Sinners Never Sleep: Loverboy (1)
This saga, like many others, begins with a challenge. A challenge is an ambivalent thing, with the capacity to inspire nationalism as quickly as it can strike discord. A challenge can be introduced in many forms, from a gentleman’s agreement and ten paces to a draw, to passionate words thrown over a marble desk and “We’ll beat those damn Russians to the moon.”
This challenge, my challenge, was nothing so bombastic. It was simply the inevitable result of a six-pack of beer, the fourth day of summer and the fourth day in a row I came home from the town pool complaining of my job, a beautiful girl, and cowardice. Never forget that cowardice. See, challenges aren’t always made up of the courageous stuffs and reputation bullshit. Sometimes challenges are just the disguise worn by frustration and A Secret Awful Hope. A Secret Awful Hope that I’d never see her again.
In the fall, she’d be off to UC Berkley to study biology as a prerequisite for medicine and she swore she wouldn’t look back. She claimed I was on the much more glamorous end of the stick, with a partial scholarship to BU as an undecided major.
“God, you still get to explore yourself and discover the things you never knew you loved. There’s no better feeling in the world than seeing yourself walking two steps ahead of you, seeing who and all you could really be just two steps ahead of you, and walking a little bit faster to blend into that person and just becoming the passion you never knew existed. You’re so lucky Josh,” she breathed, grip tight on my shoulders, shaking me gently. When I asked why she declared so early and didn’t leave it open for all the passions she might never know she had, she just laughed and shook her head and went to grab another bottle of beer.
“You’ve got it bad, man,” my best friend Chris observed as he sidled up next to me, taking her spot.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I denied.
“You’re drooling,” Dani, his girlfriend, my other best friend, and the reason I no longer noticed whether or not a situation was awkward because trust me, nothing is more excruciatingly awkward than third-wheeling the date where they did it at the movies, wryly sipped her beer.
“Am not,” I replied automatically. And I wasn’t. That was just the dribble from where I’d missed my mouth earlier when Emma came up and started talking to me. But I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand anyway and glanced over at the treacle couple.
Chris was not a big man at 5’11” and 145 pounds, but his presence was not small either. His hair stood up in messy shocks of dirty blonde all over his head, but more noticeable than his ever-present bed-head look was his huge mouth, almost always upturned in a smile. Perhaps the most scarring thing I’ve ever had to witness, second only to the misplaced movie theater sex groans (we were seeing Meet the Robinsons for god sakes, upon Dani’s request!), were his frantic shrieks as we rushed him to the emergency room in junior year when he accidentally swallowed her earring while making out. Apparently, the boy had quite a tongue—insert retching gags here.
Dani was a tiny thing at 5’3” with messy orange hair, a C-cup chest, and a shockingly painful ability to run and ninja kick in 4-inch heels when her purse was stolen and “Sorry Josh, you’re wearing the same colored hoodie as the thief!” Chris eventually managed to catch up to her and convince her that her crappy phone, three sticks of gum, two tampons, and half eaten bag of goldfish weren’t worth the trouble, and promised to by her a new one. Purse, that is.
Chris and Dani had met at a football game in freshman year, and had been together since that homecoming, after jumping through all the generic hoops and hurdles of shy flirting, first dates, meeting the parents, etcetera. Maybe it wasn’t the most exciting love story, but maybe it was a testament to how the best love stories aren’t in the meetings but in the lastings. Unfortunately, all I had to show for four years of high school and several summer stints as the lifeguard of the town pool were too many meetings and only three semi-lastings. Depressing statistics I tended to wallow in, but that was up until I met Emma.
