Authors: Julie Halpern
“Yes, Mom. There are boys who like horror movies, too. It’s fascinating.”
“I’m sure it is. Does this boy have a name?”
“Leo Dietz.”
“So he has the same name as the boy you saw a movie with last week. Friday nights. Movies. If I weren’t a confused old lady, I’d say it sounds like you’re dating.”
“It’s called hooking up, Mom,” CJ corrected her.
“You are both wrong, and promise me you’ll never say those words again, CJ. Especially if it ever involves you.”
“Then what is he?” Mom tried to hide a smile.
“I don’t know. Why does it matter? We’re not running away and getting married or anything.”
“That’s called eloping,” CJ interjected.
“Have you been watching Lifetime or something?” I chided.
“He likes those movies where Tori Spelling gets stalked,” AJ pointed out.
“Shut up.” CJ punched AJ’s chest.
“You shut up,” AJ retaliated, and in an instant they were on the kitchen floor, on top of each other.
“Is that a scene reenactment?” I asked over their screaming.
Twin boy legs flailed, and a clatter of Jenga tiles rained down on top of them. “Enough!” my mom cried, and while she attempted to pry the gangly pair apart, I made my hasty exit, running upstairs to grab the Basket Case movies and calling “Good-bye!” as I escaped out the front door.
*
When I got to Leo’s, his parents were in the front hall getting ready to leave. I was early, and I hadn’t anticipated the dreaded meeting of the parents. I put on my most pleasant girl face, the one that says “I’m just a friend and your son will not be impregnating me this evening.”
“So nice to meet you, Alex. Wish I could say we’ve heard a lot about you, but Leo doesn’t talk to us much.” Leo’s mom was tall and polished, with his same dark, coppery hair. She wasn’t overly friendly, and I wasn’t sure if I actually liked her. Not that it mattered. Friends’ parents were always at the bottom of the list of people I needed to like. Or like me back. As long as it didn’t get in the way of said friendship, neutral territory was fine.
Leo’s dad didn’t say anything, but he shook my hand when Leo introduced me. “This is Alex,” was what Leo said. I was relieved he didn’t precede it with “my girlfriend.” They left soon after I arrived, and Leo and I did the awkward dance of
what now
in his front hall. I looked at the framed pictures his parents had along the wall. Gapped-tooth school pictures, family vacations on mountainsides, and military portraits of who I assumed was Leo’s brother, Jason, covered the walls.
“He looks like you,” I noted about Jason.
“Yeah. Except the halo over his head.” Leo sounded peeved.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know, every family has one kid who’s perfect and one kid who’s a fuckup. He’s
not
the fuckup.”
“I don’t think every family has to be that way. Like, what about families with more than two kids?”
“They’re lucky. The perfection and fucked-up-ness get distributed more evenly. Way less pressure.”
I mulled over this theory and chalked it up to baggage I wasn’t in the mood to delve into.
“I brought the movies.” I held up the DVDs to change the subject.
Leo led me into the kitchen and opened the freezer. “What kind of pizza do you want?”
“Just cheese, if you have it.”
As Leo cooked dinner, I moved into the family room. The house was very neat and looked designed, as though all of the knick-knacks were strategically placed instead of shoved onto available shelf space like at my house. I loaded the first movie into the player and sat down on a long, velvety gray couch. I kicked off my shoes and turned myself to lie down on the luxurious fabric. Leo entered the room, saw me, and took this as a cue to rest himself beside me. Instantly I felt my body heat up. This was my favorite position to be in with Leo: too close to read expressions, too tempted to have a conversation. We kissed and fumbled and groped and grabbed, but our clothes remained intact because, as I reminded him, “There’s a pizza in the oven.”
About ten minutes in, I pulled my face away from Leo. “You taste different,” I said. “And smell different.”
He talked into my neck. “I’m trying to quit smoking. Someone told me it tastes like a turd.”
He quit smoking for me? That was a lot to put on a person. What would happen if we stopped whatever it was we were doing? Would he go back to smoking? Smoke more cigarettes just to spite me? Turn to crack?
The buzz of the oven put a pause on the couch session and my thoughts. So what if he quit smoking because of me? It was stupid to begin with, and he smelled a lot better without it. And if he started smoking again, not my problem. I didn’t need another thing to feel guilty about.
