Winger (25 page)

I sighed.

“I shaved this morning, Joey. I had one whisker. Here. Can you see it?”

I held my chin up and pointed.

Joey leaned close and laughed.

“Yeah. Sure.” And then he asked, “How was her place?”

“Incredible. I am so in love with her, Joe.”

“I can see that, Ryan Dean. More than I can see that nonwhisker, that’s for sure.”

I CALLED MY MOTHER FROM
the airport.

Well, to be honest, I called home hoping I’d be able to talk to my dad, but no such luck.

RYAN DEAN WEST
: Hi, Mom. It’s me, Ryan Dean.

I know. I’m an idiot.

MOM
: Hi, sweetie! Are you back from Seattle?

RYAN DEAN WEST
: I’m at the airport in Portland.

MOM
: Did you have a good time, Ryan Dean?

RYAN DEAN WEST
: It was the best weekend ever, Mom.

MOM
: Oh.

I thought she sounded . . . sad? Awkward pause.
Very
awkward pause.

MOM
(
cont.
): Is everything . . . okay, Ryan Dean? You sound different.

I can’t believe it. Is she actually
crying
?

RYAN DEAN WEST
: Are you
crying
, Mom?

MOM
: I’m sorry, baby. You just sound so grown up all of a sudden. Did you and your girlfriend, you know . . .

Please, someone, kill me now.

RYAN DEAN WEST
: No!

MOM
: Well, did you get the package I sent? Did everything work the way the booklet said it would?

Sniff.

Why is it a guy can have an entire conversation with a girl and it’s like she’s hearing something entirely different from what is coming out of his mouth?

RYAN DEAN WEST
: Mom. I am
not
calling to talk about sex.

This was so creepily disgusting. Here was the
one
person in the world with whom I would
never
want to talk about the
one
thing I think about constantly.

RYAN DEAN WEST
(
cont.
): I’m calling to ask you to FedEx me a new pair of running shoes. I lost mine on the island.

MOM
: Oh. I’m so sorry, sweetie.

She sounded crushed.

RYAN DEAN WEST
: It’s okay, Mom. They were getting too small anyway. I gained ten pounds and I’m two inches taller now than when you saw me in September. I need size ten-and-a-half. Nikes or Asics, okay?

MOM
: Ten-and-a-half?
Ten-and-a-half?

She started crying again.

Crap.

TWO THINGS KIND OF HIT
me when I saw Chas and Megan get off the flight from Los Angeles together.

First, they looked like they were tired of each other, like an old married couple who’d gone on too long of a vacation together and did not have fun; and, second, I was kind of jealous that Chas got to spend the weekend with Megan.

I know that’s stupid.

Does that make me a bad person? No matter what Joey said, I wasn’t ever going to be able to stop thinking of Megan Renshaw as smoking hot, and in some ways she was more accessible to me than Annie.

I’ll be honest. Seeing her coming off the plane and realizing I was jealous of Chas did make me feel terrible about the whole situation. And I thought, maybe I just felt that way because in some ways I was convinced that Annie was going to throw me away again. Maybe Joey was right that Annie didn’t want to get hurt, but, goddamnit, neither did I. So maybe I just looked at Megan as some type of five-out-of-five-sizzling-white-hot-crescent-wrenches on the Ryan Dean West Safety Net Tool Chart.

I still felt bad, though, and I grabbed Joey by the collar while we were waiting at baggage claim and whispered, “Joey, tell me to grow up again.”

And he said, “Ryan Dean, grow the fuck up.”

’Cause he saw how I’d been looking at Megan.

You know, there’s this lesson in cheesy stories that says be careful what you wish for, but I was never one for cheesy stories, much less morally condescending messages, so it was kind of like dying and going to that special place with Great-Grandma and that two-dimensional Chihuahua of mine when pissed-off-at-Megan Chas grumbled that he wanted to sit in front so “Asswing can sit in the back with the other two girls.”

Yeah. Whatever, Betch. Call me a girl. Call me Asswing. But, for a two-hour car ride, my legs would be simultaneously touching the legs of Megan Renshaw
and
Annie Altman, and I fully believed that would precipitate the all-time lowest blood-pressure reading north of Ryan Dean Westworld’s metal-detector-tripping equator.

And then again, there was still that unopened bottle of piss, too, so call me whatever you want.

Do things like that explode? I wondered, since I’d never actually kept a bottle of piss around for more than three days—tops—before.

And I was also fully aware of how incredibly stupid I can be at times like this, so I told myself (or, Ryan Dean West said it to the Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island) that I’d better just shut up, keep my eyes forward, and not cop any obvious feels.

Yeah, right. Okay, to be honest, I can abide by the limitation of obviousness, but the “feels” part was a done deal as far as the Wild
Boy of Bainbridge Island was concerned. Oh . . . and eyes forward? Are you kidding me? So that meant shutting up. Hmm . . . That was probably out too.

We got all our stuff loaded into the SUV and piled in.