She was a new lifeguard at the town pool, and a fluorescent light bulb of pale skin amongst the rest of us who were veterans of four or five years. And she was the reason for my garrulous complaints for four nonstop days. She was ethereal. She was so cultured. She was an enigma. And she drove me crazy with those curvy hips and full lips. Each day she’d deign me with her presence, be it small talk, a witty conversation, a brush of fingers against my arm, and I would seize up with this incandescent fear. Then, like a butterfly, she’d be gone again, and I could breathe and remember words and remember the words I didn’t say and spend the rest of the day reliving those few agonizing moments and watch her not watch me from the opposite side of the pool. And here, tonight, in the light of the campfire was no different.
By state law, unauthorized campfires were illegal in Arizona, especially in the cusp of the summer heat (which begs the question, why did we even want a campfire in this summer heat?). The law had something to do with the natural tendency of fire to spread like, well, like wildfire with this much dry brush around. But if you asked me that night why bonfires were illegal, my answer would have had to do with the celestial way the light of the fire danced in Emma’s eyes and the lucky shadow cast by the flame that touched the contour of her cheeks and how these things were substantial reasons to plead insanity or sporadic heart condition in legal court. When I said as much to Chris, he made an angry pterodactyl noise in the back of his throat and thumped me on the back.
Despite his wiry frame, the boy packed a punch, and beer sloshed all over the front of my shirt. I started to splutter some sort of genius retort, maybe along the lines of “Fuck man, fuck you!” but then thought fuck it, and reared back to punch him. But then Dani stepped between us and I couldn’t punch a girl, so I settled for reaching around her and upturning Chris’s drink on him. He just laughed and shook the drink off his hair to the tune of the cat-calls whistled by onlookers: ‘boy fight! Boy fight!’ Luckily, most in attendance of the Annual Illegal Summer Kickoff Bonfire were other lifeguards and maybe a few of Ridgemont High’s finest; we were a pretty laid back bunch and no such ‘boy fight’—anticlimactic compared to its sister—ensued. I was itching to punch something though, but most times I often was.
Dani pulled me away from the rest of the crowd, ironically closer to the rising flames (welcome to Arizona folks, a point on the map somewhere between hell and a hard place), and Chris followed, three fresh beers in his hand. He popped the caps and handed each of us one, and for a while, we chugged in silence, letting the bubbly warmth of the alcohol battle the portentous heat of the fire within our guts.
There’s something hypnotic about leaping flames, redolent orange like a poisoned ballerina, licking yellow like a diaphanous snake, effronterous blue like a belly dancer, shaking and seducing with its hips. There’s something mesmerizing about how these colors strident red hot against each other and beg for attention in small doses. There’s something languorous about the smell of dead roses. See, fire is dangerous, but not because it burns. Because it inspires. We come along, we humans, and we see this concentration of awesome power in a vessel we cannot quell and we, with our injured pride and fallacies of civility, become angry at what defies our understanding. Okay, I became angry.
Staring into the fire, I became angry at the stunning realization that the girl of my dreams was but ten feet away and here I was sitting on my ass. I became angry that my ass was now the perfect shape for sitting, molded through years of a practiced apathy and the small consolation of “study now and you can begin a really great life later, after high school, after college, after you make something of yourself.” I became angry that in my eighteen years of existence, I had yet to make… anything really. I became angry that while I sat and made carbon dioxide, the fire roared and made carbon dioxide and heat and a flagrant statement of “Look at me, I’m something incredible. I’m untamable.” And I became angry that I looked. And so I took that as a challenge.
Halfway through my bottle, I sat back and swished the beer around the glass, watching the reflection of fire bend around and through the bottle and form bulbous shapes of light like a lava lamp. But chaos wouldn’t stay put and so I gave up trying to organize it and instead chucked the rest of my bottle into the heart of the inferno. I derived some distanced form of delight from the resulting explosion of where the liquid courage shattered its shell and pranced like plasma into the fire. Melting gold flakes jittered upwards like fireflies and captured my attention. Heat beckoned, drawing its moth in. Hell had me by the throat.
