Live it Again (16 page)

Greg Curtis, another mindless track and
field jock would be Gordo’s best man, standing next to him would be Donald, and
there would be Hugh. “Can’t someone take my place? That stupid tuxedo is too
big for me anyway.” He knew the argument had been lost, but he couldn’t keep
his mouth shut.

“The tux looks wonderful on you, dear.”

“Cheer up, pal,” Steve Nance said as he
poured himself a cup of tea. “We’ll have a blast.”

“It’ll never last,” Hugh muttered.

“What won’t last?” His mother asked.

“The marriage. Gordo’s only twenty years
old and Sandy just graduated from high school. It’ll never last.”

“It had better last if he knows what’s good
for him,” his father said.

“Why? Because he got the fat bitch knocked
up?” He’d gone too far, touched on a subject he shouldn’t have. Maybe he could
tell his parents that Sandy would miscarry a month after the wedding. Maybe
that could get him out of going.

“Go to your room,” both parents said
simultaneously.

“My room? Are you serious? I’m seventeen
years old for
fuck’s
sake!”

His father banged his cup on the table,
spilling tea all over the place. “Now!”

Hugh went to his room and stewed things
over in his mind. After he’d cooled down, he realized the weekend ahead didn’t
have to be an entire loss. After all, Mandy did like him, and if he couldn’t
take her to the dance maybe she would settle for a movie the night before.

Good thinking, mom.

The wedding couldn’t have turned out more
perfect even if Hugh had tried to change it, which he didn’t. The cake-breaking
incident played out just as he remembered, perhaps even better since he knew it
was coming.

Lloyd Wolowich, the bride’s uncle,
staggered up to the front table to steal a kiss from his niece, and any other
girl seated around her under the age of forty. If Sandy hadn’t pulled back, old
Lloyd wouldn’t have had to lean so far across the table. His one dress shoe
slipped on the slick, hardwood dance floor and he knocked a half-filled glass
of champagne onto her lap. The rest, as they say was history.

“My dress!” She screamed and backed away
from the table. One chair leg caught against a slightly raised section of
floorboard and she toppled over onto her back with a crash. The fall wasn’t far
and the landing wasn’t particularly hard but she clutched her swollen belly and
screamed. “The baby!”

“Ish alright, darling, let me help you back
up.” Uncle Lloyd splayed out across the table knocking over more glasses. He
worked his way across, flopping like a grounded fish. The sleeve of his suit
found a plate of meatballs and mashed potatoes. More chairs pushed away from
the table as the entire wedding party recoiled from the struggling man.

“Goddamned old drunk,” Gordo said stepping
accidentally on his new bride’s hand. She screamed again and Gordo teetered
forward. His head connected with Lloyd’s, the man’s approach ended. He slid back
uncontrollably taking a double handful of tablecloth with him. He missed the
wedding cake that was set up in front on its own table tray by inches. An ice
bucket containing two bottles of champagne didn’t. The little plastic model of
bride and groom went first, followed by the first round, white layer of cake.
It fell onto Lloyd’s crotch just as the man was struggling to sit up on the
floor. Icing sprayed up into his red, sweaty face.

“Jeshus, Joseph, and Mary,” he mumbled
swatting away at the mess on his pants. The back of his hand hit the cake
table, and the rest came toppling down. Little pink and yellow pastel flowers
composed of rock-hard sugar rolled off in every direction like spilled marbles.

Margaret Wolowich, Lloyd’s three-hundred
pound wife rose from her chair at one of the guest tables. “He hit him! I saw
it with my own two eyes!” Hugh heard the woman yell out over the rest of the
commotion and wondered first, how she rose to her own feet without help, and
second, how she could see anything with those beady black eyes. Never had he
seen a face so fat-filled, so absolutely stretched out and perfectly round. She
must have been over sixty, he thought, but you would never know it. How could
the wrinkles possible set in? “He head-butted my poor Lloyd!”

“Sit back down, you old cow!” That had come
from Donald. Margaret sucked in air as if she’d been struck in a kidney. Her
planet-shaped head wobbled back and forth, the big grey-streaked coiffure of
hair swayed along with it. Hugh was reminded a bit of that old Bride of
Frankenstein movie, the widescreen version.

