The Lucky Kind (9 page)

Dessert

W
e always take a break between dinner and dessert. Usually Stevie and I go back to my room for an hour or so, and my parents get out board games, and later we play while we eat pie and ice cream. All through dinner, I know Stevie’s waiting for that hour, expecting that’ll be when I’ll explain the tension in the house, and that somehow my telling him will release all that tension so that he can enjoy his dessert. I also know Stevie feels bad for Eden. I know he wants to tell her that Thanksgiving at my house is usually a lot of fun. I know he wants to because I do, too.

I wonder if my parents think I’ve already told them about Sam Roth. I bet they think I’ve at least told Stevie.

Stevie shuts my bedroom door behind us.

“We waited,” he says seriously.

“I know,” I say, sliding down onto the floor and leaning back against the bed. Stevie sits on the floor across from me, leaning on my dresser. I expect Eden to sit down beside me, but instead she sits across from me with Stevie. I’m actually kind of grateful because that way I can look straight ahead at both of them while I tell them, even though I’m looking at the floor now.

I think maybe this will be a little less surprising for Eden. At least, she knows that I’ve been having issues with my parents for the last couple of months. I haven’t said a word about it to Stevie. But then Stevie says, “Okay, I’ll get this started. Something’s been going on with you and your parents for the last couple months, right?”

I look straight at Stevie, and my surprise must be written on my face because he says, “Dude, it wasn’t like you were hiding it or anything.”

“I wasn’t?”

Stevie gives me a look like Are you kidding?

“Okay, yeah. So I’ve been, you know, pissed at my parents for a couple months.”

“At both of them?” Stevie asks.

I nod. “Yes.” Then I shake my head slowly. “No. Yes, but mostly at my dad, really.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, dude,” Stevie says, “you don’t have to tell us, or me, anything you don’t want to, but don’t lie. Something must have happened to jump-start all this, right?”

“Yes. Right.”

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Eden echoes.

“I don’t want to,” I say.

Stevie grins. “Well, fuck it, man, I was lying, you gotta tell us.”

“No he doesn’t,” Eden says, punching Stevie in the arm.

“Yes I do,” I say finally. “I’m not being—I haven’t been nice since all this started.”

“You’re nice to me,” Eden says.

Stevie shushes her. “Let him say it.”

“You’re just curious,” Eden says.

“Do I have to be here for this conversation?” I ask.

They both say “sorry” and I smile at them. The past couple of months should have been perfect. I’ve been falling in love with this girl who is so amazing she can actually go nine rounds of verbal boxing with Stevie and come out on top from time to time. This makes me very, very angry at my dad. Like he’s stolen two perfect months from me, made it so that they weren’t perfect, two months I will never get back again.

So I tell them. I tell them that when my dad was in college he had a girlfriend back home, but I don’t tell them her name was Sarah Booker. I tell them that there was a phone call, but I don’t tell them about my theory that maybe some guy was trying to extort money from my father. I tell them there was a baby who grew up in Texas and now he’s getting married. I tell them my father’s been on the registry for eleven years, but I don’t tell them about the temper tantrum I had when I found that out.

Then I turn to Eden and say, “I told you my parents weren’t perfect.”

Eden slides across the floor to sit next to me, and holds my hand. She helped my mother with the apple pie before, and now she smells like cinnamon. It’s so comforting that I breathe a little deeper. I start to relax a little.

But then Stevie says, “What the fuck do you sound so bitter for?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is something that happened to your dad, not to you.”

“Of course it’s something that happened to me.” I drop Eden’s hand and look straight at Stevie.

“It’s your dad’s bad luck, not yours.”

“Bad luck?” I repeat, the words sounding small. Something like this can’t possibly be boiled down to two simple syllables.

“That’s all this is: your dad had bad luck. Nicholas, we’re all going to have stupid sex at some point—sex without protection, secret sex, drunken sex, sex with the wrong person, sex for the wrong reasons. And you know what we’ll be doing while we have this stupid sex?”

“I imagine we’ll be having sex,” I say snarkily.