“Josh,” I felt a hand on my shoulder. Chris stood above me with another beer outstretched. He gestured with his head to where Emma stood a few yards away, looking at me with cat eyes. Chris pressed the beer in my hands with this sympathetic look I hated. “Go get her, man.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. I downed the drink to drown the cowardice and tossed the empty bottle back into the fire, much to the chagrin of those nearby on whom scattered ashes stung. And then I just got up, rolled back my shoulders and walked over to her, wondering if it could really just be that easy.
The name stuck in my throat. Of course it wasn’t that easy; it had taken me one and a half beers to even approach her!
“Babe,” the arm of the intruding voice snuck its way around her waist.
“Screw off Peter,” my beautiful angel elbowed the adjacent body in the gut. Peter turned out to be a freakishly tall, gangly sort of guy with a huge nose and a wounded expression that wrinkled it.
“I said screw off!” Emma stepped out of his arm and closer to me, but not close enough. I cursed myself that I wasn’t the one standing up for her. Peter didn’t screw off though, and instead shifted from foot to foot and backed up a few paces to give us some space. Emma studiously ignored him and turned to me with a sweet sort of apologetic smile. “Sorry, he’s… not worth the explanation.”
I shrugged, stuffing my hands into my pockets, furiously trying to think of an appropriate response.
“That was pretty cool, what you did with the fire,” she offered, looking over my shoulder and back to the bonfire.
I ducked my head down as something burned like mercury in the back of my throat. It was happening again, that irreprehensible fear that clammed me up. I recalled all the words I’d wanted to say to her and all the reasons I never did and the past had me in a chokehold. I just found it so incredulous that she would want to talk to me, that she thought something I did was cool, that she… was walk-up-to-able. She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. It just didn’t work like that. That inconceivable ‘it’ that dictated when time could sprout wings and where fishes made their beds. There was a soft touch on my arm, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Are you okay, Josh?” It was Emma asking, with large brown doe eyes that solicited only friendship. Little did she know that it was this only friendship that killed me, this only friendship that I’d done nothing as yet to deserve.
I didn’t dwarf her by any means, but in the warm glow of expansive summer night, she looked positively tiny. And… god, and so sexy. I wanted to sweep her up and into me, taste her lips, stroke her skin, grab her thighs. A single touch on the arm and I wanted to strip her right there and push her down onto the dead grass. I wanted to kiss her so thorou—
I blinked. “Emma.” Fabulous, that greeting was only four minutes overdue.
“No,” a pejorative voice stretched out, “Peter.” Like I couldn’t see the oaf standing right in front of me where Emma had been only moments earlier. This close, I was this close to heaven. Wait, damn. How long had I been just loafing there, looking like a loon?
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath.
“Yeah, well, fuck to you to,” Peter tipped back an empty bottle. Upon discovering its contents were drained, he eyed it and hurled it a few yards away. There was a tinkling crash of breaking glass in the underbrush.
“Don’t do that,” I said crossly. “It’s stupid.”
“Right, and pitching alcohol into a fire is not?” he was bent over a beer cooler.
“Yeah well. I wasn’t littering,” I finished lamely.
When Peter stood, it was with a smirk on his face and two beers in his hand. He tossed one to me and we cracked them open, eyes on the crowd, not on each other.
I asked, “Where did she go?” somewhat reluctant to make it so obvious. Peter knew exactly whom I was talking about, and with a jut of his chin, I could make out her figure across the fire, sitting on a log next to Chris and Dani. They were laughing about something. This knife of self-loathing wrenched itself into my gut. “God, she’s beautiful,” I blurted out.
Peter snorted, “Welcome to the club, bro.”
Suddenly, I was very wary of whom I was drinking with. “What club?”
“The Emma Club,” why did I feel like he savored the apprehensive look on my face? “Of course she’s beautiful. She’s gorgeous and she knows it and she wields it like a weapon. She’ll cut you down with that innocence she says she finds adorable.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I shook my head.
“Don’t I?” Peter’s voice dropped with a sort of menace. “Or maybe I’m just not worth the explanation. The damn ninja plays those hearts like toys.”
