No. He shook his head. That did not just happen. The birds stopped singing. Passing traffic carried no roar. The grass and flowers of the neighborhood desaturated to varying shades of gray. The air held no temperature or scent. His mind drained into an infinite funnel, his senses numb to everything except Daphne Bowman.
He spent the rest of the journey home floating in a daze, impending punishment forgotten. His parents greeted him as though he’d come home from school. They sat him down to dinner and gave him a stern sermon about taking them for granted and love and second chances, neither raising their voice. He listened without hearing, nodding once in a while to humor them. The tactic worked—every time he nodded his mother responded with a satisfied, elongated blink.
As soon as he was released to his bedroom, he dug out his tablet and stylus. He drew the campfire. The stars. The gooey marshmallows. A pair of lips in the sky. And a heart. A heart. Not an anatomical heart—a feminine, lovestruck, accidentally-not-a-circle heart doodle. Erase, erase, erase. He tucked the tablet under his bed and turned on the TV. Eight hours of video games later, his eyeballs dried open, Oliver made up his mind. He was going to pretend like it never happened. Daphne had snuck up on him. He was unprepared and on little sleep, and a simple moment of weakness had led to a large lapse in his judgment. She had poured herself into him and he had drunk her up. He hadn’t known he was thirsty until she was a block away, scampering back to her house. A drive-by kissing, the wound of which throbbed inside of him.
It was bad enough that the time they spent at Joshua Tree had conjured magic in its hours. Somewhere between the Hollywood sign and the desert, Daphne Bowman had become a magnetic force. He couldn’t stop touching her. Putting his arm around her after the gas station, the poking match in the cafe, the hug that he’d ended even though he’d wanted to keep holding her.
Oliver had played out all the scenarios in his mind, and the only way it ended well was if he became Daphne Bowman’s boyfriend. That was not going to happen. She knew it couldn’t—he’d been crystal clear through the campfire smoke.
He envisioned Daphne in Katrina’s place. Katrina wasn’t so dumb once Oliver got to know her, right before he disposed of her, and Daphne had a noticeably higher percentage of brain function than Katrina. Within a week of holding Daphne’s hand and making out under the bleachers, she’d probably be able to convince him to paint the “b” word all over his forehead. Even more disturbing was what all of this might say about him.
He didn’t want to think about that. He needed to do something drastic, game-changing, to prove—whether to her, or himself, he wasn’t sure—that he still had the upper hand in the situation. He picked up his phone. The muscles in his arm tightened, a final warning against dialing the phone. His dialed anyway.
The cheer in her voice filled him with dread. “Hey! You still have your phone.”
He took a deep breath. “I have a question for you…”
• • •
School resumed, the home stretch of senior year. When the final bell rang on Monday afternoon, a sixth sense pulled Oliver into the chapel on his way to the parking lot. She wouldn’t be there—he knew she was grounded—but he sensed her presence. Sure enough, a hot pink Post-it was attached to her pew: Any ideas for #6?
He pulled out a pen from his backpack and wrote on the back of the note: Yes. When?
The next day, a yellow Post-it rippled against the pew from the draft of the open door: Saturday. Meet me at Sweetie’s at 4 p.m.
He wrote back: I feel like a spy.
Wednesday: With a fluorescent paper trail? I can’t believe the CIA hasn’t recruited us yet.
Speak for yourself. I’m sworn to secrecy.
On Thursday, the pew was empty, and the room was cold. He searched the surrounding rows, considering the different possibilities. Maybe Father George or a nun had been in the chapel when she stopped by. Hiding the note would be more Daphne-like than scrapping it altogether. Gritting his teeth, he ran his hand under her pew. Gum, gum, gum, and more gum.
Father George strode into the room and opened the windows. “Hello, Oliver.”
How did Father George remember his name? He’d had little interaction with the man during his four years at Sacred Heart, avoiding him whenever possible, which was most of the time. “Hi, Father George.”
Oliver expected some unsolicited guidance related to his extended absence from the chapel, all in good humor but patronizing nonetheless. It didn’t come.
“How are you doing on this beautiful Thursday afternoon? Almost Friday, right?” Father George flashed a wide grin.
“Yeah. But it’s not like you get the weekend off. Sunday’s your big day.”
“Sunday’s the best day of the week.” Father George beamed. He meant it. “Come to service, and you’ll see why.”
