Page 2 of Baby, It's You
“His iMessage was logged into my iPad and all these texts from Tiffani came through.”
“What an imbecile,” I say over my music, and shake my head in disgust from behind the curtain. I open my cherry blossom scented shampoo and start to lather my hair up in suds.
I have been down this road with her so many times. I peek my head out once more and say, “Kitchen, chardonnay, Damon Salvatore. I’ll be out in five.”
She nods from her puddle of sadness on the floor and gets up to begin the routine we have done time and again since high school. Let's pretend the chardonnay was apple juice when we were sixteen; we were good girls.
Our tradition started after Ivy’s first heartbreak with Chad Miller junior year. She found him making out with Mackenzie McCray after his track meet by the bleachers. He smelled like a walking Axe body spray ad and had acne everywhere, but that didn’t matter to Ivy. All she saw was the “love of her life” sucking lips with another girl and it was over. She wailed next to me the whole ride home and I promised her I would sleep over at her house.
That night we raided her mother’s wine cellar. Yes, her nomad parents were wealthy enough to have a wine cellar. Thanks to Ivy’s mom having an inheritance, we were introduced to our friend chardonnay. Half a bottle of wine deep, we decided to watch a show with our favorite hypothetical boyfriends, Damon and Stefan Salvatore, because everything was easier in fiction. This was where our heartbreak routine began. When a boy let Ivy down, we just watched hot men on TV and our troubles floated away, momentarily.
I towel off my hair when I’m done and throw on a green oversized T-shirt. Then I walk out to my grandma-style worn paisley couch from Goodwill and plop down next to Ivy. She tosses me a blanket and hands me the open bottle of wine. Then she clicks play on a rerun that we have watched a million times over the years.
There’s no reason to try and convince her to block him or leave him. She knows what I think of Dennis, and I know she won’t walk away from the relationship. We have learned this balance from years of friendship: take each other as we are. I want more for her, but she has to want more for herself to make a change.
After the episode finishes, I hear her start to sniffle next to me and know the tears are coming. I pause the intro to the next episode and open my arms to her. She lays with me on the couch, and I let her sob, knowing she just needs to let it out. Afterfifteen minutes, she finally stops, and only hiccups from crying so hard are left.
Ivy sits up and gives me a small smile so I take that as my opening to call him every name in the book I can think of. She laughs, forming a giant snot bubble by accident, which makes us both crack up hysterically. Ivy then reaches over and clicks the play button on the remote and we resume watching like nothing ever happened.
Eventually, we drift off to sleep, intertwined and dreaming of fictional men.
Chapter 2
Hunter
“Ah, man! I thought I had it that time!” Wes shouts, after attempting his eightieth (maybe not, but probably) try at a 360 hardflip.
“Let’s take a break, dude,” I say, putting down my camera as I watch him throw his board in frustration into the nearby bushes.
Chuckling because I know that feeling all too well—wanting to get the trick so badly but the more you think about it, the more you psych yourself out—I turn away to give him a moment to cool down. Suddenly, I feel my pocket buzz and look down to see a call coming in. The name on the screen is “Dennis.” Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I answer.
“Hello, Dennis,” I say.
“Cuz! How’s it going?” he says, but before I can even respond he continues, “Hey, man, I need to ask you for a little favor. My girl kicked me out again over something stupid. Can I crash at your place?”
Rolling my eyes, I think about the last time Dennis stayed with me when he graduated college, “couldn’t find a job” (meaning he didn’t want to), proceeded to eat all my food for months, and destroyed my place. I eventually kicked him outafter catching him trying to kiss the girl I was seeing at the time, Cecily.
“Have you exhausted all of your other options, which is why you’re coming to me after years of no communication?” I ask.
He lets out a half laugh in response. “Listen, man, if you’re still mad at me for eating all your Cheetos and ramen back in the day, I can reimburse you now.”
I look over my shoulder to see Wes digging through the bushes for his board and turn back to my call. “What? No. I don’t care about that. If anything, I would be mad about the situation with Cecily.”
“Who’s Cecily?” he asks. Unbelievable. Then he continues, “Listen, bro, you’re my favorite cousin. I always talk about how great you are to everyone. If you could just do me a solid and let me sleep on your couch for a few days until my girl calms down, that would be great.”
I sigh and look off into the distance, deciding whether I want to be the good guy or the bad one. We used to have great times together as kids and Dennis stayed with us often growing up because his dad, my uncle, was in and out of his life frequently.
Feeling sympathetic because of his upbringing, I reluctantly comply. “Okay, yes. You can stay with me.Justfor a few days, I mean it. I will be traveling for work starting Friday and I don’t want anyone staying at my place while I’m gone.”
“You got it, thanks, man. I owe you one. Text me your address,” he says and then abruptly hangs up.
That’s typically how our conversations go in our adult lives: he contacts me when he needs something and then disappears when he doesn’t.
I text him my address, already feeling the dread of an unwanted house guest. Then I turn back to my equipment and put my phone in my back pocket. Wes has successfully retrieved his board from the nearby bushes and walks back towards me.
“Hey, dude, I think I’m gonna call it for today, my knee is starting to bug me. I don’t want to end up having to wear the brace again,” he says.
Wes has always been a skateboarding prodigy and started attracting attention at an early age when I began filming him doing tricks at an empty Big Lots parking lot behind our houses. I always messed around skating, too, but I mainly enjoyed filming my friends on my crappy phone as a fourteen-year-old. Then I would edit the choppy clips on iMovie and upload them to YouTube. As Wes’s talent grew, so did my passion for filming, and one day some of the clips I uploaded of him went viral. This attracted attention from the skate community and that's where my career began.
