5. five

Chapter five

“If I Had Eyes” – Jack Johnson

X ander’s grandparents lived in a log A-frame cabin at the end of a long, winding driveway. Concealed by trees, it was the perfect place for a bunch of minors to throw a party. The only other houses on this rural lane were Xander’s and Abigail’s.

“Aren’t you guys a little worried your parents are going to question all the cars coming this way?” I asked when I arrived. Xander was tapping a keg in the kitchen, and Abigail was seated nearby on the couch, assembling the perfect playlist for the party. Next to her feet on the rustic wooden coffee table sat her iHome speaker, and she’d already proclaimed herself as the official party DJ.

“No,” Xander said without looking up, his focus on securing the tap. He twisted it with ease, locking it into place. “My parents couldn’t care less. They’re usually too wrapped up in their own shit to notice what I’m doing. Dad’s probably already at the bottom of another bottle and my mom’s just… well, she’ll just be trying to stay out of his way.” Xander cleared his throat and looked up from the keg, his usual smirk returning. “Anyway, I’m not worried. I’m just going to enjoy the party.”

I glanced at Abigail, who gave me a small, understanding smile before looking back down at her phone. “Well, my mom and dad will probably say ‘that Pierce boy down the road is up to something again’ but they don’t know I’m here, so they won’t be that concerned. Hey, how many Coldplay songs should I put on the playlist?”

“Zero,” Xander said at the same time I asked, “How many you got?”

She giggled. “I’ll stick to ‘Viva La Vida.’ That’ll get the people hyped up.”

Xander wiped his hands on a gingham dish towel before moving onto the second keg. “Or make them go home.”

“You take that back,” Abigail warned, and she and Xander exchanged a flirtatious smile.

With no knowledge of how to tap a keg, I paced around the room, glancing at the loft up above. Abigail followed my gaze. “Xander. Remember when your grandma almost caught us kissing up there in the loft when we were nine?”

“Yep.” Xander filled up a red plastic cup and gave me a nod, indicating it was for me. “Remember the tire swing?”

“Oh, God.” Abigail covered her cheeks. “What about your grandpa’s woodworking shed?”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, taking the beer from Xander. “You guys were making out twenty-four-seven while I was at home playing with little plastic dinosaurs.”

“It’s okay to be a late bloomer, bud.”

I swallowed a sip of beer. “Yeah, I don’t think I was the one who bloomed at the inappropriate time, but okay.” I shot them a half-smile to let them know I was teasing.

“Says the virgin.” Surprisingly, that jab came from Abigail, who threw her head back and laughed at the look I gave her. “I’m just kidding, Owen. And that’s all changing tonight. Speaking of which—did you bring a condom?”

“Indeed, I did. Thank you for your concern about my protection.”

“I mean, you can’t go knocking girls up if you want to go to Purdue.”

“What’s your strategy?” Xander asked.

“For what?”

“For fuck’s sake.” He grabbed another red cup and began to fill it. “For getting into Beth’s pants.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Just… be myself. Make her laugh. See how the night goes.”

“Good, good,” Xander said, carrying the second beer over to Abigail, who sat it on the coffee table without taking a sip. Xander ran a hand through his hair on the way back to the kegs. “You should brag about tutoring little kids and whatnot. She’d probably think that’s cute.”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea,” Abigail agreed. “And make sure you smile. All the girls really like your dimples.”

“What girls?” Was Lena Brower one of them?

Before Abigail could answer, Xander suddenly strolled over to the window and pulled the forest green curtains farther apart to peer outside. “Whose car is that?” I put down my beer and joined him at the window to watch a black sports car coming up the driveway past the chicken coop. I squinted to see who the driver was, and my heart skipped a beat when I caught a glimpse of blonde hair. “Uh oh, Gardner. Is that your girl?”

My girl. Right. “Looks like her.” My nerves instantly shot through the roof. I had assumed she’d arrive much later, after the music was playing and I had some more liquid courage coursing through my veins. Her early arrival would give me ample time to fuck this up. With an exhale, I said, “Here goes nothing.”

