Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rafe sitting in the bleachers, alone. His posture was bad, and I knew what had happened. My heart sunk a bit.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?”
“My buddy Rafe. I think his boyfriend just dumped him.”
I resisted the urge to spin so that she could see him. Rafe and Hannah meeting was something I’d thought about leading up to the dance, but I wasn’t sure how that would go, and moreover, I wasn’t sure I wanted them to meet yet.
“That sucks,” she said. The slow song ended, replaced by something a little peppier.
I pulled back. “Would you mind terribly … ?”
“Oh,” she said, and she looked down at the floor for a moment. Then she looked back up at me and smiled, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not at all. You want me to come too? I’m good at cheering people up.”
“I think I’d better—”
“Sure,” she said. “He’s your best friend. I wouldn’t mind going back to school early.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No. I made an appearance here. That’s good enough.”
“You sure? If you want, I could try to find a place—”
She smiled more. “It’s okay, Ben. Do what you have to do. I’m okay, really. A little bit of a formal dance goes a long way with me.”
“Me too.” I pulled her close and kissed her softly on the lips. “Sleep tight,” I said. “You got a ride home?”
She nodded. “Sleep tight,” she said.
When she left, I walked over to Rafe. He looked more deflated than I’d ever seen him look before.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to him.
“Hey.” His voice lacked its usual color.
“What happened?”
“I told him to fuck off. He wasn’t willing to dance with me. Shit. I’m not hanging out with a guy who’s afraid to be seen with me. Fuck that.”
I put my arm around him. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah, well.”
“No, really.”
“Thanks. She’s really pretty, by the way.”
“Thanks. She’s heading back to Lonna. You wanna get out of here? Go for a drive?”
“You’d do that for me?”
I laughed. “No. I wanna stay and hang with my new buddy Tommy Mendenhall. Let’s go.”
We didn’t change into anything more casual. Instead, we just got into Gretchen and went. The sky was vivid and bright for a winter’s night, with stars so crisp I felt like I could taste them.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Rafe said. “You could’ve hung with your girlfriend.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “She understood.”
“She understood you choosing a friend over her? At a dance?”
“She understood me choosing to comfort my best friend, yes.”
I turned right onto the street that leads to I-90 from school.
“Where are we going?”
“No idea,” I said.
We were quiet for a bit, and I put on a little music. Jazz. It fit with the night, somehow—soft and gentle and easy.
“I just feel like, why do I keep on dating not the right guy?”
I shrugged and slowed down to let a Chevy merge into my lane.
“I mean, I don’t mean you. Well, I guess I sort of do. I mean, I met Jeff and I knew what kind of guy he was, and that probably meant that on some level I knew, up front, that he wasn’t the one. So why would I waste my time?”
“Maybe you’re experimenting?”
“I don’t know. Are you experimenting?”
I tensed up. “I don’t know. Maybe,” I said. If Hannah was more than an experiment, Rafe didn’t need to hear that right now.
“Huh,” he said, and we were quiet some more.
“What do you like about her?” he asked.
“She’s beautiful, and she’s nice to talk to, and she’s—it’s hard to explain. She’s a little messed up but in a good way, like she’s maybe too self-aware, almost?”
“Interesting. How is it different? Being with a girl as compared to a guy?”
I took a deep breath and kept my eyes on the road. “Girls are softer.”
“And you like that?”
“Yeah.”
And that ended that conversation. I saw a sign for I-90 East, and I pulled onto the highway. We listened to the music, and Rafe tapped his hands on his legs to the beat. As we passed the sign for West Newton, he cranked down his window. The wind whipped through the car, chilling the air and drowning out the music.
I tried to look over at him to say something, but the wind blasted me in the eyes and I had to turn back forward.
“You want me to close it?” he yelled.
I smiled. “Nah. I like it.”
We let the wind run through our hair and freeze our foreheads and ears. I couldn’t help but laugh, because it felt awesome. Freeing. I opened my window too, and we stared forward as we allowed the wind to beat us into submission.
We let it ice us for a good fifteen minutes, and soon I could feel it in my molars. I glanced over at Rafe and saw his teeth chattering, so I rolled up my side. He closed his. We looked at each other as I turned up the heat and the jazz hit our ears again.
“You ever feel like just saying, ‘Fuck it’?”
I laughed. “Basically every day of my life.”
“Really? I think of you as so comfortable and reserved.”
I thought about that for a good minute.
“Is that really what you think?” I said.
Now it was his turn to sit quietly. It was like I could hear his brain working.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess I think you’re one of those people who wants everyone to think everything is fine with him all the time, and I genuinely don’t know half the time if you’re freaking out or totally cool.”
I went around a slow-moving SUV. No one had ever said that to me before. That maybe I wasn’t completely okay. I felt horrified, exposed, like he’d seen something I’d been trying to hide all my life. It was out there for people to see. I pictured my father’s stern face, and I remembered the time with the pineapple.
