A Ride Home
I’m closing down my computer at work and finishing a list of calls I need to make in the morning when Holly knocks on the door frame of my office.
I say, “Hey.”
She says, “Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“Uh, I know this is probably like a serious hassle, and it’s no big deal if you can’t do it, but I kind of need a favor.”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“I kind of need a ride home. My sister borrowed my car to go to Santa Barbara for some work thing this morning, and she was supposed to have it back by now but she got stuck up there, and all of my friends are doing stuff and can’t pick me up and you’re like the only person I really know here, so I thought I’d ask. And, seriously, it’s no problem if you can’t. I can just call my parents or something but I was trying to not have to deal with them.”
I imagine her giving me a hand job while I drive. I imagine her sucking my dick while I drive. I imagine pulling over on the freeway and fucking her in the passenger’s seat as cars speed by. I imagine smelling her pussy on my fingers the next day at work. I say, “No problem, just give me a few minutes.”
She says, “Cool. Thank you so much,” and then goes back out to her desk.
I sit back down at my desk and send Alyna a text telling her I’ll be home a little late because my boss wants me to get some reports that don’t actually exist ready for an early meeting tomorrow that will not actually take place. She texts back acknowledging my excuse and asking if she should leave dinner out or in the fridge. I respond by telling her to put it in the fridge and to kiss the kids goodnight for me if I don’t make it back in time to tuck them in. I end by telling her that I love her, which is technically still true. She responds that she will kiss the kids goodnight for me and that she loves me, too. She ends her text by telling me not to wake her up when I get home because she is very tired and will definitely be asleep by ten.
The ride to CSUN is uneventful. There are no hand jobs. There are no blowjobs. There is no fucking. We talk about mundane things. She asks me about my family. I ask her about hers. There is no hint of the girl who openly flirted with me in the kitchen a few days before.
When we get to CSUN, she directs me to her dorm, which is slightly surprising to me. For some reason I thought she would have lived in an apartment. I pull up in front of her dorm and say, “Well, there you go. See you tomorrow.”
I expect her to thank me and get out of my car. Instead she says, “Do you, you know, want to come in for a beer or something?”
My head floods with images of hand jobs, blowjobs, and fucking under the posters of Katy Perry and the vampires from Twilight that I’m sure must exist in her dorm room. I say, “Sure. I can stick around for a beer,” then park my car.
She opens the door to her dorm room, and it’s like walking into a solid wall of marijuana smoke. Her roommate is in the room, sitting on her bed and smoking pot from a bong shaped like a baseball bat. Holly says, “This is my roommate, Carly.” Carly exhales a giant cloud of weed smoke and says, “Hey, dude.” Carly is not initially attractive, but she is young, and although she is chubby I can tell it’s a tight kind of chubby. She’s plump, not fat. She’s the kind of chubby that yields a fat ass that’s extremely attractive in certain positions, I would assume.
Holly goes to a tiny fridge in the center of the room and pulls out two beers. She hands me one and then sits on her bed. The room is incredibly small. I haven’t been in a dorm room since I was in college. I can either sit on the bed with Holly or sit at one of the two tiny desks at the foot of each of the beds. I say, “You mind if I sit on the bed with you?”
She laughs and says, “Uh, no . . . go ahead.”
Carly says, “You guys want some?” and extends the bong toward us. Holly doesn’t hesitate. She says, “Hells yeah,” and takes a huge rip before extending the thing to me. I smoked pot a few times in college, but I haven’t since, and even then I was kind of bad at it. Beyond that, I immediately fear Alyna smelling weed on me when I come home. Yet I reason that the damage is already done—I probably smell like a dispensary just from being in the room—and I don’t want to seem like an uptight old guy to Holly, so I say, “Yeah.”
I light it up and inhale a cloud of weed smoke that makes my mouth look like a window in a burning building when I cough it all back out. The girls laugh. My eyes are watering and my throat is burning. I take a quick swig of beer and start to feel high almost immediately. Holly pats my back and says, “You okay?”
I lean back on her bed and say, “Yeah. I think so. I will be.” I laugh. This feels good. I look around her room. No posters of Katy Perry or Twilight. She has a poster of Christopher Hitchens with a halo above her bed and a poster of a band called Crystal Castles by her desk. The Hitchens poster surprises me and instantaneously buys back any of the vapid things she’s said or posted on her Facebook page. There are a few scattered pictures of people I assume are her family. I hate Miller Lite, but the one I’m drinking tastes amazing.
She puts her hand on my chest and says, “Hey, really, thanks for the ride. My sister can be such a cunt sometimes.” It feels good, in a way that’s sexual and nonsexual at the same time. It makes me wish I’d had a pothead girlfriend in college, or at any time in my life really. Everything is so comfortable.
I say, “No problem. Thanks for . . . this.”
She says, “For what?”
I say, “I don’t know,” and we laugh again.
Carly says, “So what do you do, dude? Are you like her boss or something?”
I say, “What do I do? What do I do?” I can tell I’m beyond high. The words make too much sense to me to make any sense at all. I say, “What do any of us do?”
Carly says, “What in the fuck are you talking about, dude?”
I say, “I’m not her boss, really. No one is. She’s an intern. So I guess maybe, actually, everyone is her boss.”
Carly says, “Dude, you’re fucked up.”
I say, “Yes, Carly, I am fucked up.”
We spend the next hour or so talking about the universe and the possibility of alien life and parallel dimensions. When I ask about Crystal Castles, Holly plays some of their music and I find that I like it a lot. I don’t think about Alyna or my kids at all as we leave their dorm room to go get frozen yogurt at a place on campus. I buy their frozen yogurt and we sit down to eat it. There are a few other kids in the place eating yogurt, too. I wonder if everyone in the place thinks I’m Holly’s dad.
When we finish, I walk Holly and Carly back to their dorm room. Carly goes in by herself, leaving me and Holly outside. Holly says, “Thanks again. This was actually pretty fun.”
I say, “Yeah it was. Thanks for the beer and the . . .”
“Weed?”
“Yeah.”
She laughs. “Anytime.”
We hug again. This time, even more than the last time in the parking lot, feels like the end of a date. We linger at the end of the hug, a little longer than the last time, looking at each other for a few seconds. She knows I have a wife and kids. I think she wants me to kiss her. I want to kiss her. I don’t. I say, “Okay, see you tomorrow,” and I give her one more quick little hug before I walk back to my car without turning around to look at her.
On the drive home, all I can think about is what she and Carly are talking about, if she’s telling Carly how badly she wanted me to kiss her, or if they’re laughing at me for being old and weird. I check Holly’s Facebook page on my phone. She makes no mention of the night’s events.
When I get home, Alyna’s asleep. I put my clothes in a plastic trash bag, which I tie shut to conceal the smell of pot as best as I can. I check on the kids in their rooms, take a shower, and go to sleep wondering what in the fuck I’m doing.