by Pete Hautman
Wes looked past her, expecting to see Elton Edberg’s wolfish smile.
“They’re not home,” she said.
Wes felt the tension go out of his shoulders.
“You want to come in?”
Wes stepped up into the entryway and became weirdly conscious of his height. Not that he was tall, but he was taller than June, and now she seemed smaller than he remembered. She was holding her shoulders in and bending forward ever so slightly, making her seem even smaller, looking up at him with those eyes. She took a step back. Wes closed the door, awkward and suddenly shy.
June said, “He’s not so bad, my dad.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“My mom says he acts like he does because he’s in a business where he has to be right all the time.”
“He seems like an okay guy. I mean, for a girl’s dad.”
June laughed.
There was another awkward moment.
“Um … can I get you something to drink?”
“I promised my mom I wouldn’t.”
“I mean, like, a glass of water.”
He nodded, embarrassed. She turned quickly away and made for the kitchen. Wes stomped the snow off his feet and started to follow her, then thought better of it and toed off his sneakers. In the kitchen, June was pouring water into a glass from a dispenser on the refrigerator door. She turned toward him and sort of jumped, surprised to find him there, so close. Had she expected him to wait by the door? Why wasn’t she talking? He was confused.
“Here,” she said, stepping toward him. Wes reached out, but instead of handing him the glass, she moved into his arms and they were kissing, and for a moment, there was nothing in his corner of the universe but lips and tongues and her body pressing into him, and he knew in some distant fragment of his consciousness that he was falling, not falling to the floor but falling into a vortex that had opened deep inside himself as his awareness spread to every pore, as if he were lit up and glowing like a firefly, and then he heard the sound of shattering glass but he didn’t stop because as long as that moment lasted, he believed to his core that it never had to end.
It was happening to June too. She was sure that what she was feeling was exactly what Wes was feeling, except that even as it was happening she sensed a jittery, anxious aura, and a tiny voice inside her — Fearful June, or perhaps Pragmatic June — was saying, He’s going to bolt. He’s going to run away again. But as the kiss went on, she banished the other Junes and let herself sink into the moment even though she knew in a distant sort of way that the panic she sensed was coming not from Wes, but from deep within herself. Then came the sound of breaking glass, and Scornful June was laughing in her ear, and she tried to pull away but her body would not let her, and then somehow she tore herself loose, gasping for breath as their arms came apart and they once again became two people, separate and distinct, but not as separate and distinct as before.
“I dropped the glass.” Her voice had turned husky and deep. She looked down; Wes was in his stocking feet. Shards of wet glass were everywhere. “Careful.”
Wes was staring at her stupidly, his mouth slightly open, his eyes glazed over.
“There’s glass all over the floor,” June heard herself say. “Don’t move.”
She got the sponge mop from the kitchen closet and moistened it, then started mopping, dragging the water and glass away from Wes’s feet. Wes watched her silently. She could feel his eyes sending out tractor beams — even though they were separated by a few feet of space, there remained an unbreakable bond. Unbreakable? No, it was more like being connected by glass fibers — hard as steel, brittle as chalk.
“I got it all, I think.” She squeezed out the mop over the sink.
Wes took a step toward her.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped.
The panicky feeling had come to the surface again, settling around her middle like her own personal lightning storm. She knew that if they kissed again, there would be no stopping. She wasn’t afraid of sex — it would happen or it wouldn’t. It wasn’t about that. It was more that if she didn’t slow it down — way down — there would be no place left to go.
He’d been body-slammed from the inside out. What had just happened here? June was standing with her back to the sink, gripping the edge of the counter so hard her knuckles were white, staring at him like she was afraid. Afraid? Had he done something wrong? He was sure she’d wanted to kiss — she’d made that perfectly clear — and they hadn’t done anything more. Although it had been an amazing kiss. Izzy had never kissed him like that — like she wanted to be inside of him.
He said, “Hey …”
“I broke up with Jerry.”
“Oh.” Not that that explained anything.
“I called him.”
“Is he … is he okay?”
“I guess. You know him better than me.”
Did she mean he knew Jerry better than she did, or that he knew Jerry better than he knew her?
She said, “I just thought, if we go to this party —”
“We don’t have to,” Wes said.
“I mean, if we did go and Jerry was there, and if he still thought I was in California and his, you know, his girlfriend or something … it would be awful. So I had to tell him.”
Wes nodded.
June said, “So who’s having a party?”
“Alan Hurd.”
“Which Alan is he?”
“The shorter one.”
“Is it far?”
“You … you want to go?”
“I think we should,” said June.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
CARS LINED BOTH SIDES OF THE STREET in front of the Hurd residence; many of them had been there long enough for the snow to completely cover their windshields.
“Alan’s parents are in Florida,” Wes said.
“They left him home alone?”
“Supposedly his older sister Hannah is there. She’s twenty-two. Except she went on an overnight and made Alan swear not to have any parties while she was gone. That was what gave him the idea.”
June laughed.
