to abort the banana lemonade halfway through, and Max pulls the car out of the spot we’re in, and then directly into the next spot. I laugh, surprised. I like silly Max.
I order a frozen cherry limeade, which Max at first says does not count on our lemonade flight. But I explain that limeade is lemonade’s weird, ugly kid cousin, and we laugh about what it’s like when limeade comes over and wants to play Kabuki Warriors on Xbox, which I surmise from the way Max says it was an old, shitty game. I pretend I have any idea about these things, and suddenly we are off to the next Sonic, the one a mile from me on Dobson, for more drinks.
I’ve never really believed in the whole jacked-up-on-sugar thing. Until drinks four and five. We order some cheese sticks to soak up some of the extra sugar, and as the sun sets, we are literally buzzing and coming up with the worst possible food truck ideas.
“Fruit salad,” Max says.
“Ew. Yes. Something about cutting up fruit on a hot truck. Agreed. What about a fondue truck?”
He laughs. “So we just give ’em like a big vat of cheese?”
“And a bucket of cauliflower to dip in it. That wouldn’t be cumbersome at all.”
“Cumbersome,” he says. “You are the anti-Betts.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
He takes a huge slurp of his grape limeade. “Betts. Him and Zay-Rod. They’re my boys.”
“Do they know you’re gay?”
He nods.
“You said you play baseball, right?”
He nods again.
“How does that work?”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, there’s this ball, and you pitch it …”
“Fuck you. I know how baseball works. That’s the one with the basket?”
He laughs. “Yes. That’s exactly right.”
“I mean how does it work, being gay on the baseball team?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t told them, other than my boys. I just think, I don’t know. It’s none of their business.”
I laugh. “It’s interesting how that works. When it’s someone who won’t take it well, suddenly it’s none of their business.”
Max doesn’t say anything and I realize I just said an asshole-ish thing. So I say, “I just mean. No, I get it. There are definitely people I don’t talk about it in front of. Most people, really. Pam and Kayla are basically my world. Or they were. Until.”
Max smirks, and I redden. It’s a little much to put on him, given that we’re basically hanging out not on a food truck for the first time. But the truth is this is the first time I’ve ever hung out with a guy alone. Sometimes Kayla would bring this guy Matt Story with her to the mall, but this is way, way different. And that’s something Max does not need to know.
“I’d like to meet them,” he says, and the worst ever idea comes to me. And before I can allow myself to get all scared, which would basically be a normal reaction in this situation, I pull out my phone and text Kayla.
Me: You wanna meet Max?
Kayla: Who?
Me: The dude bro. From the food truck?
Kayla: Um. Ok?
Me: Yay. Pam there?
Kayla: Yep
“Drive,” I say, and Max looks at me like, what?
I laugh. I am literally high from sugar. “Sorry. Poor communication. Want to meet Pam and Kayla, like right now? They can’t wait to meet you.”
He shrugs, clearly more comfortable meeting people than I am. Because if he suddenly decided I had to meet these Betts and Zay-Rod bros, I would be like, Oh, I’m busy that day.
“You’re kinda awesome, aren’t you?” I ask.
“Fuck you,” he says, as if I’m insulting him. And in some ways I am. It’s like I’m commenting on the obvious: That he’s special and he knows it. But also I’m serious. Because he carried me to his car when I got overheated. And he ignored it when I got all dramatic when he said I was like my mom, and that was the perfect thing to do. And he pulled into Sonic and suggested a lemonade flight, which is pretty much the best idea ever.
And now he pulls out and we head to Kayla’s, and I put aside every fear I have about the oncoming train wreck.
It’s the kind of night where time is suspended. We must have spent six days in my truck, drinking more frozen lemonade than any two people have ever drunk in one sitting. And I don’t mean like time moved slowly, like I was bored and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, like one of those