The Van Pact

18: Stevie

            My phone buzzed in the pocket of the blazer Valerie lent me. I peeked at my lock screen. A text. From Val:

            He loved his grandma. You loved your grandma. Tell him about Grandma O'Shaughnessy!! BOND!

            I let my phone slip back into my pocket and glanced up. Val flashed her eyebrows up and down. Janey Mac. I hoped Jesse hadn't noticed that. I didn't want to bring up Grandma O'Shaughnessy, as much I loved her. It's another slowly-dying-meatprison thing. You don't bring up your dear, dead Grandma when you are attempting to fake a flirty, boy-attracting personality. It kills any possible fun vibe. You might get emotional. Emotion, like passion, has a way of making you look like a psycho. And yeah, my earlier conversation with Jesse did steer into what I think we can agree was emotional intimacy, but he initiated it. He's a guy. He's allowed to be emotional. Emotional guys are sensitive and attractive. Emotional girls are crazy and desperate. I wasn't going to take up Val's suggestion. She must have quickly realized this, because before the conversation could wander somewhere else, she interjected:

            "Stevie was close to her grandma, too."

            "Yeah?" Jesse asked. I could feel him looking at me. I peeked up.

            "Mhmm." I was queasy.

            "Not surprised," he said. "Stevie and I are similar in many ways."

             This was the second time he had said that. He must have genuinely believed it. I was starting to believe it myself. I constructed a list of our apparent similarities: blondes, fine-featured, slender; broken homes; grandmas; interest in 80s films; Ghostbusters?

            "Ghostbusters," I said, and immediately regretted it. We've already exhausted Ghostbusters, Stevie. Don't be a one-trick Ghostbusters pony.

            "Right," Jesse held his fist out in front of me. I stared at it before I realized he wanted me to bump it. Then I bumped it, like an idiot.

            "Speaking about that," he continued, "why did you dm me about Gozer the other day?"

            Oh no. Valerie and I hadn't planned for this contingency. Why hadn't we? It seemed logical that Jesse would ask why I had dm'd him something so random in the first place. It was stupid luck and Jesse's hidden geeky personality that had allowed me to skate this far into our budding friendship without him yet asking what was fundamentally wrong with me. 

            "Actually, don't think I dm'd you about Gozer, per say," I blurted out, "I think I just said I wished I knew more about Mesopotamia." As if that made me seem any less weird.

            "Mesopotamia?" Jesse cocked his head to the side and lowered his brows as if he were struggling to remember.

            We had been doing so well. We had emotional intimacy. Now he would learn the truth. It was over. It didn't matter how similar we once seemed. He would see that I am, in fact, a worm. I considered flinging myself off the Hillside bridge. If I fell at the right angle, I might snap my neck before I felt any pain.

            "It was my doing," Valerie said, and saved my life. "I found this 1989 Seventeen magazine full of retro conversation starters and I dared Stevie to send you one."

            "No kidding," Jesse chuckled, "well, the conversation starter worked. Good job, 1989 editorial staff, Seventeen magazine."

I admit I laughed harder than that joke deserved. What made that blunder worse was that the conversation had just hit a natural lull. And we had reached the northern end of the Hillside bridge. We'd have to stand in silence at the crosswalk, waiting for the walk light to pop on, before we could meander down the hill to the lot in which Valerie had parked her van. Main Street was aglow before us. The fairy lights strung on the trees; the yuppies drinking over-priced cocktails on the restaurant terraces; the Valley Hotel sign lit up in red neon, its valets struggling to keep up with the BMWs and Audis of the incoming guests.

            "So do you guys do dares a lot then?" Jesse cut through the silence. "I remember Valerie said you dared her to bleach her hair."

This was not an ideal topic. I didn't want to give Valerie any chance to stipulate a new 'feat of courage' tonight. All I wanted was Jesse to fall in love with me over ice cream, was that so much to ask?

            "Not that often," I tried to find a way to maneuver the conversation to more comfortable territory.

            "We have a pact, so to speak," Valerie disrupted my plan, "a dare for a dare. It's fun."

            "Can I play?" Jesse lifted his brows, "I have a good one."

            I wanted to jump into a black hole or the rushing Linden behind us.

***

A/N: Happy Friday! Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting! Next update, Tuesday <3