“Fuck!” Owen exclaimed as the doorman opened the door and he stepped out into a downpour. He hadn’t bothered to bring an umbrella, and it wasn’t like he wanted to go back upstairs to get one. He huddled under the green awning, hoping that a cab would pass by, but Fifth Avenue was practically silent. The chance of getting a cab was about as good as him having a super time during the upcoming family bonding vacation. Hopefully, Rhys would be able to come and they could just hang out as far away as possible—like, preferably another island away—from Remington.
Owen balled his hands in his pockets and began to walk north, toward Hugh Moore’s house. Hugh was a teammate from the St. Jude’s swim team and had decided to throw an impromptu party when Coach announced they had tomorrow off. Owen had planned on checking out the scene at Hugh’s after dinner, but once Remington announced his plan, he’d lost his appetite. It wasn’t like Remington was a bad guy. If he were the dad of one of his buddies, he’d be pretty cool. But everything just seemed a little sudden. After years of never dating, his mom was practically married to this guy.
He reached Hugh’s town house on Eightieth and Park. The limestone steps were flanked by two large lion sculptures. Owen patted one on the head as he jogged up the steps, and rang the bell.
“Hello, sir!” Hugh flung open both of the large black oak double doors. He wore a velvet jacket belted loosely around his frame, possibly in an attempt to look like Hugh Hefner. Hugh sometimes bragged that the Playboy founder was his namesake.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” Hugh noted, shaking his head. Hugh was a muscle-y blond junior whose home was the de facto St. Jude’s swim team party house, since his parents were practically always traveling in Europe. He ushered Owen down a large mirror-paneled hallway. “I’m trying to change up this gathering a little. Maybe give some of our guys something to do this weekend. Just follow my lead.”
“Sounds good, man.” Owen was glad to have something to think about besides his mom’s love life. “What’s the master plan this time?”
“Basically, our pansy teammates aren’t getting action. And it’s like, sometimes you have to bring the fucking mountain to them,” Hugh said cryptically as he flung open the glass-framed French doors to a large formal living room. Kids were lounging in the leather wingback chairs and stiff leather couches, Riedel highball glasses in hand. A projector screen flashed some weird movie against the wall, the images distorting the large Manet painting hanging over the fireplace.
“Look who’s here!” Hugh called to the motley group. He held out his own glass in a mock toast. Owen glanced around. Amongst the usual crew of varsity and JV swimmers were a couple of random girls he’d never seen before. “Ladies, for those of you who don’t know, this is Owen Carlyle. Owen, this is Sabine, Salome, Sabrina, and Simone. These lovely ladies agreed to come to our French film-fest. They’re all in Le Cinéma Français Society at L’École. It’s sort of like a cultural exchange program, with alcohol and nudity.” Hugh leered up at the wall. The image was grainy, but the characters on-screen were definitely naked.
“Right now, we’re watching Bertolucci. Last Tango in Paris. A masterpiece,” he explained to Owen.
Owen nodded. So that was Hugh’s plan: to act like an artsy, sensitive, foreign film–loving guy when he really just wanted an excuse to screen a pseudo-porn movie in mixed company. And with girls from L’École, nonetheless—the girls from the all-female French school had a reputation for being, ahem, looser than their American counterparts. They certainly seemed to develop faster.
“Hey.” Owen flashed a smile at the four girls. Each of them smiled back.
Parlez-vous français?
“Here’s a seat,” said one, practically shoving puppyish freshman Chadwick Jenkins off the couch and onto the floor. Chadwick didn’t even notice. His eyes were still glued to the screen, where the characters were engaged in some extremely explicit foreplay involving a stick of butter.
“I’m cool, but thanks.” Owen scanned the room for Rhys, brushing past another one of the girls Hugh had introduced. She had dyed black hair, a nose ring, and a belly ring Owen could see through her off-white off-the-shoulder T-shirt. What was her name again? It began with an S….
Skanké?
“Hey man!” Rhys called from a corner, standing up hurriedly. His blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt was unbuttoned, and his dark brown hair was mussed.
“Dude, did you see that girl I was sitting with? She’s crazy,” he hissed, pulling Owen into the large, country-modern kitchen. “She’s not wearing a bra or underwear. She told me that. Then she showed me. She showed me. Is that what girls do now?” Rhys shuddered.
Owen grinned at his uptight buddy. He sounded like his mom, the society hostess of the television show Tea with Lady Sterling. It was a talk show about manners in contemporary society, shown in the afternoon and rerun on the screens in the backseats of cabs. For some reason, Avery was obsessed with the show.
“Dude, just grow one,” Owen said, not unkindly. “She’s not going to bite.”
“Oh, she does bite.” Rhys rubbed the side of his neck, and Owen could just make out two sets of faint reddish toothmarks. “Seriously, these girls are fucking dangerous,” Rhys finished, shaking his head.
“I need a beer,” Owen announced. “You need, like, ten,” he added, laughing at Rhys’s shell-shocked expression.
“You’re telling me!” Rhys pulled open the door of one of the two matching Sub-Zero refrigerators that flanked the rear wall of the kitchen. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, opening the bottle. “First I was attacked by a French vampire girl, and tomorrow I have to wake up at the asscrack of dawn to go to England.”
He sat down on one of the stainless steel stools surrounding the marble island in the center of the kitchen. “Just for once, I’d like to do a real Thanksgiving, you know? Instead I have to go to my awful cousins’ awful manor house. You know what we do there? Go on a foxhunt. It sucks.” Rhys shook his head grimly.
