Real Live Boyfriends

by E. Lockhart

  The two guys waved at me as they headed up the hill carrying the gas can, while Gideon shook the water out of his hair and smiled down at me. Very Tommy Hazard. “What are you filming?”

  “I’m making a video for my dad’s gardening Web site,” I said. “How come you’re not going with them?” I tipped my head to where his friends were pushing through the gate that led to the street.

  Gideon laughed. “I didn’t bring any shoes.”

  “Well. It gets you out of having to hike up the hill to the station.”

  “True. Hey, do you have a Band-Aid I can borrow?”

  Now this is going to sound insane, but a part of me was surprised that Gideon Van Deusen, who traveled the world for a year before starting college, who questioned the teachings of his Sunday school back in ninth grade, who played guitar badly and didn’t mind being bad at it, who folded his laundry so neatly, who had been class speaker at Tate Prep the year he graduated and who obviously spent quite a serious amount of time doing sit-ups—I was surprised that Gideon Van Deusen, who seemed so well-balanced and comfortable in himself—would need a Band-Aid.

  He seemed so perfect to me, I guess. An older guy who’s got it together. A guy so confident in himself that it seems impossible he’d have a hole in his skin. A hole that might actually be bleeding.

  “You can’t borrow one,” I told him. “But you can have one to keep.”

  He laughed and I showed him into the houseboat. Polka remembered him from the one time he’d been over to visit and slurped Gideon’s hands.

  I went to the bathroom to get Band-Aids, but before I went back to the living room, I stopped and put on lip gloss. I thought:

  What? I have no lip gloss on. My lips feel dry. This lip gloss has nothing to do with Gideon.

  Oh, fine. There is a shirtless college boy bleeding in my living room. I want lip gloss.

  I can still be in love with Noel and want a shirtless college boy to think I am good-looking, can’t I?

  Or maybe I can’t.

  Maybe if you’re really in love, you don’t care if anyone thinks you’re good-looking besides the person you’re in love with.

  Maybe it’s deranged to want college boys to think you’re hot when you already have a boyfriend.

  Maybe I am a sex maniac slut like everybody says.

  And then again, it’s just lip gloss.

  I brought out a box of Band-Aids with pictures of sushi on them, along with some antibiotic ointment. Gideon showed me a spot on his calf where the wakeboard had flipped and sliced him. It wasn’t big, but it would need two Band-Aids to cover it.

  “Are you a sushi fan?” Gideon asked.

  “No,” I said truthfully. “I just like silly Band-Aids. I got these at Archie McPhee. They have pirate ones and bacon ones, too.”

  I squeezed some ointment on my finger.

  Gideon looked surprised. “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, embarrassed.” You’re probably capable of putting a Band-Aid on yourself, aren’t you?

  “I am experienced in that department.”

  “It’s an impulse left over from babysitting.”

  “Okay, go ahead.” He stuck out his leg. “So. You babysit?”

  “Not anymore. I couldn’t take it. The kid I used to sit for was like a blood and vomit machine.”

  Gideon laughed. “A patent on that idea could make a fortune.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Or his parents could just rent him out. Like whenever anyone needs blood or vomit, they could just come over and rent out Kai.”

  All this while I was dabbing ointment on Gideon’s calf, which was tan and covered in light brown hair. I thought:

  His skin is surprisingly soft.

  But also hairy.

  Gideon is practically an adult. I think he’s at least nineteen.

  Is it horrible that I want to touch his leg?

  I mean, Doctor Z says it’s completely normal at my age to have this level of Rabbit Fever, but what I really want to know is, am I being disloyal?

  It is only ointment, after all.

  And a Band-Aid.

  Then again, I wouldn’t like it if Noel was spreading ointment on the bare calves of Ariel Olivieri.

  Especially not if Ariel was wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a bead choker.

  I was just putting a second Band-Aid on Gideon’s leg, and enjoying it more than I should have, when Hutch walked in from the greenhouse. I jerked back guiltily.

