Broken Carts ✔️

Aisle 11: Bonds & Brands

To this day, I'm not sure how the hell I talked around getting torn a new one by my parents. All I know is that I spent the entirety of work crafting a foolproof lie about some CD I needed from my dad's car. By the time I got home, I'd recited the lie so many times (Lynette helped by playing the role of my parents in a few practice scenarios) that I was prepared for interrogation.

The lie went off without a hitch, but I didn't escape punishment. Since Mom and Dad remained dubious about fully trusting me, they asked my elderly Aunt Myrna to housesit during their trip to Florida. It didn't take much to figure out "housesit" was code for "babysit." Needless to say, this turned my prospective Ten Days Of Party Time into Ten Days Of Incarceration.

"You've got some shitty friends," Lynette had said at work after I told her what happened.

"They're not... well, they have their moments," I responded, not ready to forgive their stupidity. At the least, I could almost forgive Skeeter. He'd texted me in the morning to apologize for everyone's dumb plan and claimed to have nothing to do with it. Knowing my teammates, though, it was difficult to avoid being suckered into participating in any crackpot idea. I did appreciate the sentiment, though.

"If they wanna see you so badly, you'd think they could remember really simple stuff about you. Like how you can't drive."

"Nah, they probably just lost track of time and thought I'd already gotten my license back."

Lynette popped a gum bubble loudly. "Maybe," she said. "Come on, let's practice again. This time, I'll be your dad after he's had a really shitty day at work. No holding back."

A few of the rugby guys wanted to video chat that afternoon, supposedly to "apologize," but Bud's apology sounded a lot like bragging about the blowjob he got behind the rave venue. Dumpster and Shortstop sat at Bud's side. Judging by the bored looks on their faces, they'd already heard the story a thousand times.

"It was the hottest fucking thing, dude, swear to Jesus. You're not living until this girl has sucked your cock."

"It sounds like it."

"Look her up on Facebook, I'll text you her name, it's foreign– oh yeah, she totally had an accent, too, for fuck's sake– God, last night was legendary, I'm fucking telling you."

Dumpster yawned. I forced a smile. "Yeah, wish I was there."

"Us too!" Shortstop spoke up, seeming excited to finally get a word in edgewise. "That's why we hit you up. We wanted to see Techno in full swing. It would've been sick."

Something he said resonated with me. "Wait, why did you want me to be there?"

"We wanted to watch you work your magic, know what I'm sayin'? I loved seeing you just go up to a rando and start mackin' on her in like, two seconds flat, no matter what," said Shortstop.

"I almost broke that record last night," Bud interjected.

Shortstop ignored him. "It's the one thing missing from the team this semester."

"My ability to hook up with girls?" The guys agreed in unison. I swallowed with some difficulty.

I started drinking every night out of habit. The afternoon liquor store clerk knew me by name; or, rather, by Maurice Lennon's name. There was a weird emptiness that seized me whenever I didn't end the night with a drink in my hand. I rationalized this behavior by telling myself I was just bored. Bored and in need of a way to quell the nonstop horniness that I couldn't deal with in any way besides jerking off to the same memory of my dick in Ezra's mouth.

The snag in my otherwise peaceful transition from Ten Girls In One Semester Milo to Milo, Falling For The Guy Who Blew Him Next To Niagara Falls was, unfortunately, the constant reminder that my friends from school could never know. It was a stomach-churning fact to swallow, so I pushed it out of my head. I needed to keep my friends, because they were my people, my group, my social circle. If I fucked things up with them before I even got back– by, say, implying that I might not be a source of entertainment due to an unexpected crush– then I'd lose the only friends I had at school.