Needing Me, Wanting You(5)

“This about that girl, Christy?” I ask Kimmi. She's easier to read than a damn picture book. She's been crushing on Amy's friend since the moment I picked the girl up and tossed her on my bike. “Because you know that shit's only headed two ways: down the shitter or down Austin's well traveled road of love blindness. I can't see you in either place, babe.”

“Remember Cilantro?” Kimmi asks me, and my smile gets less silly, more serious. The girl Kimmi's missing is named after an herb, sure, but the fact that she pretends to forget her name? Not a good sign. She still misses that stupid bitch. The girl was so dumb she couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. You'd have to be that friggin' stupid to walk away from a woman as wonderful as Kimmi.

“Her name was Mint, Kimmi. You know that. And of course I remember her.” I grab a surreptitious look at her face. It's frozen into a neutral expression, eyes panning the horizon with disinterest. We're here in this perfect, little town and yet neither of us can find the time to relax. What a pair we make. “And it's okay if you miss her. It's okay if you miss Margot.”

“I don't miss either of those bitches,” Kimmi says, but I can tell she does and that's okay. I respect secrets. I got to. I got so damn many of my own. “I'm just trying to use Mint as a reference. I felt her, Beck.” Kimmi frowns a bit, her red lips drawing down her face as she turns to look at me again. “Have you ever felt someone, Beck?”

I don't hesitate before I shake my head.

“Nope.”

“In all six senses: sight, sound, taste, scent, touch.” Kimmi swallows. “And … that mysterious everything that you just can't quantify.”

“Right.” I remember this story. I've heard it a dozen times before. All it does is piss me the fuck off. Mint, you stupid bitch. How dare you break my friend's heart? I hope you rot in the fiery depths o' hell. I start on another cigarette, just to keep my anger in check. “So what's this got to do with Christy?”

“I don't know her. I mean, of course I don't. And she'll hardly speak two words to me, but I … I feel like I … like I can feel her. Does that make any sense?” Don't make no fucking sense to me, but I nod anyway, just to make Kimmi feel better. “Do you think she's gay? Because, I mean, I don't want to go after her if there's no hope of anything.”

“You're stupid as Austin Sparks, Kimmi. Dumb as a doornail. Shoot, everybody calls me the birdbrained one, but I ain't near half as dim-witted as the two of you. Why do you want to get mixed up with a virginal little belle? That there's just asking for trouble.” Kimmi kicks me in the shin with her heel as we stumble past a shop window filled with nothing but candles. Who the hell would even walk into a place like that? What's the damn point?

I remove my arm from around Kimmi's neck and grin again.

“But yeah, I think she's got rainbows shooting out of her ass.”

“And why's that?” Kimmi asks me suspiciously. Nobody here believes the Beck Evans test for sexuality but me. “Wait, wait. Lemme guess. You hit on her and she said no?” I shrug and toss my cigarette into an ashtray as we pass by.

“Maybe.”

“So maybe I think you're full of shit. Thank you very much.” I just laugh and pause at the next intersection, looking either way for traffic. Dead and quiet. Just the way I like it. Good thing about hogs is you can hear 'em a mile away. So I keep my ears open and my eyes on the ocean. Already I'm starting to sweat, so I slide off my vest and reach my fingers under my shirt. I'd take off my jeans, too, if I wouldn't get arrested. Y'all know Beck Evans never wears underwear.

“Ugh,” Kimmi says as the fabric comes up and over my head. “Are you stripping already? Can't you wait until I'm far enough away that I don't have to smell your sweaty pits?” I move closer to Kimmi and laugh as she cringes away from my baby butt smoothness. Yeah, that Crystal girl shaved me up real good. From head to toe. It's fucking weird, won't lie about that. But some girls like it, so I'm going to play off this male model shit.

“Listen babe, Christy's gay as a 1970's bathhouse. But she's also a closeted little mouse. You've gotta approach with cheese before you can pet. Catch my drift?”

“Nobody ever catches your drift, Beck,” Kimmi says, stepping off the curb and moving across the shimmering pavement. Isn't that funny how that happens? How the sunshine can make something as dead as cement look alive? I follow after my friend and pause at the brick retaining wall that separates the sidewalk from the sand. As far as the eye can see, blue stretches out, smiling at us with foamy waves and curling fingers, beckoning us into the depths. I pause and sit down to take off my boots. When I do things, I like to do them right.