Chapter 99: Both Legs at a Time

Saturday, May 29, 1982

As with yesterday, we slept late. Like ... eleven. An extremely rare indulgence, but then we hadn’t gotten to bed until well after 2am. Angie woke me, trying to get out of bed.

“Sorry not sorry! Gotta pee!”

“Go go.”

She giggled. “Going before I go!”

I climbed out of bed and got dressed, wishing for the bathroom myself. I could’ve used Mom and Dad’s, but I wasn’t that desperate. Angie came out, peeked into my room, whispered “damn, too late!” and then headed into her room.

I hit the bathroom. Once done there, I found Mom in the kitchen.

“Hi, honey! How was your party?”

“It was great, Mom. We did a bunch of singing and played some games and had a ridiculous mountain of snacks.”

“I’m glad! When did you get home?”

I figured she knew, but I wasn’t trying to shade the truth. “Around 2am, more or less.”

She smiled. “Some of those tournaments went about that late. Any plans?”

“I’ll be out with a friend later in the day. I think Angie’s got something, too. Then, tomorrow, another friend, and Monday the study group party and then dinner with Jasmine.”

She laughed. “So busy! You know, two years ago, I fretted that you and Angie wouldn’t have many friends and would just mope around the house. It’s such a difference!”

Angie bustled in, wearing a green blouse and black skirt. “What’s such a difference?”

“Mom was just saying that two years ago she thought we’d both be moping around the house, friendless.”

“I didn’t go that far...”

“I know, Mom! I was exaggerating, if not that much.”

“Well...” she said. “Not that much, I agree.”

Angie giggled. “You were right to worry. Two years ago, I barely had any friends here and Steve didn’t have many that would be at Memorial. It’s a huge difference!”

“I worried once you started having friends, too. You know that. But, I really like your friends, so I don’t worry so much anymore. Some! But, mothers worry!”

“We don’t want you to worry too much, Mom,” Angie said.

“Oh, I know, honey. And I don’t. Even so, I’ll always worry just a little.”

“That’s fine by us,” I said. “We know it’s just because you love us.”

“We do!” Angie agreed.

I spent the afternoon doing mostly nothing. My biggest thing was planning a conversation with Dr. Ott tomorrow. I wanted to see if my idea would fly. If it did, it’d blunt the biggest thing ‘they’ were throwing at us, and it’d also make Mom and Dad happy. Dr. Ott, too, and he wasn’t a bad person to have on my side. Not at all.

Of course, it could backfire and bite me in the ass, but what’s life without taking a few risks? Boring!

Speaking of taking risks, here it was, 5pm, at Jessica’s house. No idea what she wanted to do for dinner. Some ideas of what she might want to do after, ideas that had me both excited and nervous.

Oddly or not, it was much easier to make myself nervous over Jessica now that I knew her well than it’d been when I didn’t know her much at all. Then, she’d been so clearly out of my league, what was there to be nervous about? Now that I was, apparently, in her league by her standards, there were things I could screw up.

I was also pretty sure we weren’t done with secrets, which implied the next ones were bigger. Considering where we already were, that was a bit daunting. She’d already given me more than enough to pull her down off her pedestal. Admittedly, it’d be at the cost of my own social standing, my friends, and my self-respect, but I could. It said a lot about her level of trust — and her need to open up to someone — that she was this candid with me. What more was there?

As I approached the door, it opened and Jessica came out. She was wearing a green top and a black skirt, with low heels that matched the top. I’d gone with a dark blue shirt and khakis. She smiled, calling back over her shoulder, “Bye, Mom! Back later!”

“Have fun, honey!” floated out the door as she closed it.

She hopped into my arms and I hugged her. A warm hug, not involving her ass, though I was sorely tempted. Public was, after all, public, and the public perception was that we were ‘dating,’ not dating.

I offered my arm, and she took it. “Where to, Ma’am?”