“You’re right. She’s a bitch. And guess what Josh, she’s already made you hers.”
“Emma’s not—” I faltered, unable to claim her in a way that I could defend her, and I hated myself for it, “I’m not her bitch!”
“Call my bluff then,” he chuckled in a way that wasn’t funny, “say what you want. I’ve already been through her shit.”
“Shit, man? You’re an asshole!” I rounded on him. “You’re not some wounded poet that gets to light down on guys that still have a chance with her and impart some bullshit wisdom just because she wasn’t your picket fence, morning coffee, and two athletic children! You’re an ex, at most, and you’ve got to let her go.”
“Let her go, you think it’s that easy? Okay, Loverboy. This is your night with arms wide open. Go get her. Go get Emma, I dare you. Go get her.”
This was the second time in the night I was thrown up against that challenge. And there Peter stood with this enraged expression on his red face like he had rights to her. And that was just it.
I spun on my heel and strode over to where Emma, Chris, and Dani sat, ears ringing and heart racing. Before I had time to contemplate ‘it’ again, I took a swig of my beer and hurled the rest of the bottle into the fire again. Hell’s warning sizzles and Chris and Dani’s surprised cries of annoyance were mere background noise; Emma’s reaction was the only I cared about, and she didn’t disappoint. She laughed and clapped delightedly and her approval gave me the courage to continue. With a comical hand flourish and a skull empty of any rational thoughts, I bowed low, “Thank you, thank you very much!”
“He speaks!” Emma remarked.
“He was a mute before?” Chris replied archly.
“He was back there,” Emma gestured to where Peter’s figure no longer stood.
I forced myself to not think about it and just sat down next to Emma, “Well, I did have to plan your personal fireworks show.”
“For which the fire marshal would have your hide,” Dani grumbled, batting out a stray spark on her top.
“So I was thinking,” I wasn’t actually, “…Road trip.”
“…Road trip?” Dani questioned.
“…Road trip,” I affirmed. “The four of us. One week. To…. To Disneyland!”
“I don’t know bro, this all seems a bit harebrained,” Chris pointed out.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, it totally is. But think about it.” And the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that there were never two more perfect words strung together. But maybe I wasn’t so much thinking as the alcohol was. “This is such a sleepy town and we end up doing the same exact thing every summer. We are four vibrant people in the prime of our youth, recently free from the shackles of high school. We owe it to America, practically, to exercise this newfound freedom and just do something crazy, before we become apart of the cookie cutter society that graduates from college and into a job and into a promotion and into a midlife crisis and… well shit it’s already bumming me out.”
Dani’s eyebrows were high on her forehead “A road trip?”
“You know,” it was the first time Emma spoke up, and my heart stopped for a minute, “I kind of like this idea of a road trip. When would we start?”
“Tonight!” I jumped up, amped off her enthusiasm.
“Whoa, there Orville, let’s not sell the bike shop quite yet,” Chris brought me back down.
“What was that?” Dani snickered.
“I don’t know, something my grandfather used to say.”
“Well let’s keep it like that, in the past tense.”
“Okay, so when would we really start?” Emma asked again.
“Tomorrow?!” Chris squeaked.
“Yeah, tomorrow. Let’s not over-plan this thing. Let’s just be wild and reckless and do it. That’s what we are supposed to be doing right now anyway,” Dani’s hands were flying everywhere and something infectious shined in her eyes.
Not everyone had caught it quite yet though; Chris spluttered, “But we need to pack! We need to plan! We need to track our route!”
“No we don’t,” she shook her head determinedly. “We need a map, we need four wheels and gas. We need a hella lot of junk food. And we need some clothes.”
“Tomorrow?” Chris was coming around.
“A road trip?” Emma asked to me.
“For a week to Disneyland?” Dani’s face was scrunched dubiously.
“Okay, maybe not Disneyland. That’s the beauty of it. It’s completely anything we want it to be.”
