Snack (6 page)

I sense the tension leave his body after a few deep exhalations. I relax, too. Removing my cheek from his chest, I tilt my face up, resting my chin on his substantial pecs. Snack drops his head and holds my gaze. His eyes are wet, but he blinks more tears away. He searches my eyes and then his eyes drop to my lips. I’d love to kiss his full lips and take away some of his pain, but it would it be inappropriate. Snack leans down a bit more and I push up onto the balls of my feet. If he kissed me now there’s no way I would or could stop him. My heart is totally overruling my brain. We’re a breath apart, the kiss inevitable when…

Snack’s cell phone rings and vibrates in his pants pocket. I can feel it only too well! Instead of kissing me, Snack laughs, shakes his head and says, “Perfect!”

Only making enough room between us to reach into his pocket to get his phone. He looks at the name on it and then swipes across the screen to answer the call.

“You’ve got Snack. Talk to me.” Snack winks at me when he answers with his patented phone salutation. I haven’t heard it in so long, but it still makes me smile. I’m still reeling a bit from the “almost kiss.” I think I can make out my dad’s voice on the other end. “Really? That bad, huh? You got there OK? OK. No, I think you’re right. Hang on.”

Snack puts his hand over the speaker of the phone and says, “It’s your dad. He says the storm’s getting really bad out there. He doesn’t think we should go anywhere. It was a nerve-racking ride to my mom’s house and it’s only a few miles. The El Camino has rear wheel drive. It’s not great in the snow. Are you OK with staying here? With me? Overnight?”

Am I OK with spending the night with Snack? Alone? My heart says, “Hell, yes!” I just wish my logical conscious would shut up.

“Stay?… Here?” I squeak. How are we going to sleep in the café? “Where are—”

“Don’t worry,” Snack interrupts. “I’ve got the perfect place.” He returns his attention to the call while rubbing his hand up and down my back. I’m more tired than I thought and his touch is so soothing, I could purr. “Gil, you still there? We’ll stay put. Tell Mom to call me in the morning.”

As Snack says good-bye, I put my head back on his chest and reach up to grab and twirl a piece of my hair that is poking out of my beanie. I start twirling it fast. As a matter of fact, I have my “full twirl” on. It’s the thing I do when I’m getting tired—I twirl my hair.

Snacks hand comes to mine and stops my twirling. “You’re tired.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re twirling your hair. You only twirl when you’re sleepy.”

“You remembered.” I smile into his chest.

Snack laughs—it’s a deep, sexy rumble I feel through his chest. “Of course, I remember. It’s a weird thing.”

Once again, I look up at him. Snack’s no longer laughing. He’s quiet, intense. He runs his hand across the top of my gray angora beanie and removes it. A look of surprise crosses his face, his eyes pinching together. “When did you become a suicide blonde?”

I open my mouth to protest and say, “What?” Then I recall I am a blonde now. Suicide blonde is an expression I once used to describe Snack’s old girlfriends. He slides a piece of my hair between his thumb and forefinger and rubs it. He whispers, “The softest thing… my suicide blonde.”

You’d think after Snack kissed me that summer when we were twelve that would have been it. Childhood sweethearts finally admitted their love for each other and voila! Happily ever after. If only. No, as Shakespeare said, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” But at twelve, who really knows how to tell if what they’re feeling is love and what “running smooth” looks like in their life? I finally convinced myself Snack forgot about kissing me, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up and make things awkward.

Through junior high, Snack and I walked or biked to school together. We hung out after school, playing video games or making mix CDs. I went to school events and dances in a group that included Snack and Clip and whatever guys they were currently running with. Oh, and let’s not forget the girls that were fascinated by them. Every time I turned around another girl was throwing herself at Snack. Even though he kissed me that one time, it seemed that I was just another one of the guys. I was confused. Why would he kiss me and call me his girl and then just go back to being friends.

By the time we were freshman in high school, the kiss was a faded memory. For him, at least. Snack dated other girls. Every single one of them a blonde. And tall. And stacked. I was none of those things.

I’m five foot four. I have blue-green eyes and my original hair color is medium ash brown. I know this because I’ve had a plethora of hair colors since college and my roots came in a lot darker than they did when I was a kid. Out of curiosity a couple of months ago, I took my picture from high school to the supermarket to figure out my real color. It matched L’Oréal 5A Medium Ash Brown. Not that I want to go back to it. I like my current blond color. It’s definitely
not
average.