She giggled. “So. Dimly-lit steakhouse is out for both of us. No soup this time, and no Dim Sum. We’ve done Mexican; we’ve done brightly-lit steakhouse. And Thai. We have, however, missed one absolute staple of high school dating.”

I took an educated guess while helping her into the car. “Pizza?”

She giggled again. “Yes! And I know you like the place at the mall. You also can guess it’ll put us on the gossip radar. I think that’s good, but it’s your choice; we could do something else, or pizza somewhere else.”

I climbed in and started the car. “Works for me. I do like their pizza, as well as the salad bar, and while I don’t have the grasp on gossip that you do, I’m happy to help play the game. So, what do you like on pizza?”

“Most anything, as long as there are some veggies and it’s not all meat. It’s horrible for me no matter what — I mean, it’s horrible for most anyone, nutritionally speaking — but I’ll eat a piece or maybe two, that I’ll just burn right off, and a bunch of salad. And, switching subjects ... you play it well, for an amateur. And a boy. Both of those are significant handicaps. You could be good at it.”

I shrugged. “I’ve gotten a lot more experience than I ever expected to.”

“Thanks to me, I know.” She sighed. “I never meant to drag you into this.”

I reached over and took her hand, which brought a smile, then squeezed gently. “You didn’t. I did. I could’ve let my turn-down stand. No one would’ve thought anything of it. You’d have been fine and I’d have been fine. We’d just both have missed out on a pretty cool friendship.”

“And some more,” she said, winking, giggling.

“That too, but you know me pretty well by now, and...”

“ ... and the ‘some more’ is a bonus, but the friendship is a big deal to you. I know. I’d say it’s a big difference for me, but ... hmm.” She hesitated.

“Hmm?”

“I was going to say only a big difference with guys, but most of the girls I’m ‘friends’ with ... well, I only mostly trust them. Girls can abruptly get catty. With guys, it’s been more about what they can get from me. Then, when it’s not as much as they wanted, they’ll move on. Not unpleasantly, for the most part, but it’s still clear they wanted me for what they could get from me.”

“Though, they pretty much got what they could get from you. They just hoped they could get more.”

She grinned. “Okay. Point, Steve. They did. It’s hard to feel too much sympathy for a bunch of guys who’ve wound up going out long-term with the other cheerleaders.”

“The cheerleaders, on the other hand...”

She giggled. “Don’t go there! Some of them, maybe, but a lot are perfectly happy with a hunk who’ll wine and dine them and treat them like a princess and take them to dances. And most of them like the fucking side of things, too.” She grinned.

“Win-win.”

“Plus, it’s Memorial. Most of the airheads would be top ten percent at many schools.” She caught my look. “Most! I’m not going to argue that some of them — my girls, or the guys — are intellectual giants. But most do just fine and will get into good schools for more than just being pretty or hunky.”

I parked us close to the pizza place’s entrance and went around to help her out. When we walked in, I spotted quite a few kids I could place as Memorial students, if not ones I knew. I could tell they placed us, too, as conversations faltered for all the staring. Had we been in the 2000s or later, I would’ve expected a flurry of texting, maybe videoing, to ensue.

We picked a table, and the waitress — a girl our age, who apparently knew Jessica, and maybe me — hustled over. I placed our order — a small with pepperoni, black olives, mushrooms, tomatoes — and a couple glasses of iced tea. We got up and headed for the salad bar, both loading up.

When we sat back down, Jessica leaned in, slightly — though there was no one in earshot — and smiled. “This is the closest I’ve been to a totally normal high school date in a long time. Venue, not company, I mean.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been on plenty that I think of as more ‘normal’, but my view might be skewed. I don’t think of Thai or Dim Sum or Pho or whatever as weird, but I know a lot of kids would. Goodness knows we’ve got kids at Memorial for whom any of those are part of their culture.”

She nodded. “Yeah. We’re a lot more cosmopolitan than many parents realize. It’s going to cause tension. It already has, with that whole School Board thing coming up.”

