The Leftover Club (11 page)

He thought about it for a minute and then looked me
straight in the eye. “Happy.”

I chuckled softly. “Funny. Of all the things they told us we could have growing up, the career, the money, the romance, every dream to the moon and back… no one ever thought to put ‘happiness’ on the list, did they?”

It was nine-thirty by the time we left the restaurant. We strolled along the pier and he brought up the reunion again.

“Don’t need it,” I said. “I can hang out with the only people who noticed me in high school outside of a pretentious reunion, thank you.”

“Ah, yes. The old crew.”

“Speaking of which, I got together with Olive Young over the weekend.”

His eyes widened with surprise. “Olive, really? What’s she up to?”

I sent him a playful side-eye glare. “You don’t even know who she is, do you?”

“Of course I do. She was the hippie artist who smelled like patchouli.”

I was stunned. “You remember that?”

“She was going to draw me naked. It was kind of a significant moment in my life.”

“She wasn’t going to draw you naked,” I giggled.

“She would have if you weren’t there,” he teased as he nudged me with his shoulder. “Like I can’t tell when a girl wants me. Give me a little credit. I think she wanted you more, though,” he added.

My eyes shot to his. “What do you mean?”

“Lesbian, right?” he asked, point-blank.

“How did you know?”

“She worshipped the ground you walked on, Roni. She never came over just to see me. So the question remains… did Olive take you for a moonlit stroll on the other side of the fence?”

He was teasing but I was mortified.
Like I ever would have shared that with him. My flustering and floundering, however, was confession enough.

“Oh my God, you did.”

I sped up, pointing myself toward the parking lot so he could drive me home. “We are not having this conversation, Dylan.”

“Hey,” he said as he pulled my arm back to stop me in my tracks. “No judgment. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a friend with a few extra benefits.” His eyes landed on my mouth. “I’ve had several successful relationships like that.”

“Is that so?” I quipped.

He pulled me towards him with one hand. “You should know.”

I slipped from his hand and stepped back. “Why should I? We just met, remember?”

My phone alerted me to a text message. It was from Meghan, who apparently had gotten home early. “
Where are you
?”

“That’s the warden,” I said as I started for the car. “I should go.”

He didn’t say anything as he followed behind.

August 7, 1987

“Have I said how much I don
’t want to go?”

Bryan
gave me a sideways glance. “You’ve mentioned it.”

We pulled up in front of sprawling two-story house in
the affluent Sunny Hills community in north Fullerton. I stared at the place like it was the Tower of London and I was about to get my head lopped off. “Tell me again why this is the can’t-miss event of the season?”

Bryan
killed the engine and turned to face me in the teeny car. “I told you. Varsity jock Turner Thompson is hosting a party for all the popular seniors.”

“Which we’re not,” I pointed out.

He smiled. “Not yet.” He pulled the key from the ignition and hopped out. I stayed right in my seat, so he bent down to my open window when he reached the passenger side. “And since your pseudo-brother is the quarterback of the football team, we got a pity invitation. This is our open door, Roni. Let’s break the fucker down.”

I heaved a sigh as I swiveled his mirror around to check my reflection for the hundredth time. The acne was long gone, thank God, and my hair had likewise grown out of its greasy state. Thanks to a perm it rose from my head in a flurry of cheerful, unapologetic curls that toppled down around my shoulders. I still wore about twenty extra pounds, but thanks to
Bryan’s insistence that we bike at the beach four times a week that summer, the extra padding had finally settled into an hourglass figure that filled, rather than strained against, my clothing.

It was the extra minutes up top, filli
ng out my shirts to overflowing that had finally earned some interest from the opposite sex.

By 1987 I wore almost nothing but black, which drove my mom crazy. I became an early Goth not because of the music, necessarily, though
Bryan definitely went through his Cure phase. Instead I loved the darkly romantic look of the flowing clothes and the chokers and chained jewelry and accessories. The black poet’s shirt I wore dipped low in the front to accentuate cleavage, while flowing freely around my hips to hide the extra junk in the trunk. I wore a lace choker and clunky rings on several fingers, topping off the look with black leather sandals.

Bryan
was way more prep. He wore a pastel yellow Polo shirt, khaki pants and navy blue boat shoes. He looked like he had walked right out of a Ralph Lauren ad. He was still thin, though his shoulders and arms had kept their bulk after working another summer with his dad.