The point is, the weird thing about Snack and his blondes was, after his
dates
, he’d come to my house and hang out with
me
.

I didn’t think too much of it at the time.

“Minnie, Snack is here!” my dad yells up the stairs from the front door.

“Send him up to my room,” I yell back.

I hear Dad’s footsteps and a second pair coming closer. “Your room!” he bellows.

I yell in my dad’s face just has he comes through my door. “Jesus, Dad, it’s only Snack!”

My dad whispers, “Oh, right.” Like Snack and I have never hung out before. Like this is a new thing. Snack turns his body sideways and slips past my dad to go sit on my bed.

My dad frowns and adds quietly but firmly, “Door
open
.”

I shake my head and grin. Then when he doesn’t budge, I nod to get him to go. He backs out of my room and leaves my door cracked. Snack is just my friend. We hang out all the time and nothing happens. Not that I’d mind if something did. But it never does. Never will.

Then one night when Snack happens to have arrived at my house before I get back from a late night of working on the school paper, I overhear a conversation between Snack and Clip and it gets me wondering.

I don’t mean to eavesdrop but then I hear Clip say, “What about Jacksy?” The distinctive clicking of game controllers in use echoes through the room. When I look around the corner, they’re facing away from me, sitting on the sectional, and playing Mario Party.

Snack moans and says, “Jennifer Jacksy? No, no way. She’s chased me so hard ever since freshman year. And she’s a bookmark.”

“A bookmark?”

“Yeah, a girl that guys use to mark the place that they left off when they break up with their girlfriend. That’s Jacksy. It’s terrible, but in Jacksy’s case, true.”

Clip replies with a “Ha!” and then says, “So, give it to her, man. She’ll love it. She always does.”

I know for a fact that Clip has banged Jennifer Jacksy. I know because I heard them. Clip had a party one weekend my dad had an overnight business trip. My God, it was horrible listening to them on the other side of the wall.

“Penny Jenny? Really, Clip?” Snack groans.

“Sure. Have some fun. Harmless fun. It will only cost you a penny.”

I decide right then and there my brother is sort of an asshole.

I’m about to march in and tell them
both
they are complete assholes and that’s no way to talk about a girl when Snack changes the subject.

“Beside, Clip, that’s not who I want. You know who I want to be with.” Snack tilts his head and nods back toward the hall where I am. I take a few steps back and hide behind the corner in case he turns around. Who is he talking about?

“That will
never
happen. Not unless you are going to stop fucking around with your blondes and get serious… And you’re too fucking young to get serious.”

“Yeah,” Snack mumbles in a low and resigned voice I can barely make out.

As I venture forward again, Clip claps Snack on the back. “Dude, what about Charlotte? You know, Charlotte Carpenter, the new girl. That attribute alone makes her a million times more interesting than chicks from around here.”

Wow! Clippy used the word “attribute” in a sentence. And correctly, too. Maybe he
will
go to college someday.

“I don’t know.” Snack starts and then his tone changes. “Hmm, Charlotte Carpenter.”

“Oh, yeah. Charlotte. I can see she’s pinging your radar just by the way you say her name.” Jesus, Clip can be a slimeball. My brother, the pimp.

I can’t stand it anymore. I hate spying on Snack like this. He’s supposed to be my best friend, right? I can talk to him about girls, right?

Entering the room breezily, I say, “Did someone mention Charlotte?”

Clip and Snack turn to look at me. Clip immediately returns to the game and says, “Yeah.” Snack looks away, guilty.

“Thinking of dating another suicide blonde, Snack?” I snark. I can’t help it. It just comes out snotty.

“Suicide blonde?”

“Yeah, you know, those fucking blondes you like to date. The ones that are so gorgeous they make regular girls want to kill themselves.”

Snack’s eyebrows squish together. “That’s sort of harsh, Minnie.”

I don’t like feeling this way. Snack’s mine. But, not really. I can’t take it. I gotta get out of here. “Yeah, well—” I bolt out of the room as fast as I can but trying to act nonchalant.

