nothing at all. And maybe I should’ve stopped overanalyzing everything, because it was kind of pathetic.

           I followed Lilah, trying not to think too much into anything. Thinking too much was the root of most of my problems, and it only caused me more unneeded stress and anxiety. When I thought too much, I started to rethink, and that was never good. So I stopped thinking about why she was holding my hand and why she had proposed that we go on a picnic and why Charlie just had to bring up me being boring and instead focused on everything around me.

           We were going down a small road with trees that practically blocked out the sky, and after a while the pavement stopped and it turned to dirt. I had a vague idea of where we were, but this wasn’t the type of place that I had ever been to, which made me wonder how Lilah knew where we were going. But somehow she had a destination in mind and kept on that, all the while dragging me along by our locked fingers. Neither of us said a word, but it didn’t seem like a tense or awkward or loaded silence. It was just a silence due to the lack of anything to say, and that was okay.

           When we came to the end of the dirt road, there was a field covered in stones. But unlike typical stones, these were carved into rectangular shapes with words engraved on them. As we entered the strange location, I realized what this place was: a cemetery. Lilah Tov had taken me to a cemetery. Or we were just passing through. Hopefully, it was the latter. Because like any normal human being, I wasn’t really a fan of hanging out in cemeteries, because it happened to be a creepy as heck pastime.

           As it turned out, Lilah liked the morbidity of the cemetery, which was how I found myself having a late afternoon picnic in the middle of a graveyard. A blanket, some water bottles, a container of strawberries, and an area of sandwiches had all been packed away in Lilah’s bag, so we were all set to go. Initially, this picnic had been meant for Sara and Jake, but then Eden decided to take them “somewhere or whatever,” meaning that Lilah was stuck with already packed picnic. And then I showed up at her door, so she figured it was the perfect opportunity to utilize everything so that it didn’t go to waste. I understood why we were having a picnic, but I just couldn’t fathom why we were in a freaking cemetery. Like, there were all these different and totally awesome places nearby (the beach, for example), but right now, we were in a cemetery. It was just weird.

           So I asked, “Why exactly are we here, again?”

           “Because it’s nice and quiet,” Lilah said, popping a whole strawberry into her mouth.

           I took a bite out of my sandwich (some mix of turkey and wheat and cheese and tomatoes) and then said, “But it’s so eerie.”

           “What’s wrong, Will? Are you scared?”

           “You weren’t actually going to take Jake and Sara here, were you?” I expertly dodged her questioned. Because the answer was simple: yes. Yes, I was totally scared. Which made no sense, because according to Charlie, I was “a strong, independent man,” and strong, independent men typically weren’t afraid, but I was. Even in the daylight with a totally kickass Lilah by my side, the cemetery was still scaring the shit out of me. I knew that a zombie or whatever wasn’t going to pop out because this was real life—not some movie or a book—but it was still unsettling, just knowing that there were dead and decomposing bodies just a few yards below us.

           “Nah, originally we were just going to the beach for the day”—that’s where we should’ve been right now—“but Eden had to take them wherever.”

           “So then why didn’t we go to the beach?”

           “Too many people.”

           “Yeah, but it’s less creepy.”

           “Tell me, Will, what’s so creepy about this place?”

           “Everything.”

           “Real specific. I like that in a man.”

           In the hopes to get off the subject of the cemetery, I said, “What else do you like in a man?”

           Lilah coyly eyed me and then put her hands on my knees. “Well, he’s gotta be tall—at least seven feet, maybe eight.”

           “Uh huh,” I muttered, urging her to continue.

           “What else… Uh, I really like guys who treat girls like shit and completely ignore their girlfriends.”

           “Sounds like you’re describing Charlie.”

           “Does it?”

           “Tall and awful to women? Yeah, that’s my brother. Too bad for me, really.”

           “Sorry, Will. You’re just too nice and not tall enough.”

           “Huh,” I remarked, “that’s the exact same thing that my basketball coach in eighth grade told me!”

           “What, did you suck at defense or something?” she guessed.

           “Oh, not just defense—offense, too,” I laughed, thinking back to my baller days. I sucked so much. Like, I was really, really, really bad. I couldn’t shoot to save my life, my dribbling was all over the place, and I always felt bad about stealing the ball from someone, so would usually give it back. To my coaches, I was the basketball player from hell. They were pretty disappointed, because they knew Charlie was my brother (and he did not suck at basketball), and they also knew that I played a bunch of other sports. But basketball just wasn’t for me.

           “Really?”

           “Yeah, but don’t worry—dreamboat Charlie has been a forward for years,” I told her, referencing the position that my dear older brother played.

           “I knew there was something I liked about him,” she commented with a nod of her head. “Mrs. Charlie Brooks. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

           “Sounds great,” I agreed, “but just to warn you, he doesn’t like commitment.”

           “Wow! Even better! I think I really found the guy for me,” she concluded.

           “So I’m out of running entirely?”

           “Spoiler alert: we’re about to address that thing that happened the other night,” she announced, trying to imitate the voice of some person narrating a commercial. “Now, Will, after a kiss like the one we shared, you could never be out of the running.”

           My eyes nervously roamed around the headstones as I mentally reviewed her words. We were just joking (which was kind of inconsiderate in a place with dead people, but at least their ghosts had something not totally melancholic to listen to), and then BAM! Lilah just slid in that line about the kiss. It was nonchalant, which was probably for the best, because if I had been the one to bring it up, it would’ve gone something like, “Uh, so Lilah… They other night when we, uh, ya know, like, kissed and stuff… That was, um, really…really cool, yeah.” The awkwardness would’ve drowned the both of us and there was a high likelihood that we would never kiss again if I had been charged with the burden of addressing it. But Lilah brought up, and for that I was grateful.

           “That was, uh, pretty cool the other night,” I gulped sheepishly, wondering why I had used the phrase “pretty cool” instead of anything else. But then if I did use another adjective in its place, that adjective would probably be equally as lame, so maybe “pretty cool” wasn’t so bad.

           “Pretty cool, indeed,” she hummed. “You’re a good kisser, William Brooks. Has anyone ever told you that?”

           I almost said, “Yeah, I hear it all the time,” because it was true, but I didn’t, because that would’ve made me sound like a dick. So instead, I minimized my epic kissing abilities and drawled out a, “Once or twice…”

           “Well, I know that I’m a good kisser, so we don’t have to go over that,” she would’ve sounded so cocky if it wasn’t the truth, “but do you have any burning questions about what happened the other night?”

           “Not really,” I lied.

           “Okay, well, I have one for you: do you want it to happen again?”

           I took another bite of my sandwich and finished it off. Then I reached over and cleansed my palate with a nice sip of water, just to prolong my answer as long as possible. Because, like, there was only one thing that anybody could ever say to that, and it felt weird admitting verbally, because there was just too much thought in it. Nevertheless, I hesitantly replied, “Uh, yeah,” though I should’ve been shouting, “HELL, YES!” from rooftops.

           “Good,” Lilah grinned. “So do I.”

           So then she leaned in to me so that our faces and mouths were inches apart. But she didn’t kiss me. Not yet, at least. First, she pinned me down to the blanket, whispered, “I’m on top this time,” and planted a small peck on my lips. That simply didn’t work for me, so I lifted my head so meet hers, and then I crashed our mouths together. And then we were full-on making out in a cemetery, because ya know, kids these days…