“I’ve got a plan there. I’ll run it by you; you’d be a good sounding board.”

“Mmm?” She munched a bite of salad, listening.

“We go to a conservative church. I’m not a true believer, obviously, but Mom and Dad are. The thing is, the pastor is very conservative but also very strongly believes that church and state should stay separated and that people who aren’t believers should be free to do what they do. God will judge in the end.”

She nodded.

“So, I’m thinking of talking to Dr. Ott — that’s our pastor — and just explaining the situation and asking him to speak at the meeting. Someone from a quite conservative denomination blasting the whole thing would blunt a lot of the crazier attacks. For me, it’s a win-win-win. Mom and Dad will love it, Dr. Ott will like that I opened up to him, and we blunt the school board. I’ll get some nudging to toe the line, but I was always going to get nudging, and I can deal with that.”

“Interesting plan. I think I like it. I’d have to know your minister better to be sure, but I trust your judgment.”

“It’ll go poorly if I’m reading him wrong. That’s the risk. Though I think, at worst, he’d complain to me and to my parents and stay out of the meeting.”

She sighed. “I wish they’d just leave well enough alone, but I guess not. We’ve gotten criticism because of the ‘skimpy outfits’. Yeah, well, my ‘skimpy outfit’ covers much more than my bathing suit does! But it looks skimpy and that’s enough.”

“I noted that, way, way back when. The pep rally before homecoming, freshman year. You looked one stray breeze, or a leap, away from showing off practically everything, where in fact less skin was showing than on any but the most conservative students.”

She giggled. “Trust you to have been thinking that as a freshman at a pep rally watching the cheerleaders.”

“To be fair, I did watch the dance team, who really do wear a lot less.”

“More than it looks like, but, yes, they do.” She giggled and winked. “Of course I watch them, too. Have to, you know. Professional curiosity.”

“Of course!”

We munched salad and made some more small talk for a while. After a while, the pizza arrived, delivered by our waitress, who winked at Jessica. She winked back.

“Friend of yours?” I asked, after the waitress had left.

“I know her, but not very well. We’ve had a couple of classes together.” She shrugged. “It’s a problem. Everyone knows me, but I don’t know everyone. You’ll get used to it.”

“Not everyone’s going to know me the way they know you.”

“True enough. But, already, many more people know you than vice versa. It’s only going to grow from this point on.”

“It’s still weird to think that way.”

“Think how I felt! I was relatively anonymous in junior high, compared to now. Until 8th grade or so, anyway. No one pays much attention to junior high cheerleaders until the hormones kick in. Except for high school cheerleaders scouting the new talent, anyway.”

I nodded. “Big change, then.”

“It’s ... well, that’s why I’m how I am. I’m always under the microscope, so I need to act like it.”

“Maybe less over the summer?”

“Less, but even at Cheer Camp some of my girls will be there, and so will girls from other district schools. I’d like to say we all support each other, and mostly we do, but ... girls, you know? Jealousy and catfights go with the territory. We just try to minimize it.” She shrugged, then grinned a bit. “What can you do?”

We munched and continued the small talk until we’d both had a couple of pieces of pizza. The waitress boxed up the leftovers, which Jessica insisted I take, and I paid for dinner. We walked out to the car, Jessica on my arm. I’m certain quite a few people took notice and I’m pretty sure we’d be all over the grapevine before too long.

Once in the car, I turned to look at her. “Where to?”

“Mini-golf? That was fun, and of course it’ll also rile up the grapevine.”

“Love to!”

We had a great time playing. Jessica won by two strokes, mostly because I completely misjudged one bump and lost a ball off the course on the fifth hole. I might have been paying too much attention to her ass and not enough to the ball. Maybe. That wiggle might’ve been accidental, after all. Maybe.

By the time we’d wrapped up, it was getting dark out. My guess was, that was part of the plan. That is, if Jessica’s thoughts tonight were similar to those at our last date. I knew as well as anyone that you can’t hold anyone to that sort of thought.