Then Isabel laughed.
“Score,” I said. “Made you talk about my balls. And, anyway, Seanie’s making that up. It’s a Princess Barbie Band-Aid.”
Then I gave Seanie a dirty look and nonchalantly scratched the bridge of my nose with my middle finger. I stood up. It was time to go to Conditioning.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ANNIE AND I PASSED NOTES to each other all during Mr. Wellins’s American Literature-slash-Sex-Ed class; and I could tell JP was getting pretty ticked about it. Oh, well, I thought, I’ve got all weekend, buddy, and by the time we get back to Pine Mountain she won’t even know you exist.
Less than forty-five more minutes of sex talk about how gay Henry David Thoreau was and we’re out of here.
Yeah, but then, with you, it’s going to beFriday to Sunday of nonstop sex talk.
We don’t have to just talk (wink).
You are so perverted. Try to be nice around my parents.
And your gay dog. Just remember, I am here to help you through this Intense-Need-to-Kiss-Ryan-Dean obsession you have.
Like I said: LIAR. And you know it.
Want me to draw you a picture?
I dunno. Is it perverted?
You want perverted? I can do.
Ugh! Get me an airsick bag. Freak!
Here you go. Love, Ryan Dean West (fifteen more minutes!!!).
In your dreams, maybe, West!!! Love, AA
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I KNEW THE DRIVE TO the airport would be awkward. Chas went out of his way to make it even worse than it had to be.
After we’d loaded our suitcases in the back of his SUV, Chas informed me that I would ride shotgun—front passenger seat. And, as Chas explained, that meant the gay guys could sit up front so Chas could be in the backseat with what he called “the two hotties.”
Chas Becker was such a tool.
Not that I wouldn’t have called them that, much less given just about anything to sit between them. I even tried to argue that it would be more comfortable for Annie and Megan if I did, because I was smaller than Chas, but Chas just looked at Megan one time, then gave me a look like he was about to punch me and said, “Shut the fuck up, Winger.”
And, when we were on the road, I turned back and saw that Chas was sitting in the middle with his arms stretched over the seat backs, pretending he was holding on to both girls, just looking at me like he was the king of the world or something, which, for whatever reason, made me think about that bottle of piss I still hadn’t gotten rid of.
“What are your plans for the weekend, Ryan Dean?” Joey asked, paying attention to the road but flickering his eyes to the mirror once in a while to watch Chas and the girls. Normally, they would have been in Kevin’s car, which was bigger than Chas’s SUV; Joey’s car was out of the question, since it only carried two people.
“Nothing boring,” I said. “No TV watching. Me and Annie are going to do some running on the beach, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe go fishing if it’s not too rainy.”
“Sounds thrilling,” Chas said. “When are you two going to actually start fooling around? Or are Annie’s parents going to play watchdog all weekend?”
“Shut up, Chas,” I said. “Annie’s not like that.”
I looked at Annie, and she smiled at me. And then I saw Chas scoot himself closer to her.
“I bet she could be like that,” he said.
“Maybe I should sit up front,” Annie said.
Then Megan tried to change the subject but chose the worst imaginable direction to steer the conversation: “I bet Ryan Dean’s a real good kisser, Annie. Is he?”
As soon as she said it, all kinds of things happened at once:
1. I felt my balls actually retract up inside my body cavity. I don’t know if I turned white or red, but I definitely felt something turning.
2. Megan got this testy and challenging look on her face—definitely the very, very bad policewoman look.
3. Joey coughed like he was choking on something, then fired me the get-your-shit-together-Ryan-Dean look.
4. Chas took his arms away from both girls and folded his hands on his lap, pouting, with a look on his face that said he wanted to snap my skinny-bitch-ass neck. He had to know what was going on with me and Megan. I was convinced.
5. And Annie said, “Oh, yeah. He’s a great kisser. And he has puppy breath.”
Then Chas said, “Do you guys want to pull over and play Spin the Bottle, or should we just get to the airport in time to catch our flights?”
Megan straightened up and winked at me. I didn’t even want to look at Annie to see if she’d caught it. This could easily ruin what I was convinced would be the best weekend of my life.
I cleared my throat and said, “Annie’s just messing around. We’ve never kissed. Not even close.” And I looked directly at her and said, “Even though I’ve asked her to hundreds of times.”
So I let her off the hook. For now.
I knew she’d think about that. I knew Annie. She wasn’t going to let a statement like that go unresponded to all weekend long, so I turned back around, faced the road, and tried to will my nuts back down from behind my belly button, smiling, confident that I’d get Annie Altman to cave in to her weakness before too long.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
GOD! WAS I GLAD TO see our group split up once we got to the airport.
We all agreed on a meeting time and place in the terminal after our return flights Sunday evening, then we headed off to our gates.
Annie and I checked our bags and took off our shoes to pass through the security line. And, of course, as these things happen to losers such as myself, when I was walking through the metal detector, an alarm sounded because I’d left my belt on. And just when the Transportation Security officer was waving me to stop, my Band-Aid conveniently came unglued after its two-day vacation on my balls. It fell out the bottom of my dorky, too-short school pants.
