More Than Good Enough(6)

“What else do you like?” I asked, stroking her arm.

Michelle slipped her hands under my T-shirt. She let her fingers slide down, ever so slowly, and whispered, “This.”

I stared at her pale, unlipsticked mouth and waited for the lies to start rolling. Instead, she kissed me. Hard.

I didn’t plan on having sex. It just sort of happened.

We didn’t talk much afterwards. I listened to a dog yapping down the block. Sometimes he got so freaked out, it sounded like hiccups. Why did they get a dog if they were just going to leave it outside?

Later, we snuck out to Michelle’s car and drove off. I wasn’t sure if Dad noticed, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

I cranked the radio, scanned around until we landed on a pirate station—one of those illegal deals, hidden in a haze of static. The DJ played an entire Tupac record, dirty words and all. When people called to complain, he hung up on them.

Michelle giggled as I tried to mimic his voice, rolling my R’s like crazy. Everything was cool again.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said. “I’ve known Eric forever. He’s like my little brother. For real. I’m the one who should be pissed. Why were you going through my phone? I always feel like you’re judging me.”

That’s how evil Michelle could be. She twisted things so basically I was the one thinking I’d done wrong. How dense is that? I was on the verge of apologizing when my cell rang. I glanced at the number.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Michelle cupped her long fingers on my knee. “Who’s that?”

“Nobody. Just Dad.”

She smirked. “Are you in trouble?”

“I was supposed to do something. No big deal.”

We slowed for a red light. Michelle leaned in closer.

“Can it wait?” she whispered.

Yeah. It could wait.

As we kissed, I was barely aware of the car horns blasting behind us. The light changed and still, I couldn’t pull my mouth from hers. It was like nothing else existed: only her lips, their softness, and the warmth of her tongue sliding over mine.

After the epic makeout session, we drove to this triple-decker mall off the highway. Michelle wanted to go to One-Up. Or to be more specific, the bar at One-Up.

“They’re kind of whatever about checking I.D.s there,” Michelle said, slipping her pinkie inside the waistband of my Levis. Damn. That girl could’ve asked me to backstroke, butt-naked and blindfolded, across the Everglades, and I would’ve said yes, please, thank you.

One-Up was in complete chaos when we pushed through the double doors. Kids stomped their sneakered feet in time to Dance Dance Revolution. Underaged thugs were pelting nachos at a girl in line for “virtual bowling.” I thought about Dad and the promise I’d made to hang with him.

“I’m not really into places that use tickets as a form of currency,” I said.

Michelle stuck out her lower lip. “You’re not *ing out on me?”

“Hell no.” I glanced at the neon-splattered bar. It re-minded me of a UFO. At least the way UFOs look in Hollywood movies: a fortress of blinking lights. I edged closer, plopped myself onto a stool.

The bartender lifted his goateed face at me.

“This is a joke, right?” He squeezed a wedge of lime into somebody’s overpriced beer.

“No worries,” I said, ripping open my stupid Velcro wallet. “I got I.D.”

He squinted at the driver’s license, the one courtesy of my boy, Alvaro, and his Heat Seal lamination machine.

“Listen, Joe Consuelo,” the bartender said, flicking it back. “If you don’t drag your skinny ass out of here, I’m calling the cops.”

Meanwhile, Michelle was making smoochy faces at me. I shook my head no. Party’s over.

“What happened?” she asked, as I ducked in front of a widescreen projection of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing.

“Nothing happened,” I said, yanking her towards the exit.

We sat on the steps outside, next to a fish-shaped fountain that reeked of bleach. The grates were clogged with pennies. Did people really believe their wishes would come true if they threw change away? I was half-tempted to scoop out a handful, but it seemed like bad karma.

“We should get going.” I tried to stroke Michelle’s hair, but she turned her whole body away from me. All she cared about was that stupid bar. It was like I didn’t exist.

“Oh, my god. There’s Jess,” said Michelle, pointing at a group of people from my old school. “Don’t you think she looks pretty?”

There was no correct answer to this question.

Michelle ran over to them, clopping in her heels. She left me there on the steps, along with her purse and cell phone. As usual, it was buzzing with text messages. I picked it up and the first thing I saw was that dude’s name.

She’d played me once.

I wasn’t going to be played again.

I got up and started walking to the mall exit. How was I going to get home? Here’s a better question: Why the hell did I care? I wasn’t going straight back to the Rez. Not right now. Maybe I could bum a ride off Alvaro. He was always down for beer, which is exactly what I needed.

“Where are you going?” Michelle shouted at me.

“Away from you.”

I kept my mouth shut. No more talking. At that point, I was done. Really done.