"So...just wanted to throw this out there, but, like, I totally kissed your boyfriend," Molly said as they pulled onto the highway out of Durkillesburg.
"Whoa, really?!" Mae cried, grinning broadly and leaning forward. She and Bea had taken the backseat, while Molly had sat up front. She'd felt a little weird about it, but Mae all but insisted.
"Yep. I like to mess with my roommates and throw them off my trail," Molly replied, grinning broadly.
"How was it?" Bea asked. "Or was that not your first time?"
"No, it was, actually. It was...not as bad as I thought it'd be."
"Whew, that's a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one," Bea said. "I'm surprised you aren't more grumpy."
"I got to kiss Molly and squeeze her tits, I'm fine. Plus, we already talked about it after," Trent replied.
"Yeah, I thought it was gonna be awful. I mean, I'm used to making out with girls."
"...yeah, I can see that," Mae said. "I love making out with you, babe, but it is different. And it'd be pretty jarring, I think. I don't even know why it's different, it just is. I mean I like both of them a lot, but…" she shrugged.
"I guess I can see that," Bea said. "Although it seems a little odd that the first time you kiss a guy in your entire life is basically on a whim."
"Well...I guess Trent just puts me at ease. He's the first guy I've really felt like I could kiss him and he wouldn't think I was leading him on or get really pissed at me."
"Okay yeah, that actually makes a shitload of sense," Bea said. "I know way too many dudes who would be all 'I know you said you were just playing but you secretly want my dick don't you?' after kissing them."
"Hope springs eternal when you're deprived of human contact," Trent said.
"Where did that come from?" Mae asked.
"I guess I just wanted to remind everyone in this car that, while a lot of this shitty behavior ranges from cringe to inexcusable, a lot of it doesn't come from nowhere. I'm not even disagreeing with you, but from my perspective...guys are told we can't express any kind of emotion. Except anger. Or getting excited about sex. But only a certain type of excited. If you get the wrong type of excited, it's humiliating and desperate. And we're also not allowed to touch each other. No hugging, no sitting too close together, basically no human contact beyond like shaking hands or hitting each other. And we aren't allowed to get any kind of touchy-feely with women unless we're dating or hooking up. We can only ever communicate meaningfully or intimately with our girlfriends. And even that is severely discouraged for a number of reasons.
"It's why you might come across story after story after story of girls saying 'I don't know how the fuck my boyfriend hangs out with his friends for eight hours and doesn't talk about anything'. Because we don't really know how to communicate with each other, and we try to play it off with things like 'that's just how guys are'. Fucking everything is pointlessly gendered. Can't talk on the phone too much, that's gabbing and gossiping like a girl. Can't hang out too much with your best friend because then suddenly everyone's like 'are you gay?'."
He shook his head, fell silent. "Sorry," he said after a moment. "I sort of kamikazed the mood there."
"Hey, we've done it often enough," Bea said.
"Yeah, I fucking nuke the mood all the fucking time. More than once I've just started crying. I mean shit, I started crying out of nowhere in the middle of us hanging out with Ann for the first time. And you two just handled it," Mae agreed.
"For real, though, you have a point," Molly said. He glanced at her. "I know I seem pretty hardcore about how I feel about guys, and a lot of guys have mostly earned it, but...I get where you're coming from. It's easy to sit here and say 'guys show just learn to be more open' when being open and emotional is par for the course for me and other ladies. And also when I'm less than willing to be involved with that openly emotional process...but mainly because too many guys try to turn it sexual. I'd actually be super open to just hanging out and talking with more guys if they just understood that sex was off the table. And I mean shit, it might not even be."
"Wait, seriously?" Bea asked.
"Yeah. I mean I've never met a guy that made me want to fuck, but like I said before, I feel about ninety five percent lesbian. Meaning that, theoretically, there must exist some guys out there who I might be willing to at least try sex. But they're probably, like, one in half a billion or something. I don't know, it's not a thought I really entertain."
"We're both in shitty positions," Trent said. "And they're shitty in different ways. Honestly, everything would be a lot more goddamned chill if we didn't put 'getting a girlfriend' up on such a fucking pedestal for dudes. Everything we do is just in service to that."
"Everything?" Molly asked.
"Yeah, basically. Getting in shape? To attract women. Better job? To attract women. Picking up a hobby or learning a new skill? To attract women. Buying things? To attract women. Pretty much everything else is just secondary to that, just facilitating that. Some guys will say they do it for themselves, and hey, it's gotta be true for a handful of them, but society has pretty much drilled into us all that the only measurement of worth that matters is how much pussy you're getting."
"So why don't you feel, like, super worthy?" Mae asked. "Cause, dude, most guys don't have three successful relationships with girls who also hook you up with other girls sometimes."
"I've got a lot of damage," Trent replied.
"Holy crap," Molly muttered.
"What?" he asked.
"You honestly had me fooled. Like...you're telling me that you are so fucking damaged that even when you get not just everything you want, but everything you want to a ridiculous degree, it still doesn't make you feel good?"
"I...not exactly. I mean, I feel a hell of a lot better than I did before I met Mae, Bea, and Ann. They are the fucking lights of my life. On the whole, I'm a lot happier. But it's more like...damage doesn't just go away. It isn't like a cut. Well, it isn't like a small cut. If you do the right things for a small cut, put on some Neosporin, put on a band-aid, keep it clean, it'll heal so well you never even knew it was there. But a bad one? That'll leave a scar, and it takes a lot longer to heal. Emotional and psychological damage, I'm learning, runs deep like those bad cuts. And leaves scars."