We looked opposite in every way, so naturally we drew some curious glances as we finally infiltrated the secret realm of the popular kids.
Aerosmith blared from the massive stereo system along one wall, and barely legal (and barely dressed) kids sucked beer from clear plastic cups as they congregated in smaller, more selective groups.

Since
Bryan had spent his junior year right in the middle of the drama department, he already knew a lot of the people there. They welcomed him like he was one of their own, even though – technically – I was the one who had been invited and had chosen him as my plus-one.

Of course,
Bryan had the enviably knack of assimilating to any crowd. He acted like he belonged there and no one bothered to question him.

It didn’t hurt that, as the creative type, he had quickly become the go-to guy for pot. Even though he never really said, I was sure that
was how he supplemented his income from his part-time job. It wasn’t hard to earn a few extra bucks by supplying kids from all cliques with the magical herb that connected all that would dare to partake.

He dragged me by the hand through the house until we reached the kitchen, where we were fortified with overflowing cups of our own.

When Dylan finally came up behind us, near-empty cups in both hands, he already wore an intoxicated smile. “Hey, guys. Glad you could make it.”

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. Dylan and I were operating in two very different universes and most of the time we barely communicated. Why he insisted on including me in these big social events was beyond me. He’d still i
gnore me the minute we got home, where it counted.

It was as if the buffer of a hundred other kids made it safe to acknowledge me. If we were alone, I just might expect too much.

It was an annoying pattern common among many guys my age, but from Dylan it was particularly infuriating given that I had never done anything, ever, to indicate that I expected anything.

It honestly made me feel like more of a loser.

I was counting the days before I could head off to college, one that he had blissfully opted not to attend.

Bryan
knew how I felt about it since his was the shoulder I regularly cried on, so he sent me a commiserating glance. This was his job, you see. If Bryan was going to insist I come to the party, he knew it was his job to play defense. If Dylan could use all of Hermosa Vista High as a buffer for me, I felt perfectly justified in utilizing my buffer of one.

In reality, I had been using Bryan to buffer Dylan since 1982, and it was usually success.

This particular party, however, it proved an exercise in futility. Once we arrived, Dylan was plastered at our sides. Apparently he had gone stag, having blown through all the sophomores and juniors our past two years at Hermosa Vista. He remained cordial with them all, remarkably, but by senior year, everyone understood that Dylan Fenn wasn’t one to settle down with any one girl. He liked to play the field and rarely retread where he’d already ventured.

Instead he was eagerly waiting the first day of school to survey the new crop of seniors, new faces and nubile new bodies to chase right into adulthood.

I kept thinking it would only take one girl to change his wandering ways, but so far that remarkable girl had not yet surfaced. He would fall hard for a time, but quickly grow bored and restless to move on.

Bryan
shrugged it off. “Happily ever after is a girl thing. Boys have a primal need to hunt and to conquer.”

I figured he knew what he
was talking about since he knew a thing or two about men on the hunt. He was dipping his toe in the gay dating pool ever so carefully, which meant using a fake ID to go clubbing in Los Angeles where no one knew him. He had to be careful because he knew his family would be distraught when they found out, especially his hyper-macho father and brother. Bryan wanted to be solidly on his own before he let the proverbial cat out of the bag.

He’d done such a bang-up job hiding his sexuality that m
ost people thought we were dating, since we had been inseparable since junior high. If I was invited somewhere, or if he was, it was universally accepted we came as a package deal.

His manner and dress were sophisticated and stylish. This didn’t make him gay in Orange County. This simply made him rich.
By senior year, he was gaining traction as possible boyfriend material. He had the right look, the right clothes and the right car. He also had an outgoing attitude that made everyone feel safe and at home. Girls would make their moves, of course. I was simply the convenient beard who gave him an excuse to say no.

The only place he was a single gay male was in West Hollywood. There he had youth and beauty on his side
, to bolster his confidence and help him make connections he couldn’t make in our more conservative home town. He had only recently introduced me to his new friends this past summer, where I met Ethan Cross. He was near ancient to us at 27, with floppy brown hair and hazel eyes. He was tall and slender and beautiful, and ruled the nightclub Eleete with style and finesse. So of course he was the first to take the virginal newbie from Orange County under his wing, to show him what he couldn’t learn playing straight for his folks, his family and his friends.

