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She yawns, trying to hide it in her pillow.
“I really should go,” I say. “Betty.”
She nods. “She’ll be waiting up for you.”
I huff. Betty stalks the windows and front door until I come home. Once I’m inside with the door firmly shut behind me, she walks away with her tail in the air and doesn’t show up again unless it’s to scream at me for more kibble at ass crack o’clock in the morning.
She watches me as I get dressed. Before I leave, I sit down on the edge of her bed again. “Do you want anything? Can I get you a glass of water?”
She squeezes my hand; her eyes heavy, sleepy, sated. “I’m good.”
“Hey,” I say. “What you said in the group chat. About me never coming out with the group...”
“I was just joking, Jesse. I was giving you a hard time. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “I can take it,” I assure her. “But it did get me thinking.” That maybe I am still not as all in on this study as I should be. “What if I...threw a party?”
Lulu sits up, the blanket falling to her waist. “What?!”
I cringe. “Yeah, I don’t know. At the game, Trey mentioned we should get the group together like that and I thought, maybe it could be me. Plus, he’s pretty persuasive. He was dropping hints that he’d be happy to host but his apartment is...” I look around. “About this size. And I said I had a house and...”
“Oh, Jesse. And you gave me a hard time for buying all those sex toys?”
“I like the sex toys.” I really, really do.
She scrunches the comforter in her fist and says into her pillow, “I do, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jesse
From my spot in the outfield, I have the best view of our team’s final-inning defeat, after somehow holding on to a two-two tie since the seventh inning. There’s always one team in every rec softball league that takes things way too seriously, and I had to play them on the one night my friends needed me to sub. Since I haven’t played softball in years and was never great at it to begin with, they put me at the bottom of the order, and I’ve only had to strike out once because of it. Then George slapped a glove in my hand and sent me out to stand in between Austin and Annie, the only cis hets in our friend group who also happen to cis het with each other.
“Are you staying for beers after, Jess?” Austin calls over from left field.
“I’ll stay,” I say. I can commit to the time if not the beverage.
George scowls at us from second base for chatting during game play and we both stand still, staring as the other team’s final batter jumps on to home base with a flourish and celebrates with a complicated team handshake. Annie trots over from right field. “Good game, boys.”
Austin kisses her and slaps her butt. He kisses me and slaps my butt. We walk to the dugout together, collecting more kisses and butt slaps as we go. From a beat-up red cooler at the end of the bench, George disperses beers and hard seltzers and canned wine. He tosses me a can, too. I almost toss it back to him but then I see it’s a Sprite. I hold it up. “Thanks.”
George blows me a kiss.
My friends settle around me, teasing each other about some particularly bad plays and doing barely passable imitations. Lacey, the only person on the team who’s actually played softball competitively, busts a gut when she describes my batting stance. I laugh, too, when she makes a face that is strikingly similar to Lulu’s version of my Grump Face.
The laughter, the affectionate ribbing, the cicadas, and the smell of diesel fuel from the freeway feel like pulling my old plaid jacket on; warm and familiar. Not just for the memories I’ve already created with this group of friends, but for the hundreds of times I’ve done something similar with my platoon at station 11. We had a basketball net behind the station and I spent a lot of nights running with them until my lungs burned, missing enough shots to fill a compilation video. And laughing, laughing with my friends.
I stay behind after to help George clean up empty cans and put equipment away.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asks as we walk through the brightly lit parking lot to our cars.
“I never thought it would be.” But I am tired now. Sitting on the bench and standing in the grass wasn’t physically taxing. It’s just a lot, being around people. It’s always beena lotbut after the accident it got to be more.
I check my phone for the time and a text from Lulu; a screenshot of the rules of an overly complicated drinking game for this weekend’s party.
“Are you working tonight?” George asks.
“Start at midnight.” I have four hours to get home, get a bit of sleep, and get to the construction site, where I’ll sit in the company-issued car for eight hours, getting out every hour to do a visual inspection of the property.
