Althea and Oliver (6 page)

Coby approaches. “Anyone seen Minty Fresh? I need a partner for beer pong.”

“He's out back, expanding the gene pool,” Oliver says.

“Fuck yourself,” Coby says.

“I swear on my eyes,” Oliver says. “Some girl with zippers.”

“Unbelievable. He looks like a clown, he smells like toothpaste, and he's still getting more action than either of us. It's a sad fucking state of affairs.”

“Jealousy is not a good look for you,” Valerie says.

“Please, like you wouldn't switch places with him in a second,” Coby says.

“Fair's fair. He saw her first. Oliver, come here.”

“I'll hold it for him,” Althea says, taking the loaded funnel from Valerie. “Oliver, get down on your knees.”

“Whatever we're doing,” Coby says, “I want to be next.”

Oliver can't figure out how to open his throat. His lungs fill with liquid, and he tears the tube from his mouth, spilling the rest of its contents across the floor in a thin foamy puddle. He wheezes but can't draw in any air; for a few panicked seconds, he's suffocating. Finally, some of the beer comes out his nose and he coughs up the rest, spraying it across Althea's bare legs while everyone hoots with laughter. She bends over to dry her knees with a dish towel, and Oliver, still on the floor, gets a quick look up her skirt, a harrowing glimpse of the space between the tops of her thighs, a flash of blue panties and taut cotton. It's so quick it's over before it's begun, but it's just long enough to make him regret his earlier comment.
First, I would have to pretend that you're a girl.
She's a girl, all right.

Coby asks Oliver to be his partner for beer pong instead, and Oliver can't say no. Every time he tries to leave the table, Coby asks him to stay for just one more game. By the time he makes it back upstairs, there's no sign of Althea anywhere. He wanders around in a gentle haze. Things seem to be operating on a three- or four-second delay. That's fine with him. Pretty much everything is fine with him. Eventually he finds his way into the master bedroom. A sliver of light shines under the door of the attached bathroom. As he raises his hand to knock, there's a crash and the spectacular, decadent sound of heavy glass shattering into a thousand pieces.

“Hey,” he says, knocking on the door. The occupant gasps. He recognizes that sharp intake of air. “Althea, is that you in there making all that beautiful music?”

“Ollie?” she whispers, regressing to his childhood nickname. She opens the door a crack and looks around frantically. Satisfied there are no witnesses, she grabs him by the wrist, pulling him inside the bathroom and locking the door. “I did a bad thing.”

The bathroom is large and opulent. There's a glass-enclosed shower in one corner, an enormous Jacuzzi in another, and a bathmat between them as thick and soft as the carpet in Althea's living room. Dried flowers hang from the walls and lavender clay pots of potpourri are lined up in a row on the toilet tank. A series of vanity bulbs frame a large blank square on the wall above the sink, and below them, twinkling like a galaxy of fallen stars, the mirror lies shattered and dazzling across the porcelain.

“Did you do that?” he asks.

“I thought it was the medicine cabinet, so I tried to open it, and it came off the wall instead,” she says.

“Why were you trying to get into the medicine cabinet?”

“It's sort of great-looking, isn't it?”

The light from all the vanity bulbs reflecting off the fragments piled in the sink is a gorgeous, arresting sight. He's never seen anything like it. It makes him think of all the antiques in Althea's house, all the glass figurines that make him so nervous, all the things people buy with abandon because they think they're so lovely, and none of them compares to the beauty of this disaster. There's no doubt that this, this is the mirror's finest moment.

Althea covers her face with her hands, peeks at him from a crack between her fingers, and catches him staring at the sink. “See?” she says softly.

“Shush.”

“Don't shush me.”

“You love it when I shush you.”

Someone knocks on the door. “Who's in there?”

Althea chooses this moment to begin laughing uncontrollably.

“Hello? Okay, seriously, you aren't supposed to be in there.” It sounds like Jason.

Althea can't stop herself, clutching the windowsill, holding her stomach, and shaking from head to toe. Jason pounds on the door.

