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“Sorry, I didn’t know that one was yours. I’m waiting for Fiona,” I said, talking fast.
He was silent for a while, his mouth twisting in a strange smile. Then he stepped aside and said, “Beat it, dyke.”
I didn’t have to be asked twice. I went straight to practice without Fiona. I couldn’t shake this nagging suspicion though. I had no idea what dyke meant and it bothered me.
There was only one person I trusted enough to ask, one person I could say anything without the risk of embarrassment of sounding foolish. So after dinner I knocked on his bedroom window and luckily found him home. Noah was sixteen at the time and Mr. Popularity was already dating someone. He was rarely home, with the exception of school nights.
We were in the midst of a very intense game of Super Smash Bros. when I dropped the bomb.
“What does dyke mean?”
He paused the game and turned to look at me, expression cautiously curious. For a while he just stared, studying me, searching my face for something.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Tommy Ahern.”
He hummed and looked away, lost in whatever he was mulling over in his head. “I never liked that little fucker. His brother’s an asshole too.” His attention shot back to me. “What did he say?”
“I was standing near his locker and he said, ‘Beat it, dyke.’”
All I got was more silence. More of his unblinking, thoughtful stare.
“Well?”
“It means beautiful,” he bluntly stated, his eyes holding mine for a meaning laden moment before moving on.
It surprised me. Like I said, all Tommy Ahern had ever done was give me nasty looks. But Noah’s word was Bible, and if he said it meant beautiful then I believed it.
“Like…pretty?” I couldn’t keep the confusion off my face. The creepy smile Tommy had given me had left a bad impression.
“Yeah. And don’t let anybody tell you you’re not.”
This claim was even more baffling. I didn’t think Noah thought of me like that. I figured, at the most, I was the coolest girl he knew. I’d heard rumors from the older girls on the tennis team that he was dating Crystal Roy, the prettiest girl in school. So I knew what his idea of pretty was and it wasn’t braces and short hair.
“Why?”
“’Cause I said so.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Okay?”
“Okay.” We went right back to playing the video game.
After that, Tommy Ahern didn’t intimidate me much anymore. I mean, he thought I was beautiful. Except he would always walk in the opposite direction whenever he saw me in school. That one was a head scratcher.
A few months later my mother and I ran into Tommy Ahern’s mother at the grocery store and I mentioned to her that Tommy thought I was beautiful. I told her what he’d called me.
I will never forget the look on my mother’s face. Ears turning red the way they did when she was really mad, she looked around the cereal aisle to make sure no one was within earshot and then proceeded to grill me about it.
When I asked her why she was so mad, going on about how she was going to file a complaint with the principal and so forth, she wouldn’t explain.
A year later I found out what it really meant. But up until then, I thought I was beautiful because my best friend told me so.
* * *
Noah
My phone rings, vibrating against the granite countertop in my kitchen. It irritates me. So does the name flashing onscreen. Dane. Someone save me from well-meaning friends.
I reach into the refrigerator for the beer I’ve earned today at the same time I answer the phone. “I’m warning you. I’ve had a shit day.”
“Who crapped in your cereal, sweetheart?”
“What do you want?”
“Just making sure you’re not sitting in a pile of your own feces with a razor blade in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other.”
Nothing my best friend loves more than to bust my balls.
A tired sigh escapes me. What a disaster that was today. After we drove back to the bar in complete silence, she went one way and I the other. If I hadn’t, there was a damn good chance I would’ve said something that would’ve had her avoiding me for the next ten years.
I had every intention to talk to her, really talk to her, charm her even if she’d let me. But no––hearing her refer to me as Rowdy’s business partner was a serious gut check.
“Macallan…instead of Jack.”
“Stop ignoring me, boo. Do I strike you as the type you can pump and dump?”
Laughter sneaks up on me. And it fades just as quickly, only to be replaced by a bout of hopelessness the likes of which I haven’t felt in a good long time.
I am suddenly and inexplicably at a loss, looking at everything with new dazed and confused eyes. I’ve been living the past decade in limbo, biding my time, respecting her boundaries. I kept waiting for her to dump that asshole to make my move. And now it looks like that day may never come.