“Okay, I will.” Oliver wanted to mean it. If he was morally comfortable with fibbing to Father George, his soul was surely condemned. Oliver cleared his throat. The question caught on his teeth and stalled on the way out. “Father George, did you find a Post-it note on one of the pews?” He wanted the question to sound less ridiculous than the possibility that the note didn’t exist.
“The second pew from the back? Yes.”
“You found it?” Oliver’s relief was palpable. Even Father George chuckled, and Oliver got the impression that Father George had a sizeable understanding of high school woe, despite being celibate. “Can I…I mean, good. Thanks. Do you happen to still have it? I think someone left it for me.”
“Sister Candice must have tossed it. I’ve been letting the notes stay, and reading them, for my own personal enjoyment. I hope you don’t mind.” Father George strolled behind the pulpit and pulled out a ring of keys.
“Uh, no.” Oliver did mind, but he had no desire to argue about it with a priest on holy ground. “If you let us deface your property, you have the right to read it. It’s only for this week.”
“I’ll talk to Sister Candice, see if she can abstain through tomorrow. No promises after that. She’s kind of a neat freak, this being the Lord’s House and all.” Father George unlocked a door to a back room and leaned over a wastebasket.
“Thank you.”
The priest emerged from the doorway and extended his hand to Oliver with a yellow Post-it stuck to his finger: What’s your code name? “Better come up with something clever. Daphne’s a smart one.”
Oliver gulped. Father George knew Daphne. “Yes, she’s a good influence on me.” That’s why I got her grounded.
“Wise men appreciate the positive forces in their lives. Keep it up, Oliver. I hope to see you one of these Sundays.” With that, Father George left the chapel as humbly as he’d arrived.
Oliver sat in Daphne’s pew and looked up to Stained Glass Mary for inspiration. His best idea wasn’t great, but his hungry stomach’s growling threatened the quiet of the room. He wrote in small letters so it would all fit: Frog Murrietta. Because Frog was my first pet hamster’s name when I was six and I grew up on Murrietta Ave.
On Friday, a blue Post-it awaited him, undisturbed: That’s your porn star name, not your spy name. Is this what communication was like when our parents were dating?
Did she think they were dating? A sharp pain formed behind his eyes. Oliver crumpled the Post-it. Picturing Father George reading the note spread his headache to the base of his skull.
His best distraction was a videogame where he could turn off his brain and focus only on the screen in front of him. But the effect was temporary. The all-nighter left him in a haze, when he was most susceptible to memories of Jason. He noticed that his position on the bed, legs folded underneath him, his back propped against the wall, was no different than it was seven years ago.
Oliver sits on his bed, back against the wall. His eyes are frozen open, staring at the television screen. He pounds on his controller, fighting to keep his characters alive.
“The whole team will be there.” Jason’s voice carries downstairs to Oliver’s room.
“I don’t want to go.” Emily’s voice chases after.
“We could just stop by for a half hour.” Jason’s voice moves between aggravation and begging.
“Go by yourself. It’s fine.”
Even with a floor between them, Oliver can tell it isn’t fine.
“Just go,” she says. “Go.” Her irritation sucks the oxygen from the air.
“No. It’s okay. I’ll stay.”
Their footsteps pad down the hall, silenced by the closing door of Jason’s bedroom.
Emily had won. Jason had lost. Oliver wasn’t going to lose.
He kicked off his covers. Saturday had arrived. The afternoon closed in and Oliver needed to have The Conversation with Daphne. But he couldn’t spew familiar words and toss in her name for authenticity. Parts of the conversation could be plagiarized, but with Daphne everything required more.
At 4:00 p.m., he shifted his car into park with a resounding click in front of Sweetie’s. He stormed through the door, sending the bell into a frenzy. He had the fullest intentions to make it clear that they were not now, and never would be, together. But at the sight of her, his mouth dried out and his charge weakened to a tiptoe.
She wasn’t working, seated next to the counter instead of behind it. “I got three weeks. That’s the decree from parents who aren’t parents. No phone, no iPod, no closed bedroom door. Straight home from school and work.”
He kept staring at her lips. Supple. Neither exaggerated, nor understated. Lips that knew how to kiss. How had he never noticed them before? Outside of the time when they were coated in lipstick and doing their best Marilyn Monroe impression, of course. “Rough,” was all he could manage.
“Eh, my friends know where to find me. What was your sentence?”
He lowered his head, both proud and appalled by his admission. “No rental car while my car was in the shop. I already have it back.”
