Alicia
Beauty pageants are weird. On the surface, everything is shiny and pretty and the contestants are all smiles and grace, but there’s a bunch of stuff lurking underneath the surface. Not just fake teeth and boob tape, but the very idea of parading women around like commodities and thinking whoever wears a swimsuit best is fit to be a role model for young girls.
There’s a whole spiel when the winner is crowned, where if the first-place lady is unwilling or unable to fulfill her duties, the runner-up steps in. That’s what Luke and I were doing at the Miller’s, helping to paint the new barn. Ryan was unable, so we were the fill ins.
“So, uh, heard from Ryan lately?” Mr. Miller asked Luke as we finished the pre-painting process of laying down tarps and opening paint cans and other boring stuff that was the perfect intro to the boring action we were about to do.
“Yeah,” Luke answered. “We talked all about science. E=mc2.” They probably were only talking about their terrible sex life or trying not to talk about it and with them who am I kidding? Totally the second one. But they were both thinking about it every second even though they weren’t talking about it, so he didn’t really know what Ryan was doing.
Then again, if Ryan did tell him all the stuff he was doing, Luke still might not know.
Yet that stupid answer was still enough to fool Ryan’s dad. “Uh-huh, sure, sure,” Mr. Miller said. Yeah, none of us were scientifically minded. “Anyway, when he comes back, I was thinking about having a cookout. Maybe get some burgers and hotdogs—"
“What? No!” Luke looked horrified. “That’s your son!”
Mr. Miller stared at him blankly for a moment. He glanced at me, but I had no idea, so he turned back to Luke. “Are you a vegetarian now?”
Whatever hysteria had taken hold of Luke left him now and he looked sheepish. “Oh, I. Sure. Hotdogs.” He sounded really uncertain. “That’s a food, uh-huh.”
Mr. Miller sent me another look to help, but I responded with my own look telling him he was on his own. He glared and I smiled. Lydia would think this awkward situation was really fun and want to see where it goes. Maybe I was doing a little of that. But mostly, things had been rough between Luke and Mr. Miller for a while and they needed to figure things out on their own.
If Luke couldn’t even be around Ryan’s dad when hotdogs were mentioned, they clearly still had some progress to make.
“Okay,” Luke said. “I get that we’re cool now and all and that’s great, we should stay that way—"
Mr. Miller had been getting ready to grab his paintbrush and get started but now he turned to Luke and regarded him seriously. “Is there a reason we wouldn’t be cool?” The words were neutral enough but it definitely got a few degrees colder out here even though it was summer.
“No sir, not at all,” Luke said quickly. I turned to the barn and pretended to be busy so I wouldn’t show my amusement at Luke’s panic. “Just, don’t think I’m trying to… diss our coolness.” I turned back to him because that was super lame and I couldn’t help it. I gave him a look to let him know that was super lame and he looked like he agreed but didn’t know how to make it better. “Loving our coolness,” he continued saying dumb stuff to Ryan’s dad. “But I just had the weirdest conversation with my dad about sandwiches and I would love it if we could just paint in silence. That would be so awesome.”
Mr. Miller stared at Luke for a moment and then made the executive decision to leave whatever was going on alone. It’s not that Ryan’s dad had the most expressive face, but he’s had to make this executive decision many times when relating to his own son, so he had lots of practice making that face. “I’ll just leave you guys this wall and go do the other side.” He gave me a look like have fun with him.
Luke’s whole painting in silence thing? I was so down with that. After a few minutes, it wasn’t bad but kinda boring. When turning my brain off and just doing the repetitive motion of dragging the brush up and down didn’t work, I started pondering pointless questions instead.
If this was a beauty pageant, who would win? I might be the runner up because Luke could beat me in a swimsuit contest, but I could best Ryan’s dad. Though Luke probably couldn’t walk in heels and I might make up some ground there.
While he was the one to suggest it, Luke’s tolerance for painting in silence was lower than mine. He kept turning to look at me. He’d coated the same strip of wood like four times and didn’t even seem to notice.
I turned and caught his gaze, giving him a severe look. My severe Titania the Fairy Queen face. That was a powerful look. Too much in this case as his eyes widened, he jumped, and he dropped his paint brush. Now he had red paint on his shoes. “Thought you didn’t want to talk,” I reminded him.
“Thinking isn’t great either,” he said. “But if you want to talk—"
“We really don’t have to.” I was more polite than my girlfriend, so I said that instead of saying hell no.
There was annoyance mixed with being impressed when he didn’t give in that easily. “I’m fulfilling Ryan’s best friend duties while he’s not here,” Luke insisted.
“Really not necessary,” I said, now painting the same strip of barn over again despite not needing to. Still hell no.
“Are you sure? Aren’t you filling in for Ryan right now just like me?” Ryan thought Luke sounded hot when he was smug. Just sounded smug to me.
“No,” I tried. “I really love… painting barns.” Talking was harder when there was no script.
“You know,” he spoke after a moment. “When I realized I liked Ryan, I went to you first.” He swiped one area haphazardly with his paintbrush and moved on. His painting skills were so uneven.
“Why?” I wondered. Didn’t mean I had to do the same thing.
“You were involved but not involved. It was helpful.” Could sort of feel him glancing towards me but he tried to keep his focus on the barn as he spoke lightly.
Dammit. Ryan was gone. Talking to the drama kids about anything serious could get intense. Talking to them about anything could get intense. Even painting a barn. I told my friend Evan what I was doing today and he said oh, that reminds me of a Faulkner story I just read and then he recited an impromptu monologue.