“I’ve never been to Disneyland,” Emma put in.
“The happiest place on earth, are you kidding me?” Disneyland was the Holy Grail to Chris.
“We didn’t travel much,” she shrugged.
“Well, Disneyland it is!” and he was all gung-ho.
“Wait,” Emma cut in, “what about parents?”
“Out of town,” Chris waved it off.
“Out of sight,” I seconded.
“Out of their minds,” Dani followed suit.
“Right,” Emma still didn’t seem completely sold. “Well, what about the vehicle?”
“We can take The Sinner,” I offered.
Dani choked, “We can take The Sinner? Hah! That’s like saying we can hibernate in grizzly’s mouth!”
“Okay,” I pacified, “so she has a bit of a temper. But she’s an eight-seater, good mileage, and she’s just had her 80,000 check up.”
“Chris, what about your Tank?” Dani turned to him.
“Okay, see, in my case the ‘what about parents’ comment becomes a real question when their precious tank is jeopardized. The rents may not mind, or ever even notice, an impromptu road trip, but if they don’t see that Tank in the driveway the minute they return from Tucson, they will fly a low copter over the greater Tristate area till they spot that thing.”
“What’s with him?” Emma asked to me.
“His mom may have carried him in the womb for nine months, but his dad spent nine years in the garage building the Tank from spare parts. And best of all, the Tank doesn’t consume food at a rate that, considering the size of its massive dumps, should send it into negative body weight, talk back, or forget to make its bed in the morning.”
“It’s spits up oil when you try to turn on the engine,” Dani refuted.
“And it guzzles gas like Dani guzzles goldfish,” Chris retorted.
“Okay, but the bed thing still stands.”
“A very sore point of contention in the Brennan household,” Chris acquiesced, “but also very off topic. So can we agree that The Sinner is the best ride we’ve got?”
“Emma,” Dani was desperate now, “please tell me you’re packing the likes of an RV in that purse.” It was a big purse.
“Sorry babe,” Emma sympathized, “I drive a beat up Volvo and this here is a smuggled pack of marshmallows.”
“Smuggled?” Chris piped up.
“When my mom is on a diet, everyone is on a diet,” she emphasized everyone severely.
“The Sinner it is!” I exclaimed.
“Why is it called Sinner?” Emma asked.
“No,” I shook my fuzzy head, “The Sinner like The Beatles or The City of Lights.”
“You’re The weirdest,” Dani joked.
“Okay, why is it called The Sinner?”
“And that, Emma, is a very sore point of contention with me.”
“He caught Chris and I in it on our 2 year anniversary,” Dani explained, all too gleefully.
“And when he saw us, he was so shocked that he accidentally let the parking brakes off,” like seasoned duet, Chris picked up the thread.
“The car rolled back into a stop sign, but the thing is so ornery that it didn’t even dent,” I was quite fond of my baby.
“Instead, the poor stop sign was knocked off its post and that’s all Josh would give us to cover up with before pitching us out into the street!” Dani was much more ebullient about the entire streaking scenario that I thought was normal.
I smirked at the memory, “We were parked near a church, so you can just pretty much guess the rest.”
“The stop sign still hangs in my room,” Chris finished proudly.
At that point, Emma was laughing so hard she was doubled over in the dirt after falling off her log. I didn’t know if it was the alcohol, the fire, or the utter lack of lady-like grace, but I thought that moment was the most breath taking I’d ever seen her in.
“Oh my god, yes!” she gasped through giggles. “So much yes. Yes! I just agreed to this crazy ass road trip on the sole basis of that story! I want a road sign with a ludicrous backstory! I want to go to Disneyland! I want to honor America!”
“To America!” Dani raised her drink, laughing now too.
“No, to the road trip!” Chris clinked his bottle.
“Road trip!” Emma shrieked
“The, you’re ruining it.”
“The, that didn’t make any sense.”