“Seriously,” Wes said. “They don’t get along so well, and Alan knew that even if she found out, she couldn’t say anything to their parents because she wasn’t supposed to leave him home alone. It’s a weird family.”
“They’re all weird,” June said. “Families.”
“No kidding.” Wes parked at the end of the line of cars and turned to June. “It might be kind of crazy,” he said.
“I could use some crazy,” June said. She didn’t mean it. Crazy she did not need, but it seemed like a funny thing to say, so she said it. Wes laughed. She liked that, his easy laugh. They were almost back to normal, or what felt like normal — a new normal. Just enjoying being together, the way people are supposed to.
“We don’t have to stay long.”
“I wonder if the Bitches will be there.”
“Which bitches?”
“Phoebe, Britt, and Jessica.”
“Oh. Those bitches. They’ll probably be at every party in town. The question is, Which party will they be at when Phoebe passes out in somebody’s parents’ bedroom?”
“Really?”
“That’s what happened last year.”
June nodded, but she wasn’t really thinking about Phoebe; she was wondering again whether Jerry would be there. She didn’t think so. When they’d talked on the phone — their conversation had gone on for twenty minutes before she was able to end it — Jerry had told her he was staying home all night. He’d even made a sort of lame joke: “New Year’s Eve parties are bad for politicians,” he had said. “You never know when you might find yourself on YouTube.”
That was actually pretty funny, she thought. For Jerry. Or maybe he hadn’t been joking.
“You up for this?” Wes asked.
“Let’s do it.”
They could hear the music the moment they steppe
d out of the car.
“Pretty loud,” Wes said. “I can guess how this party’s going to end.”
“With police?” said June.
“Exactly.” He walked around the car and offered June his arm. It felt right and natural. She hooked her mittened hand around his elbow and they stepped onto the sidewalk, kicking up snow as they walked, not too fast, toward the house. It was almost spooky, he thought, how he could be with June with neither of them talking, and have it feel so right. With Izzy the talking had never stopped. They were almost to the door when it opened and two guys wearing letter jackets tromped out, one of them saying in a loud voice, “This party sucks!”
Wes knew one of them, a senior named Bryan something, kind of an idiot but not a bad guy. The two lettermen lurched past Wes and June, laughing at something, and headed across the street to their car, one of them yelling, “Next!”
“I don’t think I’d get in that car,” June said.
The door was standing open. Wes and June stepped inside and found themselves tripping over a sea of shoes and boots.
“I think that’s a hint,” Wes said.
“I hate stocking-foot parties,” June said, pulling off her boots.
The house was packed. A Foo Fighters song was tearing up the living room speakers while some bowel-thumping hip-hop filtered up from the basement. Dozens of loud voices were striving to be heard over the music. Wes didn’t recognize the first ten people he looked at, which meant that Alan had long since lost control of events. Control was not Alan Hurd’s strongest quality.
Wes and June threaded through the partygoers, looking for Alan. They found him holding court beside a keg planted in a huge bucket of ice in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by a crowd of people representing every level of inebriation.
Alan’s mother would have died on the spot. Wes could feel his socks sticking to the beer-sloshed tile floor. A cloud of cigarette and marijuana smoke hung in an eye-stinging haze. Something green and drippy had spattered the white cupboards.
Alan caught sight of Wes and shrieked: “Wesley Weston Westerhiemer freaking Andrews. You came!”
Every face in the kitchen turned toward him, saw who he was, then promptly lost interest — except for Jerry Preuss, who was slumped against the sink holding a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of lime vodka in the other. He was wearing somebody’s bra around his neck, and his eyes were pointing in two different directions. Wes had never before seen Jerry drink or smoke, but he knew instantly that Jerry was profoundly and irredeemably polluted.
Alan shouted, “Pour my man Wes a beer!” but Wes was already backing out of the room. He turned, looking for June, but he couldn’t find her. Had she left already? He stepped over some guy — Robbie Johanson, flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling fan. Wes ran to the front door, thinking June might have panicked and left. Her boots were still there. He went back through the house, checking the bedrooms. No June. He went down the stairs to the basement. Phoebe Keller and Britt Spinoza were feeding people from a salad bowl full of cherry Jell-O shots.
Back upstairs, in the kitchen, somebody told him June and Jerry had gone out to the screen porch in back. Wes rolled open the sliding glass door and stepped through.
June was sitting on the porch swing with Jerry sprawled across her lap. June looked up at Wes and did this thing with her mouth and eyes. He understood that she was telling him to be cool. A second later he realized that Jerry was sobbing.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
“THERE’S NO WAY HE CAN GO HOME LIKE THIS.” Wes had grabbed Alan from the kitchen and pulled him out onto the screen porch, where Jerry was now on his hands and knees, puking, with June standing over him helplessly.
Alan was nearly as drunk as Jerry. He said, “Wow. It’s freezing out here,” as if he had completely forgotten it was winter.
Wes said, “Listen, Alan, you’ve got to let him stay here tonight.”
