He jogged after her. “That hurts, Kim, that hurts real bad. But don’t worry, you can make it up to me. How, you wonder? Why, by attending my party tomorrow night, which celebrates me getting back in the saddle.”
“I could care less if you’re in or out of any saddle. Hell to the no.” Kimber jammed her key in the car door.
Moquest sidled up beside the lock, his back against the vehicle and his arms folded. “Look, it’s pointless to pretend you don’t care about Jay. We both know you do. I don’t understand why any of this is happening at all. Why don’t you guys say fuck the past and move forward like you both want to?”
“Like we both want to?” She whirled on him, her anger blazing through her and heating her skin. “I heard him fucking my next-door neighbor the very day after he finally told me the truth about what a sicko he is. Do you really think that’s something I’m going to forget? Do you really think that’s someone I want to move forward with?”
To her annoyance, Moquest laughed. “Would it help you to know he didn’t bone her? Rumor has it she was just having some fun while he was blowing chunks in the bathroom, sickened by you screwing your ex.”
Kimber felt the color drain from her face, startled by this new information. “I didn’t sleep with Dane. He came over but then I heard… And I just—” She growled, flustered with her own ineloquence. “Never mind. The point is, it’s over between Dane and me.”
He grinned. “I know someone who’ll think that’s good news.”
She squared her shoulders and looked away, squinting in the sunset. “That’s over, too.”
Moquest turned with an exasperated groan and pounded on the roof of the car. “That’s such bullshit. Just put away your pride and follow this three-step plan. Ready for it?” He spun around and ticked off the instructions on his fingers. “One, come to my party. Two, kiss and make up with Jay. Three, profit. Trust me, it really is that easy if you want it to be.” Then he gave her a pointed look and sauntered off, whistling.
Kimber finally sank into the driver’s seat, starting the ignition and blasting the air conditioner with the door open wide to ebb the stifling heat trapped in the interior. She rested her head back, her mind turning over with myriad scenarios, only one of them bringing happiness of any sort. But how could she possibly make that one happen?
* * *
“God be praised!” Moquest shouted as he had every other time he sank a striped ball into one of the pockets of the bar’s pool table. “Can life get any better? I submit that it cannot.” He tipped his head back and took a triumphant, commercial-worthy swig from his beer bottle.
Jay arched a brow as he chalked his pool stick. “Everything’s just coming up Moquest, isn’t it?”
“It really is. Ever since I gave up ex-strippers in favor of my naughty nurse, I’m a new man.”
“I don’t mean to split hairs here but as I recall, the ex-stripper gave you up when she caught you getting mouth to mouth from the naughty nurse.”
“It was mouth to something, all right,” Moquest quipped, circling the table.
While his friend sought the perfect angle for the most viable shot, Jay sipped his lager draft and looked around the oddly named Targo Beach Club, a tiki bar that defied the geographical logistics of Pennsylvania’s beach-less condition in favor of inflatable palm trees and throbbing Top 40 remixes. He noted three blondes, all full of their blondness, splitting one of the bar’s twenty-dollar island-themed drinks served in paint-can-sized plastic coconuts, a multitude of straws protruding from it, kraken-style. Moquest had picked the locale, which was where he met many of the characters that put in appearances at his parties.
Jay hadn’t minded; he’d been in the mood for a bar, and the Targo Beach Club was the perfect place to remind him why he wasn’t in the mood to go to a bar more often. Still, it beat sleeping for at least ten hours a day, which had become the norm. Between shifts at the casino and waiting for his summer classes to start, he often indulged in excessively long naps, having lost his interest in reading and feeling resentful of everyone’s happiness on TV. Even the sappy tweens on the Disney channel had relationships that made him feel lonely.
Each of his dreams was weirder than the previous one. When Moquest roused him from his slumber an hour earlier, Jay had been in the midst of one about the duke from the
Wizard of Id
trying to defeat the leader of a foreign country with elaborate weapons and schemes, but the leader had already invented the same product or plan, only faster, better, and stronger. Jay had awakened, feeling as though the dream’s plot was revolutionary, but now that he thought about it, it was too
Spy vs. Spy
, very unoriginal indeed. Still, he enjoyed waking up, feeling like a genius. In his sleep was the only time he felt smart anymore, the only time he wasn’t out actively hurting the people he most cared about.
Moquest gestured to the cover-slash-jam band—a pack of college kids and a forty-something hippie on the recorder—playing on the stage of the bar’s ground floor, visible from his and Jay’s spot near the second level mezzanine. “Should I get these guys to play at my party tomorrow?”
“Only if you want me to hang myself upon arrival. I’ve been praying for sweet death ever since they started playing.”
“You’re always praying for sweet death these days. It’s such a bore, man. Another reason to throw a party.”
This time the word snagged in Jay’s ear. “A party?”
“You bet. To celebrate me and my Hel
lo
Nurse overcoming the odds—”
“The odds being your ten seconds of shame over having been dumped.”
“—I’m whipping up a little get-together tomorrow night, and you’re invited.” Moquest poked Jay in the stomach with his pool stick. “So’s Kimber.”
“Fuck.” The good mood he’d been attempting to mimic burst like a cloud full of rain and Jay leaned heavy against the bamboo-print wallpaper, plummeting back to square one. The most miserable of all quadrangles.
“She and I had a nice chat today. I found out she didn’t fuck Dane or get back with him after all, so that should set your mind at ease.”
Jay grunted in response, even though the news did give him a rush of hope. Then again, having hope was dangerous, and just because she hadn’t wanted to be with Dane didn’t mean she wanted to be with him.
“At any rate, you both should show up at my little gathering,” Moquest continued. “I think it’d be a good opportunity for you two.”
