Chapter #61Sunday in the Park with Friends by: Seuzz   "Sometimes I wanna punch her in the mouth. You know?"
It's the middle of the afternoon, and you've sloughed off your church clothes, you've sloughed off your grandpa, and you've sloughed off Cristina. It's two-thirty, and you're slouching on the edge of the municipal soccer fields with a diet cola in one hand and a stubby roach in the other. Felix Padilla and Janelle Pelletier are sitting with you. They are two of the few real friends that Alana's got, but you can tell by their pained expressions that you're testing even their patience.
"So what is going on with you and these guys at the drive-thru window?" Janelle asks.
"Nothing! Girls get hit on. I get hit on! Why does everyone think—?"
"No, you're right," says Felix. "It's not your fault." He pinches the joint from you. "Cristina should mind her own business."
"What is her business?" Janelle asks.
"She's got no business," Felix repeats. "Not with Lana."
Janelle glances skeptically between him and you.
"So what's her business with Marcos? She's thinks you're gonna get him mad, right? Isn't that how come she wanted to talk to you?" she asks, despite a discreet nudge from Felix.
"I guess."
"So what's it to her if—?"
"That's Lana's business," Felix warns.
"Well, I don't know what to say, then!" Janelle explodes. "If it's none of my business, what am I s'posed to say—?" She gives up with a hard snort.
You take the roach back from Felix, but it's burned down short enough to singe your fingertips, so you lick your palm and wet it out. You don't know why you wanted to talk to Felix and Janelle, except that it's what Alana would do, and you are now sewed up so tight inside her skin that it's not hard to let her instincts sweep you away.
Not that you aren't having fun on your own. But to scratch Alana's itches while wearing her body and her clothes—loose-fitting jeans, an XXL black t-shirt, and the castoff camo jacket her brother left her; your hair is tucked under a backward-turned ball cap—is delightful, even with the weed gradually dulling your senses.
"No, I shouldn't bug you with all this," you confess. "I guess I'm just bored. And I wanted to get it off my chest. Cristina's alright. She's a really good friend." Your eyes drift down to the grass.
There's silence for a moment. Then Felix wrenches himself up off the ground.
"Well, if you're bored," he says as he dusts off his ass, "I know where we can chill out, score some more weed." He puts out a hand and helps pull a puzzled-looking Janelle to her feet. "Cheswick's," he says in answer to her unspoken question.
Cheswick. Alana knows the name. He's a weirdo with poofy hair who goes to Eastman. Kenzo took Alana out to his place a couple of times, where she hung out in a dim basement and watched lava lamps while smoking a couple of joints. You didn't know that Felix and Janelle knew him, though. But it makes sense. Janelle is a flabby, big-titted white girl who doesn't wear a bra and dyes the sides of her mousy brown hair a dull aquamarine. And though Felix is a dapper dresser in khakis and short-sleeve button-up shirts, he's in Jazz Band, and he's the one who gave you the roach when you sat down together.
"Ooh!" Janelle groans and hands her cola to Felix. "I gotta pee before we go."
"Can't you wait?" Felix asks, but she's already waddling off toward the public restrooms. "Shit," he says to you, "you wouldn't ever catch me sitting on the john in one of those places."
You're just glad that Janelle trotted off, giving you a moment of privacy with him. You wait until she's disappeared into the women's restroom before clasping him in a loose embrace.
"Thanks for listening to me," you murmur into the soft spot where his exposed throat merges into his chest. "And for getting Janelle to shut up." He stiffens, and you hold him until you feel his cock pushing against the front of his khakis, closing your eyes and rubbing your face gently into his shirt. "You're just about the best friend I got. I can talk to you, like I can't even talk to Marcos."
"So what do you do," Felix asks, his arms rigid at his side, "if you and him don't talk?"
"Oh, we talk. Just not about stuff that matters to me. Mostly we just— And I think he saves all his talk up for Trina and Cristina. But him and me, we just— Janelle's so lucky to have you, Felix. You're so great. And you and her were friends before you—"
You give him a little squeeze, just enough to get his dick to "pop" another inch in length, it feels like, then let him go. He's very red in the face, and blinking rapidly, when you look up at him with the most beguiling smile you can muster.
