We get back to his house, and Chris makes me a grilled cheese sandwich, since I never did eat my expensive froufrou dinner. Dad’s probably pissed about that too. I watch Chris move around the kitchen, thinking how nice it is, how comfortable and safe I feel in his kitchen, how lucky I am to have him in my life. Even if things with my dad are kind of messed up. Even if my sister thinks I’m a selfish asshole.
Chris slides the grilled cheese onto my plate. He uses the edge of the spatula to slice it in half, diagonally. Even my mom doesn’t know I prefer it that way.
I get to thinking then about when we first started hanging out. I was wearing this expander in my mouth so my upper jaw could fit my huge horse teeth. It made me talk with a lisp—Seadore Woosen—I couldn’t even say my own name right. Sixth grade was pretty rough, especially because in addition to our dad ditching us, that was around the time Tabitha realized I was a dweeb and started ignoring me at school. Tabs was always good at knowing what movies and shows and web videos were popular. She, like, studied up on how to be cool, whereas I just liked to sit in my room with my Magic cards or else mess around with a soccer ball outside. Our mom never introduced us to any of the American pop culture that most kids are exposed to, and we were too broke for devices or video games, so I was pretty clueless when it came to finding common ground with other kids my age. I read a lot of fantasy books, which probably didn’t help. When I tried to talk about my own weird obsessions, I was met with blank faces, or else teasing.
I got so uptight about where to sit at lunch, I couldn’t eat. Then, a few days after the bullying incident in our neighborhood, Chris saw me at school and told me to sit with him and his friends at lunch, an honor for any sixth grader. Tabs and I started catching rides with Chris and Paloma, who drove us to school. Once people saw Chris and me palling around, they pretty much left me alone. I learned how to be cool, or at least, how to keep my dweeby thoughts to myself. And even when something weird snuck out, Chris went with it and made it acceptable.
He really saved my ass.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Chris asks.
I shake myself from the memory. “When we first started hanging out. Why you stuck it out with me. I’m kind of a dweeb, Chris. Let’s be real.”
He smiles. “Maybe I like dweebs.”
I glance around at all the new, shiny appliances that adorn his state-of-the-art kitchen. Nice cars, nice family. Nice, nice, nice.
“You’ve got, like, everything, you know? Money, personality, looks. And you’re so cool about it.”
“What’s cool about me?” Chris asks like he’s baffled by it. I roll my eyes. There’s no way he can’t know. In all the ways Chris could be an asshole, he isn’t.
“Your hair, for one. It always looks awesome. You’re, like, super buff without even trying. The girls are always throwing their panties at you. You’re generous and smart and funny and you always know the right thing to say.”
“Not always,” he says. His brow wrinkles in the middle. “And who’s throwing their panties at me?”
“Kelli Keyhoe, Isabelle Demonte, that girl in California offering you a blowjob. I have to, like, wade through a pile of used panties just to talk to you.”
He laughs.
“Your laugh.” I turn back to my grilled cheese, sad as hell because I’m in love with my best friend and I’ll never be able to have him the way I want him. I should just be grateful I have him at all, instead of being such a wiener about it.
“What about you?” he asks, leaning on the counter so he’s close enough I can see his individual eyelashes.
“What about me?”
“Tall, dark, and handsome. Mysterious. Smart as hell. Those eyes. That smile.” He sighs like a lovesick maiden, and I shake my head. He’s messing with me. “And you don’t give a shit whether people like you or not. That’s punk rock, man.”
“Yeah, that’s my problem.”
He nudges my shoulder with his knuckles. “That’s not the problem. Your dad’s a dick. We’ve always known this. Your mom knows it too. That’s why she left him. So why are you making this about you?”
He’s right. Sort of. But it’s my fault too. If I tried harder, like Tabitha, I could at least have some kind of relationship with my father, instead of constantly fighting with him about stupid shit.
“See, you always know what to say.” I take a bite of the grilled cheese. The warm, salty goo melts in my mouth. The bread is buttery and crisp. A perfect pairing.
“I don’t always know what to say.” Chris turns away to put up the dishes and wipe down the counter—he even tidies up after himself. I get the urge, then, to talk about what happened in Sebastian. To ask him if it was just some weird mood, or if it meant something to him, but I don’t want to ruin this moment we’re having, and I really can’t afford to lose any more allies right now.
“If it was legal, I’d totally marry this grilled cheese sandwich,” I tell Chris in appreciation of his culinary abilities.
“How would you consummate the marriage?” he asks with a leer. I grin and poke a hole through the sandwich with my finger. Chris shakes his head and throws a dishtowel at me, so I wiggle my finger a little more until he cracks up. God, I love his laugh.
“I’ve seen worse matches,” he says, and I grin, excited by it because we’re talking about sex, even if it is with a grilled cheese sandwich. My mother would be so horrified.
I finish eating, and we head upstairs. Chris keeps this trunk of snacks at the end of his bed—I call it his treasure chest. It’s filled with every kind of snack cake, candy bar, and potato chip imaginable. I’m surprised he doesn’t have ants in his room. We gorge ourselves on snacks. Then I convince Chris he’s going to get fat from all the junk food he eats, so he tells me we should go swimming to work it off. It’s stopped raining, so I borrow one of his pairs of board shorts, and we go out back. We goof off in the water, acting like total idiots, horsing around like we haven’t since before he left for summer.
Afterward we lie back on lawn chairs and stare up at the hazy, light-polluted sky. The scent of chlorine is in the air and the faint sweetness of cut grass. Smells like summertime.
“I missed this,” Chris says.