“About what I expected. So, I have it all worked out.” She winked at Oliver and turned to the freckled boy their age behind the counter. “Okay, Jed. If my mom calls you need to say that I’m cleaning the bathroom and you transfer her to my cell. Got it?”
“Cool.” Jed gave her a thumbs up, smitten. A tiny volt of jealousy surged through Oliver and settled in the pit of his gut.
“Thanks.” Daphne nodded at Jed in solidarity.
“I thought you didn’t have a phone,” Oliver said.
“It’s for emergencies. My mom checks it every night for calls or texts.”
“Intense.” Oliver followed her out of the shop. “I feel like I’ve turned you into a liar.”
“You have.” Her lips parted into a liar’s grin.
They drove over a winding road at the top of a ridge, elevated above the spring dew in the valley. The houses in the hills propped up with stilts appeared ready to teeter over at any moment. A coyote loped through the tall grass and vanished. Had it even been there at all? Oliver focused on the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Daphne acted like nothing had transpired between them, like he’d made it all up in his head.
“I got into all the U.C.’s except the one I want to go to.” She sighed. “I mean, I’m still waiting to find out, not writing it off yet. They have to take me.”
“Berkeley?” Oliver asked lightly, trying to lessen her intensity.
Her voice was velvet, pleased that he remembered. “Yep.”
“That’s a long drive.”
“Or a short flight. Depends which transportation glass you want to look at—half empty or half full.”
“Except for the train. The train glass is always half empty.”
“True,” she said.
“So, what U.C.’s have accepted you?”
The twisted road straightened out. Houses lined the street instead of hiding behind hills and fences.
“S.D., S.B., L.A., and Davis. What about you?”
“I didn’t apply to any U.C.’s.”
“Then, where?”
“U of M.”
She evaluated the possibilities and took her best guess. “Michigan?”
“Montana.” His enunciation drew out the word, nearly giving it an extra syllable.
“Montana? What’s in Montana? Besides buffalo roaming, deer and antelope playing, and seldom heard discouraging words.”
“Mountains. Kind of says it in the name, Slow Fry.” They hit a red light at one of the few stoplights on the hill, and he tossed her a grin.
“There are mountains all over California.”
“You’re not the only one who wants to escape. I’m going to business school. Eventually I’ll take over Pagano and Sons.”
“Is that what you want?”
“At this point in my life, I don’t have any better ideas.” The relief he thought he would feel after saying this was, in fact, emptiness. The light turned green, and he was glad to have an excuse to focus on the road.
“Does U of M have a football team?”
“Yeah.”
“You could be their chicken.”
“It’s a grizzly bear.”
“Everyone will be so drunk they won’t know the difference.”
Daphne’s future burned bright as the Sun. In her solar system, his own future became Pluto, not even good enough to be a planet, just another rock among billions. He changed the subject. “You’re not asking where I’m taking you?”
“I trust you.”
Every innocent thing she said sounded like a come-on. “You shouldn’t.”
“Are you a serial killer? Oh my god, I’m trapped in the car. There’s no upstairs to run to. I’m going to die…”
The street widened to four lanes and the palm trees grew taller, their pineapple tops meticulously pruned, dead fronds unacceptable.
She continued, “…in Beverly Hills. Nope. Beverly Hills wouldn’t let me die in it. I’m not posh enough.”
They parked off of Rodeo Drive and Daphne followed him up the sidewalk, past the stores of every fashion designer featured prominently in VOGUE.
“You need to put a couple extra zeroes in my Sweetie’s paycheck for me to shop here.”
“So, I’m assuming you remember number six?” he asked.
“Own a pair of designer shoes. Clearly Emily’s.”
“Look who’s sexist. Maybe Jason had a shoe fetish.” He opened the door to a tall store that seemed to be made entirely of glass. “I want to get you a graduation present, courtesy of a Mr. James Choo.”
She stopped in front of the door. “Now look who’s sexist. You’re assuming I’m into designer shoes because I almost have boobs.”
“Nah, you have ’em. Can’t say I haven’t looked. And I poked one.” The flirtation tumbled out from Oliver involuntarily and he shifted his eyes to the floor, avoiding her face and chest area. They hadn’t kissed, he reminded himself. Never happened. He didn’t want to touch her. His hands were rubber to her electricity. I’m rubber, you’re glue. Grade school defense mechanisms only compounded his shame.
“Well, you’re right. About the shoes. But it’s sheer coincidence.” She sauntered in the store and Oliver followed.
