WARNING: there are a few f-bombs dropped, and I do mention sex (but no one actually, like, has sex), so if you can't handle that, then I'd suggest not reading on. Feedback would be epic. Kay.

six

I stared at my empty plate, contemplating whether or not it was worth it to take more food and prolong my obligated stay at the dinner table. But Charlie seemed to be chatting his way into a plea bargain, so I thought it best to not eat anything more for the meanwhile. The girl sitting next to me nudged my side, causing me to turn my head and look over at her. She wore a smile on her face, but it felt like it was painted on—not genuine. I returned the smile, and then she reached down under the table and squeezed my thigh. I put my hand over her hand and moved it away.

           “That’s absolutely delightful, Charles!” laughed Mrs. Prescott. She took another sip of her wine and then said, “Grace was in a similar situation recently, actually.”

           “Was she?” Charlie’s interest piqued.

           “Mother,” Grace said sharply, “please don’t!”

           But Mrs. Prescott had already launched into a tale about Grace’s SAT tutoring and how her grades were higher on the ACT, something she hadn’t even studied for. Grace was hanging her head, but kept stealing quick glances at Charlie. They were so going to fuck later tonight. The entire evening, they had been playing footsie across the table, as I had learned from having Charlie accidentally kick me three too many times. Even if they were dressed in “wedding guest” attire, that wouldn’t stop them from tearing each other’s clothes off when the moment was right. It was almost disgusting how horny the two were.

           “You know,” Charlie used his I-have-a-not-so-great-idea-but-I’m-going-to-sell-it-to-you-anyway-regardless-if-you-buy-it-or-not voice, “I think it’s about time that the kids—meaning Grace, Riley, Will, and myself—retire to go play a nice game of gin, while the rest of you discuss grown up things, like supermarkets and stock markets.”

           My mom pursed her lips, internally debating whether or not it was an appropriate hour to let us go. “You’ll be back in time for dessert?”

           “Of course, Hillary,” Charlie affirmed.

           “Excuse me?” Normally, she didn’t mind when Charlie called her by her first name. But there were guests here, so she simply couldn’t let them to know what she allowed Charlie to do under normal circumstances.

           “Sorry,” he shook his head contritely, “Mother.”

           “Thank you,” she said. “Now, just promise that you’ll be back within an hour, okay?”

           “We promise,” Charlie acted as the spokesman of the “kids” at the table.

           “And where do you think that you’re going, by the way?” my dad interrogated.

           Charlie shrugged, and then guessed, “Upstairs?”

           “To a bedroom?”

           “Of course not, Dad!” Charlie threw the notion away in incredulity, as if it was absurd. “We’re going to play a card game, so I figured that the game room was only fitting.”

           “Fine,” sighed Robert Brooks, “but like your mother said, be back in an hour.”

           “Thanks, Dad,” Charlie bid, excusing all four of us.

           We stood up from our chairs and then quickly exited the room before another round of “How’s School Going?” could be played. The second that we reached the front hall, Charlie began to grope Grace, and she groped him right back. That was not something that I wanted to see. All the way up the steps, the two were going on and on about their future plans regarding each other’s bodies and it just really wasn’t what I wanted to listen to. Riley was right next to me the entire way up, and when we reached the game room, Charlie slammed the door shut and pressed Grace up against a wall.

           “Do you think we have enough time?” he asked after kissing her for a few seconds.

           I mindlessly went over to where we kept the games, in search of a pack of cards. One of us had to follow through with the lie, after all.

           “Yeah, totally,” Grace confirmed. And then the two went back to dry humping each other and making out.

           When I found the cards, I approached Riley and offered up a smile. “If you don’t mind having them as a soundtrack, do you want to play?”

           “Not really,” Riley said with a shake of her head.

           I put the cards back down. “So then, uh, what do you want to do?”

           Riley took my hand and guided me over to a couch. We sat down. “Look, Will, we’ve known each other for a long time, and I just think that it’s time for us to take the next step in our relationship.” We weren’t in a relationship. Well, at least, I thought that we weren’t.