Stevie glares at me. “We’ll all just close our eyes and hope for the best. We’ll hope that we’ll be lucky.” Stevie’s face softens. “Your dad just had the unlucky kind of sex.”

“Or the lucky kind,” Eden says, and Stevie and I both look at her like she’s crazy.

“It was good luck for someone,” she continues. “Someone must have wanted Sam very much.”

Stevie nods. “See, it was just luck,” he says. “Good or bad.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble for just a little bit of luck, huh?” I say, angry that they can’t see that everything has changed.

“Or maybe not so much trouble,” Stevie says. “I mean, does this seem like that much trouble to your parents?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how could you when you’re barely talking to them?” Stevie says. And Eden nods.

I look at Stevie. “It’s not my fault I’m barely talking to them.”

“How do you figure that?” Stevie asks.

“They started it.”

Stevie grins at me. “All right, kindergarten boy.”

“But they did. My dad started the silence when he decided not to talk to me about this years ago. And my mom kept it going when she agreed to go along with his decision.”

I’m looking at Stevie, but he’s looking at Eden, and Eden’s look must be telling him to drop it, because Stevie is quiet for a second, like he’s trying to work something out. He must decide it’s not worth arguing about, because he says, “Hey, know what I just thought of?”

“What?”

“You’re the only one of us who’s not an only child now.”

“I guess that’s true, huh?” Eden says.

“I don’t get it,” I say.

Eden takes my hand and squeezes, tight. “Plenty of people get surprised with a new baby brother. A new big brother is something different altogether.”

“I can’t believe you’re dating someone who says ‘altogether,’ ” Stevie says, and I smile, though mostly I’m hearing what Eden said. It hadn’t actually occurred to me, really, that Sam was my brother.

“Dessert will be ready,” I say, finally.

“Sweet,” Stevie says, peeling himself off the floor.

“Literally,” Eden and I say in unison, and Stevie rolls his eyes.

“Please don’t become that couple,” he says.

I open the door to my bedroom. Eden walks out first, and then Stevie, but he stops and turns to me and says, “It’s like suddenly having sibling rivalry after sixteen years of having your dad all to yourself.”

“Go eat your pie,” I say, pushing him into the hallway. I don’t have the energy to be mad at Stevie and my parents at the same time.

The Bad Dream

I
dreamed about Eden last night. In my dream, she broke up with me. We were sitting on a bench and she told me that this had all gotten too complicated, and her hair fell into her face, but it wasn’t really her hair, it was blonder, kind of see-through, because even though it was covering her face, I could see her eyes and she wasn’t crying at all.

“What’s too complicated?”

“It’s not what I thought it would be,” she said.

“What did you think it would be?”

“I thought it would be perfect. Like they were.”

In the dream, she meant my parents. She meant my family. She didn’t want me anymore because my parents weren’t perfect, because we weren’t so different from her family after all. And when I woke up, I knew it was true. And I hated my parents for it. So now, even though it’s the day after Thanksgiving, and I don’t have any homework, I’m holed up in my room studying, because it’s keeping me busy. Way too busy to go out there, and way too busy for them to come in here.

Except for then my dad knocks on the door.

“Hey.”

I look at him. I’m still in bed. And okay, maybe I wasn’t studying so much as staring up at the ceiling with some books in my lap, trying to figure out how I could salvage my relationship with Eden, the girl who never smells the same but whose every scent feels like home.

“Hey,” I say back.

“Studying?”

I look down at my books. Isn’t it obvious?

“Feel like some leftovers?”

“No,” I say, and even I’m surprised at how abrupt it sounds.

He’s only halfway through the door, which is still only halfway open. He seems scared to come in.

“Listen, Dad, if that’s all, then I really have to study now.”

Then he surprises me by opening the door wide and stepping inside, all the way, and without hesitating he walks straight to my bed. He sits down and faces me.

“No, that’s not all, as a matter of fact.”

“What else could there possibly be? A secret daughter this time, holed up in West Virginia?”

