I splash my face with cold water and follow him out.
“We’ve ordered pizza for dinner. We got pepperoni and bacon and mushroom. You can choose which one you want, and I’ll have the other one. I don’t mind either way.”
When we get to the house, my dad and Rachel wax lyrical about how much better I look and tell me repeatedly how much better I must feel.
“I bet you’ve rounded a corner, Sport,” says my dad. “I bet you’re going to feel a hundred percent tomorrow.”
The pizza arrives right then, and the events that follow put an end to me feeling normal any time soon, or ever again, for that matter.
My dad carries the stacked boxes of pizza into the media room and as he does so, Rachel grabs onto his waist and Luke grabs onto hers. They both bob jubilantly from side to side.
“Pizza, pizza par-tay, pizza, pizza par-tay,” they chant.
Sweet Jesus.
Are they doing the conga?
I’ve barely recovered when we get to the media room. My dad sets the pizzas down and says, “What’ll it be?”
“Get the Party Started,” bellows Luke.
“Oh, Lu,” smiles Rachel, shaking her head at what a munchkin he is, “again?”
My dad doesn’t need to be told twice. He has Siri on the case right away. The opening beat of the song gives rise to a very profound kind of shit show. The kind of shit show I could have lived the rest of my life without and been perfectly happy about it. My dad and Rachel start dancing immediately. The result is a frightening discordance of arms and legs. Luke isn’t far behind them. He’s doing this weird high-stepping thing with one hand raised over his head. It looks like he’s auditioning to be a back-up performer in one of those aerobics videos from the eighties. As jarring as all this is, it still isn’t the most disturbing thing happening right now. The worst thing of all is the look on Luke’s face – pure joy. Unbridled happiness. Delight with no hint of restraint.
The only other time I’ve seen a face looking like this is the time my mom and I went to watch our neighbor’s daughter’s nativity show a few years back. Callie was in the first grade. It was her first time on stage. She loved it. She practiced for weeks. She was sheep number four. She gave it her all. She did her absolute best and didn’t hold anything back. There was no pretense and zero chill in her performance. She was six and half, she didn’t know yet that life requires you to protect yourself, to hide parts of yourself so people can’t use those things to hurt you. She made no effort to hide how hard she was trying or how vulnerable she was making herself. At the time, seeing her like that made me well up. It made me want to cry knowing how many lessons she still had to learn, and how much life was going to knock her around before she learned them.
Seeing Luke like this, makes me want to cry too, for a totally different reason. Watching him dance, seeing his face ruddy and shining like the big, dumb beefcake he is, fills me with such profound second-hand embarrassment I feel it throughout my body. It’s hot and unpleasant. I feel the color rising from my neck to my face. It’s a live, visceral thing.
Someone needs to warn this guy about life and people and bad things in general. Someone needs to set him straight, to tell him a thing or two about reality, or he’s going to wind up getting hurt.
“Get in here, Jess,” cries my dad.
“Thanks, but I’d rather have a red back spider lay eggs in my ear.”
He doesn’t hear me over the music. Luke bounces over and gives me a little shove with his hip that sends me sideways. My dad is on the other side. He bumps me back towards Luke. Between the two of them they jostle me back and forth for the rest of the song. Rachel watches on with a hand clamped over her mouth, eyes shining with pleasure.
“Pizza’s getting cold,” I say, the second the song ends.
My dad and Rachel huddle up on one side of the sofa and I sit as far away as possible on the other side. I fully expect Luke to sit on the armchair since it’s empty, but of course he doesn’t. He crams himself into the space between Rachel and me. He’s sitting so close our knees and shoulders touch. Rachel hands us a throw blanket to share.
“I’m fine, it’s summer,” I say. It’s the beginning of June and the Californian weather is balmy.
Luke gives me a sidewaysaw shucksgrin, “We keep the temperature down in here so we can get cozy for movies.” He says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s the type of thing everyone knows. Like it’s normal.
We tuck into our pizza as the movie starts playing. Luke is sitting so close that despite the strong smell of melted cheese and pepperoni in the room, I can smell him. He doesn’t smell how he should. He should smell sickly sweet, like maple syrup and gardenia. He doesn’t though. He smells like fresh air and salt water and something else I can’t put my finger on.
It’s fucking annoying.
5
Jessie
Mydadwrapshisarms around Rachel’s waist and kisses her until she’s arched back and giggling like a schoolgirl. It’s the type of farewell that would be suited to an impending separation of a month or more. It isn’t. This situation doesn’t warrant this type of display at all. All that’s called for is a peck on the cheek and a, “See you later, honey.”
“They’re pretty gross, huh?” I say to Luke as they both drive off to work. I don’t know why I bother to say it. It’s not like me to try to make conversation with someone I have less than nothing in common with.
“I think it’s cute.”
