More Happy Than Not (6 page)

“Aaron!”

Genevieve rushes over to me, but I'm fine, or should be in a few days, at least. She massages my temples and I turn to see Me-Crazy celebrating his hell of a hit. And Brendan is shaking his head, no doubt disappointed in my bad throw.

“You sure you're okay, babe?” We sit the rest of the game out, my head still pounding.

“I could down a bottle of Excedrin right now,” I say, which are poor choice words for the guy with the suicide attempt on his life record. We watch the game while chatting about how she's going to miss having someone tall around to reach for high things when she flies to New Orleans on Tuesday afternoon. I'm about to tell her something that would be rated NC-17 if it were a movie, when Thomas beans the hell out of Fat-Dave so hard, Brendan claims
he
felt that one. And sure, they all sympathize for the dude with extra poundage as a shield, but when I get hit in the fucking head, the only one who makes a move for me is my girlfriend. That's gotta be contractual or something.

The game comes down to Thomas and Brendan and Me-Crazy. Between Thomas and Brendan, someone's balls gotta drop sometime in the next few rounds so Me-Crazy doesn't win out of fear. Brendan has a really bad throw (not that I'm going ahead and shooting
him
a disappointed look or anything) and it rolls toward my mom and our neighbors.

“I'll get it,” I offer so I can test my motor skills after that hit to the head. To my relief, I don't walk like some toy with bad wiring. My mom has the handball by the time I get to her and I throw it back over to Brendan. “Rough game over there.”

“I preferred the water-balloon fight,” Mom says.

“Even when we were throwing bottles of water at Me-Crazy?”

“I don't think there's any more damage that can be done to that boy,” Mom says a little too loudly, getting some laughs from some neighbors who I know without knowing, if that makes sense. But there's one woman I sort of, kind of, definitely recognize, something to do with her piercing green eyes and tousled mass of red-orange hair. That hair is like a candle's flame.

“Hello, kiddo,” the redhead says in a light English accent that's got a tinge of South Bronx flavor to it.

“Evangeline!” I practically shout. She's my old babysitter and I had the biggest crush on her. It's weird seeing her casually drinking when I never saw her drinking as a kid, which, you know, made her a good babysitter. “I want to hug you or something but I'm really sweaty and, uh, dude-like right now.”

She puts down her beer and hugs me anyway. She messes with my hair and looks me in the eyes. “So this is little Aaron Soto nine years later. You're so handsome. I'm sure you have plenty of gorgeous suitors fighting over you, yes?”

“Just the one girlfriend, actually,” I proudly say. It's sort of awesome being able to tell my first crush that I'm basically off the market now. She shouldn't have turned me down when I asked her out after my Power Rangers marathon.

“One lovely girlfriend he snuck away to spend the night with yesterday,” Mom grumbles. “Behind my back.”

“How was London?” I ask Evangeline, ignoring Mom. If I remember right, she's only nine or ten years older than me. “You broke my heart to study abroad, right?” I cried and cried after she left, not that I'm going to own up to that right now.

“I was studying philosophy at King's College. Though if I could rewind time I would happily trade in courses about pre-Socratic ideologies in favor of playing race cars with you.”

“That's all I wanted to hear.” I smile. “So you're back. For good?”

“I am, I am. I need to figure out work now, but am simply relieved to be back in the states where I'll take our God-awful subway traffic over the London Underground any day of the week.” She suddenly gives me the same sad look she used to have whenever she had to tell me my mom was stuck at work for another hour or two. “I'm sorry about your father. If you ever want to talk, kiddo, give me a holler, even if it's just to tattle on your brother for not sharing the Player One controller.”

I pocket my hand so she won't see my scar. My mom lowers her head. Better to chat with Evangeline instead of Dr. Slattery, the awful therapist I spent a few weeks talking to. “For sure.” I fake-smile because everyone wants happiness for me as much as I want it for myself. “Welcome back.”

I head back to the game just in time to see Me-Crazy bean Brendan with the ball. Thomas must've been eliminated a minute or so before because he's already sitting down with Genevieve, probably chatting about fireflies again. I sit on the other side of Gen and Baby Freddy asks me, “Who's that redhead with your mother?”

“My old babysitter,” I answer. “She's pretty gorgeous, right?” This catches Genevieve's attention. She stops talking with Thomas and turns around to scope out her competition. “I had the craziest crush for Evangeline as a kid. But I've moved on.”

Brendan asks, “How didn't I know this, you punk bitch?”

“Because I haven't illustrated my autobiographical graphic novel yet, asshole.”

Later I escape with
Genevieve for some alone time before her father picks her up. She won't be around to meet tomorrow—her aunt is taking her shopping for her retreat—but we'll definitely be in touch and will see each other for her birthday on Monday. I walk her to the car. She punches me in the shoulder before joining her father, who grunts my way and guns the engine.

Thomas looks tired by the time I make it back to the courts. He's sitting by himself, watching the others drinking Arizona iced teas and laughing. “You good?” I ask him.

He nods. “More fun than I ever have on my block.”

“You doing anything tomorrow?”

“I have work until five.”

“Where do you work?”

“This gourmet Italian ice cream shop on Melrose.”

“Sounds cold and terrible.”

“It's very cold and very terrible.”