“You’re going to be just fine, Owen,” Abigail said. And then, as Xander and I watched Beth step out of her car and retrieve the liquor from her backseat, Abigail rushed out some more last-minute advice for me. “Be confident. Relax and be your goofy self, because you already know that works on her. And when it comes time to, you know, perform–make sure you don’t rush it and you’re focused on her comfort and pleasure. Okay?”

That was way too much to process all at once.

Xander gave me a quick glance before looking over his shoulder at Abigail. He said nothing, but I could tell from the way he was holding his breath, he was thinking about how much he’d like to focus on Abigail’s comfort and pleasure.

I turned back to the window and swallowed. Beth closed her car door with her hip, carrying the six-pack of Smirnoff in one arm and the bottle of whiskey in the other. “She’s nineteen. Won’t she be breaking the law if she has sex with me?”

Xander shook his head. “The age of consent in Indiana is sixteen.”

Of course he knew that.

Pushing past him, I made my way to the front door to open it for her as she stepped up onto the weathered wooden planks of the porch. “Hey, Owen Elizabeth,” she said with a grin.

“I thought we agreed my name was Frodo.” I took the heavy Smirnoff from her, taking note of her appearance. She was wearing short, frayed denim shorts and a low-cut red shirt, and there was something different about her hair–it looked softer and straighter, or something.

And she smelled citrusy and clean.

“What a cute little cabin. And we are way out in the boonies, aren’t we?”

“Hope it wasn’t too hard to find the place.” I held the door open for her and she followed me inside. I sat the Smirnoff on the kitchen table and turned around to look at her. She spun around in a slow circle, taking in all the rustic decor and wooden beams above.

“This place is adorable,” she said dreamily. And then her eyes dropped to Abigail sitting on the couch. “Did I see you at Boomer’s today?”

Abigail nodded, but Xander, taking a seat on a stool at the kitchen island, answered for her. “We were all there. We’re the ones who dared Owen to talk to you.”

I chuckled nervously, but thankfully, Beth was smiling. “Is that right?”

“Yep. These are my friends Xander and Abigail,” I said, nodding toward them. “And guys, this is Beth.”

Abigail gave a warm smile from where she was sitting, but Xander held out his hand for her to shake. Beth took a step forward, accepting it, and the two locked eyes. “Thanks for having me,” she told him.

Xander’s gaze was a little too intense for my comfort. “Yeah, of course.”

Abigail rose from the couch and made her way into the kitchen area. “I love your tattoos, Beth,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “How many do you have?”

“Well,” Beth said, grunting as she put the Jack Daniels on the counter, “it depends on whether you count all the seagulls as separate tattoos or not.”

“Seagulls?” I asked, crossing my arm against my chest. She was still standing just a foot or two in front of Xander, who twisted in his stool so that his knees were pointed at her.

“Yeah, they’re on my back–there’s four of them. So, counting them, I have… eight tattoos?” She tilted her head to the side, like she was doubting herself. “Yeah. Eight. For now, at least.”

Eyeing the butterfly tattoo on Beth’s leg, Xander asked, “Where do you go for them?”

“Killer Ink, over on Fourth Street. I would trust those people with my life.”

“I’m getting my first tattoo this summer when I turn eighteen,” Xander said, which was news to me. He’d never mentioned that before. “I was going to go out of town for it, but it looks like they do good work there.”

I tried to ignore the way Xander was eyeing a cursive quote poking out from beneath Beth’s shirt near her cleavage. “Do you know what you’re going to get?” Beth asked, glancing from Xander to Abigail like she was trying to assess their relationship.

Good luck with that.

“Probably, like, a melting skull or something like that,” Xander said, and I would have laughed if it weren’t for the twinge of annoyance pumping through my veins. He was dominating the conversation, and I had nothing of value to add.