Alan was looking through the glass doors into the kitchen, where Calvin Warner was pouring beer directly from the tap into his mouth; half of it was running over his chin and dribbling onto the floor.
“My mom’s gonna kill me,” he said in a moment of sober realization.
“When does she get back?”
“Two days.”
“You’ll be fine,” Wes said.
Jerry unleashed another cascade of lime-green vomit.
Alan looked at him and grimaced. “You think he’s empty yet?”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Wes said. “Here, I got his car keys. Don’t let him drive.”
“Whatever,” Alan said, taking the keys.
June was bending over Jerry, saying something in a low voice, then helping him stand up.
Jerry looked blearily from Wes to Alan, his cheeks wet with tears and his chin wet with something else. “I’m really sorry, man.” He threw one arm over June’s shoulder, lurched toward Wes, and captured him with the other arm. “I love you guys. You guys are the best. I know you’re gonna be, like, the happiest couple on the whole damned planet. I’m happy for you, really … I … I … uh-oh.” He bent forward and threw up on Wes’s feet.
Alan said Jerry could crash on the fold-out sofa in the basement, but at the moment it was in use by the Jell-O shot-powered hip-hop contingent. June and Wes propped Jerry in an unoccupied corner.
“You guys, you guys are the best,” he kept saying. “I love you guys.”
It was embarrassing.
June whispered in Wes’s ear, “If I don’t get out of here in about ten seconds, I’m going to start throwing up myself.”
“Me too,” said Wes.
They found their shoes by the front door. Wes put his sneakers on his bare feet — he’d thrown his vomit-soaked socks in the trash — and they walked out of the house into the snow.
“Wow,” said June.
The flakes dropping from the sky were enormous — each one was a clump of individual flakes.
“Listen,” said June. “You can hear them hit.”
Wes listened. Even with the deep bass emanating from the house, they could hear the clumps of flakes landing — chuff, chuff, chuff — the softest, quietest sound imaginable, multiplied tens of thousands — millions — of times.
“Let’s walk,” June said.
Being outside in the snow made June feel clean again, as if the party had been nothing more than a bad dream. She held on to Wes’s arm and they walked slowly down the sidewalk, kicking through snow so light and fluffy that walking through it felt effortless. They didn’t talk. It felt exotic and daring, the not talking. Especially after what had happened with Jerry, the blubbering and vomiting and everything. How could they not talk about it? But she felt no desire to revisit the events of the party. There was no need. It was like her dad always said: Next! It was enough to be walking side by side with Wes, holding his arm and bumping shoulders, snowflakes gently landing on their faces, sometimes perching on her eyelashes for a moment before being blinked off. She imagined stopping and piling the snow into a huge mound, then tunneling into it and huddling together in their igloo, pressing their bodies together for warmth.
“I love snow,” she said, and it was true — although until that moment, she had always hated it. “I could walk like this all night.”
Wes didn’t say anything for a few steps, then he said, “All night?”
“Well, for a long time anyway.”
“Uh … me too … except my feet are kind of cold.”
“Oh!” June said, stopping. “I forgot. No socks!”
They ran the five blocks back to the car, slipping several times, but never quite falling. Once they got inside, the windows fogged up in an instant. Wes started the engine and waited for it to warm up.
June said, “I’m sorry I forgot about your feet.”
“You’re sorry you forgot about my feet?”
It was the funniest thing either of them had ever heard; they laughed so hard the windows got foggier, even with the defroster
blasting. After they stopped laughing, June said, “Take your shoes off and give me your feet.”
“Really?”
“Come on.”
Wes toed off his wet sneakers and twisted awkwardly in the driver’s seat to put his bare feet on her lap.
“Ew, they’re all wet!” June used her mittens to dry his feet, then rubbed them with her hands.
“Your hands are hot,” Wes said.
“I can’t believe you walked all that way with no socks.”
“It wasn’t that cold, at least at first.”
“You have nice feet.”
“Nice, stinky feet?”
“They don’t stink.” She sniffed his toes, then laughed. “I mean, I’ve smelled worse.”
They sat there without talking for a while as the car warmed up, June idly running her hands over his feet.
“Your middle name isn’t really August, is it?”
“It’s John. Totally boring.”
“You know how I got my little scar?”
“Grizzly bear attack, right?”
“I was five. You know how moms are always yelling at you to not run with scissors? I was running with scissors. So cliché.”
“Not cliché. Classic.”
“Like your middle name.”
They sat listening to the defroster.
Wes said, “What if nothing ever had to be different?”
“Like what?”
“Like we could just sit here forever. Take turns giving each other foot rubs. We’re connected now, you know. Invisible threads.”
June nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. “I think we were connected a long time ago,” she said.
Wes thought back to the time they had met walking home. She was right; he had felt it even then. He said, “Do you think, like, years from now, it’ll still be there?”
“The connection?”
“The connection.”
June considered, then said, “I don’t know.” She really didn’t.
“Maybe it’s like a radio signal. As long as one of us is sending, we’re connected.”
“What about when we’re asleep?”
