Courting Mrs. McCarthy (7 page)

Sleep was elusive that night. He was afraid to go to sleep for fear of having another dream about Jackie, which was hardly a ridiculous notion. He had written the first dream off as merely chance before, but the way things were unfolding left him in a very uncomfortable position.

The dream on its own meant nothing considering his conflicting lingering emotions for Sarah. Being asked to babysit was just a matter of being in the right place and the right time. Her words that night could also be written off as the byproduct of tequila and loneliness.

But all three of them together over the course of a week? They couldn’t all be ignored. Nathan wasn’t ready to count fate out on this one. He could tell himself to let it go, but that wasn’t going to happen and he felt like something was telling him not to.

The thing that really had him all tied up was a rather obvious fact that was swept under the carpet in fantasy land, but was the first huge and perhaps immovable roadblock. Jackie had three kids and he now knew their names and faces. The husband part wasn’t as much of an issue given the whole out of sight out of mind mentality, and had Nathan known about their marital troubles, he would’ve considered it more of a moot point.

He found himself in a state or moral disgust with himself. Were the feelings left over from Sarah or was it more than that? He tried his best to shake his lustful feelings toward the woman whose children he had babysat for. Children he cooked dinner for and watched TV with. The whole thing felt wrong, but also in a weird way it felt oddly right.

He tried to think of other things, but those feelings weren’t going away, like fate was moving him closer to this woman. He thought of Mrs. Buchanan’s advice not to act on impulsive feelings, but to wait them out. He would have a sign soon enough from her if she was serious about wanting him to cook for her. He told himself that it was okay as long as Jackie made the first move. The ball was no longer in his hands.

This method of thinking slowly allowed him to fall asleep.

Chapter 11

School was a nightmare the next day. The last day of classes meant that nearly everyone was in a state of impatience for the day to be over, but none as much as Nathan. He felt hung over despite not having anything alcoholic to drink. His fatigue was worse than he could ever expect from a night of simple, yet troubled sleep.

When he finally managed to fall asleep, he ended up oversleeping as he’d forgotten to set an alarm and slept through Griffin’s numerous wake up texts. He had also missed out on an invitation to wake-and-bake with Griffin, who looked amused as he sat across from him in the cafeteria.

“You look like shit,” Griffin observed. He was eating a cinnamon roll without a care in the world. The cafeteria was full of students freaking out over the end of the year even though finals were a few days away. Nathan was not really in the mood to talk.

“Late night studying,” he replied. This was a half lie, as he had been studying his future prospects with Jackie.

Griffin seemed skeptical, but he didn’t linger on Nathan’s reply. “I don’t remember you being such a scholar. Anyway, one of Ralph’s friends who goes to boarding school is having a party tonight, are you in?” He said it without making it sound like a question.

Nathan showed no signs of enthusiasm for this invitation. One of the few saving graces for him that morning was the idea that he could sleep it off later in the day. He had not been expecting a party the weekend before finals.

“Ugh, what a bad weekend for a party. I don’t know, man. I barely slept last night.” This was behavior generally uncharacteristic of him, and Griffin could see right through it.

“Oh, come on. It’s Friday night. We’ll go have a few beers, play some pong, and then leave if you really want to,” he said. Seeing the unconvinced look on his friend’s face, he added, “Megan can pick us up so we don’t even have to spend the night.”

This was a surprisingly reasonable offer from a boy who was stoned in school by himself on the last day of classes. “Fine, but if it’s boring or I want to leave, we’re going, and you’re not going to pull any of your nonsense.”

“All right, all right. Jeez, Nate, you’ll killing my vibe.”

Before their conversation could go any further, the bell rang and they headed off in separate directions to class.

Nathan spent most of the day thinking about Jackie. He wondered when the next time he’d see her would be. He hoped he’d get invited back to babysit, but the awkward encounter made that very questionable if she was embarrassed by her actions. His lack of payment wasn’t a big issue to him either.