           “And what would that be?” I hesitantly questioned.

           She placed her hand on my thigh again, and then bit down on her lip. “Well…” Then Riley Prescott’s face began to grow nearer and nearer to mine, but I just kept backing away. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and I knew precisely what she had in mind. But I didn’t want to kiss Riley. We had known each other literally our entire lives and it was weird and though this was a totally vain reason, she wasn’t that hot. Like, yeah, she was pretty or whatever and she wore the right clothes and was good with the makeup and that shit, but, like, she wasn’t hot. Not by my standards, at least. Grace was hot. But Riley…Riley was just plain.

           Right before Riley’s lips could rape mine, I shook my head and stood up from the couch. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I blurted out.

           And that was when I noticed that Charlie and Grace had stopped sucking face (such a weird expression) and were now staring at Riley and me.

           “Sorry, girls, I just need to have a little talk with my brother,” Charlie said, dragging me out of the room by the sleeve of my shirt. He slammed the door behind him once we got into the hall and immediately began to flip out. “What the heck, Will?”

           “I didn’t want to hook up with her,” I defended.

           “Why not?”

           “Because she’s Riley Prescott.”

           “That’s why you should want to hook up with her, Will!” Charlie exclaimed. “She’s a Prescott, our parents would totally approve, and have you seen her boobs?” I had seen them. That was probably the only reason I saw in potentially exchanging spit with her—the prospect of maybe touching them.

           “Why would it matter that she’s a Prescott?”

           Charlie lowered his voice as he explained that, “The Prescott girls are notoriously slutty. Like, you’ve met their cousins. All they want to do is kiss and have sex. Same goes for Grace and Riley.” He shook his head in absolute disappointment. “You really screwed up, Will. She’s so desperate that you probably could’ve f*cked her tonight.”

           “I don’t want to f*ck her,” I told him.

           “Ugh!” Charlie threw his head back and then ran a hand threw his hair. “You know, you’re being really f*cking inconsiderate right now, Will.”

           “How?”

           “Well, the plan was that I was going to f*ck Grace, and then you were going to either hook up with or f*ck Riley, so that she doesn’t feel left out, but now you’ve seriously ruined everything!”

           “Why can’t I just play gin with Riley and not hook up?”

           “Because that girl wants you—bad, and also because she would feel left out.” Charlie took hold of both my shoulders and then stared at me, like he was trying to make me feel guilty. “You don’t want Riley Prescott to feel left out, do you?”

           “If you want her to have sex so badly, then why don’t you just have sex with her?”

           Charlie thought about what I had said for a moment and then began to nod but stopped and shook his head. “That’s a good point, but I already know that Grace puts out, and I feel like Riley’s the type to chicken out halfway through.” He was right. Riley was the type to chicken out halfway through.

           “Have a threesome,” I suggested, ducking out of his hold. “I really don’t care, Charlie, just leave me out of it!” And then I did the very mature thing and ran away.

           I could hear Charlie yelling after me, but I didn’t care. I needed to get away. I needed to get out. So I did. Once I got to the bottom of the stairs and to the main corridor, I left through a side door and just kept going until I reached the middle of our back lawn. My parents were currently in the dining room, so there was no way that they could see me, but if Charlie or Grace or Riley looked out a window, they would be sure to spot me. So then in a panic, I looked over to the Greens’ backyard. And that was when I noticed her: a girl—presumably Lilah—was sitting on the Greens’ dock with her feet grazing the water.

           It was darker out due to the hour (nine-ish), but I knew what I saw, and soon my feet led me over the stone barrier, on to the Greens’ lawn, and down to the dock where the girl was. I kicked off my shoes and rolled up the legs of my pants. Then I sat down next to the girl and dipped my feet into the water. I didn’t say a word. Neither did she.

           “Riley Prescott just tried to kiss me,” I shared after a while of silence.

           “Did she?” hummed the girl.

           “Yeah,” I said, “but I really didn’t want to hook up with her, so, uh, here I am.”