The saleswoman peered down on the teenagers. The arches of her eyebrows came to a severe point over her skeptical eyes.
“Don’t worry, he’s a trust fund baby,” Daphne said to the coifed woman donned in impeccably tailored black.
The saleswoman approached, reserved, still prepared to call their bluff. “Hello, I’m Alana. Is there anything you’re looking for in particular?”
Daphne checked with Oliver. If he was planning on folding, now was the time. She cocked her head, giving him one last chance. You’re sure about this?
He wanted to call off the whole thing. This was all a terrible mistake. They were supposed to have had The Conversation on the ride over the hill. Everything should be as clear as the spotless glass surfaces in the store. The shoes meant nothing except friendship, a relationship forged through tragedy, something pure that had crawled through the ugliness against all odds.
Instead, he nodded in surrender, condemning them both to a harrowing predicament.
All clear, Daphne faced Alana. “Something neutral. Classic. Goes with everything.”
Alana believed the intent to purchase, and her attentiveness multiplied by the commission. “We have a few of those. What size?”
“Seven and a half. Or eight. I don’t know what size I am in Mr. Choo.”
“I’ll be right back.” Alana glided through the lacquered doors into the back room.
“Thanks, Alana,” Oliver called after her, ready to have a good laugh about Alana’s dramatic change in attitude. He wore a full smirk on his face, ready to break open with laughter as soon as Daphne cracked. They would make a half-hearted attempt to collect themselves when Alana returned.
“Oliver, go to prom with me.”
It was out of nowhere. No lead-in, no warning. He didn’t anticipate her having the gumption to ask.
Her voice held its confidence. “I’m not asking you to be my boyfriend. I just want you there with me.”
There wasn’t a smooth way to say it, so he blurted it out. “I’m already going. With Penny. To her prom. Your prom. It’s on the same night as mine.” Information he meant to divulge in the car. Revelations he knew would annihilate the admiration in her eyes. The end of times.
He didn’t want to see her crestfallen face, but he owed it to her to look.
“She asked you, and you said yes?” Thankfully, she was more bewildered than sad.
“Actually, I asked her.” The words scratched against his throat.
“You asked her to her prom?” Her voice began to crack.
“Yeah.” Because I am a sadistic asshole.
“The kiss…” She trailed off, unable to compliment or insult herself over it.
“It was a great kiss.” He took a step toward her, as if that would prove his sincerity.
“Not that great, apparently.” The sarcasm cut with precision.
He spoke slowly, hitting every consonant so she could feel it, know it. “No, it was…the best.”
“Oliver, tell me you don’t like me.”
“I don’t want to like you.” He said it as flat and robotic as possible, and it still came out sounding desperate.
“Not the same thing.”
The conviction in her words fueled him. “I like you, Daphne. But you want more from me than I can give you.”
Her voice sliced into him, a clean cut between pity and laughter. “You’re predicting what I want so you don’t have to find out. Better get your crystal ball checked because you don’t know me.”
“I know you want what Emily and Jason had. I can’t do that.” He stared her down, making sure it registered.
Her voice was still sharp. “I want whatever we have. All the good and all the bad.”
The line between what Oliver himself wanted, and Oliver not wanting to be Jason, zigzagged on the earthquake-laden ground of Beverly Hills. “I can’t do it.”
“Taking the coward’s way out…” her voice trailed off.
“Like Jason? Little bit of a stretch to compare suicide to saying no to a date, don’t you think?”
“I’m noticing the irony. By trying to not be like him, you’re being like him.”
“And you can’t even get dressed without trying to be Emily.”
“Wow. Thanks for throwing my honesty in my face.”
“Like you’re not doing the exact same thing to me.”
“So, what is this? You’re buying me off with a pair of shoes? Is this what happens? Someone scares you and you head to Rodeo Drive with your parents’ credit card? Take me home.” She dashed out of the store as Alana reappeared with a stack of boxes.
Oliver had run through all the possible scenarios over the last week. He’d imagined a blowout with Daphne that ended with him feeling guilty, outsmarted, and vacant. He had not, however, imagined that this would take place at the Jimmy Choo store in front of an audience.
He nodded an apology to Alana. She dropped the boxes on the counter a little too hard for how expensive the shoes inside them were, but she got her point across. He hated when people were right about him, especially strangers. And Daphne Bowman.
The car ride home was the longest one of his life. The stoplights taunted him with their measured ability to change.