“Coby? Is that you? I swear, if I find you fucking in my parents' bathtub again, I'm gonna mess you up like a goddamn car crash.”

This new piece of information incites a fresh fit of hysteria. Jason keeps banging on the door, and Althea turns on the faucet in the bathtub.

“Coby, you motherfucker! I'm serious!” Jason shouts.

It sounds like he's ramming the door with his shoulder. A voice speaks up from somewhere behind Jason. “Coby's not in there, he's at the beer pong table. He just kicked my ass.”

“Then who the hell is fucking in my parents' bathtub?” Jason hollers, slamming the door with his fist for emphasis.

A siren wails in front of the house. At once, it seems, the entire party erupts with a cry of “Cops!” and everyone starts running. The bedroom instantly clears. Screen doors slam shut. The music cuts off abruptly, leaving the house feeling hollow as its occupants flee. All the noise is coming from outside now, and it seems like Althea and Oliver might be the only two people left when they hear heavy footsteps on the stairs. A dispatcher's voice crackles on a radio. Althea gives a nervous titter, and Oliver claps a hand over her mouth.

The bathroom window opens onto the slanted roof of the back porch. “It would seem,” he whispers, “that we are out of options.”

“I'm not going out that window,” says Althea. The radio sputters again, closer, in the hallway this time.

“Non-Stop Party Wagon. You can't say no.” He climbs out. Reluctantly, Althea follows.

In the backyard, kids are stashing their drugs under potted plants so they can return and find them later. The red and blue lights in the driveway sweep rhythmically over the scene. Cops burst out the back door telling everyone to stay where they are. Hand in hand, Oliver and Althea scoot toward the edge of the roof until their feet are dangling below the gutter. They ease themselves off, falling briefly through space until they land, crouched, in the wet grass. They run through the dogwoods and the shallow creek that borders the property, then across the neighboring backyards, climbing fences and setting off motion sensor lights. With the sirens behind them, the sense of urgency fades. Slowing to a walk, they catch their breath.

This late hour has always been like their living room, the temporal equivalent of Althea's basement, whether they were reading to each other in a pup tent in his backyard, building a fort of blankets and cardboard boxes in her basement, or whispering to each other via two-way radios while they lay in their respective beds, sending schemes for future mischief across the airwaves between their houses.

The sky is still dark, the moon like a curved piece of broken glass, and a bird sings above them in a young sugar maple. They look at each other with gauzy surprise. Althea sidles up to the tree, peering into its branches, but the bird is hidden in the early summer leaves. It waits a beat and then begins again, a different tune but the same somehow, like the next verse in a torch song. Enraptured, they squint through the mess of buds and leaves as the bird trills on.

After who knows how long, Althea wraps her hands around the tree trunk, no thicker than her waist, and gives it a gentle shake. The bird does not emerge.

“I want to see her,” she whispers.

“I don't think she wants you to.”

She jostles the tree again, harder, the muscles in her wrist flexing under her pale skin. Leaves rustle and branches sway, but the bird stays put, giving no hint of her location, continuing her song.

Althea tenses, jaw clenched with frustration, tightening her grip, getting ready to give it another go. Oliver knows this look, the wicked determination that is both the best and the worst of her. She's forgotten the party, the shattered mirror, even Oliver's presence at her side; this one bird has her full attention. He figures he has about thirty seconds before she starts shouting obscenities and tries to climb the tree. He puts a hand on her slender wrist; her bones feel avian and small.

“Leave it alone,” he whispers.

Casting up a final, reluctant glance, she relents; the taut muscles go loose again. She releases the tree trunk, but Oliver clings to her, mysteriously unwilling to let her arm drop back to her side. Her expression changes as her interest turns from what's happening in the tree above them to what's suddenly happening underneath it.

Pulling her toward him, Oliver traces her blade of a cheekbone with his fingers, letting his other hand rest on her hip while hers find his waist. Through the cotton of her skirt, her hipbone fits perfectly into his palm. The salty air is warm, and except for the bird's blithe singing, the street is muffled under its canopy of blooming trees. This is the summer they wanted. The ocean is much too far away for him to hear, but he almost believes that's what's pounding in his ears. There's not a single light on in any of the houses, no random car catching them in its headlights as it passes. Their town is asleep around them in the long hours before morning. He can feel Althea's blood pulsing faintly in her veins. She smiles at him shyly, biting her lip to suppress a nervous giggle.