School ended and Nathan went home without really thinking about the fact that he’d just completed classes for junior year. The whirlwind of events that led him to this moment had stripped him of a lot of the sentimentality with regards to what someone might call the major events in his life. His aunt blamed his father for this, but he didn’t particularly care.

Aunt Cassidy was in a very cheerful mood when Nathan arrived home. Piper and Elizabeth were too young for finals, and both had another week left of school, but the weather was lovely and she tried to make a big deal of her nephew finishing up of classes for the year.

“Hey, Nathan, do you want to go out to dinner to celebrate the end of the school year?” she suggested, as he prepared himself a sandwich in the kitchen. He had skipped lunch because he wasn’t feeling great but now he was hungry. While he wasn’t the type to celebrate something so trivial as the completion of classes, he didn’t want to give his aunt the idea that he was depressed either. She often worried that he was depressed.

“That would be lovely,” he replied, with a manufactured smile on his face. “I’m going out with Griffin and Ralph later though. Can we go a bit on the earlier side?” This was largely a question he already knew the answer to, but it showed his interest and willingness to compromise.

They ate at the Pearl, a local seafood restaurant. Nathan and the women all ordered lobsters. Aunt Cassidy had stressed the importance of eating to her daughters, and they took to her words quite well even at a young age. The only real picky eater in the mix was Martin, who ordered pasta with red sauce.

Dinner was just what Nathan needed. He didn’t necessarily feel the need to celebrate, especially with finals just around the corner, but dinner marked the longest streak of not thinking about Jackie McCarthy since she had drunkenly asked him on a date. He thought that maybe the party would not be so bad.

He was dropped off at Griffin’s house after dinner.

Their friend Ralph drove them to the party. This made him feel somewhat like a child with all the switching of cars, but it was better than driving intoxicated. Griffin had convinced Megan to drive them home, but his mothers were out to a dinner of their own. Griffin had Easy Mac for dinner, a far cry from Nathan’s meal.

High school parties were typically as fun as you wanted them to be. For Nathan, being tired at a party full of people he didn’t know did not bring out the good vibes he felt at other gatherings. Most of this blame fell on him. The party had all the things any other party would have. He was also in a bad mood because Griffin had disappeared with a girl into one of the bedrooms and Ralph was nowhere to be found.

The couch was filled with beer and couples who were all over each other. Nathan found himself a nice wall to lean against while he plotted what to do with the remainder of his time at the party. He tried his best to maintain a
holier than thou
look on his face so that people didn’t suspect he was without company. He contemplated giving Mrs. Rousseau a call to end his misery, but this would not be a cool thing to do to his best friend.

While his smug grin hardly deserved credit for anything, he did manage to attract a member of the opposite sex without intending to do so. A girl, who had far more to drink than he’d had, found her way over to him.

“Do you want to dance?” Her words so slurred that reciting them on paper could never accurately describe the jumbled up nature in which they came out of her mouth.

He did not want to dance, but this girl offered up an option for spending time while he waited for Griffin to return from wherever he’d gone off too. “It’s quite dangerous out there,” he replied, pointing to the makeshift dance floor in the living room. Couches and a table had been moved to make this space available. The floors were black from dust that had lain dormant under the couch until beer had been added to it, creating a dark vile concoction that now served as an unintended slip and slide for those who chose to dance directly above it.

“I’m Jenny,” she said, in a manner which made it seem like a question rather than a statement. Nathan decided to engage the drunken girl in conversation.

“Lovely. I’m Nathan. Tell me a little about your interests.”

This odd form of small talk was lost of the drunken girl. Jenny replied with a confused, “What?”

Feeling a bit mischievous in knowing that his mind was in a much sounder place than hers, Nathan said, “You know, whatever gets you out of bed in the morning.”

Jenny did not understand the question any better the second time around. “I don’t get what you’re saying. Do you want to go a bedroom?” This was a sign she wanted to hook up with Nathan. Confusion had turned into promiscuity.