Donald wasn’t finished. “That’s what you
get when you marry into a family of bohunks!” Donald was never finished. Things
then tumbled completely out of control. Hugh leaned up against the wall behind
the main table and watched as his oldest brother was tackled down by two of Sandy’s
cousins. He knew it was about to happen, could have prevented it perhaps, but
he really did see the point. Hugh was no fighter, and how could you defend such
foul-mouthed bigotry in the first place, even from a member of your own family?

Steve Nance, who hadn’t thrown a punch
since the night of Heather’s graduation, made up for lost time. Greg Curtis
inflicted the most damage. The best man stood over six and half feet tall, his
strong athletic body threw guests around twice his age. Fortunately, he was on
the outnumbered Nance family’s side.

“Nothing like a good wedding to get the
blood boiling,” Hugh said to a girl cowering next to him. It was one of Sandy’s
bridesmaids. He couldn’t recall her name, but knew she’d been asked at the last
minute to replace Heather. Hugh’s sister had backed out and skipped the wedding
altogether.
Lucky her
. He was sure she had faked the whole ‘flu-thing’,
and if he’d remembered, he would’ve used the same excuse as well. Hindsight as
they say is twenty-twenty, but when you try and recall a lifetime of events,
most of the smaller stuff is forgotten.

“How can you joke about it? This is
horrible!”

Hugh eyed the cute blonde up and down. She
was a few older than him but that didn’t matter to him tonight. He felt too
damned good to care. The silky fabric of her dress hugged all the curvy spots
nicely. “Wanna go outside for some fresh air?”

“Get away from me, kid!” The crashing of
collapsing tables and the breaking of plates and glasses continued.

I’m not a kid.

Little boys wearing little suits and others
sporting flashy sweaters and uncomfortable dress shirts crawled under tables
finding it all a wonderful game. Girls in dresses of pink, yellow, and green
joined them. They scrambled and wrestled on the dirty floor, laughing and
fighting each other for the cake’s missing sugar flowers.

Hugh watched it all unfold again, like
revisiting an old movie favorite.

Life is great…I lost my virginity last night.

He’d picked Mandy up in the old station
wagon and the two had gone straight to the theatre. Excalibur was playing, a
totally forgettable film, featuring one of Hugh’s favorite actors, a very young
Liam Neeson playing the role of Sir Guinam. They had settled into the back row
and Hugh wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The opening credits had hardly
finished before they started to make out.

“You wanna get out of here?” Hugh asked.
Two other couples in front of them were holding hands and giggling between
whispers. A few boys off to the left were swigging sips from a smuggled bottle.
Nerds were sitting in the first row consumed with the medieval adventure taking
place on the big screen.

Mandy nodded.

Once they were back in the car Hugh fumbled
with the keys, dropping them to the floor between his feet. Mandy slid up
beside him in, bent down and retrieved the keys before he could. Her other hand
moved up his right thigh and finally settled on his stiff crotch. “What do we
have here? Are you just happy to get away from that crappy movie, or do you
have something else on your mind?”

“I umm, I wanted to, umm, I know this
place…”

She straightened up and kissed his cheek. “Do
I make you nervous, Hugh?”

Not really, just scared shitless.

What was he so afraid of? He’d lost his
virginity decades ago. The fear of being rejected was lost even before that.
Was it guilt? “I’m not nervous. I just wanted to save it for later on.”

“Oh…I hope it won’t be too late by then. I
don’t think your friend down there can wait much longer.”

He thought of his sixteen-year-old
daughter. Did Dana behave this way on first dates? Had they even allowed her to
start dating? His erection withered away. “My friend will be just fine.”

He drove to the park and the two walked
past the line of campers parked along the river. They settled down under a
bushy elm tree overlooking the sandy bank and watched the sun vanish into the
west.

“Do you remember when we used to come here
as kids and skip stones across the water?” She asked.

“How could I forget? You were better than
all the boys.”

She ran a hand back through her long hair
and sighed. “Bob used to love it down here.”

Hugh hadn’t expected that. The guilt he
felt for being with a seventeen-year-old girl doubled with the mention of his
dead friend. “Me too.”

“He was my first boyfriend.”

But not your last.

“I didn’t know that.”

“You would’ve been my first if you’d paid
any attention to me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Was she
using Bob as an excuse to get him interested in her? He felt suddenly
defensive.

“I’ve liked you since grade two, dummy.
Didn’t you ever notice how I looked at you?”