“I'll meet you after work and you can actually play manhunt with us this time.”

“Sounds like a plan, Stretch.”

We fist-bump.

Once the courts are clear of adults who will be rocking hangovers tomorrow, we play basketball in trash bins rattling of beer cans and aluminum foil, and even a little handball before calling it a night ourselves.

5

A HAPPY FACE WITHOUT EYES

T
he next afternoon, I find myself on Melrose Avenue.

I'm picking Thomas up from his job, Ignazio's Ice Cream, and the air-conditioning is on full blast. I have zero interest in buying anything. If anyone else were behind the counter I'd probably be a pain in the ass and eat a sample and bounce, but Thomas doesn't look like he's in the mood for that nonsense. He's wearing the worst khaki apron in the history of the world, and his big eyebrows are knitted as he reviews some receipt at the register, punching in keys.

“Welcome to Ignazio's,” Thomas greets me without looking up. “Would you like a cup or waffle bowl?”

“Just some eye contact,” I say.

Thomas's head jerks up. He looks like he might stab me in the eye with a sample spoon, but just as quickly relaxes. “Stretch!”

“Thomas!” I don't have a nickname for him. “It's mad hot out. I take back what I said yesterday, it's not cold and terrible in here. You got it good here.”

“Not for long.”

“What do you mean?”

Thomas takes off his apron. He opens the door marked with a bronze
manager
plate and says, “Hey, I quit.” Then he drops the apron and joins me on the other side of the counter.

I don't know if I should clap or cheer or worry about his future.

He pushes me toward the door and shouts “WOOOOOOOO!” once we're outside.

I have to laugh. “What the hell just happened? Did you just quit? You quit, didn't you?” Considering how happy he looks, I take it I'm right. “Dude, I'm sensing a pattern here. You broke up with your girlfriend yesterday and now you've quit your job. You're twenty years too young for a midlife crisis.”

“I always quit things I'm tired of dealing with,” Thomas says. “Always will.”

We make our way back toward Leonardo Housing, and he punches the air, but I'm not really sure what the hell he's fighting.

“I couldn't stand Sara's paranoia anymore,” he says. “I couldn't stand people coming into the store for eight samples when they already knew what flavor they wanted. I couldn't stand pumping air into bike tires so I quit that too. If it's not doing something for me, I quit. There. I said it: I'm a quitter.”

I don't know how to respond. This guy was a complete nobody to me yesterday. And now he's
. . .
what, I don't know, exactly. But he's more than a quitter. “Uh
. . .
”

“Have you ever quit anything, Stretch?”

“Skateboarding, yeah. I must've been ten or something. I went down this crazy steep hill, and saw my young life of playing with action figures flash before my eyes right before I crashed into a parked van.”

“Why didn't you just hop off the skateboard?”

“Why are you questioning the irrationality of a ten-year-old?”

“Well played.”

“But I get where you're coming from. I guess you can quit whatever you want. You know, as long as you're not quitting something or someone that's a good fit for you.”

“Exactly!” Thomas nods at me, like he's surprised that he's found someone who gets him. “Where's Genevieve today?”

“Hanging with her other boyfriend,” I say.

“Aww. Is he nice?”

“He's a bit of a tool, but he's built like Thor so there's not a whole lot I can do. Nah, she's going on an art retreat in a couple of days and needs to go shopping for some craft tools and luggage. Tomorrow is her birthday and there's all this extra pressure to make it seriously awesome since we won't see each other for another three weeks afterwards.”

Man, three weeks without Genevieve. Fuck that in the face.

“You should paint her nude,
Titanic
-style,” Thomas suggests.

“I don't think I could get anything done with breasts in my face. I'll revisit that idea when I'm old and have seen enough of them.”

Back at the block, we get a game of manhunt going. Nolan volunteers as hunter and everyone breaks up. Thomas launches into a sprint one way while Brendan goes the other; I follow Thomas, not wanting to be found early like yesterday. Good thing too, because Thomas makes the rookie mistake of running through the lobby of Building 135—right past a security guard. Before the guard can chase us, I lead him to the staircase with a broken lock, and head up, fast. We stop off on the third floor, open the hallway window, and climb out onto the rooftop—where there's an old generator and all the stuff we roofed.

From up here we can see the second court, the middle of three. There are dark brown picnic tables and the jungle gym where we used to play Don't Touch Green. We see Fat-Dave running from the third court. He's out of breath and gives up. Nolan tackles him and boom, man down.

Thomas isn't even paying attention.

“Nice treasures,” he comments, crouching over to pick up a broken yo-yo. He tries spinning it, but the yo-yo detaches from the string and rolls into a headless Barbie. “So how long have you been dating Genevieve?”

“Over a year,” I say. I pick up an old GameCube controller, spinning the wire over my head like a lasso before throwing it back down on the pebbles. “I'm lucky it's been that long. She didn't hate me when I gave her reason to.”

“Did you cheat on her?” His tone becomes matter-of-fact. “When I started checking out other girls on the street, I knew I wasn't completely into Sara anymore.”

“I didn't cheat. My dad died. Well, he committed suicide and that put me in a bad place.” I don't talk about this a lot. Sometimes, because I don't want to; other times because my friends don't like dragging death and grief into things.