* * * * *
You're not sure why you did that to poor Felix, except that you were riding Alana's instincts still, and what you told him is how Alana feels. She had a little crush on Felix almost from the moment she met him, and she's never quite forgiven Janelle for being his girlfriend and getting in the way. He's robust, with short, dark hair that's piled up in curls in the front but shaven close on the sides. His grin is hard and bright. You met him through Robert Vargas and his crowd (and through Felix you met Janelle and her friends) but Felix moves easily between a couple of different groups, and is really too much the A-student preppie to be real comfortable with the Vargases of the school. That's probably another reason Alana still crushes on him, because through him she could get with a better class of people.
How Felix really feels about you, you're not sure. Save that you're pretty sure he would fuck you in a moment if he could get his conscience out of the way.
"Yeugh, that was disgusting," Janelle says when she gets back, "but I feel so much better." She pinches at Felix's stomach as she passes him on the way to the car. He turns and follows her, being very careful not to look in your direction.
* * * * *
Joshua Cheswick lives clear on the other side of town, which gives Janelle plenty of time to text him that you're heading his way. "He says to come on down," she reports from the passenger-side seat of Felix's car, "we don't even have to knock." So, twenty minutes later, you're relaxing on a futon in a dim basement whose atmosphere is reeks with the scent of weed, beer, and teenage sweat.
There's only a handful of other kids there, all from Eastman, and no one bothers to make any introductions. Joshua, a lanky kid whose easy grin floats under a bouffant of coppery curls, is too occupied with a girl in a halter top and glasses to play the responsible host, and Felix and Janelle, after falling into a couple of beanbag chairs, are similarly distracted with each other. That leaves it to you to try to make friends.
But you don't try, and content yourself with perching on that futon and listening to the old-fashioned psychedelic-rock that's playing softly in the background. The other kids occasionally look over at you and smile, and you smile back, but no one crosses the divide, and no one seems likely to. But even after thirty or forty minutes of this solitude-amidst-company, you are not ready to leave, because where else would you go?
Still, you are ready for something to happen when something finally does. It happens when the loud bang of the basement door heralds a new arrival. "Fuck!" he shouts as he bounces heavily down the stairs. "It looks and smell like a whorehouse in here! So how come every'n's got their clothes still on!"
He's a medium-sized guy, slim without being skinny, in a black t-shirt under a rust-colored jacket. He's good-looking, with a bold nose and an insolent mouth, and dirty blonde hair pushed back from his forehead. He rakes the room with a glance, then strides over to the dorm fridge. "Got any beer?" he shouts.
"Got weed," Cheswick calls back.
"I don't need weed, I'm getting a contact buzz just taking a deep breath in here. I want beer. Christ. What is this horse piss?" But he takes out a can and cracks it open, though he makes a face as he drinks. "Hey, Weldon." He nods at a skinny kid in black-frame glasses who's perched on a nearby armrest. "Suck any good cock lately?" He glances over the room again while knocking back another draught of beer. This time his eyes settle on you. In fact, they seem to freeze on you, and his jaw works as he studies you a long moment.
"There anything here to eat?" he asks as he continues staring at you.
"You can raid the kitchen," Joshua says.
"You got anything 'sides granola? Fuck me, it's like it's only weed and granola around here, every time I come." His eyes bore into you, and you find you can't look away from his face.
"Is Zachary coming?" one of the girls asks. "Or Charles?"
"Dunno. Charles was trying to score in a sorority house last night, last I heard." He chews on his lip, then turns back to the fridge. "Holzer's probably still home, jerking off in the bathroom." He takes out another beer, and strides over to you.
"Hey," he says as he drops onto the futon beside you. "Brung you something. Not the beer," he says as you reach out to take it. "Me." He grins.
Behind him, across the room, you see Felix and Janelle watching you. Felix shakes his head in a warning.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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