the initial shock of weed-beer flavor and those floppy, soft lips and all that saliva, that kiss of his feels not terrible (beer helps) so I try to not think about how it tastes. I get over it quick when he starts to ask me if he can kiss my flower—in Spanish!—which makes me feel all worldly and reminds me of that class trip to Barcelona my junior year of high school, even though he says he’s Dominican. Great, I think. Head is on. I really, truly hope that Travis is outside right now with his ear to a pint glass on the door trying to listen in on this hot Rutgers-soccer-player action I’m about to get.
Then it turns out he’s not asking if he can kiss my flower, he’s asking me to suck his dick. So much for dropping Spanish after my freshman year. “En la boca?” he keeps saying and I don’t know why because the guy speaks perfect English, he grew up in Perth Amboy for Chrissakes. But I’m going to do it, I decide. En la boca. He keeps kissing me, all wet and sloppy, but I tell myself I like it. I tell myself any minute this will start to feel good. I pull him over to his bed and his face lights up with a smile and he has these beautiful, straight teeth. I pause to appreciate again that Eli is actually really hot and a little Scope would solve a lot of my problems right here, but I’m not sure how to suggest it without humiliating him so I don’t. He sits on the bed next to me and takes my hands in his and kisses me again. Then I realize my problem here is not a lack of Scope.
It’s a lack of Travis.
So instead of focusing on Eli and putting it en la boca, I start thinking about Travis. I’m wondering if he’s left the party with Millie yet, and realizing how I’m going to feel when that happens. Like complete shit, that’s how.
“Hey, sexy,” Eli whispers as he pulls his face away. “What’s wrong? Do you feel okay?”
I feel like a prick, is how I feel. Not sure how I decide this is a good idea, probably booze, but I decide to tell Eli the truth. I am drunk-weeping now, telling him that I’m dealing with a complicated situation with a guy and he’s here and I just can’t stop thinking about him and I don’t know what to do about it. Eli’s face drops and gets angry and I’m worried I may find myself in another kind of situation. A bad one. He looks away for a minute, muttering. Then he gets up off the bed, grabs the bowl off his dresser, lights it, and inhales. He holds it, then blows a cloud of pot smoke into the air as he points at me with the bowl.
“He’s a fuckin’ fool if he lets you get away,” he says.
“It’s not quite like that,” I say. “The problem is that he’s in my band.”
“So?” he asks, like I just spoke German. Which he probably speaks, but I don’t.
“So, he’s in my band,” I say again. “It’d be like having sex with your center defenseman.”
He looks at me like I’m insane.
“So?” he says again, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re into him?”
“I can’t be,” I keep trying to explain. “That’s the problem.”
“He’s not into you?”
“I don’t think you understand,” I say, because he obviously doesn’t.
“Let’s go dance some more or drink until you forget him, then,” he says, and this sounds like a good plan to me, so we go back out of Eli’s room into the hall and holy shit, there’s Travis, in the hallway talking to Sonia and looking super aggravated.
“There you are,” Sonia says. “We were looking all over for you.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I was with Eli making the sexy times.”
“You were not,” Travis says, glaring at Eli. Then he looks at me and wow, does he look unhappy, obviously not catching on to the fact that I’m joking. “Were you?”
“Sure she was,” Eli says, stepping right up to him. “Why? You got a problem with that?”
I guess he does, because before I can intervene and explain that I’m just being an ass and nothing really happened, Travis has Taekwondo’d Eli’s ass, flipped him onto his back right there in the hallway. Now, Eli is a full head taller than Travis and we’re in the soccer house with all the other Rutgers