Chapter 13 - Part 2

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I'm just lying really still on her bed when I realize it. I'm sore down there. I'm sore where Thomas went inside me. I rarely visit the dark side of being high, and this isn't exactly one of those moments, but I will say that my insobriety is not helping the situation one bit. I feel that soreness like a presence. It kind of starts to get a mind of its own, and then it spreads, pulsing, radiating waves up into my chest. I tell Lexie I have to get outside and she's sympathetic about it. I've gotten anxious one or two times before, and she's been really good about calming me down.

We're walking around her neighborhood. I can still tell I'm sore if I focus on it, but it feels far away now, and my attention span isn't long enough to hang onto it. Lexie's neighborhood went up in the nineties. It's called Bayhill and it's just south of the school. It's a dumb name because there aren't any bays around here, just a small river and a bunch of mountains and desert. It used to be known as kind of a rich-kids' neighborhood, but the houses are getting older now and there's nothing all that special about them. Anyway, we go to Milwaukee Park, which is just an extra cluster of old baseball diamonds adjacent to the school grounds. Lexie says we should go walk closer to the school and I tell her I'd rather stab myself in the eye than set foot anywhere near that place. So we're just messing around, ducking in an out of old rusty dugouts. We go into one that's shaded by a maple tree and it's sort of cool and dark in there, so we rest for a while on the bench. Lexie climbs on top of me. I lay my head down on the worn, greasy wood. She's kind of riding me a little through her jeans. We're just playing. I look up at the ceiling and see all kinds of messages etched into the paint. A lot of them are names and years like "Andrew Furlough '98" and shit like that. But I'm looking in this one corner where a string of words stands out a little bolder than the others, and I tilt my head so I can read it better, and it says the following: "It's all just a game." And I'm wondering if someone was writing about baseball, reminding people not to get too worked up or act unsportspersonlike or whatever. But something about the phrasing makes it seem a little more big-picture than that. Everything we're doing, all of life, it's just a game. I like it. It kind of reminds me of what Thomas said the other night.

By the time we wander back near Lexie's house, I'm feeling pretty clear in the head. The only problem I'm having is that I'd kind of rather be alone right now. I've spent most of the day with Lexie, and for some reason, I'm just not into being around her at the moment. But clearly she's not feeling the same way, so I figure it's in my best interest and hers to keep a thought like that to myself.

"Let's take Thomas's car out," she says once it's in sight.

"Out where?"

"I don't know—anywhere you want to go."

"I don't want to go anywhere."

She gives me a look, and I know I better get enthusiastic about all this pretty quick. "What about your car?" I say.

"I don't want to go in my car. Thomas's car is more fun."

I don't know what the hell she's talking about. Maybe it's because she wants me to drive and feels weird about asking me to drive her own car, since I never have. "It's not good on gas," I say.

"It's fine, I'll pay," she says.

So we're headed south on Milwaukee. Where we're going is anyone's fucking guess. I'm sitting in Thomas's seat, and Lexie's sitting in mine. Thankfully, she's in a mood where she doesn't care to talk about much. She just turns up the radio and she's singing along to Ariana like nobody's listening. You really do have to love her for that.

Anyway, I'm just going through the motions, and before I know it I'm back out in that area south of the airport where Thomas and I went a couple of days ago. All the windows are down and the warm air is just whipping through. I slow down and pull off to the side before the road turns to dirt. We're still a few miles from where Thomas and I ended up. I shut off the engine. There's endless flat brush plains all around us.

"So nice to get out of town," says Lexie.

I look at her. Jesus, I can't think of a single thing to say all of a sudden. I bet I have the dumbest look on my face.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing," I say. And then it happens. My phone goes off.

"Is that Thomas?" she asks. "How's his trip going? Wait—let me pretend I'm you." She grabs my phone.

Of course it's Thomas. No word from him for a day and a half, and he chooses now to reach out? Jesus. I only saw his name, not what he'd written, and now she's looking real hard at the screen, like it's the most riveting goddamn thing she's ever seen. I realize suddenly that he could have written anything. My heart is in my throat. I'm sweating. We're in brand-new territory now, and Thomas just might be dumb enough to have said something that could fuck over this entire situation.

Goddamn, Lexie's probably studying that screen for only a second or two, but it feels about a thousand times longer than that. "Awww," she finally says, all long and drawn-out. She turns the screen towards me.

There's just one little blue bubble that says, "I miss you."

"Why do you guys have to be so cute?" she says.

I take the phone back into my sweaty hand. I type, "Just hanging out with Lexie. I miss you too." I hit send. I turn to Lexie and say, "It's too hot out here. Let's drive somewhere else and find some shade."

"Wait," she says. She looks all around her. "I like this spot."

"It's a hundred fucking degrees outside."

"Not it's not," she says. "It's ninety, tops."

"It's a figure of speech."

She reaches over and starts pulling my t-shirt up over my head. I'm not exactly fighting her or anything, but I'm not really helping her out, either. Anyway, she manages to get that thing off me in about ten seconds.

"Making me do all the work, I see," she says. Jesus, she sounds super turned on by that. She cups one of my pecs in her hand.

I look slowly over at her. I say, "Guess so," and I feel myself smile. She comes at me and starts kissing me in a really messy way. This is normally the part where some version of myself gets pretty into it and starts kissing her back. I swear to you, I'm searching all over for that person, and he's just not showing up. I pull back from her. It's not the kind of kissing I can pretend to be into when I'm not.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing," I say. "Can you stop asking me that?" It feels like she's been asking me that all goddamn day.

"Sure," she says. "We can do something else." She looks deep into my eyes and says, "Why don't we get right down to business?" She puts her hand on my crotch, and my involuntary reaction is to grab her wrist. But I don't grab it hard, and I don't pull her hand away. Maybe I was going to, originally, but not now. I'm letting her feel me a little through my shorts, but I'm probably a million miles away from getting hard. She's down there starting to do her thing, and I'm just glancing around the car. Every corner, every surface of it reminds me of him. I smell the air, and under all that dried-out leather and baked plastic and dirty carpet lies the faint but unmistakeable scent of his cologne. Maybe even a little bit of his sweat after practice. Jesus Christ, I'm telling you, it's all coming apart at the seams.

You know what I do next? I reach out kind of dumbly for the door handle, and I fucking extricate myself from the situation. I walk ten feet across that empty road. By the time I turn around, Lexie's standing on the other side of the car, looking at me over the roof. She's not moving.

"I'm sorry about that," I say.

"I'll ask you one more time," she says. "What's wrong, Niko?"

"I don't feel well," I say.

"Do you need me to drive?"

"I think so."

We swap places in the car. I put my shirt back on and Lexie moves the seat forward. And then we're just driving in silence.

A few minutes later, she turns to me. "Did you get too hot? We'll can find somewhere shady, like you said."

"I don't want to," I say.

"Well, what do you want to do, then?"

I look over at her. "I just need to be alone right now." 

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