I keep her close to me as we go in, and I lock my bedroom door and sit down, dig a cigarette out and light it, and wait for Kylie to clear a space on my bed, shoving dirty jeans and T-shirts aside. It’s a mess in here, but she doesn’t seem to care.
I blow a smoke ring, and then bat my hand through it. “Ky, look. You’re right about a lot of things. About me. About how I’m scared of what you make me feel. Yeah, I am. Maybe I’m being a f**king sissy about this, but…it’s more than that. Being scared of how much and how intensely I feel for you. I’ve never been as close to anyone as I am to you. And it’s more than that. You want some truth? I’ll give it to you.” This is going to be cruel. “I’m not a virgin, okay? I think you know that. My first time was in ninth grade. Biloxi, Mississippi. A Cuban girl named Nina. She was two years older than me, and she was…experienced. She wanted me, so she made sure I wanted her back. It wasn’t hard. We got blazed, and she kissed me, and started touching me, and that was that. She was my first, but she wasn’t my last. And since then sex, for me, is just….a girl who knows what’s up. We smoke a joint or two, we bang, and go our separate ways. Nothing else.”
Kylie blanches. “A girl who knows what’s up, huh?” She sounds bitter, hurt. “What’s that mean?”
“That it ain’t gonna be more than what it is. That I ain’t gonna stick around or talk about feelings. No complications. Just a quick f**k.”
She flinches at my words, keeps her eyes cast down. “So sex has never meant anything to you?”
“Nope.”
“Have you ever…been in love?”
I laugh. “Yeah, actually. Once. Senior year of high school in Atlanta. Amy Peretti. Upper-middle-class white girl, not popular, not a loner. Pretty, but not gorgeous. But she was…nice. Really nice. We were chemistry lab partners, and we ended up hanging out here and there. Never sat with her for lunch or hung out with her friends, but she’d talk to me in the hallways. We met at the mall once. Just walked around and talked. She was the first person who ever…saw me for me, I guess. Saw past the fact that I was the new guy, saw past the fact that I was always in detention and getting suspended for fighting and all that. I liked her. By the end of the year, I was convinced I was in love with her. Started making excuses to see her. Finally got up the nerve to ask her out on a date. Had f**king roses and shit.” I swallow hard, trying to tell the story without reliving it. “I got her alone in the hall after school, by my locker. Handed her the roses, and asked her if she’d go out with me. She just stared at me, surprised, panicked, even. I can hear her, remember every word. “Oh, god, Oz. I’m sorry. I thought you understood that we’re just friends. You’re nicer than most people realize, but…no, I couldn’t ever date you. Sorry.’ And then she walked away, and that was that. It was two weeks before the end of the year. I skipped the rest. Had to take summer classes, but there was no way I could go back and see her. It hurt, Kylie. The look in her eyes. The surprise. The pity. Like…how could someone like me ever even think I’d be good enough for someone like her? The worst part was…she wasn’t mean about it. She didn’t laugh or make fun of me, and I don’t think she ever told anyone I’d asked her out. But she just…seemed so surprised that I’d even think of it. Like it was obvious all we’d ever be was friends. She gave the roses back.” I laugh again, bitterly, angrily. “Thirty bucks, wasted. I gave ’em to the secretary in the main office.”
Kylie takes my cigarette from me, which I’ve held without smoking while I talked, so the ash is long and dangling. She holds it over the ashtray, taps the filter gently, and we both watch the quarter-inch of gray ash topple down and lose shape. “That’s…shitty. And sad.” She puts the filter to her lips and inhales, and I hate the fact that she doesn’t cough as she pulls the smoke into her lungs, holds it briefly, and blows it out through her nose. She doesn’t smoke without me, and never smokes a whole one, just a hit or two, but it’s enough. I haven’t touched pot when I’m around her since that one time, and I’m determined to keep to that. “Oz, I’m not her. I’m not like her.”
I shake my head and take the cigarette from her. “I know, sweetness. That’s not what it’s about.”
“Then what is it?” She pivots on her ass and crosses her legs to sit Indian-style facing me. “I really don’t understand. I mean, do you really think you’re not good enough for me?”
I sigh. “God, you make it sound like I have self-esteem issues. I don’t. I know who I am, and I’m good with it.” I gesture at my room. “This is my life, Kylie. It’s probably all I’ll ever have. Shitty apartments in the shitty, ghetto end of town. I can’t give you…anything. Not for a long time, if ever. I mean, let’s say I am as talented as y’all seem to think, and I manage to get a record deal or something. It would be years and years of work to get there, to get noticed. And in the meantime, my life would be beans and rice and Ramen noodles and one-room shitholes in neighborhoods that sound like war zones. Maybe I will amount to something in my life. I do want more than this, Kylie. I do. But I can’t give you more than this. And I’m not a stupid kid, okay? I know just…being hot for each other, even being in love isn’t enough to take care of someone. It won’t pay the bills. It won’t provide food and rent, much less the kind of life you’re used to, the kind of life you deserve.” I squeeze my eyes shut and feel the cherry on the cigarette nearing my fingertips. I welcome the burgeoning heat. “So, no, Ky. It’s not about me not being good enough. It’s about you. You being worth more.”
My skin is being singed by the cigarette, and I let it happen. It doesn’t count as burning, because I’m not doing it intentionally. It’s just a side benefit of not caring if I get a little burnt.
“Goddamn it, Oz.” I feel the cigarette being taken away. I don’t open my eyes, but I can feel her gaze on me. So blue, so hot, so conflicted and angry and needy. “My worth isn’t for you to determine. My future isn’t for you to decide. I don’t care about any of that. What if I told you I’d be willing to live in one-room shitholes? That I’d learn to live in neighborhoods that sound like war zones and eat Ramen and Kraft mac and cheese and whatever. That I’d be willing to live that way if it meant I could be with you. What if I said all that would be worth it? Does it sound fun? No. Do I want that? No, not really. But I do want you.”