“Thanks for coming today.”
“Sure.”
“Pretty fun, right?”
“Yes.”
“You know, you have a really nice voice.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh my God would you please please please tell me what is going on because last night we were kissing in a sea of stars and today you hate me again but you still came with me to the studio and it’s all insanely weird and driving me friggin’ crazy.”
(Thought, not said.)
So now we’re riding, and I’m going to drop her off and she’ll go in her house and we’ll be exactly where we were when I received her Let’s not even be friends text. Then, just as we’re coming into a wooded area she says, “Stop.”
“What?”
“Stop. Pull over.”
I do. She gets off the bike without explanation and crosses the road toward the lake, taking off her helmet, walks across the grass and foot and bike paths until she’s standing by the fringe of reeds at the edge of the lake, looking out at the water.
“You okay?” I call out, but she doesn’t answer. A car beeps behind me, Minnesota polite. I give the driver an apologetic wave and steer the bike to and then over the opposite curb, parking it on the grass. It’s dusk. There’re a few joggers and strollers and bikers out. A middle-aged woman with silver hair notes the bike and gives me the side-eye but doesn’t say anything. Minnesota disapproval.
“You okay?” I say again when I get close. She doesn’t answer. Instead she spins around and says, “Why?”
“What why? Why what?”
“Why did you kiss me last night?!”
“I’m sorry. I told you I’m sorry! I’m sorry if I insulted you!”
“I’m such a fool!” she says. I have a flashback to her saying that as she stormed out the first day we met. “It’s all just a game to you! You just collect people!”
“I don’t know what you’re saying! I don’t understand!”
“I’m just another stupid girl to you,” she says, “Another girl on . . .”
“On what?”
“Your frigging playlist!”
Oh, Devon, you stupid, loudmouth idiot . . .
“‘Playlist’? What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about! Everyone knows about your playlist!”
“It’s not . . . I don’t . . . it’s not even my idea!”
Taking a shovel to an already deep hole.
“Oh, so you do know what I’m talking about! It’s real!”
“No, it’s not. Or yes, fine, but no—it’s not my idea! I never called it that!”
“Oh, really? What do you call it, then?”
“Call what?”
“Your cute little list of all the girls you’ve had sex with!”
“I’ve never had sex with anyone!”
It jumps out of me way too loud, way too emphatic. Timed just as some college-age guy jogs into earshot, his smirk pretty clear evidence that he heard me.
He’s at least fifty yards away, receding in the distance, before Josephine can muster, “What?”
“Nothing!”
“You’ve never . . . ?”
“No! Yes! No! Whatever! Leave it!”
“You’re a virgin?”
“Would you please?”
“But—”
“I’ve done lots of other stuff, okay? I just haven’t—You know, this is embarrassing for me, and I don’t want to be standing here talking about—”
“Why?”
“Why don’t I want to talk about it? Because I—”
“Why are you still a virgin?”
“Is that bad?”
“No! But why?”
“I’m still a virgin because my mom had me when she was eighteen, and look how great I turned out.”
“Oh.”
“And . . . because it’s special. Okay? I want it to be special, and with someone special. Is that all right with you? Now can we go? Please? Or do you just want to yell at me some more for kissing you, which I thought you wanted to do too, or yell at me because Devon made up the whole playlist thing, or make fun of me because I haven’t done it yet, which, yeah, I’d prefer you keep to yourself, if you can manage that. Oh, what now? Why are you shaking your head?”
“Who are you?”
“Augh! I don’t know what you’re talking about, Josephine!”
“Who are you, Austin?”
“What do you mean?!”
“Who are you? Are you the guy who has a joke for everything, and a playlist, and it’s all charm and laughs and your motorcycle and BS, or are you that other person?”
“What other person?!”
“The person who . . . The person I see when you’re singing.”
That stops me.
“I don’t know, Josephine. Maybe I’m all of that.” I scrub at my face with both hands like I’m trying to wash this all away.
“Let’s just go. And we can forget today and forget last night and forget everything that happened since I met you. I projected all this nonsense on you, thought you were something. Why did I kiss you? I kissed you because I hate you. I kissed you because I think you’re stupid and boring and ugly.
“I kissed you,” I say, “because I can’t stop thinking about you, and having dreams about you and pretend conversations with you, and wishing I was with you, because you’re twice as beautiful as your awful sister and you don’t even know it, and because you’re smart and funny and you’re like the songs I hear in my head, like every song I’ve ever tried to write. And you feel like a fool? I’m the fool. I’m the idiot, for liking you, and for thinking you might somehow like me back, and—What, what are you—”
—is as far as I get, because we’re kissing again.
I’ve painted all around the lines / in every shade of blue /
I’m asking you / don’t fake with me / I’m true
“In New York,” Josephine says, “we will have a cat.”
“I hate cats.”
“In New York we will have five cats.”
“C’mon.”
“In New York we will have no cats.”
