The Lifeguards(33)
-2-
Bobcat
BOBCAT BIKES PAST HER apartment on his way to the pool, and then—compelled by a magnetic force—he veers into a parking space, locks his bike, and runs up the stairs. Outside apartment 5B, he pauses, honestly kind of scared.
(There could be someone in there with her.) (He should leave.)
(Something is wrong with him.) He knocks.
From the landing outside her door, he can see the condo complex pool where he works on weekends, not because he needs money but because he wants to be away from his house. His dad’s “Mr. Good Time” act and his mother’s face, her smile a frozen mask of effortful joy. The air around them is toxic. He only wants to breathe.
Lucy opens her apartment door. She wears pink pajamas and looks so beautiful he almost tells her so. “Robert?” she says, sleepily. Her eyes are unfocused, as if she is stoned. It scares him. “Are you high?” he asks.
Instead of answering, she takes his hand and pulls him inside.
Lucy’s apartment is an adult’s apartment: framed posters, a bowl of fruit, a neatly made bed with accent pillows, no socks on the floor. Bobcat looks around. Where is her laundry? Lucy is even neater than his mother and their housekeeper combined. Bobcat thinks of asking if she cleans her own apartment, or complimenting her on her countertops, which gleam and smell of lavender. But that would be weird.
There is no pot smell. Only the lavender counter spray, the smell of her sleep, and some kind of fruity lotion.
As soon as her door is locked behind them, she falls to her knees and takes him in her mouth.
(He stops talking.)
When, later, she says, “I’m sorry, did you ask me something?” He shakes his head.
(He wants to say, “I love you.”) (But that would be weird.)
-3-
Charlie
CHARLIE’S PHONE HAS TWELVE Snapchat messages before he even wakes up. Only one has words, and it’s from Amir. Charlie smiles, just thinking of Amir. They’ve been together about a month, only Charlie’s third relationship since coming out. Amir is more experienced but just as nervous, just as smitten, Charlie thinks. They’ve gone shopping three times at Flamingos Vintage, held hands under the table at Kerbey Lane once, and on the last day of school, Amir had come up behind Charlie at his locker and kissed his neck.
“Get a room!” said Van, who was on the basketball team with Amir.
“Only if you pay for it, brother!” cried Amir.
“Hot couple,” said Sophie, the girl with the locker next to Charlie’s.
Charlie had blushed, turning to smile at Sophie, and Amir had leaned down to kiss Charlie on the lips.
Heaven!
Amir’s message reads: HIIIII. WHAT SHOULD WE DO TONIGHT? MEET AT THE 7-ELEVEN FOR SNACKS AND THEN???
Charlie answers with an emoji of a cat in a party hat. He immediately wishes he hadn’t sent such a stupid emoji, but it’s already done. He gets up to shower and pee. In the shower, he thinks about how he should change his Snapchat avatar’s outfit. His avatar wears basketball shorts and Jordan 1s, but he’s more preppy now, less into sports gear. He loves the band Vampire Weekend and wants to copy the lead singer’s boarding school style—Birkenstocks and slim-fitting khaki pants. His mom is obsessed with seeming rich, so she was thrilled when he asked to buy some J.Crew and Abercrombie off eBay.
He hasn’t come out as bi to his mother officially, but he assumes she knows. Charlie’s mom doesn’t like to talk about uncomfortable topics, and Charlie figures that if she wants to keep his father a secret, he can keep his sex life a secret. It angers him; it’s bullshit. Charlie wishes he and his mom could just have a big cryfest and be real about things. It’s exhausting to live the way they do, his mom pretending she can afford things she can’t, Charlie pretending he is seeing his lifeguard friends when he is seeing Amir.
Xavier and Roma and Bobcat are fine, they are his everything, his best friends. But they’re kind of strange about Amir. They like him—he’s on the basketball team, after all, and leaving for Tech (Div I, full ride) at the end of the summer—but Charlie knows his being in love makes them feel uncomfortable. Maybe jealous? Nobody cares that he’s bi; it’s more that he has a lover and the rest of them don’t. Not yet. Not really. Unless you count Bobcat’s Lucy, which to be honest, Charlie doesn’t.
He even tried to bring Amir to the house, warned him to wear the collared shirt they’d bought together, giggling and kissing in the Flamingos Vintage dressing room. But his mom immediately acted like an idiot, with the high voice and constant “are you sure you boys don’t want some nachos” bullshit. By which she means Costco cheese microwaved on tortilla chips.
Charlie’s mom has nothing but him, he gets it. But after Amir left, her inquisition about him—what did his parents do, was he a good student—was too much. He watched her mouth move, and he thought, I don’t even know you.
Worse, he thought, I don’t want to know you.
His mom! They’d been so close. Pizza and movies on Saturday night, “us against the world,” et cetera. But the story she’d been telling him unraveled when he started to examine it around sixth grade. Why was his father a lie about a heart attack on a ski slope? Who was he really? Why didn’t his mom trust him to understand any situation that had gotten her pregnant?