Late to the Party - Kelly Quindlen Page 0,22

obviously you shouldn’t do this unless you want to, but for what it’s worth, I think you might have fun.”

I nodded and accepted the beer he handed me.

“These are gonna be warm,” Ricky said, “so it’s gonna taste nasty, but that doesn’t matter when you’re chugging.”

“We’re chugging?”

“Yeah, we’re chugging.”

He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and explained what we were going to do. I listened carefully, trying to make sure I understood.

“Dude,” he said, clapping a hand to my shoulder. “Breathe. It’s not rocket science.”

“Right,” I said, trying to steady myself.

“You ready?”

I nodded and turned my can horizontally. Ricky stabbed a hole in the bottom of my can, then his can, and we held them to our mouths like we were about to eat corn on the cob.

“Ready … and … pop the tab!” Ricky yelled.

I popped it open and chugged from the hole in the bottom, throwing my head back wildly. The beer was warm and tasted vaguely of aluminum, but I chugged it down as fast as I could, ignoring the dribble that spilled onto my neck and T-shirt.

“YES!” Ricky shouted, his own face and T-shirt spotless. “You got it! Keep going!”

I drank the last of it and let the can clatter to the deck. I bent forward, hands on my knees, wiping my mouth like a boy would do. Ricky roared with delight and pulled me into a hug.

“That,” he said, with his arms around me, “was fucking awesome.”

* * *

It turned out drinking beer left my stomach feeling swollen and carbonated like I’d been drinking soda, but with one special side effect.

“So this is what being drunk feels like,” I laughed, spraying the hose over the beer stains on the deck.

“You’re not drunk,” Ricky said, chowing down on his sandwich. “You’re maybe tipsy.”

“Either way, it feels good. I’m starting to understand why that girl wants to take her underwear off all the time.”

“Please don’t do that.”

I snorted. “I’ll spare you.”

Ricky had been right that the beer was gross-tasting, but I was enjoying the effect nonetheless. I felt like I could laugh more easily, like I wasn’t so trapped in my head.

“You missed a spot,” Ricky said, pointing toward the corner of the deck.

I turned the hose on him, spraying his legs and bare feet, laughing when he dropped his sandwich in shock.

“I’m eating this anyway,” he said, picking up the soggy sandwich and stuffing it in his mouth. “Now, c’mere, we’d better spray those beer stains off your shirt.”

He wrangled the hose from me and sprayed straight at my torso, drenching my work shirt. I screamed and stole the hose back from him, drenching his T-shirt and athletic shorts.

We dashed around the deck, chasing each other, until we were both soaked through to our skin.

“Shit,” I said, pulling off my Vans and stretching my bare feet into the sun. “What now? Do we have more to clean?”

“Fuck cleaning,” Ricky said. “It’s time for a drive.”

* * *

Ricky lent me a size XXL T-shirt to wear over my damp shorts. We spread pool towels over the seats of his truck and climbed inside in our bare feet. The interior smelled like boy, like sweaty football pads mixed with cologne, and there were hints of Ricky throughout: a brush in the cup holder, a strip of photo-booth pictures sticking out from the side compartment, a graduation tassel hanging from the rearview mirror.

We drove to Sonic, where Ricky ordered us popcorn chicken, Tater Tots, and Snickers Blasts. We sat with the windows down, gorging ourselves on the hot food and fending off brain freezes from the ice cream. Ricky played Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” singing unabashedly along, bragging about how he’d gotten the other football guys interested in her music. Then he kept driving, going nowhere in particular, making turns whenever he seemed to feel like it.

After a while, we ended up along the river. Ricky parked with his truck facing the water, and we kicked our feet up on the dash, slurping the last of the ice cream from the bottoms of our cups.

“So what do you and Maritza and JaKory do when you hang out?” Ricky asked. “Is it anything like this?”

I told him. I talked about our movies, and swimming, and our annual Halloween sleepovers, and how Maritza couldn’t make it through a Harry Potter movie without losing her shit laughing at the centaurs, and how JaKory once wrote a poem for every person in my family. I kept checking his expression the whole