           “To hook up with me?” I was pretty sure that she was joking.

           “No, to hide,” I corrected. “Charlie wanted me to hook up with her so that we were both occupied while he was banging her older sister, but it’s Riley, so I just couldn’t do it.”

           “Is this Riley pretty?”

           “Not as pretty as you,” I wanted to say. But I ended up going with an indifferent, “Eh, I guess.”

           “Then what’s the problem?”

           “She’s not, like…hot, and I know that sounds terrible, but I’m going to try to bullshit that and make it into a personality trait,” I rambled. “Like, her personality isn’t hot. She’s not interesting. Also, I’ve known her for forever, so it would just be weird and awkward at every other family dinner if we hooked up, but I guess that since I ran away, it’ll be awkward, anyway. Whatever. I’m glad that I didn’t kiss her.”

           “Are you?”

           “Yeah, I am.”

           She didn’t say anything after that for a long while, and neither did I. We both just gazed at the moonlit water, slowly creating small bumps through its journey. The motion of the water was almost therapeutic. Like, the repetition of it all and how smooth and easy everything appeared. I liked looking at the water at night. In daylight, everything sparkled and shined, but at night, everything was dark and serene and just more honest.

           “How many girls have you kissed, Will?” Lilah suddenly asked after minutes of the impending taciturnity.

           “A few,” I replied, not wanting to commit to an actual number. Because a small number made me out to be a loser, and a big number made me into a manwhore. Since the estimated number was towards the higher end of the spectrum, I didn’t really feel like sharing. Which was odd, because normally when someone randomly asked me that question, I gladly replied truthfully. But something told me that Lilah didn’t want to hear about my many lip locked conquests. Or maybe she did. I didn’t really know her that well, after all. So then I impulsively asked, “How many, uh, guys have you kissed, Lilah?” It was a stupid, stupid question, but sometimes I was a stupid, stupid guy, so it was only fitting.

           Lilah fiddled with the hem of her shirt for a moment before the inklings of a smirk grew on her face and she mimicked my response: “Oh, ya know…a few.” But the thing was, I didn’t know. I knew that my “a few” meant upwards of ten girls, but maybe Lilah’s “a few” only meant three or four boys. Or, perhaps, Lilah used the phrase to minimize her exploits even more than I had. Maybe her number was closer to twenty, though I found it highly unlikely. I didn’t want to bring the degradation of the “slut” word into my internal ruminations, but Lilah just didn’t seem like the type to get with any guy that would have her on a whim of desperation. Lilah Tov was a lot of things. Desperate was not of them.

           Besides, Lilah was hot. Like, yeah, she had a smoking bod and all that, but from what I could tell, her mind was also hot. She was kind of a mystery because I didn’t know her yet, and she wore somewhat provocative clothes, which was a refreshing sight from some of the stuffy, snooty shit that some of the other girls I knew wore. And there was just this quality of intrigue about her that kind of pulled you in, and was just hot. Which was why Lilah Tov was not the kind of girl who needed to beg guys to hook up with her. Because she was hot, and they always wanted to. I knew I did. The thing about Lilah kissing, though, was that she always had a choice. She didn’t have to settle because she was hot, which enabled her to determine whether or not the feelings of attraction were mutual. Some people didn’t get that autonomy.

           Take Riley Prescott, for instance. As confirmed by my older brother Charlie, Riley was desperate. She also happened to lack a certain familial hot-gene that her sister acquired. And Riley was typically an absolute priss. Like, this girl screamed at the sight of an ant and her only solace in life was shopping. Those weren’t exactly appealing qualities to most guys, but most guys didn’t care. They saw that Riley had an okay face and nice boobs and that was all they needed. But there was the occasional guy (like myself) that simply didn’t find her okay face and nice boobs and dry personality to be enough to constitute a connection between the two. Because kissing Riley Prescott wasn’t an adventure. I knew what would happen and how it would go, even if I had never actually preformed the deed before. It just wasn’t interesting.

