Page 68 of Try Me
He hitched one shoulder subtly, then glanced pointedly at his phone.
Chet:But would you?
I let him sweat it out for a solid two minutes, keeping my attention drilled ahead before replying,yes.
23
Chet
The first date I ever went on was a double with Mark in eighth grade. I took Sarah Striker, a sassy, well-endowed blonde who was rumored to have let Jack Cargill go up her shirt before they’d broken up. And while that wasn’t exactly why I asked her out, I’d gone into the date supremely hopeful thatsomethingmomentous would happen since we’d been flirting all week and she’d let me peck her on the cheek that Friday after the last bell. The rules of our engagement included finding a date for her best friend, Jenny, so I happily informed Mark he was taking one for the team. He’d been pissed initially because he’d actually had a crush on his lab partner, Stacy, but halfway through the movie while Sarah was telling me for the eleventh time about her upcoming vacation to the Caicos Islands and the fifty billion vacations that had come before, I happened to glance over at Mark.
Big mistake.
Mark and Jenny were twisted up like a Twizzler, arms all intertwined, heads bobbing as they went at each other like hungry Velociraptors. Envy flooded me, along with the second-nature component that was part of the bedrock of our friendship: competition.
I girded my balls, smiled at Sarah, and went in for the kill.
The end of that story was that Sarah and I didn’t kiss that day. Or ever. She got back together with Jack Cargill a week later, and I realized my crush had been a convenient transitory event leading to their mutual realization that they were deeply in love with each other—for at least the rest of the school year.
Meanwhile, Mark had sat through the whole ride home in the back seat of my mom’s Jag with a megawatt smile on his face.
“Kissing is freakin’awesome,” he said later.
And then he went on to date Jenny for six months.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I figured out the bitter jealousy I’d felt over it had little to do with Jenny or Sarah, and even less to do with some dumb but persistent sense of competition with Mark.
Mark slid his hands into his pockets and cocked his head at me with the quieter, but no less magnetic, version of that long-ago smile as I coasted into the student housing parking lot. I scuffed the asphalt with my shoes until I came to a stop.
“This is the secret, isn’t it? How you got so much ass in high school. It’s the combination of hot machinery and wind-blown hair, huh?”
I patted the bike’s fuel tank and flashed Mark a mischievous grin. “This is just my roommate’s Kawasaki. Something like a Triumph Bonneville is what you need to really make the drawers drop. But the Charger definitely helped.” God, I’d adored that car. It’d been a piece of crap when my dad gave it to me for my birthday. The idea was to fix it up over the summer. We’d fiddled with it for a couple of weeks, then he’d gotten “busy at work,” probably figuring out new ways to drain people’s bank accounts.
I’d taken it to a shop I’d heard about and pestered the old mechanic, Ray, until he agreed to help me provided I purchased all the parts, showed up on time to help him, and never came on a Friday without a case of beer in hand. That latter part had been the most challenging until his younger brother hooked me up with a fake ID. A couple months later, I had a boner-inducing vintage ride and a dirt bike Ray didn’t want anymore. I was flying high.
“So whatever happened to it?” Mark asked as I tossed him a helmet. He eyed it dubiously before scraping back his hair and trying to duck into it awkwardly.
“I guess they put her in an impound lot, sold her off? Or maybe they’re still holding it? I actually have no clue. I try not to think about it.” I started laughing as Mark continued to struggle with the helmet. “I was wondering if it might be too small for your gigantic head.”
He shot me an amused glance and then wiggled the helmet lower. “Ego’s always been more your thing than mine.”
“Sure about that?”
“Nope.” He grinned.
I reached up and adjusted the helmet until it sat properly on his head. “Look at that. You might actually be able to see now.”
He still wore the same amused expression. “So you’ve chosen to take me on a Grand Prix for our first date?”
“What I had originally planned included Delia—my Volvo,” I tacked on when he looked confused. “Because she has a nice big back seat with plenty of cushioning for your knees when you inevitably go down on me.” He rolled his eyes, but I carried on. “Adam needed to haul some shit today, though, and I have a generous spirit. So.” I smacked the seat behind me. “Are you getting on, or am I taking this pleasure cruise by myself?”
Mark scoffed, then stepped from the curb and placed a tentative hand on the back of the seat. “So I just hop on?”
“Unless you want to levitate your ass onto the seat, yeah.”
He prodded the seat like the whole bike might tip over. “I’ve never ridden one before.”
“If you only knew how many times I’ve heard that in my life.”