He closes his eyes, making it impossible to tell who moves in and closes the final inches. All he knows is their lips finally meet in their first kiss. She tastes like beer and peppermint; he catches a whiff of smoke from her long hair. Her bare knees brush against his jeans. Her lips and tongue tentatively mimic the motions of his. Leaning into her, Oliver staggers, and she stumbles backward into the tree, pulling him along. Bark scrapes his knuckles. Drunk and giddy, they punctuate their giggles with more kisses. He nibbles her neck. Althea, infamously ticklish, shakes with silent laughter, her head thrown back against the tree. Her skin is warm and saline against his lips. He kisses his way back up her neck, her throat vibrating against his mouth as her laughter trails off.

“I think we finally scared that bird away,” he whispers, and kisses her again.

Oliver is learning to kiss as he goes, guided by some unknown instinct. He strokes her hair back, out of her eyes and off her forehead. Their kisses are tender and earnest at first, mindful of their own newness. Her hand finds his; their fingers interlace. Cupping his cheek sweetly in her palm, she gently squeezes his bottom lip between her teeth and then releases it.

Pressing her against the tree, he clutches at her hipbone, her neck. Their hesitation vanishes along with their nervous laughter; their kisses grow strident and insistent. Althea's fingers dig into his shoulders; they climb his chest, tugging at his shirt. He's almost sad they're not on their own Magnolia Street; what a show this would make for Mrs. Parker.

Althea breathes faster. He traces the muscles that run the length of her bare thighs. The fantasy he had earlier in her room returns. Running his hands up her sides, he grazes her breasts and she gasps softly, a brand-new Althea sound he's never heard before. Now he's panting, too, their legs intertwined against the tree, their identical heights putting them exactly at eye level.

“Oliver,” she whispers in a raspy voice. “Maybe we should go back to my house.” Her cheeks are flushed, eyes glassy.

He nods.

They untangle themselves, Althea smoothing her ruffled hair and skirt. Taking her hand, he breaks into an easy jog, which she, of course, turns into a race. She slows down to let him keep pace, then pulls away again, laughing while he chases her with no chance of ever catching up.

The charge home is quick, too quick, and suddenly they are standing in front of her house. The haze is lifting from his vision. Though his usual lucidity has not yet returned, he is abruptly aware of what they are about to do, what Althea is offering him as she starts up the path to her door.

“Wait,” he says.

“What? Oh, you're right. We should probably go in the back.”

“No, just—just wait.”

“What?” she asks, irritated.

Oliver can only shake his head.

“What's wrong?” Her words slur together like ice cubes melting in a glass. “Come on.”

It's her impatience that betrays her. Sensing his reluctance, she's realizing that the moment under the tree has passed. She's trying to seize what's left of her chance to get this thing done, because once it's done they can't undo it. To her this is some kind of first step, a necessary catalyst that will set off a series of reactions and completely transform their relationship. To him it's just an experiment, the test of a curious hypothesis. That's exactly the reason he is glued to the sidewalk, refusing to follow her down to the basement and at last make proper use of that old couch. If he goes inside with her, then what? Is he going to wake up as her boyfriend just because he got drunk and made out with her under a tree? Isn't it better to disappoint her now, before, than to do it in the morning?

“I'm not—” He pauses. “I'm not ready.”

She tucks her fingers inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt, thumbs poking through the holes in the cuffs. Her shoulders come up around her neck as if she's trying to retract her head, turtle-like. “That doesn't even mean anything, you know. What are you, cupcakes in the oven, waiting for the timer to go off? Are we sitting at a red light, waiting for it to turn green?”

“Al, I'm sorry—”

“Why did you even let it start, then?” She raises her voice, heralding the return of the irascible Althea.

“I was drunk,” he says.

“Are you fucking serious?”