  “Gideon Van Deusen,” Hutch announced, barely making eye contact while he went to the sink and filled his water bottle. “Rock on.”

  Gideon looked blank. “Have we met?” he asked Hutch.

  “This is John Hutchinson,” I said apologetically.

  Hutch hopped up on the counter and swigged his water, still without making eye contact.

  Gideon held out his hand. “Good to meet you.”

  “We’ve met,” said Hutch, shaking it.

  “I have a bad memory for faces.”

  “We went to school together for ten years.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Gideon, obviously lying. “Out of context. Sorry.”

  This is why Hutch is such a roly-poly. He has zero sense of what a warped little bunny he sounds like sometimes.

  Yes, they had been at school together. But Gideon had graduated when we were freshmen, and seniors can’t be expected to recall every dorkface underclassman from three years ago. But there went Hutch, saying Gideon’s whole name like a semi-stalker, and then telling him to “Rock on,” not even saying hello like a normal person. And then what kind of conversationalist quick-calculates the number of years their Tate Prep careers overlapped and uses it to guilt the other person for not remembering?

  “Did you finish getting the greenhouse set up?” I asked Hutch, to change the subject. “And is Dad presentable?”

  “His face is dry, at least. And yeah. It looks pretty good in there.”

  “Gideon’s boat ran out of gas,” I explained.

  “Almost,” said Gideon.

  We all stood around the kitchen for a moment. Not saying anything. Then Hutch said, “Nice lip gloss, Ruby,” jumped off the counter and went back outside.

  What?

  Why was he commenting on my lip gloss?

  Since when did Hutch notice my lips anyway?

  “Was that your boyfriend?” asked Gideon, plopping himself on our couch and stroking Polka’s ears.

  “No,” I said, sitting down on the rocking chair. “Why?”

  “He seemed a little tense is all.”

  “He’s—he’s a friend of my boyfriend’s,” I explained. “He’s just being protective.”

  Realizing: Oh. That’s what “Nice lip gloss” meant.

  It meant, “Ruby, you’re going out with Noel, remember?”

  “So you have a boyfriend?” Gideon asked. He leaned forward and touched the hem of my sundress with the tips of his fingers.

  “I—I think I do,” I answered.

  I have a boyfriend who doesn’t call me back, I thought.

  I have a boyfriend who doesn’t answer my e-mails.

  “You think, or you know?” asked Gideon, looking up at me.

  “I don’t exactly know right now,” I said. “The thing—it’s hard to explain. The thing we have is somehow not the thing it was before.”

  At that juncture, a shout of “Gas!” could be heard from the deck. The guys had come back and were going to refill the boat.

  “You should call me,” Gideon said, standing up to leave. “When you know for sure.”

  “For sure, what?”

  “For sure you don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “What if I do?” I asked. “I mean, I am pretty sure I do.”

  “Then don’t call me.” He was standing in our doorway, silhouetted in the light. “But call me.”

  Humiliation at Snappy Dragon!

  a video clip:

  Meghan sits in the window seat of her bedroom. The Tiffan
y blue wall behind her is decorated with photographs and mementos. Her silky curls are up on top of her head and she’s wearing one of Finn’s soccer T-shirts.

  Ruby: (behind the camera) What’s your definition of love?

  Meghan: I didn’t know you were going to ask hard questions.

  Roo: This is a serious documentary.

  Meghan: (twisting her hair with her fingers) Okay. Love is … Um. Love is this feeling. It’s a big feeling. It’s like listening to music, you know, like a ballad or even religious music—because it fills you up and you can’t think about anything but the other person and it all seems like a dream. Finn took me out in a canoe the other day, and we had a picnic and watched the sunset. That’s like love in action.

  Roo: Isn’t that love in the movies?

  Meghan: What do you mean?

  Roo: Isn’t real love something different?

  Meghan: I don’t think so. I think the movies are expressing the way love feels, the beauty of it.

  Roo: Sunsets and picnics. Really?

  Meghan: Don’t be cynical. I’ve been in love twice. I think I know how it feels.