He hadn’t, and now he knew she was being
serious. “I remember how you were always laughing at me.”

“Why wouldn’t I? You were funny. It felt
good being around you. It was the main reason I hung out with Bob…to be near
you.”

“No way.”

“Yes way!” She pushed him onto his side and
jumped up. He watched as she went down to the river and bent over to find some
stones in the sand. “You want to toss a few?”

“Wouldn’t be fair, you’re just a girl.”
Hugh joined her.

“I’m not laughing.”

“Sorry.” He took a stone and hurled it out
across the water. It sank instantly. “There, that should put a smile back on
your face.”

“After all these years and you
still
can’t skip a stone.” She squatted down and started to dig in the sand. “It all
starts with finding the right ones. They have to be nice and flat with a
rounded edge.”

Hugh knelt down and picked up a dark grey
stone. “I like these shale ones.”

“Yeah, they are pretty good.” She grabbed
it from him. “Let me show you how it’s done.” Mandy whipped her arm forward;
the rock spun off her index finger and skimmed the water’s surface. Once,
twice, three bounces all separated by ten foot spans, and after the fourth it
rolled up onto the grassy bank on the other side. “I still got it. You want to
try again?”

Hugh rubbed his elbow. “Think I strained my
arm.”

“You poor baby.” She stroked his shoulder.
He pulled her in and kissed her forehead gently, the skin warm beneath his
lips. Her hair smelled fresh air and apples. She looked up into his eyes and
wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck. Their kiss was tender and
long, nothing like they did back in the movie theater. Her lips tasted sweet
and the coolness of her nose tickled his cheek. He reached down for her other
hand, felt the damp rocks she was still clutching to. They dropped back down
into the sand, and Mandy whispered into his ear. “Time to get your rocks off?”

Hugh pulled away, embarrassed. “I’m
sorry…it’s just that when you talk like that…when you come on too strong, I
just don’t know what to think.”

“Why think at all?”

“It’s our first night out, maybe we shouldn’t
push it.”

“You really are a sweetheart, aren’t you?”
She led him back to the elm tree and they sat back down. They kissed again.

“I’m anything but a sweetheart,” he said
when they finally pulled away from each other. She ran her fingers through his
hair and shuddered when a coyote started to howl in the distance. They were
joined by a half dozen more a few seconds later. “I love that sound,” he said
and kissed the back of her hand.

“Scares the hell out of me.”

“They sound so lonely.”

“Why would you love that?”

He shrugged his shoulders and Mandy wiped a
tear away from the corner of his eye.

“Have you been lonely, Hugh?”

“I guess you could say that.”

She rubbed his leg above the knee, away
from his crotch, much gentler than rub she gave him in the car. “It isn’t a
crime to be a virgin. We don’t have to do anything tonight.”

Hugh laughed and lay back down on the
grass. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

She jabbed his stomach with a finger that
made him flinch and laugh harder. “What did I say that was so funny?”

“I thought the guy was supposed to push for
sex, not the girl.”

She sat forward and wrapped her arms around
her knees. “It’s not like that, not like you think. I told you that I’ve liked
you for a long time.”

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I don’t give it away that easily to every
boy I date. I’m
not
a slut.”

“No, no! I definitely didn’t mean that.” He
sat up and rubbed her back. He could feel the bra strap beneath the fabric of
her red sweater. He pictured what it was holding in and felt his erection
returning.

Not now.

“I really wanted to go out with you, too. I
guess I was just kind of expecting one thing. Now that we’re together, I just
feel kind of guilty for thinking that way. Boys can be pigs sometimes, you
know?”

“Boys are pigs all the time.” She was
smiling again. “Thanks for telling me the truth, it means a lot. So have you
ever been with a girl?”

“Hell, yeah! Well…no, I guess I haven’t.”

She raised a single eyebrow, looked at him
quizzically. “Then I guess we can wait.” She stood up and held her hand out for
him to take. “Let’s get going. It’s getting cold out here, and those wolves are
really starting to creep me out.”

“They’re coyotes, not wolves.”

“What difference does it make?”

“A lot if you’re a coyote.”

She smacked his rear-end and ran off ahead,
back towards the car. He watched her run. Her blue jeans were tight, her ass
tighter. He could just make out the side of her one breast bouncing with every
step. Why not feel the way he felt? He
was
seventeen years old.