While Nathan enjoyed teasing this drunken girl, he was not the kind of person who would take full advantage of someone like that. Then he saw his friend Ralph looking around a bit frantically. Nathan quipped, “Go find one of your friends, Jackie, it was nice to meet you.” He scurried off without caring that he’d gotten her name wrong.

“Hello, Ralph, what seems to be troubling you?” Nathan asked. He felt a little better about the party after his encounter with Jenny. A girl had asked him to hook up and had not tossed her drink on him after he called her by the wrong name. This was the kind of victory that might warrant another lobster dinner, playing by his aunt’s logic.

Ralph informed him that a few of the meatheads, which in the context of this party referred to hockey players, were looking for someone who Ralph was pretty sure happened to be Griffin. One of their girlfriends, who was presumably in a similarly intoxicated state as Jenny, was missing. The concern was not that she was actually missing but that she’d wandered off with another boy. Ralph thought that there was a good chance that she was with Griffin, who had also had quite a bit to drink.

The logical thing to do would be to get Griffin out of there as quickly as possible. Neither Ralph nor Nathan was sure he was actually with this girl, but a bunch of drunken hockey players looking for a fight was not a great idea. They had to find him. As soon as Ralph suggested they should get out of there, Nathan began making preparations for their departure.

He texted Megan the address of the party and said he’d heard a rumor the cops might be coming. This was yet another lie, but it was the only way he could get their ride there faster without putting any responsibility on himself or Griffin. He told Ralph to stall the hockey players as he made for the stairs knowing the likely ineffectualness of Ralph’s escape abilities.

He called Griffin’s phone to find him faster than the hockey players might. Alcohol and a longing for adventure had enhanced the sense of urgency. He had no solid evidence that anyone was looking specifically for his friend, but playing hero was fun.

He heard “Two of Hearts” by Stacey Q, Griffin’s ring tone. Griffin had a soft spot for eighties music, though he was likely embarrassed to have it go off now. Nathan burst into the bedroom without knocking, knowing that Griffin wouldn’t have let him in anyway.

“Dude, not cool. Get out,” said an angry, drunken, and undressed Griffin. There was another body that had disappeared under the covers.

“Some people are looking for you,” Nathan said firmly. “I would suggest getting dressed and coming with me now, Griffin.” He regretted saying his name in front of the drunk girl, who might sell them out.

Griffin seemed unconvinced. “Who would be looking for me? Tell Ralph to get a life if he thinks this kind of nonsense is funny.”

A voice came from under the covers. It said, “That would probably be my boyfriend. He won’t be happy, so you should probably go.”

Griffin was dumbfounded. “You didn’t say your boyfriend was here. Jesus Christ.” He hopped out of the bed to put his shirt on. Nathan tried not to laugh at what was currently a fairly amusing scenario.

“I texted your mother. She’s on her way,” he said to his disgruntled friend. “It was nice to meet you,” he said to the covers.

The girl replied, “Good luck.”

Griffin did not address the covers as the two friends left.

The escape was discrete, as no one looking for Griffin had gone upstairs just yet. Griffin was paranoid even though Nathan continued to remind him that the KGB was not in fact after him. This did little to ease his friend’s suspicions that everyone at the party was looking for him.

As they headed for the back door, Nathan asked, “Why would you hook up with her if you knew she had a boyfriend?”

Griffin seemed unfazed by this moralistic question and replied, “If a girl that hot was looking for some, the guy had to be doing something wrong, man.” He spoke more coherently than he had in the bedroom.

Not wishing to stick around the house of infidelity, the two walked down the street to hide from any hockey players. This could also give Megan the illusion the house had in fact received company from the police. Victoria had given the two boys a long lecture about what to do when parties went sour.

The sight of the yellow Camaro was welcomed. All the adrenaline had Nathan feeling more alert than he might have been on another night where he was drunk and it was late.