“Sure,” he said. He placed his cup down on the table between his feet and yanked his shirt off over his head. Then he swung it around in the air before hooting and throwing it off into the shrubs by the beach.
Well, hell. I guess I was going to have to do it, too.
I had a little trouble—both with putting the cup down and with getting my shirt off, but Samantha was quite helpful with both. I stood up with my cup in one hand and my shirt in the other. I looked at them both and then threw them behind me with a shout. Punch went everywhere. Joe held his stomach as he laughed, and I joined him.
Then I noticed just how high up I was on the table.
“Damn,” I mumbled as I looked around. The bonfire was a lot lower now, but I saw a couple of guys hauling more wood from the nearby forest to rebuild it. There were kids everywhere, and from where I was, I could see the tops of all their heads. When I looked past them, I could see two feminine figures walking up the beach, arm in arm.
“Mayra!” I called out, waving my hands frantically. “I’m over heeeeere!”
Mayra approached with a tear-stained Aimee on her arm. She looked up at me with her forehead all furrowed into a bunch of cute little tiny lines as she handed Aimee over to Scott, and they hugged.
I wanted to poke at the little forehead lines, so I headed over in her direction.
I kind of forgot I was on top of the table though.
I landed face first in the sand but didn’t have any trouble rolling myself over and staring into the night sky. Nothing hurt, either, which was kind of odd. I could see Joe high above me, still laughing his ass off.
“What the hell is going on here?” Mayra said as she stood over me.
I turned my head toward her, and the expression on her face was just incredibly funny. I couldn’t stop laughing, and the stars above her head starting spinning around her hair, which was also pretty funny.
“Matthew, where’s your shirt?”
“I dunno.” I raised my arms over my head to shrug but then realized they weren’t really up in the air since I was on my back on the ground. I flailed my arms around in the air a bit, but I didn’t think it had the same effect.
“Matthew!” Mayra gasped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing, nothing wrong here.” Joe hopped off the table much more skillfully than I had managed. “Nothing at all wrong with my main man, Mister M, here. No, ma’am.”
“Joe, are you—”
“Nope, nothing wrong with him that can’t be fixed by a jellyfish.”
“Can I poke it?” I blurted out.
Mayra glared down at me, and I started laughing again. She really did look kind of mad, though, so I figured I’d get up and try to figure out why. The thing was, I couldn’t seem to stand.
It was probably my damn eyebrows holding me down.
I couldn’t manage to get up, so I just stayed there in the sand, laughing.
“Matthew, have you been drinking?” Mayra’s eyes bugged out, and her neck seemed to stretch forward and toward me. I was still on my back in the sand, which was a little itchy but nice and cool at the same time.
I thought the question was kind of strange. Yes, I had been drinking. I was thirsty, especially after eating all those chips.
“The chips are salty,” I told her.
Joe and Samantha both laughed, and Mayra turned toward them with her hands on her hips.
“Did you two give him that punch?”
“Don’t look at me!” Samantha said with her hands moving up toward her chest, palms out. “He was all giggly before I even came over here! I just gave him a refill.”
“More like three.” Joe chuckled and gestured toward me with his arm, which had a nice collection of other arms trailing after it. “He’s fine!”
“So, you’re responsible!” Mayra growled.
“Nope,” Joe told her. “He had his own cup before I sat down, I think. I mean, I didn’t give it to him.”
He started laughing again, so I joined him. I mean, if he was my other brother something-or-another, I should laugh with him, right?
“Joe’s my nudder brudder,” I told Mayra.
“Your what?”
“It’s like a brother,” Joe explained, “except without the geriatrics…er…genetics.”
“For the love of all that’s holy,” Mayra muttered. “Help me get him up.”
Joe grabbed one of my arms, and Mayra got the other one. They both yanked at the same time, but Joe’s pull was quite a bit more forceful than Mayra’s, and I ended up falling into him.
“We’re not that kind of brothers!” he cried out with another laugh. He pushed me, and I stumbled against Mayra instead.
Falling into her was a lot nicer anyway—softer, too. I leaned on her a bit just to steady myself. I seemed to have a bit of a head rush from getting up so quickly. I felt her hands come up over my back to steady me, and I grabbed her hips. My head was a little floppy, and when it landed on her shoulder, I inhaled with my nose against her skin. She smelled so good, and it made me want to taste her.
Pushing my body against hers, I captured her mouth and kissed her deeply. She moaned into my mouth—or maybe she was trying to say something—as my tongue touched hers. She grasped my bare shoulders, and her fingers felt warm against my skin. I heard a low whistle and a few snickers as Mayra pushed against me.
I broke the kiss but still held her hips. I was fairly certain my head rush was keeping me off balance because everything was still spinning. I moved my nose over her shoulder—right next to the strap of her tank top. That made me think of the little fish shape just beside the strap, and my hand started moving up from her hip. My fingers touched the smooth, rounded underside of her breast, and Mayra grabbed my hand.
“Matthew!” she yelled. “Don’t!”
“I wanna poke the fish,” I whined.
“Oh my God!” Samantha cried out. She turned away with her head in her hands as Joe spewed punch all over the sand.