“A dog.”
“We will have a very small dog that behaves like a cat.”
I am naked next to Josephine Lindahl. She is naked too.
We are lying pressed against each other under the stars, the swim platform gently rocking with the motion of the lake.
“Okay. And we should probably get married, right?”
She says, “Absolutely.”
“Good. Because I’m in love with you, and that’s, you know, that’s it. There’s no other way. So I think we have to.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. That’s settled.”
After we did our kissing on the shores of Lake of the Isles, she said, “I don’t want to go home yet.”
So we came to do more kissing in the hidden cove on Cedar Lake. The place where it all started, the place from which I set off in a canoe to sing songs to the cheerleaders and got clubbed over the head for my efforts. Maybe the best thing that ever happened to me. Because if it hadn’t, Josephine and I wouldn’t be here right now.
We lay there and kissed and talked and kissed and talked, desperate to do both, in a breathless rush to reveal ourselves to each other, to tell all the stories and secrets we’d been saving up our whole lives to share with the right person.
There was this time when . . . Did you know that I . . . I’ve never told anyone this, but . . .
Able to tell each other exactly what we had been thinking since we met.
I said to her, I fell in love with you when I walked into that room.
And she said, I fell in love with you when I saw you singing, because I could see the real you.
And then a little later she said, “Actually, can I tell you something? It wasn’t an accident that I was your tutor.”
“What?”
“I fell in love with
you when you were onstage. But I’ve had a crush on you since tenth grade.”
“What? Why? How would you even know me?”
“Because I saw you in the hall. Todd Malloy was pushing Ed Risse, the kid with cerebral palsy. And you stopped him. You got in a fight with him.”
There was a girl watching! THE girl! It WORKED!
“That wasn’t a fight. That was Todd Malloy punching me in the face.”
“It was very noble,” she said.
“No one has ever called me noble.”
“No one has ever called me beautiful.”
I said, you were so mean to me when we first met.
“You showed up late, and I felt like such an idiot, this big plan where I’d be your tutor, and then . . .” She shook her head. “Haven’t you ever wanted to hurt someone first?”
“After the party, when we were kissing . . .”
“It was the same thing. I felt dumb. I kept fighting it, promising myself I wouldn’t be the dumb girl who falls for the bad guy with the motorcycle and the guitar.”
“You’re not. You’re the smart girl who fell for him.”
She propped herself up on her elbow. “My little cousin, she’s four. I was teasing her, telling her animals can talk or something. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Don’t fake with me—I’m true.’”
“That’s cute.”
She looked at me. The moon was bright enough to light up the lake, light up the swim platform, which was about thirty yards offshore.
“What?” I said finally.
“Don’t fake with me, either, okay? Because I’m true.”
“I’ll never fake with you, Josephine. Never. I’m true too.”
Then we did more kissing.
And also mosquito slapping, because it’s Minnesota. After more kissing and talking and mosquito slapping, Josephine sat up and gestured to the swim platform.
“I want to swim out there,” she said.
“What, now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a terrible swimmer.”
She stood up, said, “I’ll save you. I won’t let you drown. Close your eyes.”
I could hear her zipper, the rustle of clothing. “No peeking,” she said. Splash splash splash as she waded into the lake, then a bigger splash as she dove, then surfaced.
“Now you,” she called. She was a few yards from the beach, just her head above water.
“Okay, but you turn around.”
“Okay.” I stripped down with my back to her, putting my clothes next to hers on the beach. When I turned around, she was looking right at me, smiling.
“Hey!” I said.
She laughed and said, “C’mon!” and started swimming out, and I ran in with a whoop and dove and dog-paddled after her. She was waiting for me when I reached the platform, and kissed me, our hands brushing each other’s bodies.
“Man,” I say. “When you make up your mind, you make up your mind.”
She laughed and said, “C’mon” again and hoisted herself up out of the water.
“You coming up?” she said.
“I’m embarrassed.”
“I already saw you naked.”
“I’m sort of naked plus.”
“Oh.”
“I’m shy.”
“I want to see you. Naked plus.”
So I climbed up too—gingerly so as not to snag anything important—and she said, “Naked plus.”
“Yeah.” Then I said, “Hey,” because her hand was somewhere.
“Is that all right?”
“Yes.”
My voice was raspy.
“Can I touch you?” I said.
“Please.”
It wasn’t the most comfortable of surfaces for what happened over the next while, but that was okay. Since you’re concerned, yes, I maintained my precious virginity. Afterward we both dove into the lake again, and then we climbed back on the platform and we’re here now, under the dome of stars, holding each other gently for warmth. We talk and it’s perfect, we’re silent and it’s perfect, we’re together and it’s perfect.
I murmur, “Why me?”
She says, “Because I know who you are now.”
“Because you saw me perform?”
“That’s part of it.”
We speak slowly, quietly, long pauses between sentences.
“But not just because you’re good at it,” she says. “Because of the person I see.”