Daphne took a raspy breath. Thankfully, she wasn’t crying. “I’m asking you to be honest with yourself. I don’t think anyone’s asked you to do that before.”
“And I’m responding by saying, ‘I can’t date you.’ You’re getting all riled up because I’m saying I don’t want you.”
She pulled the words from the depths of her throat, “Then say it.”
He was even more intimidated by her than usual. “Say what?”
“Say you don’t want me.”
“I already did.” It sounded whiny. He hadn’t wanted to sound whiny.
Her pity was back to splicing laughter. “The Oliver no is ever ambiguous. And I’m not riled up. If I got upset every time someone in my life didn’t want me, I’d be in a constant state of delirium.”
“Drama Queen,” he said as a dark joke. It cleared some of the frenetic energy in the car but solved nothing.
She took a breath and waited. He knew her next words would be dangerous. They trickled out like the soft rain that rarely fell in L.A. It was always either downpour or a drought. “You’re embarrassed to be with me.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true. I’m with you right now.”
“No, I mean, of being with me. My boyfriend, or friend with benefits, or whatever your turn of phrase is for what you are with Penny.” She parted her hair on the right, using the thousands of extra strands to hide her face.
“I’m not with Penny.” He sat up straighter and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. He was right, and Daphne was wrong, for once.
“Well, you will be, soon enough. You know me? Well, I know you, too.” She faced him, waiting.
He glanced over to prove her wrong, but her gloat, bigger and better than his own, returned the curve to his backbone.
They veered onto Mulholland Drive. Oliver used the winding road as an excuse to not face her. “You are an amazing person…”
She almost laughed. “Oliver, if you break up with me one more time I’m going to throw myself out of this car. And as a person with a family history of suicide and depression, I know I shouldn’t use that as a threat.”
“You forgot alcoholism in there. You want to make a joke about drinking yourself to death?”
“It’s too expensive.”
“Oh, so this is realistic hypothetical suicide? Should I 5150 you?”
“As long as Jason wouldn’t.”
The air in the car went so thick and still, it forced Oliver to ask the question he didn’t want to ask. “Should we not hang out anymore?”
“I don’t know. I think you would miss me a lot less than I would miss you.”
“No, Daph. You have it all wrong.”
“Give it to me right.”
“I tried. I’d just be breaking up with you again.”
He glanced at his side mirror to avoid her rolling eyes. But evading her with one sense didn’t stop her disgust and exasperation from creeping over to his side of the car.
Defeat swelled in her throat. “You bring out the worst in me.”
And you bring out the best in me. He couldn’t say it out loud, couldn’t tell her how she’d made his senior year the best year of his life. How he knew that even through cancer or Alzheimer’s or a horrific car accident, on his deathbed, he would hold onto their conversation at Frank’s Diner, when they decided to do the list. He would forever recall the beauty of the desperation and hope in her eyes. The same feeling he’d held inside of him for so long, never having the courage to let it rise to the surface until he met her. She’d opened the cage of something in him that needed to be freed.
He could see black tears streaking down her face. She didn’t make a sound. She had mastered the art, a crying ninja.
The silence that was usually so safe between them had grown fangs and snarled at him in the dense air. He snapped back at it. “You want me to change, and I won’t.”
“You want me to change, and I can’t.”
Which was worse?
He didn’t have to think long before realizing he was the greater of two evils. His adamant refusal to align himself with the best thing that had ever happened to him—it didn’t make sense anymore. But change couldn’t come in thirty seconds, or even an hour. She had to understand that; she was a reasonable person.
He pulled into the Sacred Heart parking lot where they could continue the conversation without him having one eye on the road. She opened the car door as he pulled into the stall and jumped out before he’d come to a stop.
“Daph!”
All that was left of her was the echo of footsteps on the asphalt.
• • •
At lonely times in his life, Oliver turned to Mitch and Joe. After a couple hours spent with their simple sentences and bad jokes, life was better. Getting hammered in Joe’s garage pushed the future to another day. All that mattered was the night in front of them.
Freshman year, Joe had thrown an epic party one weekend when his parents were out of town. The party had been such a raucous success that three bottles of Resolve and half the JV football team could not get the stains out of the rug in the living room. The jungle juice interwoven with the beige carpet fibers had turned from red to green to blue to purple during various stages of scrubbing, leaving the contaminated sections of the carpet dark and sparse. The color of Joe’s face had also changed during each scrubbing phase: hangover gray to panic red to sweaty orange to surrendering white.
