Goodnight Moon

22- I Will Listen Until My Ears Bleed

Our last minute pool party is canceled.

We were going to have it on Friday, but Dana has a bad case of the flu and Leda went home to take care of her (it perturbs me again that she didn’t do the same for me when Adan was in jeopardy, but the past is in the past) so Lake told his friends that the party will be next weekend, which gives Dana plenty of time to feel better again. It also gives Lake and I almost two weeks of couple solitary before Leda is down our throats again, in the most loving way possible.

At lunch, we talk about things and laugh a lot, like we do even with Leda there, but Lake doesn’t shy away from making even bolder and more perverse jokes than he would with Leda around, mostly because she’d slap him if he said that stuff around her but I think that it’s funny, even if he does make me blush most of the time. I don’t know, I just like it. I like having so many private conversations with Lake, really getting to know him. I mean, I’ve known him since freshman year, but I’ve never really gotten to know him at all.

Now, just with our lunch room conversations, I know that he is an only child, his favorite movie is Carrie (the old one), and he doesn’t like Chipotle or any Mexican food in general. Just little things like that that I’ve never known about Lake because, with all of our fighting and bickering, we never really got to know each other (obviously). I already knew that Lake was funny and caring when he wanted to be and that he has major, untouchable family issues but I never knew that when he was eight, he fell off of the monkey bars at recess trying to impress a girl and ended up breaking his arm. Which pretty much sounds like something that Lake would do.

Most days, Lake will come over to my house after school and we’ll hang out there too but there is marginally less talking done at home, when there is nobody around. We hang out in the game room a lot and watch movies in the theater but, since I have the house completely to myself save for Max, we can make out in literally every room of the house. Obviously, that is not what we do, because that’d be really weird, making out in rooms like bathrooms or my dad’s room or Adan’s. However, it is a lot easier to start wanting to rip each other’s clothes off when we’re playing video games in the game room or watching The Purge in the living room when I know that nobody can walk in on us.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to hang out as much next week,” Lake tells me on Saturday as we’re sitting on the back porch with my legs stretched out over his lap. Max is running around the yard, enjoying the transition in weather from rainy back to sunny and bright outside. “Nolan’s dad said he’ll start showing me how to work with cars so I’ll have to go there right after school a few days each week.”

I know that Nolan’s dad owns a car garage- one of the little things that I learned during our lunch talks- so that makes sense, I guess, that he’d offer to teach Lake how to work with cars. “That’s nice of him,” I comment. “Are you going to work at a garage during college?”

“I’m not going to college,” Lake says it in one breath, so quickly that I barely understand what he said, as if he’s breaking the news to a very expectant mother or something, like I’m going to be livid at what he just told me.

I just raise my eyebrows a little bit at him and run my fingers through my wavy blonde hair. “Oh? Why?”

He shrugs. “It just wouldn’t work out. My grades are mediocre at best and considering my detention/suspension record, there’s no way I’d get any scholarships and paying for my whole education with loans doesn’t seem appealing to me. I just can’t afford it and I don’t think I’d do well anyway.”

“You’re pretty smart,” I inform him. “You’re just particularly lazy.”

“Exactly,” He agrees with a nod and he places his right hand on my leg, his thumb starts to move against my bare knee, just moving in slow, lazy circles. Not trying to seduce me or anything, just a comfort type of thing. “I’m way too lazy for professors and reading assignments and hours of homework. I’d fail all of my classes and it’d be a waste of money.”