This, of course, made the guard think that I was some kind of black-tar-heroin-cakes-or-whatever-the-fuck-you-call-them-Band-Aided-to-my-ballsack-smuggler, and he and another very unhappy-looking man in a white shirt escorted me behind a thin screen, the kind you’d see in a run-down clinic.
That was where they told me to strip down to my underwear.
Nice.
Annie laughed at me.
Well, I think she was laughing at me. I couldn’t tell, because I couldn’t see her since I was standing in my boxers behind a goddamned hospital-cloth screen while one of the TSA guys turned my socks inside out and shook them.
At the same time, the other agent actually grabbed my now Band-Aid-free balls (and it was probably not in good judgment for me to ask him if he wanted me to turn my head and cough, because he just kind of nodded and said something about me being a “smart ass,” and then he pulled out the waistband on my underwear and gave my actual-not-so-smart-skinny-white-ass a glimpse of airport-terminal fluorescent light).
Annie was doing her best, I am sure, to pretend she didn’t know heroin-ballsack-boy.
Yeah.
I’m a loser.
Not just a loser, a loser who was still standing behind a screen, barefoot and in his boxers, when he heard the final boarding announcement for his flight to Seattle. The TSA guy just placed my boarding pass on top of my thoroughly ransacked and inside-out school clothes and said, “Sorry, Mr. West. You’re free to go.”
I quickly pulled on my now-beltless pants and slid into my shirt. I grabbed my shoes and the rest of my clothes and boarding pass in a bundle under one arm and walked out from behind the screen.
Annie stood there, laughing, her eyes all wet.
“Why do these things always happen to you?” she asked.
“Because I’m a fucking loser,” I answered.
Yeah, well . . . I didn’t say “fucking,” of course, because you know I never cuss, especially not in front of Annie, but to say that I wanted to say “fucking” is a fucking understatement.
“Here,”
she said, “let me help you,” and she grabbed my shoes and belt as I hopped along to the gate, my unbuttoned and untucked shirt fluttering behind me as I tried to pull on one sock and my pants slipped down toward my knees. I dropped my tie and had to stop to pick it up.
I gave up.
I followed Annie to the boarding gate half-undressed and barefoot, with one hand holding up the waist of my pants.
And the attendant at the gate, who, I will say, was pretty damn hot in a paramilitary-Andrews-Sisters kind of way, raised her very disciplined-looking eyebrow as I pinched my boarding pass to her with the same hand I was using to try and keep my pants up.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, dropping my tie and one of my inside-out socks at her feet, “I plan on being completely naked by the time we get to our seats.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
“I REALLY DO WANT TO hold hands on takeoff,” Annie said.
I slipped my hand into hers.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Well, considering I get naked before takeoff, I’d say that exactly nine months from the moment we fly over the Columbia River, you’ll probably be giving birth.”
She laughed. “Pervert.”
I buttoned my shirt.
I couldn’t help myself now:
RYAN DEAN WEST 2: So . . . loser, did you pack the condoms?
RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Don’t be ridiculous. Annie is not like that.
RYAN DEAN WEST 2: I bet five out of five Buffalo wings on the Ryan Dean West Spice Matrix Megan Renshaw is.
RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Hmmm . . . I haven’t been keeping up with that particular scale, but that stewardess up the aisle has got to be a four-and-a-half . . . I wonder if I could swing a trip to LA next weekend . . . . Just a thought.
JOEY COSENTINO: Goddamnit, Ryan Dean. I am going to stop sticking up for you if you don’t grow the fuck up. You are finally getting to go somewhere with the girl of your dreams, and you can’t stop thinking about every other female on the planet.
RYAN DEAN WEST 1: I’m sorry, Joey. Hey, how could you be on this plane?
JOEY COSENTINO: I’m not. I’m the part of your subconscious that actually (a) knows the right thing to do and (b) is not perverted.
RYAN DEAN WEST 2: You mean there is a part of my brain that doesn’t think about sex? You’re making that up!
RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Go away, Joe. The stewardess is about to come around to check if my seat belt is snug enough.
I actually managed to get dressed, shirt tucked, necktie knotted, one sock still inside out but at least in my shoes, before the plane was on the runway, and all this despite the fact that I was wedged into a middle seat between Annie and a drunk-bald-fat guy who fell asleep, sitting on my seat belt buckle, with his head on my shoulder.
We were still holding hands when the plane began its descent into Seattle. Me and Annie . . . not me and the drunk guy.
“This is going to be so great,” Annie said.
“What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in your life?” I asked.
“I don’t know. What about you?”
“Top three,” I said—my shoulder leaned against hers, and it felt so good—“were those last two times you and I were alone at Stonehenge, and being here right now, holding your hand.”
I looked right at her.
“You’re trying to see if you can make me do it, aren’t you, West?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.
“Sure.” Then she said, “It is not going to happen.”
“Stay strong, Annie.”
“You too, Ryan Dean.”
Crap.
