At least I used a bedroom. Most of the time.
“Hey, you want to go out and get some pizza?” For the moment, he had decided to be my brother. These moments were like four leaf clovers. Rare and hard to find and sometimes I missed them, and sometimes I stomped on them, crushing them under my feet.
“Sure.” Since we were so close in age, we played a lot together as kids. When we were little, our personality differences weren’t much of an obstacle to building a town out of blocks on the living room floor and then destroying it with our dinosaurs.
When I was three, and he was almost five, he saved me from drowning one day at the beach, so for a few years, he was my protector. But it didn’t last.
As we grew, our differences became more pronounced. He was competitive, always wanting to wrestle and challenge everyone. I was more solitary, preferring to run, to read, to do things on my own. The fact that he had his license and a truck brought us back together, due to my lack of transportation. Then that night happened, and we hadn’t been the same. But nothing changed the fact that he was my brother.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” I said to Devin. He just grunted and started ripping open one of the garbage bags.
Since pizza was the food of choice for most college students, naturally there were about three pizza places per student just outside of campus.
On the way over, I sat in the passenger seat with Katie beside me. She made sure to scoot over as far as she could she wouldn’t touch any part of me. I slouched toward the door, helping her out. Other than that, she ignored my existence. Or she was doing a good job at pretending.
He found a parking spot and we got out, Zack lifting Katie out, making her squeal with delight before he gave her a rough kiss and took her hand to lead her into the cramped restaurant. I looked away, regretting that I’d come with them.
It had the typical Americanized idea of an Italian place. Black and white tile floor, Italian flags, and pictures of fat jolly chefs twirling dough and chopping tomatoes on the wall.
We slid into a booth, me on one side, Zack and Katie on the other, wrapped around each other like ivy and a brick building. It was disgusting, really. I’d never been one for PDA, but then I’d never really had a girlfriend. Just a long line of f**k buddies.
“What do you want, babe?”
“I don’t know,” Katie said, glancing at the menu. I could tell she wasn’t even really reading it. “You pick.”
The waitress came to take our drink orders, and we all got Cokes. I knew Zack wanted a beer, but the chances of getting one in a college bar without an ID were about as good as my chances of walking into a store and not having a salesperson follow me around to make sure I didn’t steal anything. Less than zero percent. Even our waitress gave me a second look before Zack captured her attention.
I got a calzone so Zack and Katie could share a pepperoni pizza. Katie kept checking her phone and trying to fix her ponytail so it was just messy enough to show people that she didn’t care. I mostly ignored them as Zack kept sliding his hand up her thigh and trying to feel her up. Either she was oblivious, or she was doing the best she could to ignore him. Judging by the stiff hold of her neck, she was doing the latter.
I always wanted to ask the girls he went with what it was about him. Why did they put up with him? Zack was harder on girls than he was on his truck.
“So there’s this party next weekend at this guy Todd’s house, and you’re invited. It’s going to be a bunch of baseball guys, but it should be fun. Lots of new girls to get friendly with.” Zack had never been friendly with a girl. Not in the non-sexual way.
“Maybe,” I said. Not that long ago, I would have been into it, but now things were different.
“Come on, little bro. We need to get you out and social. You’ve been at that freak school for too long. You’ve forgotten how to be around normal people.” Yeah, I’d seen what he called normal.
“And why the f**k was I at the freak school?” I said it quiet, but Katie flinched anyway, and cast her eyes down. I hated to do this in front of her, but I could only deal with Zack’s mouth for so long, especially now that he’d dropped the fact that Charlotte was here before walking away.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. About what she would look like when I saw her. If her eyes would still be like that.
“Jesus, calm down, dude. I was just trying to be a nice big brother. No need to get your panties in a twist. I’m just trying to get you out of your own head so you’re not thinking about Hottie anymore. You haven’t even asked me how she looks.” I wanted to tell him to go f**k himself, that I’d hitchhike back, but that would cause a scene, so I shut my trap and finished my calzone.
Katie had remained mostly silent and barely picked at her pizza. She looked so sad already, or maybe it was just because I was with them. But then Zack whispered something in her hear and took her hand and kissed the back of it, and she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He was already using her up, like a tube of toothpaste that would soon be squeezed dry.
“So let me know about the party. You should come,” Zack said as we walked back to the dorm from the student lot. The air was still full of summer, and crickets still sang in the grass. If I was still at home, I would have climbed out my window and laid in the field behind our house for a while and stared at the sky. The streetlights were on, casting that orange glow over everything and blocking out the stars from visibility.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, twiddling my hands in my pockets and fingering the lighter I still carried around. I’d quit smoking pot, but I couldn’t give up my lighter. It was only a stupid chrome Zippo, but it had been my grandfather’s, so I was attached to it. One of the only things I’d be really upset if I lost.
