And there I go, fully dressed, easing myself down, the warm, healing waters gathering around my chest.
“You’re crazy,” Shawnie says.
“Yeah, but that’s why you like me so much.”
“That’s true.”
“So, Miss Queen of Ping-Pong, do you choose to test the waters or do you choose to be a loser?”
“You can never outdo me, Sutter. You know that.” And sure enough, here she comes, right in next to me. “How’s your forehead?”
“Not bad. For a tragic head wound.”
She inspects my head for a second. “It’s just a red spot. Here, let me apply some of these magic waters to it.” She reaches up and dabs my skin with her wet fingertips. It feels good, a whole lot better than the feeling I got from beating up those shrubs with Jeremy Holtz.
“That better?”
“That’s perfect.”
She leans her shoulder into mine. “You know what, Sutter? You’re my favorite ex-boyfriend of all time.”
I look into her dark brown eyes and my stomach starts to melt. Shawnie’s one of these girls you might not think is that great-looking at first—big nose and all—but once you start talking to her, it’s like this humongous, sparkly, fun spirit bursts out of her eyes, and you go, Wow, this girl is beautiful! Plus, she has a stellar bod.
“We’ve sure had a lot of fun together,” I say. “You remember that Flaming Lips concert?”
“Are you kidding? That was the most amazing thing ever.”
We trade memories of the show—the crowd dressed in crazy outfits, like Santas and Easter Bunnies and Halloween skeletons; the huge flying saucer that landed on the outdoor stage; the light show; the balloons filled with confetti; the crazy-great band with Wayne Coyne walking across the crowd’s upraised hands in his giant space-hamster ball. And most of all just the feeling of being there, the enormous wild beauty of it. It was almost like we were the music, soaring across the galaxy.
“It was so funny when you went crowd surfing,” Shawnie says. “But then I didn’t see you again for about thirty minutes.”
“Yeah, but I made up for it when we went parking by the lake afterward. You remember that?”
“Of course. That was pretty incredible too.”
“And here we are—single again.”
“Yeah. Here we are.”
And there we are, all right, staring into each other’s eyes, the warm water and the warm memories both hugging us, and I can tell we’re thinking the same thing. I lean toward her, and she closes her eyes and opens her mouth just a little, inviting a kiss. It’s nice. Her lips taste like strawberry lip gloss. I run my fingers down her neck, and then it happens—she starts to giggle right into my mouth.
I pull back and her giggle turns into a full-out laugh, and then it hits me, and I bust out laughing too. She’s right. It’s ridiculous. You just can’t make out with someone you have a continuing Italian mobster routine with.
She hugs my arm tight. “Carmine, you’re da greatest.”
I kiss the top of her head. “No, Carmine, you’re da greatest.”
We sit there for a while just enjoying being next to each other. Then I go, “So, do you think this Cassidy-and-Marcus thing’s going to last?”
“I thought you said you were over that.”
“I am. I’m just wondering how long they’ll last, that’s all.”
“You know what?” she says. “I wouldn’t waste any time thinking about that. We both need to find ourselves someone completely new.”
“Well, you won’t have a problem. Except there aren’t any guys out there worthy of you.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“No, I mean it. You have the fun, you have the bod, you have the deep soul-force. What dude can possibly be good enough for you?”
“You’re right.” She laughs. “But I might go ahead and give some guy a break anyway.”
“So whatever happened to us? I mean, we get along so great. Why didn’t we make it as a couple?”
“Oh, you don’t want to go over that again, do you?”
“I’m just wondering. I mean, here I am, out on my ass without a girlfriend again. It might be educational to know what happened to us. What changed?”
She mulls it over for a moment. “I don’t think it’s so much that something changed as that things didn’t change. We just kept being the same as we started out, you know?”
“Not really.”
“It’s like we were always buddies instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. Even when we had sex it was kind of like two buddies just fooling around.”
“And that’s not good?”
“No, it was good. It was fun. And I know girls always say they want a guy that’s like their best friend, but somewhere along the line we really want more than that.”
“More? See, that’s just the thing. It’s that more part I get stuck on.”
“You’ll get the hang of it one of these days. You just need to find a girl that brings it out of you. Someone completely different from Cassidy.”
“I tried that. I asked out Whitney Stowe.”
“No way.” She pulls back and looks me in the face. “You asked out Whitney Stowe?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time. She has great legs.”
“But she’s one of these girls that, like, has a schedule worked out for every second of the day. How could you possibly fit into that? You’d be like a dog on a leash.”