Ethan
initiated him as a lover, but Bryan soon transitioned to an informal apprentice. It was far more important to Ethan to teach him what it meant to be a proud gay man in the 1980s, which apparently meant sowing one’s oats while still young and beautiful enough to do so. Because Ethan didn’t do relationships any more than Dylan did, it was a concept Bryan had become well versed immediately following their epic one-night-stand. “It was safe,” he assured me. “And it was mind-shattering. Then it was over.”

I couldn’t imagine.

Actually that wasn’t true. I assumed if I ever got my chance to be with Dylan, it’d end pretty much the same way. This was why it was so important to keep him under glass at all cost.

Ethan also
worked in the entertainment industry, and had already introduced Bryan to several important people. This included A-list actors who were so deep in the closet they’d need JoBeth Williams, a psychic and a rope to pull them out.

Ethan had flirted with me and made me feel girly and pretty. It was completely safe because he was completely gay, but that didn’t stop my blushing that someone so beautiful could be so affection
ate to someone like me.

As a result,
Bryan became a lot more affectionate. This helped him maintain the illusion of heterosexuality once we returned to the OC. As I stood cuddled up under the crook in his arm, I could feel the gazes of our onlookers. They must have been asking themselves, “What is SHE doing with HIM?”

Dylan pulled us outside around the
pool and hot tub, past the koi pond and up the stairs above the garage, toward the well-lit guest quarters. Once there, I understood immediately why Dylan wanted to cozy up to Bryan.

Ethan had supplied
Bryan with a brick of marijuana from Mexico, and Bryan immediately started rolling joints in colorful, designed papers and selling them at a few bucks a pop. It was good stuff in wrappers that stood out, a tip about marketing he had learned from good ol’ Ethan. Within the summer Bry was a legend, and suddenly a very popular guy among our harder partying teens. Within minutes Dylan was taking a long hit on a joint that looked like stripes on a tiger. He handed it to me, so I obliged.

I was desperately in need of another buffer.

Once the other kids got wind of Bryan’s bag of party favors, dozens of kids were filling the small space in the garage apartment. It was a little too much noise, as our brains were nice and fuzzy. Before it could seriously harsh our buzz, Dylan and I headed toward the bedroom in the back. He locked the door so no one would barge in as we smoked the rest of our joint, sitting on the floor in a darkened bedroom, facing each other.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I didn’t want to.”

He nodded.
He filled in the blanks easily. “Bryan’s a good guy.”

“The best,” I answered without hesitation.

“I need some music,” he decided immediately. “You want some music?” He stood and walked toward the stereo, which he set on a channel that played classic rock from the 70s. When he returned, he pulled me up by the arm. We sank backward on the bed, where we lay side by side as we listened to Boston. “That’s the stuff,” he said with a contented grin. He took another hit and handed the joint to me. “I can’t believe this is going to be our last year together,” he said. “After everything.”

I shrugged as I took a hit. My head swam. It felt like a dream as he took my hand in his.

“Truth or Dare?” he asked softly.

“Truth,” I murmured without thinking about it.

“What other firsts do you have left?”

I turned my head slightly to look at him. “What do you mean?”

He turned to face me, propping himself up on his elbow. “I was your first kiss. Your first real kiss, too. What else is left on your list?”

None of my brain cells were firing properly
enough to lie. “All of them.”

“Really?” he asked. “I thought you and
Bryan were pretty tight.”

I opened my mouth and then clamped it shut. I had to protect
Bryan’s secret. “It’s complicated, I guess.”

“You love him?” Dylan wanted to know.

“Yes,” I said honestly and resolutely.

“Oh,”
was all Dylan said. He fell uncharacteristically silent.

“My turn,” I said.
“Truth or Dare?”

“Truth,” he answered.

“Have you ever been in love?”

His eyes were dark and unreadable in the low light. “Can I change it to dare?”

I shook my head slowly. I really wanted to know if Dylan Fenn was capable of loving.

“Once,” he finally answered. “
But she didn’t love me back.”

For some reason, Amber
O’Riley jumped in my head. She had always been the one who got away. Maybe she was the one who got away with his heart. I touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“
Thanks,” he said. He was quick to change the subject. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” I answered easily.

“Are you afraid to pick dare?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Again I got lost in those dark eyes. “I don’t know why.” A beat passed between us.
“Truth or dare?”