“Well, you have to go to Killer Ink. They did my hip tattoo just a couple weeks ago, too. It took six hours.”

“Six hours?” Abigail’s eyebrows raised as she leaned onto her elbows on the counter, giving Beth her full attention.

“I fell asleep halfway through it.” Beth laughed, running her fingers through her hair.

“How big is it?” Xander asked.

“Well, it’s like…” Beth touched her hip, her pointer finger curling around her belt loop. “It’s a little hard to describe. Want me to just show you?”

With her eyes locked on Xander’s again, it was obvious that question was directed at him. I adjusted my arms against my chest and swallowed, awaiting Xander’s answer, hoping he’d throw me a bone and say something to redirect her attention toward me.

“Hell yeah,” he said, dropping his eyes to Beth’s hands, now hovering over the button of her shorts. And the second Xander gave her that enthusiastic answer, the shorts began to come down. But she didn’t stop there. I sucked on my bottom lip when she tugged at the side of her blue panties, too, angling her hip toward Xander so he could get a better view of the floral tattoo.

I was standing too far away to get a decent view myself, but to move closer would make me feel like a pervert. My feet remained firmly planted where they were as Beth’s shorts and underwear dipped dangerously low on her hip. And then, to my astonishment, Xander’s hand lurched forward to hold up her shirt so he could see the full tattoo, which extended from her waist to her thigh.

He was touching her.

“Wow,” he said, raising both eyebrows. “You fell asleep during that? That’s badass.”

“It barely hurt at all.”

I glanced over at Abigail, who was already staring at me with wide eyes, like she expected me to do something about this.

“Hey,” I blurted, wrapping my fingers around the neck of the Jack Daniels bottle. “Should we take some pre-party shots?” If I gave Xander something to hold, he couldn’t touch Beth anymore.

There was a chorus of yesses around me, so I reached for the red cups. I doubted Xander’s grandparents had shot glasses anywhere, so these cups would have to suffice. “We could just drink out of the bottle?” Beth suggested, buttoning her shorts. Both of Xander’s hands were resting on his lap now.

“That works,” I said, turning back around to twist the cap off the bottle. I slid it down the counter toward Beth. “You brought it, so you get the first sip.”

She picked up the bottle and take a long swig, shivering after she swallowed. I watched her wipe her mouth as she handed the Jack Daniels to Xander. Their fingers grazed as the bottle passed between them, and she watched him drink. He offered the bottle to Abigail, but she declined, saying, “It’s too early. I don’t want to be hugging a toilet by ten.”

No one argued with her. Xander then passed the bottle to me, and I took a deep breath, remembering I didn’t handle myself very well when drinking whiskey straight. Whiskey and Coke? Fine. But from the bottle, like this? God help me.

I did my best to keep a straight face as the liquor burned my esophagus on the way down, but a wince still worked its way through my attempt to act tough. Xander grinned. “Would you have rather had one of those fruity Smirnoffs?”

Maybe it was just an innocent joke, but his words felt like a slight dig at my masculinity. Ignoring Beth’s giggles, I stared at Xander and said, “No, but I’ll take the rest of my beer next to you there.” I nodded toward my cup, and Xander handed it to me. It was seconds before his eyes shot back to Beth, though, and she was looking right back at him.

Neither of them were being subtle.

But I had to keep my eyes on the prize. “Hey, Beth,” I said, lowering my cup from my lips. “There’s some cute baby chicks outside. Do you want to hold one?”

I didn’t know a whole lot about girls, but I understood they loved baby animals. As predicted, Beth’s face lit up, and she was fully focused on me now. “Aww! Yes, show me!”

I led her to the front door and opened it, allowing her to step onto the porch first so I could pause to give my friends a wide-eyed look. Though Xander merely stared down at the counter, Abigail lightly clapped, making me feel like I’d just pulled the most genius move of my life.