I ignored them and tried to move my fingers up and over her breast again—wanting to move up high enough to shift the strap a little to the side and find her birthmark, but her breast was in the way, and my hand couldn’t seem to figure out how to get around it. Mayra tightened her grip on my hand and pushed it back down.
“Matthew! Stop it!”
“But I wanna poke the fish!” I said again.
“TMI!” Samantha called out as she walked away from us quickly.
“Not here!” Mayra’s voice sounded a lot like a dog snarling.
I really, really wanted to poke the fish, but she had a good enough grip on my hand. I decided to kiss the fish instead. My lips pressed against her shoulder and then started downwards.
“Ugh!” Mayra grabbed both of my hands and held them down to my sides as she pushed me away from her a bit. Her touch made my skin tingle, but when I looked down to where we were connected, everything was still blurry. I was also getting really dizzy all of a sudden. I looked up at her face, and her eyes were shifting around and around.
My stomach lurched a bit, and my head really began to swim.
“Mayra,” I whispered, “I don’t feel so good.”
“Joe, Sean!” Mayra called out. “Help me get Matthew back to my car.”
Arms went around my waist, and I was yanked forward by the two guys. They dragged me across the sand, following Mayra’s footsteps until we reached the Porsche. I kept telling them I was fine to walk, but the words came out all garbled.
“Walking is not that hard,” I told Joe as he propped me up against the hood.
“You’re a fucking mess.” Sean chuckled. “And your shirt smells like a fucking frat house. I cut Scott off, but I didn’t even think to watch out for Matthew.”
“Just get him in the car.” Mayra sighed. “I need to get him home.”
I struggled to poke at the fish shape as they piled me in and buckled the seatbelt. Joe tossed my used-to-be-gray shirt, now covered in red splotches, onto
my lap. I ended up falling a little to the side with my head on the window, which at least let me touch the fish-shaped mark in the car’s interior.
Mayra got in the driver’s side and started up the engine. It was a lot louder than I remembered, and I jumped a little as it roared to life. Shaking my head, I tried to sit up a little straighter, but everything I looked at was still spinning around in circles.
I wasn’t too bad off until we started moving.
As a kid, I remembered my mom telling me to look out the window toward the horizon if I was feeling carsick, but that didn’t help in the slightest now. It actually made the queasy feeling in my stomach worse. It didn’t get any better when I tried to focus on something inside the car, either. It felt like there was something bubbling around in my gut, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it home.
“Mayra, pull over!”
“Ah, shit!” she cried out. She pulled off to the side while I undid my seatbelt and yanked open the door. I dropped to the ground just before I heaved onto the edge of the road.
Even though I was shivering, I felt hot and was pretty sure I must have a fever or something. Could I have caught a bug from someone at the party? Mayra was next to me as I threw up once more.
“I think I’m sick,” I said softly.
“No kidding.” Mayra’s voice was deadpan.
“Do I feel hot?” I asked. “I think I might have a fever.”
“You don’t have a fever,” Mayra said. “You’re drunk.”
“Drunk?” I asked with incredulity. “I don’t drink.”
“Well, you did tonight,” she said with a sigh. “What did you think was in that punch?”
“Um…punch?” I said. My head was still spinning, and I couldn’t make it stop. “Hawaiians?”
I wanted to laugh, but my gut hurt too much.
“And then some,” Mayra replied. “It had an entire bottle of Everclear in it.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she promised. “Do you think you can make it back home now?”
“I think so.” I did feel a little better after throwing up. We both got back in the car, and I ended up falling against her, which is where I stayed until I got home. I made it to the bathroom just in time to start vomiting again. I’d had food poisoning once after eating clams at the Red Lobster near the mall. All in all, I think I might have preferred to go through that again.
Not only did I feel awful, but my head seemed to just flop around on top of my neck, and the dizziness wouldn’t stop. I felt like I had gone on a merry-go-round at top speed for ten minutes, only the dizziness didn’t seem to be getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse.
Mayra knelt beside me and pushed my hair off my forehead. I couldn’t stop throwing up long enough to thank her. Once I completely purged everything out of my body, I tried to collapse on the floor beside the toilet. Mayra wouldn’t let me though. She hauled me back up by one arm and dragged me to my bed.
Lying down made the spinning worse, but at least it was more comfortable. I also didn’t think I had anything left to vomit. Mayra crawled in beside me, and I nudged my face against her shoulder and brought my finger up to—finally—poke the fish.
“I don’t feel good,” I told her for the twentieth time.
“I know, baby.”
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
“I know.”
“Why do people drink that stuff if it makes you feel like this?”
“I don’t know, Matthew,” Mayra said. “Just close your eyes and try to go to sleep.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I know. Hush.”
“Everything is spinning around,” I told her. “It won’t stop. Will it ever stop?”
“It will stop,” she promised. “Just go to sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll feel like shit in a whole new way.”
I couldn’t really fathom that it could get worse, so I closed my eyes and passed out.
Lose.
