The Lighter Side of Life and Death (2 page)

Hugo’s a different story. Risking his entire relationship with Kat for a few minutes with Monica G is utter insanity. I can’t understand why he’s not out here right now, down on his knees, begging for forgiveness.

“You’re not surprised?” Kat pulls her hands back under her poncho and faces me.

“I’m completely surprised,” I tell her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“He’s been trying to get me to sleep with him for weeks.” Her chin droops. “He made it sound like he was so into me. That it’d be this special thing between us.” She leans down and rests her head on her knees. “I think I’m drunk.”

I’m half-drunk myself. I don’t have a clue what to say to her. “He’s crazy,” I mutter. “Did he even see you? I mean, what happened when you opened the door?”

Kat presses her eyelids shut. “I just want to get out of here.” Her hands dart out from under her poncho as she stands. “You want to come?” She takes a step away from the house and then swings abruptly around. “I’m sorry … God … this is your cast party and everything. I’m not thinking.” She tucks her ears into her hat and tries to smile. “You were great, by the way. It’s like you were totally someone else up there.” She said the exact same thing at the start of the party, but I’m fine with hearing it again. “It was almost eerie.”

A grin escapes before I can catch it. “You want me to get Sondra or Michelle for you?” They’d know the right things to say. They definitely wouldn’t break into smiles.

“No,” Kat says decisively. “I’m going to phone my brother and hide out here until he comes.” She wrinkles her eyebrows.
“Seriously. I’m not even that upset. The whole thing’s just gross, you know?”

“Yeah.” I tilt my head and look into her eyes. With her body hidden she looks super-young, practically the same as when we first met. “You want me to walk you home?” I’m not in a hurry to leave the party but it seems like the thing to say. Kat doesn’t like the cold but the last of the winter snow melted weeks ago; we really could make it to her place no problem.

“I’m not sure I even want to go home. Just …” She shakes her head in aggravation. “Go back in and help Jamie. I’ll wait out here for my brother.” Her brother, Eric, has no life. I’m sure he’d be here in no time but her suggestion doesn’t sit right. Her eyes are miserable, and like a complete asshole Hugo has neglected to even show up on the doorstep. Somebody has to do something.

“We can go someplace else,” I offer. “We don’t have to go to your house.” Kat wants to argue with me. I can see it in her face. “Don’t worry,” I say. “Just tell me where you want to go, Kat.” I rock back and forth on my heels as I stare at her. Truthfully, I’m still half thinking about the party happening behind us. I don’t know that I want to go. Maybe I’m channeling Chris Keller, my role in the play, trying to be a better person. Maybe everyone you play rubs off on you a little like that.

“I don’t know,” she admits wearily. “Let’s just walk.”

So we start heading south, against the wind, only she won’t say a word so I have to do all the talking. It’s giving me a dry mouth, and I’m thinking how nice another beer would go down when she stops, hunches over and says, “All this walking is making me dizzy. Can we stop?”

At this point we’re, like, twelve minutes away from Yolanda’s and maybe ten minutes from my house and I say, “We’ll head over to my place, okay? It’s not far.”

“Seriously, Mason.” Her face is turning shades of green and she’s forcing her eyes open wide as she stares at a fixed point in the distance, probably in an attempt to stop the spins. “I’m not going to make it.”

The girl barely drinks. She had to go and pick tonight to booze it up and make herself sick. “All right, climb on my back.” I crouch down and lock my arms around her legs as she hops on. By now I’m starting to get kinda pissed off with the way this is turning out. On any other night I’d be happy to help her out but I’m missing my cast party, the last chance to celebrate the shit out of what we accomplished with
All My Sons
, for someone who could be unconscious in two minutes. Plus, I don’t know that I can carry her very far. There’s a good chance that I’ll be phoning her brother myself in about five minutes’ time, trying to explain that Kat’s passed-out presence on a generic scrap of lawn has nothing to do with me, despite appearances.

“I wish we brought some pizza with us,” Kat mumbles near my ear.

“You don’t need to be any heavier,” I say irritably. Generally, this isn’t a good thing to say to anyone. If I’m lucky she won’t remember.