And maybe it was? I was glad I’d heard the chicks cheeping on my way up to the house earlier that evening, because as it turned out, they were the perfect icebreaker. I opened the wooden latch to the enclosed part of the coop, just like Xander showed me a few years ago when I visited him here, and led Beth inside, where a couple dozen yellow chicks were cowering beneath a heat lamp in the corner.

“Oh. My. God.” Beth clapped her hands against her cheeks and squealed. “They’re so cute. They look a little afraid of us, though, don’t they? We’re like giants to them.”

I bent down and scooped one up, holding it out toward her. “Here you go,” I said, and she carefully took the chick from my hands. She held it close to her chest, and it cheeped softly, nestling against her. “Look, she likes you,” I said before bending over to pick up another one. As I straightened back up, I subtly moved closer to her, praying this thing wouldn’t poop on me. For a few moments, I watched her pet the chick’s head and talk to in a sweet, soothing voice.

“You don’t even know how badly this makes me want to become a vegetarian,” she said. “But I tried that when I was going to ISU last semester, and I barely lasted a week.”

I sat the chick I was holding back down on the ground. “You were going to ISU?”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “But I had to drop out in January for… reasons. So for now, I’m helping my Uncle Boomer at the store.”

I was dying to know what those “reasons” for dropping out were, but if she wanted me to know, she would have elaborated. “What’s your major?”

“General Studies. What’s yours going to be, Frodo? Let me guess—female anatomy?”

“No,” I answered, grinning down at the ground. I held the smile for a moment, remembering that Abigail told me girls liked my dimples. I needed to learn to use that to my advantage. “I’m still undecided. Something in the science field, probably. Or education.”

“You want to teach?”

“I might,” I said, sticking my hands in my back pockets. “I actually, uh, tutor elementary school students now.”

I had hoped that would make her swoon the way Abigail and Xander assumed, but she was too busy swapping out the chick in her hands for another, clicking her tongue at them.

Outside, I could hear car doors closing. Beth heard them, too. “Should we head back to the cabin?”

“Yeah.” I held the door to the henhouse open for her, regretting the fact I hadn’t taken this opportunity alone with her to impress her more, or even make a move. But at least I knew a little bit more about her.

The blast of cooler air when we stopped out of there felt nice. Around the back of the cabin, Xander was throwing some big sticks into his grandparents’ fire pit. The sun was just barely peeking through the trees at the edge of the property, casting an orange glow on the six or seven cars that were now parked on the side of the gravel driveway. I couldn’t see Abigail, but I could hear a Arctic Monkeys song drifting from her speaker somewhere.

As Beth and I made our way onto the porch to retrieve our drinks from inside, I stopped when I spotted Lena Brower over near Xander’s grandparents’ wicker rocking chairs. She was standing next to her friend, Bailey, who was on the phone.

She noticed me at the same time. “Hey, Owen.”

I held the door open for Beth, but I didn’t follow her inside. For a fraction of a second, I hesitated, knowing that if I didn’t keep an eye on Beth, Xander was likely to swoop in and charm her somehow. But I couldn’t ignore Lena, and I didn’t want to, either. “Oh, good, you made it,” I said before turning to Beth. “I’ll be in there in a sec.”

I made my way over to Lena at the other end of the porch. Clutching her purse to her side, she tossed her head to get her dark hair out of her face as I approached. Though she didn’t wear a lot of make-up to school, her lips were an orangey-red color, and her eyelashes somehow looked longer tonight. Her freckles, my favorite thing about her, were less obvious under a layer of make-up, but the darker ones still popped.

Lena was one of those girls who was so goddamn pretty but didn’t know it. If I weren’t actively trying to end the night with another girl, I probably would have let her know how good she looked. But instead, I just gave her a smile and shoved my hands in my pockets, asking, “Did I miss anything in history today?”

Lena winced. “Yeah. A pop quiz.”

My mouth fell open. Fuck. “What? You’re kidding me.”

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she said with a laugh. With both hands, she played with the ends of her hair on one side. Bailey turned her back to us, fully engrossed in whatever the person on the phone was telling her. “It was an easy A, too.”