I was five. It was one of the summer family reunions before Uncle Max came back from China, and we were at Grandpa Mirek’s, outside in the backyard. All the relatives I saw once a year had told me how much I’d grown, and I was standing there by the buffet table in silence. Dad had told me to mind my behavior, not to do anything that would embarrass him. Luke was still a baby, so Mom was carrying him around.
There was pineapple carved on a platter. I’d never seen pineapple before. It looked exotic, with the scaly exterior of the top of one on display, the sharp, green leaves pointing at me. I took a piece and tasted it. The juiciness shocked me. It was like a festival of flavors in my mouth, and I remember smiling wide, and I remember my great-aunt Sylvia smiling back at me from across the buffet table. I took another chunk. Then another. It was so good. It was the best, most special thing I’d ever tasted.
I may have eaten most of it. I don’t remember. I guess I probably did.
Dad saw me finishing off the tray, and he grabbed my left arm and pulled me across the lawn and inside the house. “I told you not to embarrass me. Why do you always have to embarrass me?”
He bumped me on the side of the head with his palm.
After, I went and sat in the backyard on the grass and pulled up sunflowers.
I felt Rafe’s eyes on me. Maybe a minute had passed, and I hadn’t said anything.
“Bleep. Bloop. Bloop,” he said, pantomiming pressing buttons in front of him.
“What the hell is that?”
“I’m turning back time to before we got all awkward because I said too much.”
I grinned. “Bleep. Bloop. Bloop,” I said back, pretending to press the same buttons.
We enjoyed some more quiet as this Ella Fitzgerald song came on that I especially liked. Rafe pulled out his phone.
“Do you
know I’m seventeen, and I have never, ever felt the wind through my hair like we did earlier?” I said. “And it’s not like anyone is stopping me. I just have never done that.”
“I love that feeling,” Rafe said.
I looked over at him and smiled.
“Take Exit 18. Toward Cambridge,” he said, playing with his phone.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer. “We’re jointly saying, ‘Fuck it.’ Me to Jeff, and you to the world.”
I smiled again. “Okay.”
He used his phone to navigate us north and then east, and soon it was like I could smell the beach air, even though the car windows were rolled up and the heat was on.
We parked in an abandoned parking lot. The sign read, REVERE BEACH.
“The British are coming,” I said.
I could feel Rafe smirk as I turned the car off. “I thought this would appeal to your history-geek side.”
The brittle night air greeted us as we stepped out of the car. It was probably about thirty-five, not so cold for a February evening. I could see my breath, but it dissipated quickly. In my suit and tie, the air permeated my bones right away. Rafe, in his suit jacket and T-shirt, looked positively frigid.
Rafe took off running toward the sand. I ran after him. The sand was hard, nearly frozen. There were no lights illuminating the beach, but the bright moon sat over the water, giving us just enough light that we could see the small waves lapping toward seaweed and smooth sand.
He came to a halt about ten feet from the waves.
“Low tide,” I said, my teeth chattering.
Rafe curved his hands around his mouth, looked up at the night sky, and howled. The howl then turned into a scream. It juggled my insides a bit, nestling into my chest cavity.
“What was that for?” I asked, once he was done.
“My mom believes in shouting out emotions.”
“Of course she does,” I said, smiling. Rafe’s mom had shocking red hair she wore in a ponytail, and she wore overalls.
“You should try it.”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on! You know you want to.”
“You know what? I kind of do.”
“Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it,” he chanted softly.
“Aaaahhh!” I said, just a bit louder than my speaking voice.
“Oh my God, that was pathetic,” he said, and he showed me how a howl/scream is done again. “Let it go, Ben Carver. Let it all go.”
I looked down at the sand. I wasn’t used to all this. Emoting. And yet, his scream was still nestled in my chest cavity, and it felt a lot like fuel and energy, like something that I was supposed to use in a way. So I clasped my hands around my mouth, arched my back skyward, and let it go.
The howl felt like it could go on forever. It was filled with ice and fire, mixed together, and frustration, and giddiness, and hopelessness, and all sorts of stuff we don’t talk about in my family. I howled and howled and howled, and when I was done, I turned toward a radiant Rafe, who was looking at me like a proud dad, kind of, and I couldn’t take that sort of response, so I said the first word that came to my mind.
“Tackle,” I said.
His eyes got big. “You’ve heard about Tacklers Anonymous?”
I nodded and deadpanned, “It’s the next big thing, don’t you know?”
He backed up a few steps, and then he turned around and sprinted, his suit jacket flailing in the wind behind him, the back of his turquoise shirt helping me see him as he booked it away from me. I charged after him, every part of my body feeling alive and engaged. He was fast, no doubt about it, but so was I, and soon I was gaining on him, and then—fuck it, fuck it, fuck it—I leapt at him from behind.
My weight pushed him forward, and we thudded together on the hard sand. My heart was pulsing wildly. He turned his head, stunned at the hard tackle, shocked, like me, that I’d done it. He pushed back, struggling to get free, but there was no way against my weight, so I let him get up.
His eyes were flashing like crazy. He reached down and pushed me into the sand.
“Jerk,” he yelled.
