More Happy Than Not (3 page)

I know I'm lucky just to have a cell phone, even though it has the shittiest Internet connection ever, but with a laptop I could sneak into the bathroom for “research.” Instead, we have a big-ass computer in the living room, and Eric is busy online right now building a free website for his video game clan, The Alpha God Kings. Fuck.

I'm doodling on the back of the report card I got yesterday. Students had to return to school to clean out our lockers and sign up for summer school if needed. My grades dropped in the last couple of months because of, well, you-know-what, but I passed everything (even chemistry, which can go in a corner and melt in hydrochloric acid forever). My guidance counselor tried getting me to talk to her about how I should use this summer to get back in a better headspace for senior year. I totally agree, but right now I'm more concerned about tonight than I am about high school.

The apartment feels extra small, my head even smaller, so I go outside to breathe for a second or minute or hour, but no longer than that because I am having sex tonight whether I know how to or not. I spot Brendan heading into a staircase, call his name, and he holds the door open. He got his first blow job at thirteen from this girl Charlene, and he would go on and on about it whenever we played video games. I hated him for achieving something I hadn't, but he's actually the kind of person whose ways I should tap into.

“Yo. You got a second?”

“Uh.” We both look down at his hand and he's carrying weed in a Ziploc bag. Long gone are the days when he was a solitaire whiz. “I actually gotta go handle this.”

I make my way past him before he can close the door. The staircase smells like fresh piss and I see the puddle on the floor; it was probably Skinny-Dave who is very territorial. “You blazing or dealing?”

Brendan checks his watch. “Dealing. Customer is coming in a minute.”

“I'll be fast. I need to know how to have sex.”

“Let's hope it's not fast for your sake.”

“Thanks, asshole. Help me not fuck this up.”

He shakes his pungent weed in my face. “I gotta make some bank, A.”

“And I gotta make my girlfriend happy, B.” I pull out the two condoms I bought from work yesterday and shake them in his face. “Look, just give me some tips or tell me girls don't really care about their first times or something. I'm freaking out right now that I'm not—I swear to God I will pay Me-Crazy to destroy you if you repeat this—that I'm not going to be good enough.”

Brendan rubs his eyes. “Fuck all that. I boned a bunch of girls just so I could get off and get better.”

“But I would never treat Genevieve like that.” I wouldn't use any girl like that. Maybe Brendan isn't the right person to ask after all.

“That's why you're a virgin. Go ask Nolan for advice.”

“Nolan, who's fathered two kids at seventeen? No thanks.”

“Aaron, don't be some little boy who everyone will think is a punk or fag if you bitch out.”

“I'm not trying to bitch out!”

Brendan's phone rings. “It's my customer. You gotta bounce.”

I don't move. I expect my sort of best friend to step his game up during this big day for me. “I need you to do better than that.”

“What, did your father not give you a sex talk before he kicked it?”

Really crude way of labeling my dad's suicide, I know. “No, he would always joke that we had HBO. I overheard him telling Eric some stuff one time, though.”

“There you go. Ask your brother.” I'm about to protest when he stops me. “Look, unless you're about to buy this weed off me, you need to go.” Brendan fake-smiles with a hand out for money. I turn away. “That's what I thought,” he says. “Man up tonight.”

There's a list of
things I would rather do than have the sex talk with my brother, but dying a virgin isn't on it.

Eric is playing the latest Halo game—I've lost count to which one this is—and his match is finally coming to a close. I have no idea what to say. We sometimes play racing games together, less so these days. We definitely never talk to each other about monumental life things, not even Dad's death. His match ends and I stop acting like I'm reading
Scorpius Hawthorne and the Crypt of Lies
and sit up from my bed.

“Do you remember Dad's sex talk?”

Eric doesn't turn, but I'm sure the words are sinking in. He speaks into his headset, telling his “soldiers” he needs two minutes, and then mutes the microphone. “Yeah. Those talks are always really scarring.”

We aren't looking at each other. He's staring at the postgame stats, probably analyzing how his team could've done better, and I'm shifting from the worn yellowed stains in the corners of the room to outside the window where life isn't awkward. “What did he say to you?”

“Why do you care?”

“I want to know what he would've told me.”

Eric taps buttons that have zero effect on the menu screen. “He said he didn't think about feelings when he was our age. Grandpa encouraged him to just have fun when he was ready, and to always make sure to wear a condom so he didn't have to grow up too soon like some of his friends did. And he would've said you're making him proud if you actually feel ready.”

Eric echoing Dad's words is not the same.

I miss my dad.

Eric switches his microphone back on and turns away like he regrets ever talking to me. I shouldn't have forced him to remember Dad when he was distracted; the grieving need their peace whenever they can get it. He resumes playing, instructing his team like the alpha he is. Like Dad was whenever he played basketball and baseball and football, and anything else he did.

I pull a shirt out of my dresser that smells like concentrated dish soap. That's what happens when you share your clothes with a brother who rubs everything against cologne samples. Before I leave, I tell him, “I'm spending the night at Genevieve's. Tell Mom I'm at Brendan's playing some new game or something.”

These words knock him out of his zone. He looks at me for a second before remembering he's totally disinterested in my life, and goes back to playing.

I'm torn walking to
Genevieve's.