“Damn it,” I muttered. I had a perfect grade in history–and this was certainly going to mess that up. Not only that, but my chemistry test didn’t go very well that day, either. I spaced out the entire time, staring at the word isotope for so long it didn’t even look like a real word anymore. And that was Xander’s fault, too, for making me leave school to smoke with him in the first place. “I wonder if I can make it up on Monday.”

“Probably. I told Mr. Thompson about your ‘migraine.’” With a smile, she made air quotes with her fingers. “Where did you and Xander go, anyway? Boomer’s?”

“Where else?” I asked, a little ashamed. She didn’t seem like the type of girl to skip class to hang out at Boomer’s. I’d never even seen her there after school, come to think of it. “Xander can be very persuasive.”

“Is he persuasive, or are you just a pushover?” she asked with a grin. This was the type of playful insult she often threw at me, always leaving me to wonder whether she was flirting or just thought I was a moron.

“Probably a mixture of both,” I chuckled out.

Lena licked her lips. “How’s tutoring going?”

“Oh, I love it.” A sliver of sunlight started blinding me, so when Bailey stepped off the porch to continue her phone call around the side of the house, I stole her spot next to Lena. “I’m actually a little sad the school year’s almost over, because I’m going to miss all the kids. Some of them might not even need me next year. They’ve come such a long way.” Was I talking too much? I couldn’t stop. “I just love seeing how much more confident they are once it all clicks.”

Lena’s head tilted to the side. “Aw,” she said, twirling her hair with one hand now. “You did so well with the reading buddy kids last year, too—remember how they all begged you to come back?”

I laughed, remembering how a few of us from the student council went to Grissom Elementary to read to some first graders last year. It was nothing short of chaotic. “Those kids were insane.”

“I was, like, chopped liver compared to you. You’re so good with kids. You’re going into education, right?”

Just then, I spotted Abigail pouting as she came around the corner of the porch, scanning the yard like she was looking for someone specific. Her eyes stopped on me. “There you are.” She jogged up the steps toward me, giving Lena a quick wave before leaning forward to whisper in my ear. “You need to intervene with this Xander and Beth situation.”

I caught her eye. “What happened?”

“Just come to the fire pit.” She turned to Lena. “Lena, girl, you look effing gorgeous in that skirt, by the way.”

The compliment made Lena laugh and blush. I’d been so distracted by her face, I hadn’t even noticed she was wearing a skirt the same ocean blue as her eyes. Had I ever seen her in a skirt before?

I swallowed. I certainly hadn’t seen that much of her thighs before.

“Oh my gosh, thank you,” she told Abigail. “You do, too. In that outfit, I mean.”

“Thanks!” Abigail shot her a sweet grin before hopping down off the porch. I turned toward Lena, beginning to step away with my hands back in my pockets.

“I have to go take care of a situation. But it was great talking to you.” And then, deciding there wouldn’t be any harm in platonically complimenting this girl, I added, “And Abigail’s right. You look really pretty tonight. Anyway, see you later.”

Feeling a little embarrassed, I turned around and walked away before I could witness her reaction. Bailey, whose phone call was now over, glanced from me to Lena with her mouth hanging open like she might have heard what I’d just said and had some thoughts about it.

They were going to talk about me after I walked away, weren’t they?

I made my way through the house before joining the others by the fire pit, grabbing a new cup of beer for myself and a Smirnoff for Beth. Then, I stepped out the sliding glass door to the deck, taking in the scene before me as I pulled it shut behind me.

Xander was crouched next to the already crackling fire, using a long stick to poke at the logs to make the flames bigger. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but his deep voice carried across the yard. Whatever he said, it made Beth throw her head back in laughter beside him. “Oh my God, no! You’ll burn yourself if you do that!” She gave Xander’s shoulder a hard shove, and I could see the resulting grin on his face all the way from the deck.

Even more prominent, however, was the scowl on Abigail’s.