“I’m not that heavy,” she protests, releasing her grip on me and jumping down. “Your muscles are underdeveloped.” She starts shuffling along next to me and we manage to make it all the way to my house in twice the amount of time it would normally take. The lights are off and the driveway’s empty, meaning Dad’s still at Nina’s.

I fish my key out of my wallet and unlock the front door. Kat brushes past me, kicking off her shoes and collapsing onto the living room couch. “I love your house,” she announces. “It feels so
lived in.” The Medina house is covered in plastic wrap and constantly hosed down with multiple layers of Lysol and Mr. Clean. You could perform surgery in any room.

“You mean messy,” I say, smiling as I sit down next to her. Now that we’re here I’m back to feeling friendly. There’ll be other parties. I did the right thing. “Maybe Nina will fix that.” I nudge her arm. “You feeling better? You want some water or something?”

“No, I’m okay. Just don’t ask me to walk anywhere else.” Kat rubs her eyes and looks thoughtful, her face back to its normal color. “That’s going to be really weird with Nina and her kids, isn’t it? Having other people in your house, acting like it’s theirs.”

“I guess.” I’ve been trying not to think of it that way. “Everything’s going to change after graduation anyway.”

“Yeah, but that’s still over a year away.”

“It’ll go fast,” I say, making Kat frown.

“I don’t want it to go fast.” Kat pulls off her hat and wrestles with her poncho. She drapes it over the arm of the couch and turns back to face me. “All that stuff that happens after is serious. Important life and career decisions.”

“You’re already worrying about those things,” I remind her. She’s had this career path conflict going on since at least summer. Her parents are really into the idea of her becoming a pharmacist. Kat’s half into the idea herself but she’s also hyper-interested in designing jewelry. Personally, I think she’s kidding herself with the pharmacy thing. Not that she’s not smart enough. I just can’t see her in a lab coat counting pills for a living. She needs more than that.

“I know.” She pouts a bit when she says that. It’s the cutest thing and now’s probably a good time for me to admit that I never entirely got over my crush on Kat Medina. Sometimes I almost forget
about it. It’s like a photocopy of a photocopy of an original that you packed away in an unmarked cardboard box in your attic. The point is, it still exists.

“I can’t believe Hugo,” she says with a snort. “I can’t believe he pulled that bullshit after everything he said to me. The worst part is that he sounded so sincere. He kept talking about how the whole sex issue was a matter of trust between us and that he wanted to do whatever he could to make me feel okay with it.” Kat grimaces and goes quiet, and I know she’s embarrassed, and it embarrasses me too because we’ve never really talked about sex. I know she’s a virgin but that’s about all I know, and she knows even less about me.

“It sounds so stupid now,” she adds, her voice hushed.

“He’s an asshole,” I tell her. “An asshole in disguise.”

“Disguised as what?”

Isn’t it obvious?
Come on, Kat. Work with me here
. “You always go for that same type of guy. Somebody who looks like Hugo. Somebody who’s all about themselves.”

“He didn’t seem like that.” She pulls at her earlobe, plays with her dangly silver earring. “He was always really sweet.”

“Except for the last few weeks when he was trying to get you into bed,” I point out. And thirty minutes ago when he was giving it to Monica G in Yolanda’s upstairs bathroom.

“Even the past few weeks,” Kat says. “
Especially
the last few weeks.” She strokes her cheek with one hand and taps my leg with the other. “How come you never told me that you don’t like him?”

All this weird tension’s building in the silence, making the living room shine in a way that you don’t need eyes to see, and I stare at her hand, which is now resting on my thigh, and shrug. She’s not getting me on this. I’m not admitting a thing. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I’m just telling it how it is.”

Kat looks me square in the eye. There’s something so naked
about her stare that my hands tremble. I’d swear she’s reading my mind, that she knows exactly how hot she’s making me, and maybe, just maybe, that’s the point. So I reach out and touch her face with my fingertips. Then we’re gazing into each other’s eyes, on edge, breathing hard and waiting for the next leap.

I kiss her first. Our tongues push together and I can’t get enough. We stretch out on the couch and get serious. She’s reaching into my jeans and I’m dipping into hers and it’s so out of control that I can’t believe it. She’s making a quiet moaning noise and looking up at me with hazy, happy eyes and I’m so caught up in it that there’s no room for anything else, like thinking.