I'm overthinking everything. Why am I not running? If I really want this, I should be running, or at least jogging, in the interest of saving some energy. But if I don't want to do this, I should be dragging my feet and flipping around to go home before I reach her door. Maybe I'm playing it cool by just walking there, not too eager, not thinking too highly of this completely monumental rite of passage to manhood. Here I am, a lanky kid with a chipped tooth and first chest hairs, and somebody wants to do this with me. And not just anyone. It's Genevieve: my artist girlfriend who laughs at all my unfunny jokes and doesn't abandon me during anything-but-fun times.

I step into this corner store, Sherman's Deli, and pick up a little something for her since it feels like a dick move to take a girl's virginity without some kind of present. Skinny-Dave says flowers are the perfect deflowering gift, so if that's what he thinks, it's gotta be the wrong move.

As I approach Genevieve's door and knock, I look down at my crotch and say, “You better do what you were made to do. So help me God, I will ruin you if you don't. I will absolutely massacre you. Okay, Aaron, stop talking to your dick. And yourself.”

Genevieve opens the door in a sleeveless yellow shirt and bedroom eyes. “Good conversation with your dick?”

“Not nearly as deep as I would've liked it to be.” I lean forward and kiss her. “I'm a little early so if you need a few more minutes with your other boyfriend I can wait out here.”

“Get in here before we break up again.”

“You wouldn't dare.”

She starts closing the door.

“Wait, wait.” I reach into my pocket and pull out a pack of Skittles.

“You're the best.”

I shrug. “It seemed weird to come empty-handed.”

Genevieve grabs my hand and drags me inside. The apartment smells of the huckleberry candles her mother gave her and also of hot paint, probably Genevieve mixing up a shade she couldn't find inside of a Home Depot.

After my dad passed, I spent a lot of time on that living room couch crying into Genevieve's lap. She promised things would eventually be okay. Her promise actually carried weight since she lost a parent too—versus my friends, who consoled me with pats on the back and awkward glances.

Genevieve is the reason things got better.

Colorful paintings line the hallway walls. There are canvases of alive gardens, circuses where clowns watch ordinary people do tricks, glowing cities below a deep black sea, clay towers melting underneath a harsh sun, and so much more. Her father doesn't say much about her art, but her mother always bragged about how Genevieve painted rainbows in their proper order before she was old enough to spell her own name.

Creepy china dolls crowd a mail-littered table with a dish for keys. A brochure with Genevieve's name catches my eye. “What's this?” I ask, looking at the cabin on the cover.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing is nothing, Gen.” I open the booklet. “An art resort in New Orleans?”

“Yeah. It's a three-week stay out in the woods working on art with zero distractions. I thought it could be a good space for me to maybe finally finish something but
. . .
” Genevieve gives me
this sad smile and I hate myself.

“But you couldn't trust your dumb-idiot boyfriend to be alone.” I hand her the brochure. “I'm done holding you back. If you don't go, make sure it's because you want to have sex all summer.”

Genevieve flings the brochure back on the table. “I should probably make sure it's worth staying for first, right?” She winks and walks deeper down the hall, vanishing into the living room.

This apartment was so confusing my first time here that I walked in on her father comparing blueprints for a new mall he's assisting with. Yeah, he has an office in his apartment, and meanwhile I share a living room with my brother and am limited to masturbating in my bathroom. Life sucks that way.

The scent of huckleberry grows stronger as I step inside her bedroom. I see the two candles sitting on top of her bureau, the only source of light in a room dark with unfinished paintings and two sixteen-year-olds about to grow up. Her bed is made with deep blue covers. Genevieve looks like she's sitting in the middle of the ocean. I drop my bag and push the door closed behind me.

This is it.

“We don't have to do this if you don't want to,” Genevieve says. Seems very role-reversal based on all the bad TV I've watched, but sweet of her to offer. Or not offer.

The last time we tried having sex I got sick from movie popcorn. It was some romantic comedy thing—we were on a double date with our classmates Collin and Nicole (who are expecting a kid now, crazy)—but I'm ready to do this. I'm not backing out.

“Are you sure you want to?”

“Get over here, Aaron Soto.”

I imagine myself tearing my shirt off and charging toward her for awesome sex, but I'm more likely to get tangled in my shirt, tripping over my feet, and making this everything but awesome. So I just walk over, managing not to trip, and sit down beside her, nice and simple. “So. You, uh, come around here often?”

“Yes, I come around my house often, dumb-idiot.”

She hugs my neck and squeezes. I choke for a second, collapse backward on her, and play dead. Genevieve smacks my chest, and between giggles says, “No one suffocates
. . .
that quickly! You suck
. . .
at dying! You are the
. . .
worst
dead guy ever!”

Confidence floods through me in this little moment where I poorly played dead and she called me out on it, and it's a joke that will remain between us because it happened in our personal space where we were about to do a very personal thing and I know I want this with her without a doubt. I break free from her not-quite-tight grip, slide up on her, and kiss her lips and neck, and everything else I instinctively feel is right. She pulls my shirt off and it sails over my shoulder.

“Remember that time you were half naked in my bed?” Genevieve asks, looking up at me.

I take off her shirt and leave her in a bra.

She unzips my jeans and I kick them off with much awkward difficulty while she laughs. If I thought there was any chance Genevieve would've laughed seeing me in my boxers, I would've faked a reason to get out of this. But I can't recall a time where I felt more exposed and comfortable in my life. I care for her so hard, whether Dad would've advised that for my first time or not, and my happiness and her happiness will be one of my greatest hits.