           Once Riley got you acquainted with the idea of kissing her and that settled in, then she would probably be the one to initiate the kissing, so that you couldn’t back out. After that, she would give you lazy openmouthed kisses for a while, and then slowly add in a dosage of tongue. It would be nice, yeah, and your hormones would be driven crazy, but everything about the osculation would be predictable. After the tongue, Riley would take one of your hands and put them on one of her boobs, allowing you to feel it for a while—over the shirt and over the bra, of course. Then she might moan a little bit and squeeze your thigh and inch closer and closer to your crotch, but she would never actually touch your crotch, because Riley wasn’t ready to take a leap of faith like that. All the while, you would be thinking, “Huh. I’m kissing Riley Prescott. She’s pretty easy. Her boobs are pretty nice. I don’t really want to make an effort to do this again, though.” I had friends. I knew how kissing Riley worked.

           Though, if I had gone through with it, Riley probably would’ve let me slip a hand under her shirt and maybe even under her bra. And if she was really in the giving mood, then she may have even given me a handy or a BJ. Because Riley knew me, and she knew that if she allowed any of those things to occur, I wouldn’t run. I would stay by her side and I would feel like I owed her something. Like, we could’ve potentially started dating, and then there would be absolutely no way out of it, because then I would end up proposing, and maybe I was taking things out of proportion, but Christ, I was only sixteen and I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with Riley Prescott. Mainly because life with Riley would be an absolute bore, but also because she just wasn’t hot. Well, not in the way that Lilah was.

           “Ya know,” I said, “I’m really glad that I didn’t hook up with Riley Prescott tonight.”

           “The night’s the still young,” Lilah mused. But that particular musing was a fallacy, for it would be morning in less than three hours. Midnight, but that was still the AM—not night. “Besides, why do you have to hate on Riley Prescott so much?”

           “Because if I hooked up with her, there’s the possibility that I could’ve freaking married her, Lilah, and I really don’t want to marry Riley Prescott,” I told her, summarizing the main bullet points of my mental deliberation.

           “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”

           “No,” I shook my head because it totally wasn’t. “Because if hooking up led to having sex and I forgot to use a condom or the condom broke and Riley wasn’t on birth control, I could potentially get her pregnant.”

           “So?”

           “So, I don’t know if you’ve figured it out yet, but my family is more against abortion than vegetarians are against eating meat,” I said. “She would have to keep the baby, and then maybe she would get on that MTV show about teen moms or whatever, but she probably wouldn’t, because Riley’s pretty annoying sometimes, and I seriously can’t imagine anyone tuning in to watch her complain. But if she were pregnant and forced to keep the fetus, then we would have to get married, because both of our parents wouldn’t be able to love their first grandchild if it was born out of wedlock. And then I would be stuck with her, because divorce is a big no-no unless there’s a valid as heck reason for it, and I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”

           Lilah’s feet skimmed the water in a circular motion. “Yeah, you are.”

           “Sorry about that.” I took a deep breath, hoping that it would calm my mind and mouth.

           “It’s fine, Will. I’d rather that than wonder what you’re thinking about.” I wasn’t sure if she actually did wonder what I thought about, or if she was just being, like, polite. It was probably just the latter. “Oh, and you’re not going to marry this Riley Prescott chick. You’re sixteen, Will. Breathe.”

           Upon her instruction (or maybe it was a suggestion), I inhaled another surge of the summer air. 

           “By the way,” Lilah started back up, “since I’ve heard so much about her, do I get meet Riley Prescott?”

           “I wouldn’t know why you’d want to, but, uh, sure. Tomorrow. We’ll all go boating or something.”

           “Sounds delightful.”

           “If you knew Riley, then it wouldn’t. She hates getting wet.”

           “Even better!” And then Lilah Tov leaned over to me and planted her lips squarely on the side of my cheek. The contact didn’t last more than a few seconds, but it felt like it did.

           “You know, I bet Riley would’ve given me more than that,” I couldn’t help but joke.

           “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” Thankfully, last thing I was feeling was upset.