“The, shut up!” Dani cut us off, but she was laughing hysterically, leaning into Chris who steadied her. He was cracking up too, and holding her, and knocking back his drink all at the same time. With a pang, I grew somewhat jealous of the scene. I wanted that, that complete understanding, that silliness, that comfort of loving someone and being loved back just as equally, easily. I craved that confirmation.
I glanced over at Emma. She was also watching Chris and Dani with a peculiar expression on her face. As if she could feel my eyes on her, she turned to me and smiled. “Thanks for inviting me Josh,” she bumped her shoulder against mine. I bumped her back.
“It’s no problem.” I hesitated. “It’s kind of all because of you actually.”
She looked up at me, “really?”
“Umm...” I couldn’t decide whether she thought I was lame or not, whether that was too forward. I think she was smiling. There was definitely a smile, right?
“I…” she spoke and I soared. “I should probably go, you know, pack and everything.”
And I came plummeting back down. “Right, yeah.” She began walking slowly to her car, and I followed. Say something! “Packing is good.” Say something that doesn’t make you sound like an old fart!
“Packing is good,” she laughed, not unkindly. The sound made me feel a bit better.
“Are you going to be okay to drive?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” her hand brushed against mine.
“Great. I’ll pick you up at 7?” I blurted in a rush.
“That better be 7 at night,” she warned.
“Then you better have pillows and blankets!”
I chuckled, “I’ll pack my elephant snuggie.” Oh fuck. That was smooth, Josh, bring up the snuggie. You don’t sound all of three years old or anything!
“What?” was she laughing?
“Shit. Mental note to self, when trying to appear suave, do not bring up the snuggie.”
“Note to Josh,” we’d reached her care and she stopped walking and turned to me, “mental notes are silent. And suave is outdated.” But then she smiled and gestured for me to come in closer for a secret. She smelt like a vanilla cake, and her breath tickled my ear, making me hypersensitive to every feeling on me, especially the tug in my stomach. “But snuggies are awesome. And elephants are my favorite animal.”
I pulled away grinning, unable to take the proximity. “The elephant snuggie it is then!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow Josh,” she smiled wide enough to dimple.
“Yeah.” I was doing that funky walking backwards deal, smiling like an idiot with my hands in my pockets and my head bobbing like a chicken. “Bye. Drive safe.”
I watched her pull out in her ratchet green Volvo and raise a hand in a wave, then roar out of the parking lot in a way that made me wonder at the event of goodbye. Was it better done like ripping off a Band-Aid, quickly? Or was the sweetness in the savoring the tears and the distance? I couldn’t decide, and maybe it was because I was too high on the feeling in my pants and the fluttering in my brain and the memory of her fingers on my shoulder when she whispered and her lips that close to my ear. And then something hit me, and I sunk to the ground.
“Oh shit.” I groaned. What was I thinking? Planning a road trip for a week with this goddess when I could barely maintain a 4th grade level conversation with her for five minutes! She was so above and beyond anything I could hope to capture, and she would hate me when I called to cancel! Fuck if I would ever drink again. Oh god, I dreaded this phone call. She could ream me out, she could hang up, worst of all, she could understand. Shit, I couldn’t take that. I was paralyzed with the idea that she might actually understand. Nope, okay, I couldn’t call her. I was just too afraid of the oppressive sundry of possibilities. Looked like I would have to go through with this insane road-trip deal; I was just too much of a cowardly bastard to try to mess things up any further than I already had.
She was like being scared of the dark, being rooted to a single place in an unmovable fear. Unnamed horrors could be at the next step, monsters with hideous heads breathing fire, sickly sweet fruits to intoxicate and prison the soul, a vast abyss of nothingness. It was so much safer to stay in the same place, the same familiar place, even if the door was wide open, right over there. But it was too late, and I’d been shaken into a step.
She was the option I shouldn’t have chosen, but if I was completely honest with myself? Damned if I wouldn’t choose her again.
