Sugar and Spice And Everything Nice

When We Say Balls, We Mean Something Else

When Amy went out on the porch all dressed up for the movie, almost all of her cousins were looking at her with amused expressions. Before anyone could say anything, sixteen year old Karen, the youngest cousin looked at her with interest and said, “I didn’t know you played with balls even now! Aren’t you a little too old?”

That was all it took for all of them to burst out laughing. Amy felt the heat creeping up her neck.

“What did you tell them?” She looked at Jehan with eyes like saucers.

“I told them you were talking to your friend and you saw his balls.”

“Don’t you think Karen is a little too old to not get the joke? She still thinks we’re talking about footballs. Jezz, one day I’m going to counsel the kid.” Jehan’s elder brother Zahaan shook his head.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“Chill out, we’re just playing around.” That resulted in another round of coughing and laughter.

“You still do want to come for the movie, right?” Zahaan asked her.

“Yeah, are you still game, Ames?” Another round of laughter.

She rolled her eyes. “One day, I’m going to find something out about you Jeh, and I will post it on Facebook, I swear.”

“Shit! I never thought of that! Wait a sec…” He pulled out his phone with a devious smile, only to have it snatched away by Farrah, Karen’s sister.

“I think that’s quite enough, Jeh. Let it stay within just us. There’s only so much Ames can endure before wanting to kill you.”

“God, I’m so blessed to have a female cousin close to my age among all these doofuses.”

“Call me a doofus one more time and I swear I’ll put it up on Facebook.” Jehan tried to look menacing. Farrah took his picture in her phone before he could go back to normal.

“Hey! Why would you do that?”

“That’s what’s going to go onto Facebook if you put up a status with Amy and balls in the same sentence.” She smirked and high fived Amy.

“What’s wrong with Jeh saying Amy plays football with her boyfriend? Personally, I think it’s cute!” Karen said.

“Personally, Kar, I think you should shut up.” Farrah glared at her as Jeh and Zahaan commenced loud laughter Round 3. Then they started moving towards Zahaan’s pickup. The lovely Red truck was reserved for road trips, or times like these, when all the cousins wanted to go out together and there were one too many to fit into a regular car. As they walked, Jeh slung his arm around Karen and tried to explain to her why it wouldn’t be cute if they put up the fact that Amy had seen her boyfriend’s balls on Facebook.

“See, when we say balls, we don’t mean footballs or beach balls or something. We mean the real balls. Like the balls on males.”

“Males have balls?” Karen looked at Zahaan and Jeh like they’d magically grown a pair. “Oh yeah! The guys in class keep saying Mr. D’souza needs to grow a pair of balls because he’s sort of… docile.”

“Yeah we have them, right down.”

She looked at their feet. “I don’t see them.”

“They’re….. not visible right now.”

“They how did Amy see her boyfriend’s balls?”

Farrah and Amy burst out in laughing as Jehan facepalmed in frustration. “Let’s just forget we had this discussion okay?” He told Karen. They wisely didn’t reopen the topic and moved on to the theatre.

When they came back, it was way past dinner time. As was usually the norm when the cousins all went out, they didn’t just go for the movie. They went for a long drive till the mountains and had dinner there too. When they returned, Amy was dead beat. She went straight to bed. But something kept her from sleeping peacefully like she had yesterday. She kept thinking about the bakery and the fact that it might close. The thought was like an annoying child that kept her from sleeping. Every time she drifted into a state of semi consciousness, the thought kept coming back to poke her and wake her up. Finally, she decided to go up onto the terrace. If she could calm down anywhere, that was the place.

But when she reached up, there was another lanky figure on the edge of the parapet.