“What if your dad comes back?” Kat whispers in her tiny Filipino accent.

“You’re right.” I sit up on the couch. “We should go to my room.” This can’t be over yet. Neither of us is ready for that.

So we relocate upstairs and I watch her pull her top over her head. Her black bra’s next and she looks at me while she’s unhooking it, like she’s proud of what’s underneath. The sight of her bare skin makes my face burn. I kiss her breasts and slip her pants down and she looks so gorgeous on my bed like that, her hair tousled and this sexy-dirty expression on her face, that I have to stop and stare at her for a bit, just to remind myself this is real.

I’ve spent so many hours imagining different versions of this moment over the years that my brain overheats and melts down to nothing as I watch her. When Kat opens her mouth again, her words are so husky they make my heart stop. “Do you have condoms?”

I almost have a coronary. You’d think it was obvious where this was heading, but this is Kat’s virginity we’re talking about. I’m stunned.

The thing is, I’m also a pretty good actor. I pull a package of
Trojans confidently out of my dresser and rip one open. I want to tell her this is crazy and that we’re both drunk and maybe she’ll regret this, but on the other hand, that’s not what I want to do at all.

I roll the condom on and go back to the bed without a word. Kat’s staring at me with wide eyes and I guess it should feel awkward, because before tonight we’d never even kissed, but the truth is it feels fine. I slide in easy, like we’ve done it a hundred times, like this is just the latest in a long line of perfect physical encounters. She comes first. I feel it. I mean,
I really feel it
, and I’m thinking,
No way on earth this is actually happening
. This must be some amazing dream. Vivid as hell, beautiful as fuck, but not real. It can’t be. It’s too good, too natural to be
anyone’s
first time, let alone
two
people’s first time.

Because, yeah, it’s my first time too.

Kat Medina is my first time.

Kat’s speaking urgently
into her cell phone when I wake up. The light’s still on in my room, and I squint at my clock radio, dazed. It can’t possibly be one-thirty, can it? Not when my head’s telling me I must’ve been asleep for hours. I stare over at Kat, her eyes flashing panic. She’s sitting on my bed in her top and panties, combing her hair frantically into place with one hand.

I roll over and open my mouth to speak but she turns towards me, pressing a finger to her lips. So okay, I’ll be quiet. The light’s boring a hole into my head, making me clamp my eyes shut. Meanwhile my throat’s praying for water and I don’t remember what I did with the condom. I pry my eyelids back open and spy it down on the carpet, within arm’s length. I pull my jeans and shirt on, pluck the condom off the floor like a piece of litter and shuffle into the bathroom where I wrap it in toilet paper and bury it at the bottom of the wastebasket.

On my way out of the bathroom I nearly collide with Kat, fully
dressed, in the hall. “That was Eric,” she says quickly. “He went to Yolanda’s to pick me up. He said he went to the door and everything and that everyone was searching all over the house for me.” Kat turns and hurries along the hall, explaining as she goes. “He said he’s been trying to call me for twenty minutes.”

I follow her mutely downstairs and towards the front door where she stops to shove her feet into her shoes. “He’ll be here any minute,” she adds. She’s practically vibrating with anxiety and I’m three steps behind mentally, stuck on that amazingly beautiful thing that happened between us upstairs before we passed out.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Don’t worry.”

“He’s FREAKING OUT, Mason.” Kat turns to unlock the door. “He’ll be here any second.”

“Wait,” I cry, my mind racing to catch up. “Your poncho.”

I rush into the living room and swipe it off the couch. Her hat too. “Thanks,” she says, opening the door. And sure enough Eric Medina’s pulling into my driveway at the speed of light. I catch one final glimpse of Kat’s face before she closes the door swiftly behind her. She looks scared and I want to put my arms around her and hold on to her for a while. I’ve hugged her lots of times, but this would be different; this is after.

It’s too late, though. She’s gone.

I amble into the kitchen for water and then slowly back into the living room where I sit on the couch, solo. The cushions are askew but I don’t fix them. They’re proof something happened.

I sit there, thinking the same things over and over, and they’re all about Kat and me upstairs. My mind’s in replay mode, doing its best to adjust to this startling new reality, when Dad walks through the front door. “Mason!” He exhales heavily as he crosses the room towards me. “You gave me a fright.”