She explains how it is, though. Her sister, Ambith, had this humongous blowup with their mother about moving off to college and now they hardly talk. Ambith got a scholarship but she still has to work a full-time job to get by. So, like, about every other day their mother gives Aimee the spiel about how the family will collapse if she quits the paper route.
And then there’s Krystal Krittenbrink who’s planning on going to OU, which is only about twenty minutes away, so she’s counting on having Aimee around to keep being her best—and probably only—friend. It’s ridiculous.
I’m like, “Wow, these people have really done a job on you.”
“Why’s that?”
“Look, they’ve got you thinking you’re like Atlas, you know, carrying the whole world on your shoulders. You’re not. You’re just you. You have your own problems to worry about. Here’s what you need to do. First, take another swig of whisky, nothing big, just a little one.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
“Okay.” She takes the flask and tilts it up. “Whoa, that one really burned.”
“All right now, I want you to repeat after me: Get off my goddamn back, Krystal f**king Krittenbrink.”
“What?”
“Just say it.”
She gives it a try, only way too soft and without the f**king and goddamn, but I’m not about to let her get away with that.
“No,” I tell her. “You’ve got to say it like you mean it, and you have to say f**king and goddamn. Curse words are absolutely one hundred percent necessary for something like this.”
“Maybe I better take another drink.”
I pass her the flask, she hits a good one, and then tries again. This time she really puts some heart into it, except you can tell her curse words need some work. So I tell her to go again, only louder, and I demonstrate by yelling across the lake, “Get off my goddamn back, Krystal f**king Krittenbrink!”
And then she goes for it, and I tell her, “Louder,” and she really belts it out. I know it has to feel good because she lets go with another one without any prodding at all, and this one flies out of her like a big, jagged hunk of igneous rock and goes flaming across the lake.
Next, I get her to let loose on her mother and then Randy, her mother’s lazy, good-for-nothing, Dr Pepper–swilling boyfriend. It’s great. We’re both belting them out, one after the next.
“Get off my goddamn back, Krystal f**king Krittenbrink!”
“Get off my goddamn back, motherfucking Randy!”
“Get off my goddamn motherfucking, sonofabitching back, Mom!”
You can practically see all the dank creepy-crawlies that have been weighing down her stomach go spewing out in the wake of every volcanic shriek. Louder and louder we scream until, finally, we’re laughing so hard we can barely get a word out. I’ve never seen her laugh like this before. It’s a sight to behold, a wonder, like the Eiffel Tower or the World’s Largest Prairie Dog.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“No,” she says. “It feels great!”
“And now we just have one more to do. One more person to shout down.”
“Who?”
“The guy that broke your heart.”
“What guy?”
“Now, you’re not going to tell me no one’s ever broken your heart, are you?”
She stares across the water and fiddles with her fingers.
“Come on,” I say. “You can’t get to be seventeen without at least one rotten, brain-curdling relationship.”
It takes a while before she says anything. “The truth is I’ve never been in a relationship.”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be, like, some huge, heavy thing. I just mean some dude that you kinda went out with some.”
She looks down at her hands. “Guys don’t think of me like that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Guys don’t look at me like a girlfriend, you know? They don’t think I’m pretty and all that kind of thing.”
This is brutal. I mean, sure, she’s no super-hot spank machine, but she’s no gargoyle either.
“You’re crazy,” I tell her. “Didn’t you notice Cody Dennis and Jason Doyle were both hitting on you a while ago?”
“No, they weren’t.”
“Yes. They were. You’re a sweetheart. I mean, look at your soft little eyebrows, look at your cute, pouty mouth. You’re sexy.”
“Oh, sure.” The girl can absolutely not look me in the eye. “You’re just saying that because you’re a nice guy.”
“Me, a nice guy? Are you kidding? I’m not a nice guy. I’m completely serious. I mean, if I wasn’t serious would I do this?”
I tilt up her chin and lay a big fat kiss right on her. And I don’t mean some polite, brotherly, nice-guy kiss either. I’m talking a long, deep, molar-swabbing French kiss with all the toppings.
“Whew,” she says when I pull back.
“You’re damn right, whew.” Just to make sure she gets the point, I go back for another one. What else am I going to do, let the girl sit there on a railing in the moonlight thinking she’s damned to go dudeless for the rest of her life?
Chapter 33
Hangovers are tricky. They’re kind of like practical jokers. You never know quite how they’re going to hit you. I used to enjoy them. They didn’t give me a headache or a sick stomach or anything like that. Instead, I’d feel cleansed. Redeemed. If it was a really serious party the night before, I’d get this survivor-like sensation, like Robinson Crusoe after a shipwreck, washed up on the shore of a new day, ready for the next adventure.