“Well, consider this your lucky year.” Owen chugged his own beer, slamming the empty bottle against the hammered stainless steel counter. “We’re all going to the Bahamas. It’s this lame family bonding trip with my mom’s boyfriend,” Owen explained. He couldn’t say the word boyfriend without cringing. It wasn’t like he wanted his mom to be lonely or alone, but she and Remington had only been dating for a little over a month. Still, there was the prospect of warm weather, lots of booze, foreign girls… “Anyway, you’re invited.”
“Seriously? They’d be cool with that?” Rhys’s eyes lit up.
“Of course they would. You should come. It’d be good for you to get away,” Owen said. Rhys had seemed a little down ever since his breakup with Kelsey at the beginning of the year. Owen generally tried to avoid the subject, since he had pretty much single-handedly destroyed that relationship when he and Kelsey hooked up. But now he and Rhys were both over Kelsey. What better way to really smooth things over than a bachelor weekend?
“What’s going on, men?” Hugh appeared in the kitchen, a drunken Sabine clinging to him for support. She was the same one who’d bitten Rhys. The strap of her tank top had fallen off her shoulder, her skirt barely covered her super-skinny ass, and she looked way too drunk for 7 p.m.
“I was looking for you guys,” Hugh continued. “Sabine and I decided it’d be educational for us all to do some reenactments. You know, to fully understand the context of the film.”
“I can show you what you missed,” Sabine said, pulling the other strap of her tank top off her shoulder, as if she were ready to strip right in the middle of Hugh’s kitchen. “What do you think, Rhys?” Rhys wordlessly shook his head and shot a pleading look at Owen to rescue him.
“We were just coming out,” Owen said, blushing as soon as the words left his mouth. Earlier in the school year, when he was hooking up with Kelsey covertly, the guys on the team had thought he was being secretive because he was gay. Even now, when it was common knowledge he’d basically stolen Kelsey from Rhys, he was still sensitive about gay jokes.
“You know I’m nothing but supportive.” Hugh waggled his eyebrows. “Do whatever you want, guys!”
“What are they going to do?” Sabine slurred, obviously angry that no one seemed to notice her impromptu striptease.
“Carlyle and I are going to the Bahamas,” Rhys explained.
Because that doesn’t sound gay.
“Oh! You need a goodbye kiss!” Sabine pulled up her tank top straps as she lurched toward Rhys. She dragged her red-painted fingernails against the back of his neck as she pulled him toward her. Rhys took an automatic step backward. What the hell? Since when were girls so predatory? Sure, she was hot, but she was also hammered. He didn’t want just a drunken hookup. Whatever happened to romance?
Don’t ask the girl who thinks tequila shots are foreplay.
“I… uh, have to pack,” Rhys said desperately.
“No you don’t.” Sabine made puppy-dog eyes at him. “You know what I always say?” She leaned closer to Rhys so he could smell the tequila and Life Savers on her breath. “Je ne regrette rien.”
Suddenly, a look of terror flashed across her face. “I don’t feel so good!” she apologized, throwing open one of the doors to the terrace. Rhys could hear retching sounds.
“Happens to the best of us,” Hugh called out cheerfully. He turned back to the guys, his face now serious. “Listen, Rhys. You have to do more than pack,” he announced, thoughtfully stroking his bearded chin. At the beginning of the school year, as a show of solidarity after Kelsey broke up with Rhys, the swim team had made a pact that all of them would stop shaving, and that none of them would get action until Rhys had. The rest of the team had abandoned the plan after a few weeks, but Hugh had soldiered on. The fact that facial hair made it easier for him to avoid getting carded was certainly a plus. “You need to lose your virginity, stat. And here’s your opportunity. Sometimes it’s easier to get outside of your comfort zone if you’re in a different geographic region. It expands your thought horizons and stuff like that. You better get laid in the Bahamas. If you don’t, I don’t even want to see you back here,” Hugh finished, as if that settled the matter. “I’ll go make sure she’s okay,” he added, and went outside to check on Sabine.
Rhys shook his head at Hugh’s lewd suggestion. It was true—he was still a virgin. The swim team guys had been trying to get him to lose his V card this entire year. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had any opportunities: At any given party, he could pull a girl like Sabine away to one of the guest rooms upstairs and just get it over with. But he didn’t want that. He wanted a nice girl whom he could go to dinner with, kiss while watching romantic comedies, make playlists for and send cute e-mails to. And then, when they were ready, they could have sex. And have it actually mean something.
This week on Tea with Lady Sterling: freak-of-nature high school boys.
“You okay?” Owen asked Rhys sympathetically, once they were alone again. He pulled out two more beers and placed them on the counter. He knew Rhys had been bent out of shape over the whole virginity thing. He’d wanted to lose it to Kelsey, only to discover Kelsey had lost hers to Owen. It was pretty messed up, actually, and Owen really hoped Rhys would be able to put the past behind him and move on.
“Better than her.” Rhys gestured toward Sabine’s still-retching form. Okay, so he sort of felt like a loser.
“You better not come back from the Bahamas a virgin,” Hugh called from the terrace, where he was rubbing Sabine’s back. “Carlyle, make sure of it!” he added.
Thus spoke the Master of Multitasking.
Rhys considered this. As drunk as Hugh was, he had a point. Why not just lose it in the Bahamas? Maybe out of New York, and out of his mom’s sight, he’d be able to lose his hang-ups. Maybe if he just got it over with, away from Hugh and the swim team guys, he’d be in a better place to find a real relationship once he got back. He needed to stop acting like a shy pansy.
“I’m going to do it!” Rhys announced. He drained the entire Sierra Nevada in one gulp and slammed down the empty bottle as if in victory. “Watch me!”
Not literally, we hope….