  Roo: It doesn’t feel that way to me.

  Meghan: Doesn’t it?

  Roo: No.

  Meghan: Are you sure it’s love, then?

  Hutch was going away. He was spending the first half of senior year on an exchange program in Paris, and I got the idea to have a goodbye party, partly to cheer up my dad and partly to be nice to Hutch. There weren’t many people to invite—just me, Noel, Meghan and my parents—but I thought it was a fine excuse for cake, and we could get him travel-type presents, like a French guidebook or a fanny pack.

  Hutch in a fanny pack would be very amusing.

  Anyway, he was leaving in late August, the day after Noel was supposed to come back from New York, so the party had to happen the night of Noel’s return. I decided we’d all go to Judy Fu’s Snappy Dragon, our favorite Chinese place, and then to Simply Desserts, where they have the most unbelievable white chocolate cake. I invited Hutch and Meghan, told my parents and sent Noel this e-mail:

  7 pm, day you get back

  Judy Fu’s, a goodbye thing for Hutch.

  We can pick you up in the Honda if you need.

  Let me know if you can make it.

  Love,

  Roo

  Doctor Z is always saying: Think what you want out of a situation, and then try to get it. And I wanted Noel to come out with us the moment he got back.

  I wanted to sit next to him at Snappy Dragon and twine my leg around his under the table.

  I wanted to give him a ride so I’d get to drive him home after dinner, alone.

  I wanted to kiss him in the car outside his house for so long my lips felt swollen, drinking him in after so many weeks apart.

  So the e-mail was meant to get me all those things, but I was trying to be subtle about it.

  And later, I would wonder over and over what would have happened if I hadn’t tried to be subtle. If I had been bold and true. If I’d conquered the weirdness I felt because he hadn’t called, and just said: I want to see you more than anything in the world. I’ll die if you don’t come see me Sunday night. Come be with me, come be with me, come be with me. Noel.

  But I didn’t. Say that.

  And after I sent my subtle e-mail, I thought: He won’t come.

  I can’t assume he wants to come.

  No, no. Stop thinking that.

  He does want to come.

  He will want to come.

  He’s my real live boyfriend.

  But he didn’t reply.

  The night of Noel’s return, Hutch, Meghan and I drove to Snappy Dragon in Meghan’s Jeep, leaving my parents to take the Honda.

  “Are we supposed to pick up Noel?” Meghan asked, pushing a CD into the car stereo and pulling out of Hutch’s driveway.

  I was sitting in the back and I could see Hutch wince in profile as Beyoncé came through the speakers. Hutch and Meghan are friends only of the school variety. They don’t hang out unless I’m there to be the link, and Meghan spends a lot of time with Finn and his soccer buddies—a social group in which Hutch would be woefully out of place.

  Hutch shrugged. “Haven’t talked to him.”

  “I haven’t either,” I said. Meghan knew this already. She asked because she was hoping Hutch would have.

  Hutch turned and looked at me, some hurt in his eyes. “I thought you said he was coming.”

  “I said he probably was. I completely invited him.”

  “Let’s call. Do you have his number?”

  But Meghan had already found it in her cell.

  “DuBoise, are you home?” she asked when Noel answered.

  “Don’t talk and drive,” said Hutch. “Give it to me.”

  But she didn’t hand it over. “It’s Meghan, you doof,” she said to Noel. “I’m in the car with Roo and Hutch. Do you need a ride?”

  Hutch grabbed the phone. “Dude. Welcome back. How was New York?”

  I leaned back in my seat and stared out the window, blinking away tears.

  Noel was here.

  He was here in Seattle and he’d picked up his phone for Meghan when he hadn’t picked up for me.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, dude,” Hutch was saying. “No more Tate till December.”

  Silence. Hutch listening.

  “Nah, not even Thanksgiving. I thought Ruby explained it all.”

  Silence again.

  “Well, you should check your e-mail. We’re going to Snappy Dragon and then some dessert place with white chocolate cake.”