In hopes of a temporary solution, furniture had been rearranged to cover the stain, and the living room had a feng shui meltdown. The sofa and chairs were returned to their former divots. Carpeting installers were contacted, and estimates had been handed down like prison sentences. In the end, the cost was too high and the time too short. Joe’s parents had returned that night, and they could be heard screaming at him in Spanish from three houses down. The punishment was a doozy. The Valdivias laid off their landscapers for six months and forced Joe to spend every weekend mowing and grooming his yard.
Members of the football team had cruised by Joe’s house on Saturday afternoons tossing catcalls while he pushed the lawnmower or pruned the shrubbery. Oliver ducked and didn’t make a sound during these drive-bys. He knew Joe’s humiliation far outweighed the punishment. He also saw a darkness in Joe that hid behind his eyes. Joe never forgot those taunts, never forgot the mouths that threw them.
Joe never hosted another party. And if alcohol was consumed on his property, it was forbidden indoors. Oliver was only allowed inside to use the bathroom or get a glass of water. Even then, he was required to remove his shoes before entering. Joe’s fear of his parents ran deep. Six months of caretaking the grounds of his home had taught him to take zero risk when it came to illicit behavior. Oliver admired this relationship. If he had more fear of his own parents, would it have shaped him differently? Would he wade through life more carefully, with more forethought, with more cunning? Would he have figured out who and what he wanted to be? The grass was always greener, just ask Joe. The guy was shockingly knowledgeable in eco-friendly fertilizer.
Oliver sipped his third beer, sitting on a lawn chair flanked by Mitch and Joe. “Do you guys remember that girl at one of the football games? The one who was waiting by the fence for me?”
“Emily Bowman’s little sister. The one that blew you off on New Year’s.” Mitch sneered.
Oliver winced. Had it been that obvious? Even Mitch had picked up on it, so that question was answered.
“Daphne.” Joe wasn’t playing the pronoun game.
“Yeah, her.” He wanted to know how Joe knew her name. Maybe Mitch told him. Or maybe Oliver had slipped and mentioned her. Asking would make him look guilty of some crime he hadn’t committed. “What did you think of her?”
“Ball buster.” Mitch laughed.
“Kind of hot, in that scary, goth sort of way,” Joe smirked.
Oliver was surprised by their positive reactions. “Really?”
“She might bite your dick off, but it would be really good up ’til that point,” Mitch said, matter-of-factly.
“She asked me to prom.” Oliver expected this confession to be peppered with more embarrassment.
“You like those firecrackers,” Mitch said.
“I didn’t say I liked her.”
“You didn’t say you didn’t like her,” Mitch said.
Oliver opened his mouth to defend his omission, but Joe cut him off. “So, you’re going with her?”
“No.” Oliver was amazed that Joe considered his going to prom with Daphne an option. Not that Oliver needed or wanted either Mitch or Joe’s approval. “I’m already going with someone else.”
“Pussy,” Mitch teased.
“And you regret it.” There was no hint of question in Joe’s words. They hit Oliver with the potency of smelling salts.
Oliver tread carefully. “Regret what?”
“Going with whoever prom-queen-cheerleader-student-council-president you’re going with.”
“It’s Penny Layton.”
Mitch brightened in recognition. “From the spring break party?”
Oliver nodded.
“And the New Year’s party,” Joe added.
“She’s hot,” Mitch continued his singular thought without pause or breath, “You should’ve been at that party, man. It was awesome.”
“So I’ve heard,” Oliver sighed.
“Yeah, why weren’t you there?” Joe trained his eyes on Oliver.
Oliver met his challenge. “If Daphne asked you to prom, would you have said yes?”
Joe shifted in his lawn chair and the hinges squeaked. “I don’t know. It’s something different, man. Something different.” Joe tossed his empty beer across the room, aiming for the garbage can. The bottle hit the rim and bounced off, shattering on the cement floor.
Mitch rolled off his chair in a fit of laughter, prompting Oliver to laugh at Mitch’s muscular body floundering on the ground. Joe joined in, laughing at his own misfortune while simultaneously sulking to the broom and dustpan resting in the corner.
Maybe Mitch and Joe weren’t so bad after all. But they weren’t serving their desired purpose of making him feel smarter, wiser, and more evolved as a human being. He hunched at Neanderthal level, barely upright, and drew another long swig of beer.