Charlotte Carpenter. She’s only been at Downers Grove North High School for three months and already is a coveted cheerleader and member of the student council. She has straight As (OK, in that we’re even), blonde, built, and confident. Wears her makeup like fucking war paint and dresses like off the runway. Perfect. Everyday. You’d think the hallways at school had red carpets the way she walked them. And by all appearances she was actually nice, too. Bitch! She made it impossible to hate her.

She was everything I wasn’t. Superior. With the exception of good grades and the ability to write, I’ve always been blissfully average. Right down to my brown, not caramel, not chestnut, hair. Average.

Snack started dating Charlotte, the suicide blonde, the next day.

Snack is with Charlotte. Has been for ten months.

We don’t talk to each other at school anymore. Ever. The one time I asked him why, he snapped at me in a terse whisper, “I’m not sharing you. Not subjecting you to those idiots.” I didn’t know how to respond. Part of me liked it because if he didn’t want to share me, it meant part of him still cares for me. Granted he was hanging out with the super popular jock crowd ever since he started dating the fucking perfect cheerleader Charlotte. The popular crowd is a bunch of idiots, anyway. Clip had been part of that crowd, but he was off at college. Snack used to make fun of them with me. Now, he was one of them. I didn’t understand why I had to be invisible to Snack at school. Or maybe I wasn’t, really. A few times in the fall of our senior year when he thought I didn’t see him, I caught Snack staring at me in the hallway. He’d have a look on his face I couldn’t decipher. Blank? Angry? Confused? Of course, I couldn’t ask him. The unwritten rule was: no talking to each other at school.

I thought maybe he didn’t talk to me because it would make her mad. The truth of it was I didn’t exist to Charlotte. Oh, she was never mean to me. Then again, she was never nice to me, either. She never displayed any feeling about me. Probably, because she didn’t have any. And that’s how you know you mean nothing or, more aptly put, are worth nothing to a person. When you don’t even register in their life—not for one millisecond. You never pass through their consciousness. Sure, she knew my name. I was Minnie. Clip’s little sister, if anything, but she wasn’t aware of the history Snack and I had. I guess he never told her that I was his girl first. That he used to practically live in my bedroom every night of the week.

Hell, Snack taught me how to get off on my own. Bet Charlotte would be pissed if she knew that story.

I can never use the bathroom at my house when I want to. Why? Because my little brother is constantly in there, taking a bath and whacking off.

I bang loudly on the door. “Hey, Dr. Spankenstein. What are you doing in there? Trying to reanimate the creature?”

“Just a sec,” Sid moans through the door.

Ugh! I hate to picture what he’s doing in there.

Watching me in the hallway, Snack leans on the doorjamb to my room. “Oh, give him some slack. Everyone needs some “self amusement” now and then.”

I throw my hands up in the air, spin away from the bathroom door, and stomp back to my room and Snack.

“Not me,” I declare proudly, shooting him a squint-eyed glare.

“What? You never get yourself off?” Snacks eyes practically pop out of his head and his hands fly to his hair.

“No.” My cheeks flame with heat and I know I’m turning bright red. I plop down on the edge of the bed and try to act cool, but inside I’m burning up. This conversation just tipped into the uncomfortable zone. The uncomfortable-because-we’re-talking-about-sex zone.

“Like never?” He looks at his feet and shakes his head. I think I detect a crooked smirk on his lips. He leaves suddenly and the next thing I know he’s banging on the door to the bathroom. “Hey, Sid! Tug Monkey! I need to piss. Open.”

From my perch on the edge of the bed with my thighs pressed tightly together because this whole thing is sort of working me up, I hear the bathroom door open and a whispered conversation between Sid and Snack. Then the door closes.

Snack returns. He stands in the doorway with my electric toothbrush, which he wiggles while holding between his thumb and forefinger.

“Do I have bad breath?” I quickly cup my hand up to cover my nose and mouth and breathe into it. No, breath is OK. Seriously, why is he bringing me my toothbrush?

“Noooooo.” Snack shakes his head slowly and smirks. “You are definitely not going to brush your teeth with it.” I don’t say a word. I’m shocked and intrigued and what I can only think is… horny.

“Here.” Snack hands me my brush. His voice gets low. “When I leave, lay back on your bed. Imagine your favorite celebrity or boy band member.” I shoot him the stink eye, ’cause I’m not the boy band type. “Then close your eyes, turn that on, and stick it down your panties.”