  Pause.

  “I don’t like white chocolate either, but Ruby says trust her.”

  Hutch shook his head as Noel was talking. Then he turned and rolled his eyes at me.

  “Whatever, dude. I’ll be back in four months. Nah, it’s fine.”

  He hung up.

  “Lame!” Meghan said.

  “He’s jet-lagged,” said Hutch. “And he forgot about it. And his parents want him home. He said to tell you he’s sorry, Ruby.”

  He wasn’t coming.

  He was back in Seattle and he hadn’t called and he wasn’t coming.

  I mean, I kind of knew he wasn’t.

  But until then, I had been able to hope he was.

  I’m a vegetarian, so I ate asparagus in black bean sauce and vegetable pot stickers. Hutch, Meghan and Dad shared mu shu pork and sliced cod in Szechuan sauce, and my mother abandoned her raw food diet because she likes the Snappy smoked duck so much.

  It wasn’t a very good celebration. Everything tasted like straw because of the choking feeling at the back of my throat. I was trying not to sob and my father was staring morosely into his plate of rice, occasionally saying things like: “My mother used to make asparagus on holidays.”

  “My mother liked orzo better than rice.”

  “My mother went to China once.”

  “My mother used to bleach our tablecloth in the sink.”

  Mom kept trying to get Dad to change the subject and tell Hutch about how they’d backpacked through Europe before Dad insisted on settling down and building his dream houseboat. “We slept on the trains, John,” she told Hutch as he unwrapped a Lonely Planet guide to Paris. “We’d shove our wallets down our shirts so no one could steal them. I didn’t shower for days. It was wonderful.”

  Hutch smiled at her in the way teenagers smile at their friends’ parents. “I’m staying with a host family, actually. I’m registered for school there.”

  “Now I shower almost every day,” said my mother. “But it’s really not necessary. In Europe it’s totally normal to bathe only once a week.”

  “Don’t bathe once a week, Mom,” I said.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “I wouldn’t smell. We just worry about smelling, but really we don’t smell.”

  “What about the smelly people?” I said. “There are definitely people who are smelly.”

  “You might get a rash,” sai
d Meghan. “Like a sweat rash.”

  “No, I won’t,” said Mom, taking a sip of tea. “I think it’ll be very good for my skin, actually. I have a few dry patches that I’m sure are from overbathing.”

  “Please, don’t let your new thing be refusing to bathe,” I said. “Any new thing but that.”

  “What do you mean my ‘new thing’?” my mother snapped.

  I knew I was starting an argument.

  I knew I was, and I knew I shouldn’t.

  But I was so shattered about Noel not coming, all the badness had to come out one way or another.

  “You know. First it was juice fasting, then craniosacral therapy, then Rolfing, then the macrobiotic diet, then raw food. And now that you’re eating smoked duck, you’ll obviously need some new thing to fill the void left when you abandon the raw food way of life.”

  “Ruby!” My mother straightened up in anger just as Meghan kicked me under the table.

  But I kept talking. “So I’m just asking you not to take up no bathing as your thing. I think that’s reasonable. It’s not a pathway to health and it’s not chic and European and it’s not anything except gross. You can put lotion on your dry patches and pick a different new thing, no loss.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.”

  “Why not? Dad and I have suffered enough through all your fads. I don’t think we should have to live with someone who doesn’t bathe.”

  “You!” My mother stood up so quickly her chair fell over and hit the floor with a bang. She shoved her pointer finger in my face and leaned down so her angry mouth was in front of my eyes. “You are a disrespectful, unsympathetic, shallow brat who has no idea what it’s like to be searching for something. Searching for some kind of truth, some kind of path to be on in this life. All you care about is whether you get dessert and whether you can borrow the car and whether some boy is going to call you.”

  “I want truth,” I said, because her words stung. “I want a path. I just don’t want to talk to you about them.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “You’re a crap listener.”

  “I am a wonderful listener! Ask anyone. Ask Dad. Ask Juana.”