I expect that to shut him up, but instead he smiles and says, “Why West Virginia?”

“Had to think of a state that would be worse than Texas,” I say meanly.

“Jesus Christ, Nick, when did you get so damned snotty?”

“Snotty?” I repeat angrily. What the hell? My father, the man who doesn’t even yell at boys stealing bicycles, has the audacity to yell at me because he doesn’t like the way I’ve responded to his secret-love-child-ridden past.

“Superior, like that. Like somehow you’re better than me, or than Sam, because you’re from New York, and things like that don’t happen to people here—do you really believe that? That no one in New York makes mistakes, that up here you all know better than us Midwestern-Southern know-nothings?”

I answer too fast, before I even know what I’m about to say.

“Maybe, because I don’t know anyone who’s not smart enough to use birth control.”

A normal father would hit me for saying something like that. A normal father would get off the bed, yell at me, slam the door behind him. But my father sits there. He looks crushed. He looks disappointed, not in me, but in himself, that he could have raised a son who would say something so mean.

“Well,” he says finally, “I hope you’re right. Because I would hate to be your friend if I’d screwed up: I would hate to have to come to you for any kind of help or understanding.”

I don’t say anything. Dad gets up off the bed and takes a couple of steps toward the door.

“In any case, I was just coming in here to tell you that Sam’s coming to Ohio for Christmas with us.”

“What?”

“He wants to see where he’s from. He wants to meet me.”

“What are you going to tell everyone?”

“I’d been planning on asking you your opinion, but I don’t think I will now.” He says that like it’s a punishment to me, for him not to want my advice.

He closes the door behind him, and I realize that it actually is a terrible punishment: my opinion doesn’t hold weight anymore.

Perfection on Black Friday

I
never believed in going places without calling first. There’s no excuse anymore—everyone has cell phones and BlackBerrys, text messages and email. But I need to get out of the house, and I don’t feel like calling. So thirty minutes later I’m in Eden’s lobby, pressing the intercom so that she’ll let me up.

“What are you doing here?” Jesus Christ, was she always this beautiful? The way Eden looks is a constant source of fascination to me. I would never call her pretty. Pretty girls are simpler; their hair isn’t so thick and their lips aren’t so dark. Pretty girls smile easily and often; Eden’s smiles are rewarding.

“Are your parents home?” I ask.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“What are you doing here?” she repeats.

I shrug.

“I mean, of course you’re welcome. You just usually call.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind. I’m happy you’re here. I wanted to talk to you.”

Oh God. She wanted to talk to me. That’s what people say when they want to break up with you. She’s going to take her freckled skin and her brown hair as far as she can from all this melodrama.

“Can we just sit down?” I say desperately, looking around the living room for a place to land.

“Of course we can sit down,” she says, like it’s no big deal. No big deal, she’s just dumping me. She turns her back on me and walks to her room, and I walk slowly behind her. Her hair is in a ponytail but pieces of it have fallen out of the elastic, trailing down her back. She’s wearing a tank top and I can see her shoulders, white and shining, like they’ve never seen the sun, her shoulder blades jutting through like wings.

Apparently, I wax poetic when I’m about to be dumped.

Eden closes the door to her room, and I sit on the floor, leaning my back against the bed.

“I dreamed about this last night,” I say.

“Dreamed about what?”

“This conversation. But we weren’t in your room. We were on a bench.”

“Where?” Eden is standing over me. I usually feel so tall when I’m with her, so much more like a man. But now I feel small, a little boy waiting for his punishment.

I shrug. “Not sure. The park, maybe.”

“Oh.” She nods, and then she says, “So, how are you? Did you and your parents talk at all after we left?” She sits now, but not right next to me. She’s out of my reach.

I press into my cheeks with both hands. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Ask about my parents. I know you didn’t want any of that.”

“Any of what?”

“It’s not what you wanted to get into, I know that.”

“Well, I’m glad one of us knows something, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You liked my family.”

“I still like your family.”

I laugh, “Yeah, like this was the family you had in mind.”