She was playing the same game.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
ANNIE’S MOTHER AND FATHER WERE waiting for us when we came through the arrival gate. I had never even seen a photograph of them, but they both looked so Annie-like that I would have known them anyway. They were doctors, and they looked so young and healthy. When they saw us, their eyes smiled the same way that Annie’s did.
Annie’s father kissed her, then he held his hand out to me.
“You must be Ryan Dean,” he said. “Annie thinks the world of you.”
I looked at her; and she actually blushed. I couldn’t believe it—Annie Altman turning red; and I wondered if she had that same inner-voice thing where she was currently calling herself a loser, even if I did think it looked totally hot when it happened to her. Blushing, I mean.
“Thank you,” I said, and then I thought, What a stupid thing to say, so I added, “Doctor Altman.” Which sounded even stupider.
Then Annie’s mom hugged me, which kind of flustered me for two reasons: first, because she was a doctor, it made me immediately think she was going to ask me to take my pants off; and, second, I have to admit it, being Annie’s mom, she was really hot.
And she said, “ ‘Doctor Altman’ won’t work in our house. We won’t know who you’re talking to. But you are so polite, Ryan Dean.”
Now I was blushing. Loser.
“You should just call me Rachel, and the other Doctor Altman is Keith.”
I hated calling grown-ups by their first names. It seemed so flower-child-nineteen-seventies to me. So I decided I’d try to not use their names at all, or if I had to, I’d call them “Doc Dad” and “Doc Mom.”
Annie’s father had to drive us to the docks in Seattle to catch the ferry; it was a thirty-five-minute ride to their home on Bainbridge Island. I had never been to Seattle before, and I thought it was one of the most intense-looking cities I’d ever seen, built right up against the tree-lined coast, in the shadow of a giant volcano.
On the way to the docks, we talked about school and sports. Doc Dad was one of the only adults in America I’d ever met who had actually played rugby when he was in college, so we hit it off right away, even though he had been a loose forward. Loose forwards are usually not the most evolved primates on the planet. Still, I knew I was going to fit in just fine with Annie’s family.
Hand-holding in the backseat with Annie was definitely off, though. It took only one look from her to quietly get that message to me. And I could feel her getting a little embarrassed again too when her father and mother began talking about her.
“This is what Annie’s told us about you, Ryan Dean,” her mother said. “Tell us if we’re right. She says you are the smartest boy in the school, you’re a great athlete, and you made the varsity rugby team when you were in tenth grade. And she told us you are the best-looking boy at school too.”
Annie coughed.
My ears turned red.
“You’re Annie’s first real boyfriend,” her father said.
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Annie said. “Ryan Dean and I are just really good friends. That’s all.”
I guess that whole “boyfriend” label did kind of make it sound like salmon spawning, as Seanie might have noticed.
“Tell us about where you live, Ryan Dean,” Doc Mom said, turning sideways to look at me.
“O-Hall,” I said, and then I thought, why am I such a fucking idiot? I wasn’t even listening to her; I was too caught up in thinking about being Annie’s “boyfriend.”
Annie coughed again, no doubt choking on the thought of bringing a delinquent to Bainbridge Island for the weekend.
“I mean . . . I live in Weston,” I corrected. “I don’t get home much.”
“That’s a shame,” Doc Mom said. “Well, you are welcome to visit us anytime you’d like.”
I looked at Annie and smiled, and she mouthed “pervert” to me.
We were paused in a line of cars making their way onto the ferry.
“Well, what brought you two together?” Doc Dad asked me.
“Annie was the first person I met at Pine Mountain,” I said. “I was really lost and out of place when I started.” I slid my hand over so I touched Annie’s fingers, and she pulled her hand away. “But Annie came right up and introduced herself and helped show me around. She’s been my best friend ever since that day, and I’d do anything for her.”
r /> “You are such a sweet boy!” Doc Mom chirped. “Have you ever been to Seattle before, Ryan Dean?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, laying it on as thick as possible, momentarily fantasizing about that dreamed-of couch in Annie’s bedroom. “But it really is beautiful here.”
“Wait till you see the house,” she said. “We are right on the waterfront, and we look across the sound to the Seattle skyline and Mount Rainier. It’s a perfect spot.”
Yeah, I thought, how could it not be? As long as it’s got Annie in it—and you keep her gay dog off my leg—you could live in a fucking plywood lean-to.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Annie said. “Did you bring any swim trunks? We have an indoor pool and Jacuzzi.”
“Wow,” I said. “No. I didn’t.”
I looked down, then shrugged and looked over at Annie and whispered, “I’ll go without.”
Annie rolled her eyes.
“We can pick some up for you on the island, Ryan Dean,” Doc Mom said.
Score.
Even if it rained all weekend, I’d still get to be Annie Altman’s pool boy.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
OKAY.
I realized why my dad refuses to shop for anything, even golf clubs and fishing gear, with my mom.
For most women, I think shopping becomes something like a model of the expanding universe, only rather than relating to the Big Bang, Ryan Dean West’s Law of Shopping deals with the expansion of time, and “adorable stuff” to look at. Kind of like a supernova rather than a black hole—the opposite of having your balls stepped on, as similar as the experiences may actually be.