Side by side we ate pizza, drank Coke, and watched
Basket Case 2
. Leo laughed at all the right parts, and I caught myself watching his face to see how he reacted to each scene. He was rather lovely. Nothing made someone more attractive than knowing they liked the same movies I did. It always disgusted me when people couldn’t tolerate horror movies, or lumped them all into one dismissible genre, as though they weren’t each their own work of art. Or piece of crap. But at least watch them and decide.
When
Basket Case 2
ended, I asked, “So what did you think? Brilliant, right? The third one goes total crazytown. There’s this part where Granny Ruth says, ‘Oh Cedric, I see you’ve brought your lettuce.’ It’s hysterical—” Before I could continue, Leo was on top of me. He smelled so good, like laundry and pizza and gasoline, I couldn’t help but pull his shirt over his head. Instantly my shirt was off, too. We attacked each other’s clothing with mindless abandon. Instinctively I needed to be naked next to him, to feel nothing but his warm skin against my own. When all our clothes were off, we shivered together. Not from cold but anticipation.
We hadn’t known each other very long, not in the talking-to-each-other-every-day sense. But I had watched him for years, followed his class schedules and smoke breaks, spied on him at horror movies and coffee shops. He felt familiar, safe. Leo had done nothing in his existence to make me feel bad, never touched me in a way that was all about him. I had never known a guy like that, and I had let them explore me, manipulate me, convince me that what I did with them would feel as good to me as it did to them. It never had. Leo helped me to lose myself. Not become someone different but transcend my life so none of the bad mattered. I wanted to be as close to him as I could. To feel what I had never felt with another person.
Our breathing was frenetic, like we couldn’t get where we wanted to go fast enough. His hands were gentler than I wanted, and I grabbed one and wrapped it around my breast. I let out a sigh, and Leo reciprocated with a sound of his own. “Do you have a condom?” I asked. Life had been too cruel in the last year not to get me pregnant, or diseased if I wasn’t careful. I couldn’t trust my body to do the right thing, and I didn’t want to have a conversation with Leo in the middle of this to talk past sexual partners. I didn’t want to know. I just needed it to happen.
Leo rolled off me and stumbled upstairs. I quivered on the couch, every part of my body feeling tense and needing. Footsteps pounded down the stairs, and then Leo was on top of me again, ripping open the wrapper with his teeth. Quickly we were completely intertwined. Neither of us lasted very long. We couldn’t have if we tried. Nothing I had ever done with myself compared to the grand finale with Leo. I shuddered, even after he collapsed on top of me. I willed the feeling not to end, and when it finally did I fell asleep almost instantly.
When I awoke, a knitted blanket covered my body. Leo, fully clothed, sat next to me on the couch eating Doritos and watching
Basket Case 3
. When he saw I was awake, he paused the movie. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I started it since you’ve seen it a million times. Actually, I tried to ask you but you wouldn’t wake up. Plus, you look really cute when you’re asleep.”
“I don’t look cute.” I sneered and tried to dress myself discreetly, but I felt Leo’s eyes on me. It reminded me of Becca, of her flashing Caleb at her window the night before she started chemo. I dropped the blanket and dressed in full view. When I finished, Leo wore a huge grin. “Unpause,” I said.
“Come here,” he commanded.
I hesitated, and a ding sounded from the kitchen.
“Cookies are ready.” Leo bounded off the couch into the kitchen, his bare feet slapping against the floor. When he returned, he carried a plate of steaming chocolate-chip cookies.
My face must have objected.
“What?” he demanded. “They’re just the fridge kind. It’s not like I broke a fucking egg. Don’t eat them then.” He looked put out.
Guilty as a bitch, I tried to hide my discomfort with his post-sex baking effort. “No. Cookies are good.” Apparently, that was enough for him, and he squeezed up to me on the couch, barely giving me enough room to digest.
Ten minutes into
Basket Case 3
, I left to use the bathroom and when I returned found a nice, spacious seat on the opposite end of the couch. Leo seemed focused enough on the movie not to notice. When it ended, I collected my DVDs and told him, “Thank you for having me over.” It sounded ridiculously formal after what we did, but I didn’t want to get all sappy and relationshippy. The smell of fresh-baked cookies hovered around us.
