But he’s rolling the bottle of beer in between his hands now, looking faraway into a distance only he can see. “I got plans. Stuff I’m gonna do. Later.”
“Like what?”
“Just stuff.” He takes a drink.
“I’ve got plans too.”
“Yeah?” He looks at me curiously. “Like what?”
“I’m going to move to the Rockies and live on the side of a mountain,” I blurt out as if it’s always been my dream. “I’ll have a library of rare books, and then a library of books I hate. I’m going to keep a diary of everything I think about and everything I do. Then I’m going to drink a lot of brandy and die young. But first, I’m going to leave my diary somewhere where a mountain climber might find it. I’ll be famous after I’m dead. Like Anne Frank.”
If he thinks any of this is strange, his face doesn’t show it. “You don’t say?”
I shrug. Swallow more beer. “Sure. Why not?”
He laughs, but it isn’t at me, and because his laugh is infectious, it makes me do the same.
“I’ll drink to that,” he says, holding up his beer.
I grab mine and clink mine against his, and we both drink.
There now. Isn’t this easy? I’m here in his sitting room with him, talking like we’re best pals, and I could’ve been doing this all along. Just what in the hell was my problem? It feels so easy-breezy that I consider asking him for a cigarette.
And I’m really starting to like beer.
“Hey, hey,hey…why do they call them flying saucers? Why not, like, flying lamps…cause, cause all they are is…just lights.” I look up at Asher’s face to see if he’s as concerned about this as me, but he just shakes his head.
“In Texas,” I say. “They’re a-aall over Texas. I guess Martians like Texas, eh?” I giggle at this, imagining Marvin Martian in a ten-gallon hat. “Do they really hold ten gallons?”
“What?”
“The hats…”
“Come on, pal.” He nudges my foot with his. “You need to go to bed.”
I’m not exactly sure how I ended up on the floor, but I’m lying partially under his coffee table while he stands over me. It seems like I’ve been here for days or just a few minutes. I want to sing about bottles of beer on walls, but I stop myself.
“I don’t wanna go home,” I mumble instead, my head swimming, and he looks so glowy in the lamplight, like an angel. “Where’re your wings at, pal?”
He shakes his head again, puts out his cigarette. “What’s your aunt’s number?”
I thrust a fist into the air. “24601!”
He grabs it. “Come on.”
“Aw, you wanna hold my hand.”
He pulls me up, and I feel so damn heavy, like I’m made of stone. And somewhere in my swimming thoughts, bouncing around on a sea of booze, I seem to recall there was a fairytale about some Prince or Princess, or something like that, where they were going to turn into stone unless someone kissed them.
Or maybe it was just a frog or a…duck?
I don’t care, and I don’t want to turn into stone, so once I’m on my feet, I stumble into him, put both my hands around his face, and I look into those deep blue pools of sky, and it just tumbles out of my mouth, completely unbidden. “Kiss me.”
I feel heat between my palms and the heat of his breath. There’s the scent of his cigarettes and something with an orangey spice underneath. I resist the urge to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in fully. I want to unfold him like a map, trace all his beginnings and endings, then wrap myself up in him, tight. It’s an urge that overcomes, that inches through my heartbeats so delicately that tears are in my eyes.
The blue sky flickers for a second. I feel one of his arms curl around me like a vine. I’m held and steadied on my stumbling feet, and the skin of his face is so warm and prickly from his scruff, and so my thumbs start to move, almost as if they had their own little thumb-minds, little circles, little circles, smooth skin, and prickly scruff. And then the hand of his other arm slowly comes up to my face and his fingers gently push my glasses up my nose that I hadn’t even noticed had slipped. A stray finger trails down my cheek in a haphazard path to my neck. I sigh and move in closer, closer.
But he pulls back and gently pries my hands away. “Come on, pal.” His voice is soft but firm. “Let’s get you home.”