“A good opportunity to do what exactly?”
“That’s up to you.” Moquest hunched over the table and squeezed one eye shut, taking aim. “But you could try talking about this hot mess you’re in so you can get past it. Then, it’d be all, blindfolds, ahoy!”
“I’m taking it Hello Nurse isn’t dating you for your tact.”
“No way. I keep it real. Corner pocket.” Moquest took his shot, and the ball rocketed into the desired location. He threw his hands in the air. “God be praised!”
Jay crossed his arms and waited for Moquest to finish showboating, doubting he’d get another turn in this game.
Moquest paused his celebration and leaned against the table, clasping his fingers around his pool stick. “Now, before I completely slaughter you this game, let’s be serious. You haven’t talked to Kim since your Night of Ultimate Confessions, which is fucked up, so why don’t you just talk to her at the party? It’s on neutral ground and the perfect opportunity.”
“I haven’t talked to her because I don’t know what to say. Nothing I do now is going to make any difference. She already told me she hates me.”
“Jesus, Navarrete, you’re one sad sack. She wants to be with
you
, man. Why don’t you stop acting like a whiny bitch and make her realize it already?”
Jay shook his head, not knowing what else to do or how to respond. Attempting reconciliation was absurd. It wasn’t like the time in college when he’d taken her pleather pants, cut out the back pockets, and made assless chaps for Moquest one liquor-soaked night—and she’d been livid then. Furthermore, how could he expect Kimber to forgive him when he couldn’t forgive himself?
“What you need to do is figure out why the hell you’re so obsessed with this girl. There needs to be reasons why this is worth the trouble.” Moquest held up a hand. “But don’t tell me. I’m sick of hearing about you two. Just think it over while I finish kicking your ass.”
Jay drank his lager as he watched Moquest sink all the striped balls, then the solids just to show off. He also pondered Moquest’s question. It certainly was a fair one, and one he’d never thought to reflect on or bring under analysis. It had always been a feeling, a knowing, a way of living, a state of being: in love with Kimber. The why and all its logic never before factored in.
Now, in lieu of all that happened, he found it only fair to dwell on the answer, although he was scared to learn what it was that really mattered to him, scared at the thought of possibly wasting a decade loving the wrong person, scared of having to face the fact that he ruined a lifetime with the right one.
But he did it anyway. He allowed himself to think of all the things he loved about Kimber, like her infectious laugh and how she made even the most ordinary, day-to-day things seem fun. In a town of inhabitants with the imaginations of sea-soaked driftwood, she was the sole beacon of endless fascination for him, like finding a long-lost Alphonse Mucha original at a garage sale. He found her incredibly beautiful, with her blonde hair, gold-brown eyes, curvy form, and that mouth—damn. It was no surprise the casino bar goers plunked down their hard-won cash in the form of generous tips every time she flashed them a flirty smile.
Furthering her attractiveness was how she lived her life. She brimmed with an energy and vivacity so strong it would be damn near exhausting if it weren’t so intoxicating. He liked that he could bring her to the park and trust her to derive meaning from it, and that she had ambition to go back to school and open her own bar someday, even if drama with Dane had put those goals on hold. He even liked her fluctuating mood swings, how one moment she’d be consumed with sadness over thoughts of her mortality and a half hour later she would be draping her sweater over her head so it looked like beautiful blue hair and positioning a maple leaf over the crotch of her pajama pants, announcing, “Hello, I’m Eve.” Kimber made the most ordinary events seem special, which is how she once coerced him into an evening spent wearing their bathing suits in a bubble bath together, while they colored on the walls with washable crayons and drank strawberry milk out of beer glasses. Not that he’d needed much coercion to get in a tub with Kimber, but the event had hardly been sexual, with Kimber next to him, splashing her chin over and over to create a waterfall beard and proclaiming to be Poseidon. Nevertheless, the moment had definitely made him fall more in love with her.
She wasn’t always selfless, but when she wanted to be, she gave all of herself. He would never forget his twenty-first birthday, when she gave him a silver flask engraved with his initials and a glittery, homemade “Jay’s Wish Candle” in the middle of a plate of chocolate chip cookies served with mudslide mix blended with half a bottle of peppermint schnapps. She’d given him a tutorial on delivering the perfect hug as well as head that had made him see stars. He liked how she could somehow make doing a favor for her something to look forward to. Actually, he both loved and hated that.
On that note, there were several things he didn’t love so much about her, like her taste in guys, her insecurity, and her tendency to dwell on her problems. But these attributes were so inherently part of Kimber he couldn’t imagine or prefer her without them.
“You come up with anything?” Moquest cut into his reverie, and Jay took note how his friend was already setting up another game, which was likely to be one-sided.
“I guess.” Jay nodded, his voice rusty.
“And what you came up with—is it all worth it?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t even hesitate.
“Then why are you giving up?”
“I’m not giving up.” The words were an automatic defense, but it wasn’t until they were out of his mouth did he realize how much he meant them. “I’m not giving up.”
Moquest smirked and pushed the pool stick back in Jay’s hand. “Then man up and do something about it.”
Jay knew his friend was right. When faced with the choice between a life with Kimber and one without her, there was no choice at all.
Now if only he could convince her to feel the same way.
* * *
Kimber arrived at Moquest’s party, feeling anything but celebratory. Her faded jeans, vintage Yellowstone Park T-shirt, and flip-flops made her feel like an outsider compared to the other guests. The girls were decked out in tank tops and skirts and surrounded by frosted-haired boys wearing Abercrombie polos and too much Axe. They looked carefree and full of bliss, too—another difference between her and them, and an important one. Were they really enjoying themselves, or were they just that good at pretending? How were they able to put their troubles out of their minds?