My roommate was gone when I got back, and the trash can was full of torn-up garbage bags. His bed just had a cheap thin comforter thrown on it, and most of his other stuff was just crammed here and there.
I threw myself back on my bed and tried to keep my mind from going to the place it kept wandering.
I pulled out the lighter and snapped it off and on, trying to focus on the little swoosh as the flame lit.
“You got a special gal in your life?” Gramps had asked me one of the last times I’d visited. He never called them girls. Always gals.
“Not really.” I was in the midst of trying to get up the balls to talk to Charlotte. I’d been trying different ways, but so far I’d been too much of a p**sy to do anything.
“Don’t you lie to me, young man. I know that look in your eye. You’ve got it bad. Just like I did when I was your age. What’s her name?” He puffed on his pipe and sat back deep into the recliner.
I shook my head.
“She must be pretty special if she’s caught your eye. What’s she like? Bet she’s gorgeous. I remember your grandmother at that age. What a set of legs.” He whistled and threw his head back, as if the memory had taken over his brain.
“I can’t talk to her,” I said.
“Why not? What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. Whenever I see her, I choke.”
“That’s natural. Gals have a way of making you feel like you’ve got no tongue at all.” That was how she made me feel. As if someone had cut my tongue out. “If this gal can’t see who you are, she doesn’t deserve to see it. You’re like your grandmother. Hard shell on the outside, but real sweet on the inside.”
Gramps comparing me to candy made me grin just a little.
“So, you going to talk to her?”
“Sure.”
“Good man,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder.
Three weeks later he died.
Six months later, I tried to talk to Charlotte. A half hour after that, everything went to hell in f**king hand basket.
Lottie
“It’s been so long!” Simon’s face split into a grin and he pulled me in for a hug, yanking me off my feet and spinning me around. His glee at seeing me made me put on a happy face and shoved the dark clouds that had descended on my first day aside.
“I saw you this morning,” I said as he set me on my feet. Simon and Will were nearly the same height, but they looked like night and day. Simon had dark hair and green eyes and the most infectious smile in the world. A few girls who walked by gave him the once over, and it was clear that they liked what they saw.
Girls were always coming on to Simon, almost as much as they did to Will.
“What can I say? The ladies love me,” he’d always say.
“So I heard about your little encounter. Do you want me to pretend it didn’t happen and just be my normal charming self? Or do you want me to make a voodoo doll? Or I could sit and watch chick flicks and cry with you.” That was another good thing about Simon. He was so shiny and bright and happy, he could brush away even the most morbid and depressing of thoughts.
“I’ll take option one.”
“Done,” he said as Will struggled in behind him, carrying three clear storage tubs.
“You have a problem, you know that?” he said, setting the tubs down. Simon was the most organized person I’d ever met. He said he used to freak out when his mom threw all his food in his lunchbox and didn’t divide it up in separate compartments, and he’d asked for a label maker for every Christmas and birthday since he was five until he’d gotten one.
“Are you sure you’re going to be able to live with Will? You’ve seen his room.” Not that Will was a pig, but he wasn’t Simon, the Master of Organization. Will gave me a look, but I ignored him. We were back to being normal again.
“I am going to convert him to my way of life.”
“Oh really? And how do you presume to do that?”
“I have my ways,” he said with a wink.
“Excuse me, I’m standing right here,” Will said, waving his arms.
“Yes, we see you, William.” Will pouted and Simon shoved him. “Is it just me, or is it smaller than I remember?” Will shoved back before plunking himself down on the stack of tubs.
“Maybe it’s a magical room that changes size. Like Hogwarts,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure they had better beds,” he said, sitting down on his with a horrible metal screech. “Oh, that’s going to need some WD-40.”
“We haven’t even been here for five seconds, and you’re already fixing something,” Will said, as Simon snapped his fingers for him to get off the tubs. One of them was marked Tools.
“I can’t sleep on a rickety bed,” Simon said, diving into the box. Will looked like he was going to say something, but I shook my head and went to go get some more of Simon’s tubs.
Seven trips later, we had all Simon’s stuff inside, my arms were like Jell-o and Simon had not only fixed the squeaky bed, but had tightened the screws on all the chairs and re-arranged all the bookshelves. He was like a one man Extreme Makeover Home Edition team. All he needed was a megaphone and a tape measure.
Will had given up and gone to get pizza after the third trip to the car, the slacker.