Track laughed, and I got mad. “Listen, I don’t know! It’s hard to remember,” I yelled. “But I swear you licked my nose, so don’t fucking laugh!”
He stopped laughing. “I didn’t lick your nose,” he said. “Not exactly. You sort of stuck your nose in my mouth,” he said. “Kind of.”
“…What do you mean, ‘kind of’,” I asked, a little fearful.
“Well, listen, you were trashed, right?”
“So were you!”
“Not as trashed as you!” he fired back. “I have never seen you that drunk,” he said, strong. “Never!”
“…Well…”
“You pissed yourself, Lath.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Pissed your pants.” I stared. “Yeah,” Track said, “you did.”
“…But… I mean…”
“Listen. I wouldn’t tell anyone, but, yeah, you drained right into your jeans, man. I saw you when you came down — I was swimming. I thought you were coming in, but you could barely stand.” He smiled a bit. “Yelling about your shoes, and then throwing them. And then you just lay there and mumbled shit.” He shook his head. “I called your name about five times.”
I felt way small, now. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. So then I cross over and get out, and you’re lying there with a shitty smile, and you reeked of piss, I kid you not.”
“Oh fuck,” I muttered.
“Don’t sweat it, man. It happens. I’m not going to tell.”
“Really?”
“Why would I? Why would I tell?” He looked into my eyes, serious.
“…Well, so then—”
“So then — well, you were lying on your back right at the edge of the water. You almost were slipping in anyway. Your feet are already in the water, with your socks on! So I just… pulled you in halfway. I pulled your pants off and pulled you in halfway.”
“My pants?”
“Yes. What else? I rinsed ‘em good. Your boxers too. I was thinking the stream would wash your legs…” He paused, but then smiled again. “You were fucking singing shit with no song, it was…” He looked at me again. “Really, Lather, it’s okay.”
“And you swear you’ll never tell?”
“Swear.”
We went quiet for a minute, but then I had to ask.
“So tell me the rest.”
Now, Track looked a little uncomfortable, but not too much. “So I don’t know. I get your pants all rinsed, and wrung out as good as I could, and then… Not much really. Not really.”
I looked at the floor.
“So… I kind of half picked you up to pull you back on the bank, and, I don’t know, you know? I was drunk too, right?” I nodded. “Right? So I guess you kind of had your arms around me and your face is in my face for a couple seconds. Just fast, and whatever…” He skipped ahead a few seconds I think. “…so, but that was good, because it was easier to stand you up and I had to stand you up. And then I help you get your pants back on, which was not fucking easy.” He laughed again, now. A true laugh. “It was not easy. You’re fucking stumbling like a scarecrow or something, and I’m… I didn’t bother with your boxers — they’re probably still under a bush at The Logs. Your socks too, which were soaked, so…”
“Uh… Thanks,” I said. What else could I say?
“…Yeah, well then it was spinnies and puke time for you, and you fucking emptied for about ten minutes.”
“…Yeah. I remember after that.”
“Totally wasted, dog. Not pretty.”
“Yeah.”
“Complete.”
A weird feeling came over me. “I put my head on your shoulder?” I blurted out.
“…Yeah.” he said, quiet. “Yeah.”
“And my cheek… next to yours?”
Quiet.
More quiet.
“Track?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me.”
“What?”
“…Are you gay?”
* * *
“Oh, Celeste,” Dara said sadly, and maybe with a little much of a disapproving parent kind of sound. Talking about anything else, Celeste might have jumped on her best friend for that tone, but this time it felt half right. Or at least, it felt like… a test. Like Dara was testing Celeste, who needed to pass that test — for herself, not for Dara.
“I know,” Celeste replied, and then she waited for bad feelings to come. … They didn’t. They didn’t come. Celeste even smiled a little. “But, hey, why not?”
“Why not?” Dara asked, incredulous. “Why not?”
“Yeah — why not?”
“Well, duh! Because—”
“Because blah blah blah!” Celeste interrupted. “We’re sixteen, Dar! Sixteen!” She rolled over on the end of Dara’s double bed, until she could look her bestie in the eyes. “You are sixteen, and you have a boyfriend,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Archie’s different,” came the reply.
“No doubt.”
“But that’s good.”
“Are you doing anything?”
“…Just kissing. And cuddling!” she added.
“Cuddling!” Celeste laughed, rolling on to her back again. “Cuddling.”
“Yes. And I like it fine.”
“But does he?”
Now Celeste had pressed a button. Dara had wondered the same thing. Would Archie want more? He had asked, 'what's next?' a couple days earlier. She'd just kissed him again. But did he want more? Did he already? Would he get bored of her? "...I don't know," she answered, weakly.
Celeste returned to her eye-to-eye position. This was serious. “It’s Archie,” she said. “I bet he’ll go as slow as you want. You know he’s probably more nervous about it than you’ll ever be.”
“He is,” Dara smiled. “He’s so cute.”
Celeste had to admit that Archie had somehow gotten cuter as he got older — which was the opposite of what she thought about herself, with her braces, glasses and ridiculously flat chest. Yeah, she was tall and strong, and her mom and older sisters were all flat chested runners too, and that was cool… But sometimes Celeste just wished she had a build more like Dara’s. With… curves. Curves that boys liked. “Fuck!” she snapped.
“What?”
“You are so lucky!” she said. “You have a nice boyfriend. He’s so nice.”
“Yeah,” Dara smiled.
“And I’m rubbing Bret Simmon’s thing at a party, and he’ll tell his friends, and they’ll all look at me like that.”
“You said he promised never to tell,” Dara replied, worried.
“He better not!” said Celeste. “I made him promise! I told him what would happen if he told. I know some things he won’t want to get out. If he…”
“…Then he won’t,” Dara assured. they both lay back and stared at the ceiling for a time. “Why did you do that, Cel?”
Celeste smiled slowly to herself. “I don’t feel bad about it,” she said. “Not at all.”
“…But—”
“To see what it was like! To… I don’t know. Try it I guess.” Celeste lifted herself again to face her friend. “You know,” she said. “For fun, yes, but for knowing about it. I mean, he was so sweet. He is a nice guy. So goofy I mean.”
“I know.”
“He makes me laugh.”
“Me too.”
“And he’s being funny and it’s just me and him talking late, and I start walking up to go home, and he’s walking with me.” The memory ran. “And then we’re at the path, and he’s so sweet, talking about how he doesn’t know anything, and he just feels like he’s got nothing. He says he knows he can’t be my boyfriend — he knows I couldn’t like him like that, that he’s just a doofus and I’m so cool, because of sports, and could he just hold me. He said he’d be so gentle, and he would never hurt me. So he held me, and he was gentle. He was afraid of me, but he also wanted me. It was…”
“Kind of like Archie?”
“Are they all like that? All boys?”
“…I don’t think so,” Dara said.
“And then. Well. We walked off the trail just a bit. He held me close…”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing! He held me. So gently. He didn’t try to kiss me or anything. It was me!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the one. First I held him tighter with one arm so I’d be closer, and then… I touched it.”
“Oh, Celeste.”
“I did!” she admitted with remembered excitement. “I touched it, then rubbed… Well, I sort of moved him slow, like he was a big doll, and his pants… and then he sat down, and it was hard Dara! I didn’t know it would be so much, I…”
“…And you…”
“And then he goes, ‘oh, oh, oh…’ Just a few seconds. Then, like, I think he was crying.”
“Crying?”
“I think.”
“Oh, Celeste.”
ns 15.158.61.20da2