“Nick, you’re not making any sense. Seriously.” She slides across the floor, closer to me. She takes my hand and holds it in her lap. Her skin is cool and soft.

“That’s like when you showed me how my parents held hands.”

“You wanted to kiss me then, didn’t you?”

I smile. “Sure I did.”

“Well, you can now.”

I shake my head. “No, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It would just make this last longer.”

“Make what last longer?”

“Listen, let’s get it over with, okay? I know you don’t want me anymore.”

“I don’t?”

I shake my head. “Everything’s a mess.”

“Not everything. Many things are still neat and clean and exactly where they’re supposed to be.”

“Like what?”

“Like you and me, sitting on the floor of my room.”

“But you didn’t sign up for this. You liked how perfect everything was—how perfect my family was.”

“Well, sure I did. Normal is exotic to me. But, Nick, that’s not why I like you.”

I don’t look at her.

“Seriously, Nick, is that really what you thought? That I wanted to be with you because your family was so neat when mine was so messy?”

I look at our hands in her lap. Her skin is so much paler than mine.

“Nick, I don’t love you because of your family. I love you because I just love you.”

And slowly I raise my head to look at her. She’s looking straight at me. She’s
smiling
at me. And she loves me.

Holy shit, she loves me. She’s not breaking up with me—she wanted to tell me that she loves me. Whew, did I misread the signals! Fucking idiot.

Wait, why has she stopped smiling? Why is she raising her eyebrows at me like there’s something I’ve done wrong now, something I forgot to do, like how my mom looks at my dad when he forgets to put the toilet seat down? All she has to do is come into the living room with that look on her face and Dad knows what he’s done.

Crap. This is some big, important moment, and I’ve just done the verbal equivalent of leaving the toilet seat up.

“Oh. Oh, of course. I thought you knew. I love you, too.”

“But you’re supposed to say it, you idiot,” she says, shoving me. I fall back onto the carpet, taking her down with me.

“I love you, too,” I say again, quieter now, with my hands on either side of her face, and I kiss her, probably softer than I’ve ever kissed anyone before, and I feel so safe, because we love each other now, so this isn’t ending. Fuck it, I’m gonna just say the cheesiest thing I can think of: It’s not the end, it’s the beginning.

And we don’t stop kissing, and I know something else. I know we’re going to have sex. Right now, on her floor, the day after Thanksgiving. I’ve never wanted anything like I want Eden now. Nothing we’ve done has been like this. None of our kisses have ever felt like this. And her skin has never been so soft, and it’s never been so natural to slide her pants off, to kick my shoes off, to take her hair out of its ponytail and watch it fall around her face.

We stop for a second. I remember that I have condoms in my jeans pockets, left over from that day when Stevie shoved them in my backpack. After Eden and I became a real couple, I optimistically moved a few of them from my backpack to my jeans, just in case. And I haven’t even washed the jeans since. They’re months old, but condoms don’t expire after just a few months, right?

And when I’m almost inside her, suddenly that’s all I’m thinking about. They’re still good, right? They’re still working. Condoms don’t go bad in a matter of months. I should have looked at the expiration date first. I know better than that. I’m smarter than that.

Expiration date, expiration date. It’s all I can think. How is that what I’m thinking about now? Why is that what I’m thinking about now? But there it is again: Expiration date. Expiration date. When I close my eyes, all I see is the wrapper before I ripped it, but the date is too blurry to make out.

But then Eden’s arms squeeze my neck, and my body relaxes over hers, and then I can’t hold another thought in my head. The only thing I can feel is Eden. I can’t feel the end of the desk against which my foot is lodged and I can’t feel my belt discarded underneath my knee. I don’t feel the carpet scratching my hands and I will have to think, later, to remember why my hands are so red. The only thing I’m aware of is Eden and her arms around my neck and her legs touching mine and her skin under my hands. Nothing, I think, has ever felt this good. And maybe no one in the world has ever been so perfectly in love.

I won’t think about the expiration date again until much later. When I’m at home and I look at my dad, and I wonder what he was thinking about when he was with Sarah Booker.