Girls Our Age

Another excerpt of my novel.

Jelly

The crowd started drifting toward the door. The girl with the thick thighs reached down to pull on laced up shoes, forcing them over her heels and grabbing onto a friend’s shoulder for balance. Margo was arm in arm with a guy, someone Jelly hadn’t noticed before, pulling a jacket over the half of her that wasn’t tethered to another person. The hosts were in the kitchen, taking one last shot of something that smelled cheap and sour, even from here.

Someone yelled that it was time for everyone to leave, that they could still miss the line at the arcade that usually started winding around the block around eleven, that if they didn’t get out soon, the old lady who lived upstairs would start pounding on the door, begging them to shut up already. Jelly thought it might be nice to stick around long enough to meet the old lady.

“Where’s your bike?” Jeff asked Jelly. She realized she’d committed to sticking with him for the night at this point, and there was no backing out. She wished he’d made this harder. Whatever attraction she’d mustered up as he presented her with the sort of kindness she attributed to the beginning of a long lasting relationship dissipated as she came to the realization that he was just as lonely as she was.

Wasn’t this the sort of thing that was supposed to bring people together? Wasn’t pushing someone away because they were just as lonely as you a fundamental flaw of the human condition?

“I parked it outside,” she told him. “You don’t have to wait for me, you know.” She wanted to give him an out: a reason to leave her guessing, to talk to another girl and make her feel jealous, aware that someone else wanted him, and therefore, that he was worthy of being wanted.

“Of course I’ll wait for you,” he said.

She shrugged, allowing him to accompany her down the skinny set of stairs that creaked beneath their combined weight, and out to the sidewalk where he pulled out his phone to shine light on her bike lock while she fumbled with its key.

“Is that helpful?” he asked.

“Of course,” she told him. “See? Done,” she held up her lock, silently pleading for him to understand that he could go now — he wasn’t needed, and the more he hung around, the less she’d continue to need him.

Jeff

Jeff didn’t remember this girl’s name. He’d sidled up behind her the night before, his hands reaching for her waist like it was the most natural thing in the world, and not — as he now looked back on it — probably a little bit creepy, the kind of thing his sister would say obfuscates women’s agency and creates a power dynamic of cisnormativity, etc. He wondered if the happenstance that brought them together made him more or less accountable to creeping on her. He’d have to check with his sister on that one. He probably wouldn’t, though.

He hadn’t really noticed this chick specifically. In fact, he hadn’t noticed any chick that night except for Jelly. It was weird how drawn he was to her awkwardness. It was cute on her, in a way that made him feel better about himself. He’d done everything his older brother had coached him on: she didn’t have a backpack he could offer to carry, so he made a point of carrying her dumb bike basket all the way to the bar, even though she probably could have hooked it on her bike, leaving neither of them to carry it, and he was just now realizing that maybe there was no reason for him to have carried it at all. He offered to buy her a hot dog at the arcade, which she declined. He told her he’d pay for it, if that was what she was worried about. She had looked confused at this: clearly, it wasn’t what she’d been worried about at all. Girls were confusing. He didn’t understand how anyone ever got a girlfriend these days.

He knew he wasn’t exactly top-notch when it came to male specimens. His parents hadn’t been able to afford the dermatologist he’d begged them to let him go to back in high school — someone his best friend Jonah had gone to when cystic acne presented itself on both of their faces within the same month. It had been funny for a second: one more way they were eerily similar. Two boys who loved fantasy football and washing down cheap vodka with pickle juice when their parents were out of town and slacklining and referring to weird girls as “porgs,” a term whose origins they both claimed responsibility, even though neither could remember its exact logic or meaning.

Jonah’s skin started clearing up towards the end of sophomore year. Jeff noticed, and figured his turn would follow. He didn’t really think much of it — they were getting older, and their lives weren’t perfectly in lock step anymore like they’d been since they became friends in first grade, back when their teachers used to confuse them for one another.

It was dumb that Jeff felt so left out when Jonah mentioned offhandedly that he couldn’t come over to play video games and take pickleback shots one afternoon, because he had an appointment. Jeff teased him about the nature of the appointment: an embarrassing rash? An STD? Jonah had defended his sexual health, flicking his wrist in the direction of the passenger side window.

“Nah, man, just the skin doc. My face looks way better, don’t you think?”

Jonah’s face did look better. And Jeff, although he hadn’t had the wisdom to understand why he’d known it, was sure in this moment this would be the first of many steps Jonah would take without him. They drifted over the following months, as Jonah won a scholarship to a decent school out of state, and Jeff did not. Then Jonah got a girlfriend, and told Jeff they were getting a little old for video games, didn’t he think? Jeff’s acne cleared up on its own, eventually, but left scars from where the puss had eaten away at his skin while he played video games and drank pickleback shots alone in his basement while his parents screamed at each other upstairs.

But clearly Jelly hadn’t felt the same way. He thought that maybe she had, when she let him accompany her to the arcade, where they took turns playing tetris from a thick roll of quarters he kept in his jacket pocket for this exact purpose. He’d been hoping to spend those quarters on a girl.

She was smart, and easy to talk to, which surprised him. He always thought aspirational girls would be cold, the way they were back in high school, when they ignored him unless they were joking at his expense. But Jelly was kind, and her jokes were witty and made him laugh without having to pretend.

So he’d been surprised when she’d cut him off mid-sentence to tell him she was ready for pizza, and she’d probably head out to heat up the leftover slices she’d been saving in a cardboard box in her fridge, and it was nice to meet him, she hoped he had a good night! He offered to walk her home, to carry her basket the rest of the way (he’d thought that by that point it’d become an inside joke, a shared burden that had brought them closer). He told her he’d love to buy her fresh pizza, if she wanted. But she didn’t want this. She didn’t even give him a hug as she turned away from him and walked, fists clenched, towards the door.

He’d been bummed about this, understandably, he thought. He’d really thought he’d had a chance, and now he knew he’d blown it, but he didn’t know why. He’d spent all those quarters on her! Didn’t she realize that was something? Not everything, but something?