I watch them both almost stumble down the steps and keep running toward an empty table, grabbing cans of Bud Light out of a cooler nearby and setting a game up. And then my eyes go back to Vale, still sitting on the railing. He’s already looking at me, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to ask the obvious question. Except, “I, uh—I don’t want to keep you from your friends. I can—”
“Come on,” he says, jumping down. “I think I owe you one. I can bail. And I’m actually incredibly impressive when it comes to beer pong. Let’s throw some balls in some cups.”
I nod, smiling at him as I let him grab my hand and lead me over.
“You still up?” Ahmed asks, coming downstairs and finding me on the couch, playing FIFA, the volume turned up only as loud as I need tojusthear it, both of us matching in our black boxer briefs. He heads for the kitchen and whispers an excited “Who swiped a bottle from the party?”
“Kat,” I say. “Pérez dared them.”
“I’m going to make one last drink. You want one?”
I look over at him, giving it a second of thought. I’m not buzzed enough that one more drink is going to kill me. It’d be a good keeping-the-energy-alive-for-thirty-more-minutes sort of drink. So, “Sure. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
A few minutes later, he’s dropping down on the couch next to me, handing me a cup just as I finish the game after whooping some computer ass. “You have fun tonight?”
“Mm-hmm,” I try to answer while taking a swig. “How early did you leave?”
“Maybe an hour after you went outside. One of the girls ran into more of her friends, so the other one started dropping some loud hints.”
“And when did she leave?”
“From here? About fifteen minutes before y’all got back. You have any luck?Oh, is that why you’re still up?” He gently knocks his elbow into my arm, like he’s fully found me out. “Waiting for a girl to give you thecome overtext?”
“Nah, nothing like that. I promise.”
“Not even the girl you’ve been hanging out with?”
“Nope.”
I never ended up texting Leana again. Honestly, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about her after I got pulled into that make-out session. And I guess the fact that I made out withsomeonehas to count as some kind of success for my first college party.
A finger goes to my lips, and I softly trace the bottom one, thinking about Vale. I wonder if he’s thinking about me too. Short flashbacks of our kiss, of his fingers, of my hands on him, of our tongues run through my mind. How we basically hung out the rest of the night. After annihilating Pérez and Kat in beer pong, we sat around with them, shooting the shit. At least, for about ten minutes before Pérez was getting up and needing to find more liquor. The memory of Vale leaning over me to listen to Kat and his hand going to my thigh to help him stay stable plays clear in my head. Of him asking if that was okay and me telling him yes and how it felt kind of … nice. Definitely the White Claw’s fault. Got me all touchy.
And it’s still got part of my body ready to act up.
I chug the rest of my drink and hop up and stride over to the stairs before things quickly start getting noticeable. Don’t need to get hard when I’m an inch apart from Ahmed and we’re both only in our underwear. Plus, upstairs, in my room, I can pull up a video and take care of business.
“I have to, uh—” I start, already a couple steps up, “I’ve got to piss. See you in the morning, bro.”
“Catch you in the morning, papi.”
And it’sgotto be because of the White Claws and the way four cans of those motherfuckers does things to my brain that, in those final moments as my hand’s quickly bringing me over the edge, it’s not Leana and the memories of her from the past week, but Vale I’m picturing, kissing, and touching.
9
“MORNING,” I SAY THROUGHa big yawn to Nguyen, who turns from the stove to look back at me and do one of thoseSup?head nods before going right back to the protein pancakes he’s making. Basically, how every Sunday morning has started since mid-July, and, like usual, he’s the only one of us who had enough decency to put on shorts before coming downstairs. I woke up, felt my body screaming for water, realized that I shouldn’t have chugged whatever Ahmed made me last night, crawled out of bed with all those final thoughts from last night gone (and rubbed out), grabbed my Stanley, and started walking. He’s lucky I at least put my underwear back on before falling asleep.
I rest my head against the fridge door while filling up my cup, chugging the whole thing, and then doing it all over again. This is really all I need to get me back to functional. Not that I ever hit a point I’d calldrunklast night, but even if I’d gotten there, I’m less of a “painfully hungover, regretting everything”sort of person and more of a “very dehydrated” kind of guy the morning after a party. The perks of having a rowdy-ass group of friends in high school; I came to college ready to hang. A good body shake and a couple hops right in the middle of the kitchen, asking Nguyen to give me random numbers to add in my head to get the brain going, and letting water into my system gets me right quick.
“Now stop waving your junk at me,” he says after I’ve answered what three hundred forty-seven plus eight hundred twenty-eight (“Eleven-seventy-five, easy.”) is as he drowns his breakfast in syrup. I let out a laugh and promise him that I’m done for now.
I open the fridge, pulling out everything I need for my usual breakfast: overnight oats in a mason jar sweetened with agave, pineapple cut in pieces, and shredded coconut. Mix it all together with a little honey and tajín, andboom. Call me Chef Piña. Put me onThe Bear.
“Duuuude,”Pérez says in this loud, froggy voice as he comes downstairs, hair a mess and underwear on backward. “Last night was wild. All I remember is chugging this green drink that tasted like lime Jell-O. Or maybe I put a bunch of Jell-O shots in a blender.”
Nguyen lets out a single laugh as he shakes his head, looking to me to fill our dumbass-est roommate in. “Can’t verify what you did before y’all caught up with me, but after you and Kat lost beer pong—didn’t make one cup, by the way—you chugged all the leftover cups by yourself, and once those hit, y’all were up and recording yourselves doing some dances in the backyard, and then half an hour later we found you yelling‘Kumbia Kings!’and doing their weird birdcall on some frat guy’s bed. After that Nguyen and I had to carry you out.”
“Were you the one that got me naked too, Nguyen?” he asks like he’s flirting, falling onto the couch, lifting a leg and holdingit straight up in the air with a hand wrapped around his ankle. Nguyen just gives him back a tired glare, mouth full of pancake.