I grabbed on to his arm, and I pulled him down again and rolled on top of him.
“You’re the jerk.”
He struggled free, and then he rolled on top of me, and he cracked up laughing, so I did too. And we rolled like that a bit, our breathing loud, grunting like animals on Animal Planet. Finally, I was on top of him and our eyes met.
“Victory!” I yelled as I jumped up. I felt like a different person.
Rafe got up too. He swatted sand off himself, and I did the same.
There was so much to say. There was so little to say. We caught our breath together.
“How cold do you think it is in the water?” he finally asked.
“Like maybe just above freezing?”
“Would we die if we just took everything off and walked in?”
I looked at him. I threw my jacket off. The wind pierced my shirt like it wasn’t even there, freezing my arms and chest and especially nipples.
He did the same, and then crossed his arms over his scrawny chest.
We burst out laughing.
“Bad idea?” I asked.
“Way bad.” He reached down, grabbed his jacket, shook it off, and said, “Brr.”
I nodded. He took off for the car, so in one movement I grabbed my ratty jacket and slung it over my shoulder as we ran back to the car as fast as we could.
We were quiet as we drove back. For me, I was playing back the tackle and the wrestling on the sand. There was something sexual there, obviously. But I had a girlfriend, and maybe friends did that, I don’t know. I knew that I was glad to have a friend whom I could tackle, and get maybe a bit rough with because it was the right thing in the moment.
“I didn’t mean the jerk thing,” Rafe said. “I’m sorry I said that. Heat of the moment.”
“Yeah, you did,” I said, surprising myself.
“Maybe. Maybe a little. I’m not used to rough play.”
“Me neither. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No. You just shocked me, is all.”
“Good. I shocked me too.”
He laughed, so I did too, and I turned up the tunes, and we zoned out on jazz for a bit.
“Did you know goldfish have five-second memories?” Rafe asked as I turned onto the highway back to campus.
“Nice segue. No, I did not know that,” I said. “How could they ascertain that?”
“I don’t know. Research?”
“But what kind of research? It would be pretty hard to ask goldfish what they can and can’t recall, wouldn’t it?”
The highway was surprisingly empty for a Saturday night. Then I realized: It might not even be Saturday night anymore. I’d totally lost track of the time.
Rafe said, “Maybe they set up a maze for the goldfish, and they let them go through it, and they found that after five seconds they keep bumping into the walls?”
“Maybe,” I said. “What would that be like, to have a five-second memory?”
Rafe laughed. “Hey, it’s food! Chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp. Oh, hey! It’s food!”
I said, “My name is Goldie, what’s your name? Hi, Thomas, nice to meet you.… My name is Goldie, what’s your name?”
“Stupid goldfish. They don’t remember anything,” Rafe said.
I told him about the fact that I was being asked to argue against gay marriage. He told me his mom had called Mr. Sacks a fascist when they’d met on Parents’ Weekend last fall. That cracked me up. I could imagine her saying it.
I got off at the Natick exit and asked Rafe the time. He told me it was 12:15. Past curfew.
“Oops,” I said.
“Oops. You think we’ll get in trouble?”
“Donnelly loves me, so probably not,” I said.
“Everyone loves you,” he said.
“Yeah.” I rolled my eyes.
We parked and let the car go quiet
for a bit.
I smiled in the silence. Despite all the bad stuff that had happened between us, we’d gotten through it. It was, at the moment, crystal clear. Maybe I loved Hannah, but in a way I loved Rafe even more. It was agape. Higher love. There was just something about him that set me free. Made me light. Got me weightless.
Even if once in a while I had a dream that I probably ought to keep to myself.
As I opened the car door and stepped back into the chilly night, I was thinking that maybe the key to life is to have goldfish memories. So you can’t remember the time a friend hurt you. So you can give second and third and even fourth chances. To yourself too. Because sometimes it takes multiple chances to get things fully right, to put your universe in order.
The next night, I called Hannah.
“What’s up?” I asked when she picked up.
“Not much.”
“Did the girls give you shit about me?”
“I don’t know. Some.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s going on?”
She sighed but didn’t say anything.
“Wait. Are you upset with me?” My brain was spinning with possibilities. Did she decide overnight that she didn’t like me anymore? Had I done something wrong?
“I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you’re upset with me?” What had I done—oh. Shit. “Is this about comforting Rafe?”
She didn’t say anything.
“But you said it was okay.”
She sighed, deeper this time. “I know what I said. But I guess I don’t feel like I should have to tell you what’s normal behavior. It’s not normal to invite your girlfriend to a dance, convince her to come, and then, halfway through, send her home so you can tend to your male friend with whom you once had sex.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Yeah. Not my favorite evening of all time.”
“You should have told me! I would have stayed with you.”
“Well, obviously you wanted to be with Rafe. Or else you would have stayed with me. And I don’t want to have to convince you to stay with me. I already told you about my dad. I don’t need any more disappearing guys in my life, okay?”
“Shit,” I said. “I didn’t even … God, I’m sorry.”