what I tell myself, Harp, whenever I get nervous about doing something?”
“You never get nervous about doing anything.”
“But I do!” His eyes were glassy, and he was wobbly on his feet as he hopped onto my bed and began lip-syncing to the song.
“Cal, be serious for a sec.” I was suddenly fascinated with the idea that Cal could feel insecure. “What do you get nervous about?”
“Ack.” He rubbed his face with his palm like he was trying to rub off the high.
“Cal,” I huffed, turning off the stereo with an irritated thud.
“Bro. Chill.” He sat down and looked at me. “I’ll tell you, even with this dumb Game Night, I worry that I’ll sound stupid or lose every round to the biggest douchebags in our class.”
“Really?” I said. “You really think like that?”
“Sometimes. Yeah.” He laughed like a stoner. “But you know what I tell myself when I do?”
“What?”
“I tell myself that everybody thinks like that. And you know what else? Deep down, nobody gives a rat’s ass what other people are doing, they’re too concerned with themselves. You can’t let that kind of shit stop you from doing your own shit. This is supposed to be fun. Games are fun. And everything in life is like that. Not all fun and games; I mean shit is important, obviously. Doing shit is important. Dreams are important.”
“Cal.”
“My point is—” He pointed his finger so close to my nose it made my eyes cross. “It’s impossible to become less of yourself by doing something you really wanna do. You can only become less by not doing it. And becoming less means you shrivel up and die inside. That’s why you have to do shit. Especially shit that scares the crap out of you. You know what I mean? You can only become more from that. More smart, more strong, more brave, more whatever. Even if you fail. That’s the goal. To be more.”
It was impressive how articulate he could be even when he was stoned out of his mind.
“More or less?” he asked in a prog metal voice.
I laughed. “You’re so washed, dude.”
“More or less, Harp?”
“More,” I said. “For sure. More.”
“Way more.”
“Way.”
That’s what I was thinking about when I finally got up the nerve to kiss October. Cal and his concept of more.
It happened at work, at the beginning of what was supposed to be a long night shoot.
October and I had gone on one more dinner date that week, though it was to Super Duper for burgers and shakes, which we got to go and ate on the swings in Old Mill Park because October was in one of her moods where she didn’t feel like being around people. We’d fallen into the habit of sending flirty texts back and forth before bed, but I hadn’t touched her yet. I wanted to. And I could feel a tacit, palpable desire buzzing between us like a delay pedal on an endless feedback loop whenever I got within a two-foot radius of her. But she’d put the ball in my court, and that meant she had to wait for me to get my head out of my ass.
On Wednesday, October announced that Thursday’s selfie would consist of me filming her entire night’s sleep. She planned on condensing that into a four-minute video, on top of which she would overlay carefully selected words and phrases about time and death.
“And could you make the set look like a hospital room?”
She wanted it simple: just a bed, some medical equipment on the side, which I rented, and a working clock on the wall. “The biggest clock you can find so the numbers are visible above the bed.”
She gave me the next day off to rest so that I wasn’t too tired to man the camera for six hours that night, and she filmed and uploaded a selfie on her own that afternoon.
We reconvened late Thursday evening. October showed up in a hospital gown with a pair of white silk pajama pants underneath. Her hair was wet from a shower.
“Are you really going to be able to fall asleep with a camera running and a strange man staring at you?”
“I can fall asleep any place and under any circumstance.” She sat up against the headboard and pulled the covers up to her chest like she was cold. “Last year, Chris and I took my parents to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden. We had seats in the first row, and about two hours in I fell