The back windows immediately fogged up. I felt myself beginning to sweat. I slipped my shoes off and kicked them under the seat, quietly contemplating the beauty of that hump in the floor, which allowed me to touch Annie’s foot with my left and Megan’s foot with my right.

Suddenly, I found myself in a battle of epic proportions, pitting good and pure Ryan Dean West against the crazed urges of the Humping Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island, who, undoubtedly, had been somehow infected from the saliva of that sex-starved gay pug dog and, as a result, felt a helpless compulsion to hump anything with a pulse.

I am such a loser.

I didn’t even make it out of the goddamned parking lot.

RYAN DEAN WEST
: Stop trying to play footsie with two girls at the same time. You’re getting mud on my socks.

WILD BOY OF BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
: I can take them off if you want. You know how I feel about wearing clothes, anyway.

RYAN DEAN WEST
: Oh my God. You wouldn’t.

(
Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island loosens his tie and begins unbuttoning his shirt.
)

“It’s really hot in here,” I said.

Megan smiled at me. She’d slipped off her shoe and was playing with my foot right under Chas’s seat, where no one could see what was going on. I felt like I was melting. I had to do something to pull myself back away from the Wild Boy urges.

I fought.

I slipped my hand into Annie’s, interlocking our fingers. I squeezed tight, our hands resting on the soft fabric of her skirt where it draped over her thigh.

God! I think I actually began hyperventilating, creating my own microclimate in the backseat, where it was as humid as a rain forest in the Amazon. Worse. It actually started
raining
in the goddamned backseat.

Megan saw that I was holding hands with Annie. She didn’t look happy. She pulled her foot away and slipped it back inside her shoe. She turned her face toward the window and put her hand down on the seat between us. That’s when . . . she . . . touched . . . my butt.

That gave the Wild Boy renewed strength, and good, pure, and kind Ryan Dean deflated to a wasted and wimpy 152-pound sack of crap. So in a last-ditch effort, I squeaked “I had a really great weekend” to Annie, but I sounded like a third grader on helium.

I cleared my throat. I don’t know where this new Ryan Dean West came from, but I realized that everything Joey had been cussing me out about was totally true; and, worse, that Megan Renshaw was every bit as evil as Mrs. Singer.

“And, Annie, I never told you this, well, at least not the right way, but the things you make at your house—everything: the sculptures, and how your room is, your Wonder Horse, and the sounds and smells and everything—is so beautiful. It makes me feel lucky just to know you.”

Score.

I rallied my strength and pulled my right foot over the hump, away from Megan, so both of my feet could be tangled up around Annie’s. I leaned my head back and looked at her. Megan pinched my butt really hard, but I stifled my jerk reflex, and since it hurt so bad it made tears well in my eyes, it was a potential grand slam as far as Annie was concerned.

But the play in the outfield didn’t quite unfold the way I’d imagined.

Chas said, “I just threw up in my mouth, Pussboy.”

Pussboy.

Another new one.

Nice.

Megan said, “I think Ryan Dean is one of the sweetest, hottest boys I know.”

Okay, I’ll be honest. She actually
did
say that. And her hand was still under my butt.

Chas gave me an over-the-shoulder, “You’re fucking dead, Pussboy” look.

And Annie gave me the it-was-vacation-craziness-we-are-not-ever-
ever
-going-to-kiss-again look.

Crap.

I was hosed and I knew it.

I sneezed. I suddenly felt terrible. Not terrible because of how much of a loser I was, but terrible because it dawned on me exactly why I was so sweaty and my voice wasn’t working.

“Are you okay, Ryan Dean?” Annie asked. She was leaning forward in her seat, looking square at my face, so close.

“I feel like I’m getting sick,” I said.

Then, as happens in my reality, all these things occurred at once:

1. (Fight or Flight) Chas turned around and said, “If you fucking puke in my car, Pussboy, I’ll make you lick it up.” This made me feel a little queasier.

2. (Nice) Annie gave a sympathetic “aww.” She put her hand across my forehead (Bliss) to see if I had a fever and said, “Well, you shouldn’t have been running around naked in the woods in the rain this morning.”

3. (Hot) Megan’s hand warmed up considerably, her fingers played inside my back pocket, and she said, “You were running naked in the woods? That’s so incredibly sexy.”

4. (Kind of thing the Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island lives to hear) Annie said, “You are really hot, Ryan Dean.”

Okay, I’ll be honest. I know she was talking about my having a fever. But with Megan cupping her hand under my butt cheek and cooing on one side of me, and Annie touching my face and looking so compassionately Florence-Nightingale-hot on the other, a guy can hallucinate, can’t he?

BY THE TIME WE GOT
back to pine Mountain, I had been sleeping with my head on Annie’s shoulder for over an hour. I woke up when the cold air rushed in on me from the open doors.

I felt Annie let go of my hand.

“We’re back,” she said.

I felt sick.

“Make it be yesterday again.”

Annie smiled.

The others were already around back, pulling their bags out of the SUV. Chas and Megan weren’t talking to each other. Megan didn’t seem to mind. She wheeled her bag away in the direction of the girls’ dorm and said, “I hope you feel better, Ryan Dean.”