“And who is that?”
“When you sing, you’re so open. You look . . . like a child. Or like a person talking to God.”
I absorb that.
“But it’s just a show. It’s just me performing.”
“No. That’s when you’re performing the least.”
∗ ∗ ∗
When I drive her home, she steps off the bike and comes around and just stands there and we look at each other forever, smiling. She kisses me again, then turns and weaves a curving path to her front door with her arms out like wings.
∗ ∗ ∗
I do the same when I get home: park my bike in the garage, glide to the back door, glide through the kitchen, glide up the stairs, fingertips brushing the walls, glide to my darkened room, shut the door and lean against it and . . .
AHHH!!! SCREAM WHEN THE LIGHT SUDDENLY GOES ON!!!
“Buddy,” says my mom, “you are in some deep trouble.”
When the smoke is clear / then I won’t be here /
but go on keep the ashes / and you can have the tears
“Mom! What the hell are you doing!!”
“What the hell am I doing? You’ve got some nerve asking me that!”
She’s sitting at my desk in her nightgown, having switched on the desk lamp when I came in, like a frigging spy movie, and I come pretty close to having the kind of pants-filling accident that I haven’t had for thirteen years.
“You and me have a lot to talk about,” she says.
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“That’s fine—I plan on doing most of the talking anyway.”
“Mom, can we just do this tomorrow?”
“Nope. Sit your ass down on the bed, because we’re going to talk about it right now PUT YOUR GODDAMN PHONE AWAY.”
I shove my phone back into my pocket, dying to check the text I just got.
“Mom, I want to go to sleep.”
“Me too, but instead I had to wait up for you to come waltzing in here.”
“Mom, get out of my room.”
“Do not talk to me in that tone of voice, Austin Methune! Do not take your phone out again!”
“Mom, please get out of my room.”
“Sit down and shut up!”
“Fine, I’m going to sleep downstairs!”
“NO YOU ARE NOT!”
“YES I AM!”
I grab the pillow off my bed. My mom springs to her feet and snatches it from me and body slams it on the floor in front of me, which is not so effective because it’s a pillow, but still pretty dramatic, and I immediately kick it at her, which is just stupid, and she bats it away, and it nearly knocks over the lamp, the illumination in the room lurching crazily as the lamp totters, and then we really start shout-arguing, full-on top-of-our-lungs going at it.
I don’t know what’s coming out of my mouth, but it all COMES OUT LIKE THIS and my mom screams her part LIKE THIS, asking me who do I think I am, and what the hell am I doing hanging out with Shane who is a NO-GOOD PIECE OF CRAP and she’s the one who raised me and BELIEVE ME IT WASN’T EASY, and I say WELL AT LEAST HE UNDERSTANDS ME, and she starts laughing derisively and saying, OH HO HO HO, REALLY, and then Rick makes his entrance, squinting at the light, making patting gestures with his hands to try and cool things down—“Guys, c’mon, it’s one in the morning”—and I shout, “It’s none of your damn business!”
“It is his damn business, because he is a member of this household!” yells my mom.
“No he is not!�
�
“Yes he damn well is! Rick is moving in—has moved in—and we’re getting married and you’d better start getting used to the idea!”
I’m gaping. Rick says, “Hon, this really isn’t the time to . . .”
“It is the time, and Austin here does not get to set the terms!”
“What do you mean he’s moving in! He’s not moving in!”
I don’t know why I’m saying this. It’s not like I’m actually surprised.
“Uh, yeah, actually, he is, he has moved in, and if you had decided to be here at all over the past week, we could have had an actual discussion about it!”
“Oh,” I say. “This is crap. I’m out. I’m going to Devon’s!”
“Austin. Austin!”
Screaming at me, “AUSTIN, AUSTIN,” as I grab a handful of clothes and stuff them into a bag and storm out of the room and down the stairs, picking up speed, my mom yelling, “I’m putting you in that goddamn military academy!! Austin!!” but I’m already kicking my way out the back door, speed marching to my motorcycle, and buzzing along the driveway and into the empty night streets before she can make it outside.
Two blocks later, I remember the string of texts I was getting, and I pull over and check them.
OMG my parents were waiting up they’re so pissed
I’m grounded like I’m a kid
This is absurd
I call her and she answers immediately.
“Austin, I’m so screwed.”
“Me too. I just left. I’m not staying at home tonight.”
“Where are you staying?”
I tell her.
Silence.
“You still there?” I say.
“Come and get me,” she says.
I’ll lift you up high so that you can see /
till the lifting’s all that’s left of me
The chirping of my cell phone wakes me up, and I accidentally knock the phone off the night table, sending it thud-thumping onto the uncarpeted floor when I paw at it to silence it. Next to me, Josephine stirs, changing position. The phone, undaunted, continues to chirp.
“Who is it?” Josephine says sleepily, half into the pillow.
The Bad Decisions Playlist Page 15
