I spent Monday, now that the locals were on break too, over at my friend Tony’s house with Chris, playing on the PS5 Tony had gotten for Christmas. A drawback to going to boarding school is that you don’t have time for video games. The two of them crushed me at everything, since they knew all of Tony’s games by now.
Every time I whined about them knowing all the combinations or track layouts when I didn’t, they would throw the fact that I had had a date, and with whom, back in my face.
After a while, I started whining gratuitously, just to get them to bring it up.
*
Tuesday, I was hanging out at home, with no plans for the day. Breakfast had been a two-hour marathon of questions from my mother about how the winter had gone, overlaid by a logistics discussion surrounding getting me out to LA to start USC in the Fall. I finally escaped to my room for some much needed decompression time. I was scanning Instagram when my phone rang. It was a local number I did not have stored in my phone. Carrie’s kid brother?
“Hello?” I said, answering the call.
“Al? It’s Mary.”
“Mary?”
“Mary Davis,” said the sweet, slightly amused voice on the phone.
“I know who you are Mary,” I said defensively. “Why are you… I just didn’t expect you to be calling.”
“I got your number from Carrie,” Mary said, considerately filling in that gap in my knowledge. “She said you two had a nice time at the movies.”
I considered her tone of voice carefully. There seemed no innuendo in it, so hopefully Carrie had been as circumspect as I was being, locally at least. “Yeah. Terrible movies can be fun,” I replied.
“Especially bad movies with too many naked boobies,” Mary’s voice teased good-naturedly.
“No such thing as too…” I cut myself off, suddenly remembering who I was talking to. I could feel my cheeks blazing. How had those few (amazing) hours with Carrie broken down my internal filters so much? I was going to have to rebuild those stat, or girls were going to think I was nuts. “Anyway,” I went on, my voice croaking slightly for just a moment, “what’s up?”
“Nothing much. Maddie and I had plans to drive down to the beach today, and she just got a better offer, the wench. I still want to go, though, but nobody is up for the long drive.” Our town is about 45 minutes from the nearest good beach. It is kind of a journey to get there. “Carrie called,” Mary chattered on, “to tell me about all the new powder they got out there in Vail last night. I grumped about her not being here to go with me to the beach and she suggested I call you. Wanna ride along?”
Did I want to spend the day going to the beach with Mary? Oh hell, yeah. I mean, I had sort of known her most of my life. She, her twin sister Maddie, and I had all ridden the same crowded bus for most of elementary and middle school. But shy little wallflower Al had barely ever talked to them, or any girls, of course. But they had always been nice to me if we did come in contact. And Mary had grown up to be a stacked little bombshell. Since they had always looked virtually indistinguishable, I was sure Maddie was just as hot now too.
I was still confused, though. Hot girls I barely knew seldom did much but look right through me. They sure as hell didn’t ask me to drive to the beach with them. But newly confident me (relatively confident me) was not going to shy away from the opportunity. “Sure! Sounds great. I’ve missed the beach hard. And it was still pretty cold up at school.”
“Great,” she said, sounding pretty enthusiastic for a girl who was down to lonely geeks she barely knew as beach-going companions. “I’ll text you my address. Can you be here about eleven?”
“Sure, I just have to throw on a swimsuit,” I replied. “So you want me to drive?”
“No,” Mary said quickly. “I offered, after all. But your house is ten minutes in the wrong direction and I still have to get ready to go myself. If meet me over here, it should give us an extra half hour at the beach. I should be changed and stuff by the time you get here, though. Mind parking your car on my street while we are at the beach?”
“Sounds good,” I said, feeling much more enthusiastic than I tried to let on.
“Great! I gotta get ready. See you about eleven!” Mary chirped and hung up.
I lunged for my dresser and dug through for my best, baggy board shorts. They were supposed to be baggy board shorts, that is. I grew during my four years away at school. I went away at fourteen all of five feet, three inches tall. I was now six-one (maybe two), and thankfully appeared to have at least slowed down my growth. I had currently been the same height for two months in a row, and that was the first time that had happened in four years. But, I did not go to the beach or pool that often, and my trunks were two years old. What had been a baggy, knee-length sack, was noticeably more form-fitting, and only came down to mid-thigh. Looking at myself in the mirror, I grimaced.
I momentarily thought of calling and saying I had to stop at the mall to buy a new suit, but that might mess up the whole day. And while this day was not going to turn out as some magical sex adventure, my date with Carrie had definitely taught me to seize the day when it came to girls. I wasn’t sure that I actually had the confidence to be a Day Seizer a lot going forward, but I had the confidence that day.
And besides, the suit wasn’t that tight, just smaller than I was used to.