Chapter 17—Cookies Aren’t the Only Things That Start with “C”
Even before I opened my eyes and saw the dark of night outside my window, I knew I hadn’t slept long. For one, my head was still spinning about as much as it had been, and my tongue felt gross. From the hallway just outside my room, I could hear Mayra’s soft voice.
“…he had no idea,” she was saying. “No one is confessing to giving it to him, anyway… I couldn’t leave him by himself…he was such a mess…yes—the whole gamut…no, I did not…not a drop, I swear…”
I didn’t hear any other voices and figured Mayra was talking on the phone. I wanted to get up and brush my teeth, but I was afraid if I moved my head at all, it just might fall off and roll across the floor. It occurred to me that it might pop off even if I didn’t move, and I had a random thought about dying with unbrushed teeth. I tried to roll over and groaned.
“Oh, I think he’s awake. I should go…oh, yeah—good idea…”
Through blurred vision, I saw her standing in the doorway to my room with her cell phone in her hand.
“I didn’t want you to worry…in the morning, but don’t expect it to be early…you too, Dad…bye.”
I closed my eyes again, not daring to keep them open in case it made my head worse. I felt Mayra sit down on the bed next to me, and I reached out to her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“Are you in trouble with Henry?” I asked.
“No,” Mayra sighed. “He’s probably calling the cops to head out to break up any party that is left over, but he didn’t sound like he was mad at either of us. He won’t be too happy if he finds out who gave you spiked punch, but I don’t think he’s going to blame you.”
“I was thirsty,” I said. “I didn’t know what was in it. I thought it was just—”
“Shh…” Mayra’s fingers drifted through my hair and stroked it backwards, away from my face. “It’s okay. I’m going to go get you some water. I’ll be right back.”
“My teeth are furry,” I said.
“I’ll help you.” I heard Mayra’s soft snicker.
Mayra maneuvered me to the bathroom and helped me get toothpaste on the brush. I tried to figure out just where my teeth were while she brought me a large glass of water and two ibuprofen tablets.
“Drink it all,” Mayra commanded.
“That’s a big glass,” I told her. “I don’t need that much to take pills.”
“You need that to get yourself rehydrated,” she said. “You’ll feel a lot better tomorrow if you drink it all.”
I argued a bit, but it hurt to argue, and I really needed to lie back down. I stumbled into bed after drinking the full glass, and Mayra followed me. She wrapped her arms around me, and I snuggled into the place between her shoulder and neck, which was really quite a nice spot to be.
Just having her here this way in my bed at night was quite a nice thing, too.
“You should live here,” I told her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mayra laughed.
“I mean it,” I said. I tried to move a bit so I could look up at her, but as soon as I did, my head got all swooshy again. I swallowed hard and tried to steady myself. “I like you being here.”
“I like being here, too,” she said. “But Matthew, we graduated from high school a few hours ago. Let’s take things a little slower, for the sake of Henry’s heart if nothing else.”
I had to think about that for a minute, imagining how Henry might react if Mayra said she was going to move out of his house and into mine. It would be quite a shock to him, that was for sure. Would he still like me if he thought I was taking Mayra away from him too fast? But she was planning to move to campus at the end of summer anyway.
“Will college be hard for him?” I asked. “I mean, when you go away?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think he’s already kind of freaking out a little. He worries a lot. Staying in town
helps since he can keep an eye on me. I think you going to the same school actually makes him a lot happier about it.”
“It does?”
“He knows I’m safe with you,” Mayra said quietly.
“I love you,” I told her.
“I love you, too,” Mayra responded. “And I think Henry does in a way as well.”
“Henry?” My eyebrows lowered and scrunched at the top of my eyes. I reached up with my fingers to try to get them to stay in place.
“I think he sees you like he would a son, you know?”
“I think so,” I said, but I wasn’t entirely sure I did. Love was weird and confusing. Outside of my parents, Megan, Travis, and Beth, I had never really thought about loving anyone else besides Mayra. Now that she was in my life, I couldn’t imagine it being any other way.
I didn’t sleep well. My head went from spinning to pounding, and I kept waking up every hour or so. There was the slightest tickle against my neck where Mayra’s fingers rested as she cradled my head to her shoulder. I sighed against her skin and wrapped my arms around her. I still felt crappy, but having her close made it bearable. The only problem was, the huge glass of water had gone straight through me.
I wriggled around a bit, but it didn’t help. I was still dizzy and really, really didn’t want to leave either the comfort of the bed or the comfort of Mayra’s arms. The pressure on my bladder soon became too much, and I had to get up.
As I washed my hands, I glanced at myself in the mirror. I looked really rough. My head still hurt, so I headed down to the kitchen for another large glass of water.
Throughout the day, I slowly recovered physically, but I was still quite embarrassed. When Mayra woke up, she made me fried eggs and toast, which settled my stomach. I vowed to never touch alcohol again, and Mayra laughed.
I didn’t understand the joke.
With school out, we spent most of our time over the next week planning for the move to Columbus to begin college at Ohio State University. I was worried about moving even though it really wasn’t very far. Knowing Mayra would be there with me made the idea a little more palatable.
When we weren’t talking about college, we were making plans for the weekend. When Saturday finally rolled around, I couldn’t help but worry about it.