Leo stood to walk me out, but I stopped him. “No, you stay on the couch. I can find my way out. Eat your cookies.”
He looked at me quizzically but didn’t make a move to rise again. “Thanks for coming,” he said in a way that acknowledged the weirdness of the situation, the weirdness of me. “Hope we can do this again sometime.”
I nodded, not knowing which part he was referring to.
“See you in school!” I waved overly enthusiastically and bolted out the door.
As I drove home, I berated myself for showing so much vulnerability during sex. It should have been no big deal. Except that it was a big deal. And sex with Leo was an even bigger deal. And the actual sex with Leo was most definitely the biggest deal of all. I mean … cookies.
Instead of doing something to make me forget the shit of my life, I had added something to make it a trillion times more complicated.
I knew then I had to end whatever it was I had with Leo.
SATURDAY BECCA FELT
somewhat better than she had been feeling, but not enough to leave the house. We spent the day together, camped in front of the TV, this time for a
Buffy
marathon.
“Maybe I should have my Make-A-Wish about Joss Whedon. Like, meet him or something.”
“Screw that. You have cancer. Up the ante and wish for him to create a show about a badass bounty hunter and make you the star.”
“Yes! Opposite Jamie Bamber!” she cooed.
“Speaking of muscular men, what’s going on with you and homeschool boy?”
“I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. Yes, I can. I have total cancer brain—but he sent me flowers! Like, a bouquet he picked from his garden. With a note. It’s over there.”
I hopped off the blue chair and walked over to a wonky, paint-dappled vase filled with wild-looking flowers, although not necessarily wildflowers. “Where’s the note?” I asked, not finding it tucked into the bouquet.
“Oh. I hid it under my mattress. Mom and Helen are nosing around my room way too much. I think they suspect I’m smoking pot, which I’m totally not. I wish I were. It’s supposed to work miracles on nausea. Maybe you can score me some!”
“Score you some? Who talks like that?”
“I do. Now get me some pot.”
“Where am I going to get pot? You’re the one who was all toking it up with Davis. Maybe you can call him in the army to score you some.”
“What about Leo? Could he get me some pot?”
“Leo doesn’t smoke pot. I don’t think.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t get a quarter. Or a gram. However they measure it. Ask him. For me?”
“We’ll see. Isn’t it legal now for medicinal purposes? Can’t you just get a prescription?”
“Can you really see my mom going to Walgreens to pick me up some joints?”
“Duly noted. Now where’s that note?”
She accepted my weak commitment to getting her pot, and dug Caleb’s note out from under her mattress. Inside a blue envelope was a neatly printed note.
Dear Becca,
I hope these flowers brighten your day just a little. If you need anything, throw a rock at my window. I might have something to help with the pain, too, if you’re interested. Take care of yourself.
Wishing you well,
Caleb
“He totally wants to bone the cancer right out of you,” I told Becca.
“You got
that
from the note? I thought it was much sweeter and homeschooly than that.”
“What did he mean when he said he might have something to help you deal with the pain? Do you think he meant pot? Is he growing marijuana in his little homeschool garden?”
“There is no way. He’s not like that.”
“Ah, but Leo is.”
“You know what I mean.” I brushed off the insinuation that somehow Leo was pottier than Caleb. “But do you think that’s what Caleb might have meant?”
“It’s pot or his penis.”
“I’d take either.”
“Should we throw a rock through his window and find out?” I asked.
“I believe it was
at
his window. And no, not while my mom is home. I prefer this to remain a secret homeschool affair.”
“That sounds pretty hot,” I acknowledged.
“Speaking of hot,” Becca transitioned, “tell me about your evening with Mr. Army Jacket.”
I hadn’t yet told Becca about my night with Leo. Parts of it felt too good to share with her, as though I’d be rubbing my ecstasy in her cancerous face. And other parts of it, where I looked like a dumping skag, seemed too stupid to burden her with when she was dealing with something so much bigger. Still, I knew how much Becca loved anything sordid, and it
was
a somewhat momentous occasion for me.
“Well, if you must know, I guess I kind of crossed something off my Fuck-It List. If I had one.”