"Yeah," Bea muttered.
"Mmm-hmm," Mae said.
"I can see that," Molly murmured.
"This is the part where you find out you're hanging out with a bunch of damaged, emotionally scarred people," Mae said after a moment of silence passed.
"I mean, at this point, who isn't?" Molly replied.
Mae laughed. "Fair point, I guess it's just how you deal with it." She looked back to Trent. "Babe, do you want to keep going with this or can I re-rail the conversation?"
He chuckled. "Re-rail?"
"Yeah, opposite of derail."
"Yes, re-rail with gusto," he replied.
"Okay! Did you put your tongue in my boyfriend's mouth?" she asked.
"No, but I wanted to," Molly admitted. "He put his hands down the back of my pants."
"Can you blame me?" he asked.
"No one alive would blame you. Molly has got such a fucking ass!" Mae replied.
"I dunno, I've definitely put on some weight since you last saw me," she murmured, looking down at herself.
"And it definitely fucking benefited you," Mae replied.
"Yeah. Fucking hell your thighs are amazing," Trent said.
"Well, thank you," she said, then let out an awkward giggle. "Goddamn. I haven't felt this awkward in, like, years. I don't know what it is about y'all that brings that out in me. Glad my fur is hiding all my blushing."
"Well, we could talk about something else," Mae said.
"Yeah...actually, I was gonna ask if now was a good time to cash in on that 'honesty' we discussed about, you know...you and your life?" Bea asked.
"Oh. Right. Yeah. That's fair." Molly sighed heavily. "It's disappointing."
"Not agreeing or disagreeing but we're used to that. All our lives have been very disappointing up until relatively recently," Mae said.
"Fair enough, I guess. Well, uh. Hmm. Me. Shit. I'm not used to this. Uh. I guess I sorta just coasted through school. I remember elementary school and middle school being pretty, just, whatever. Fun, I guess. I thought dinosaurs were cool and that was sort of like, my thing, for a really long time."
"Dinosaurs are the shit!" Mae cried.
Molly laughed. "Yeah. I still think they are. But then everything changed somewhere in middle school. I mean basically when I hit puberty. All of a sudden I was popular. It was...I don't like to talk about it. It was a weird time. I mean I knew pretty fast that girls hit my buttons, like, way more than boys ever did. I guess another way you could see it is it took me a lot longer to get past my 'boys are gross' phase. But I pretty much just relied on other people for everything. I didn't have a job or a license all through high school. People just gave me stuff, bought me stuff, gave me rides. Honestly, I didn't really connect the dots until the near the end, that everything was being done just because I was-well, that I look like I do."
"It's okay, you can say it, 'because I was a supermodel'," Bea said.
Molly laughed awkward. "Personally I think stripper or porn star is more accurate. But, anyway, my parents sorta like...threw me in the deep end? After I graduated, they were pretty much like 'okay go live your life now bye' and kicked me out."
"Holy shit, seriously?" Bea asked.
"Yeah. It was awful. I was lucky because I was already dating a girl at the time and she was helping me learn to drive, so I just moved in with her, but I was not ready for real life. I got a job as a waitress, but that become fucking intolerable, so then I became a cashier at a Hungry Hippo. Did that for like a year. Quit when the manager tried to fuck me."
"Fuck's sake," Mae growled.
"Yep. Super fucking awful. That was about the time my life fell apart again. My girlfriend was, like, convinced I was cheating on her, even though I wasn't, and wouldn't, and the jealousy and paranoia just...ate her alive and tore everything apart. We had so many arguments. I was so tired. Just all the time, so tired. We broke up and I moved in with some college kids living off-campus. It was kind of, like, unofficial, because you were supposed to be a college student to live in those apartments, but they wanted a couple hundred extra bucks a month and they had some unique situation where, like, one of their roommates had paid his share of the rent for like six months, because his parents were rich, but then, like, he dropped out all of a sudden? I don't know, but I lived there for like four months, working part time at a Snack Falcon...then I finally got caught and management kicked me out. So I found another place, had to get a second job, found one at a library and that was cool."
"Yeah, that sounds like a good job," Trent said.
"It was, but, of course, I tanked it. Started dating this real cute girl a few years older than me and we got serious but then the jealousy thing happened again and fucking detonated the relationship and I just couldn't work there anymore, not with her there. And she had been there longer so I was just...whatever. And basically my life is just more of that for a few years until I landed here with these roommates and my latest job. Barista. From which I just...got fired."
"Jeez, what happened?" Mae asked.
"My boss was a fucking controlling bitch and I know it sounds so fucking cliché and petty and immature, but she was jealous of me, so she always low-key was kind of hating on me and then it really ramped up like two weeks ago when her new boyfriend came to visit her and hit on me. They got in a fight and then she cranked the bitch mode up to eleven on me and I finally snapped and just screamed at her and cussed her out and called her out on fucking everything, not just shit with me but how she treats everyone like shit, and were like packed, so there were like thirty customers in there to see the show. Also she stole tips from us."
"Goddamn," Trent said.
"Yeah. Fucking bullshit. And I don't know what hell job I'm going to work next but that's just my life." She looked back at Mae suddenly. "Still all that into me?"
"I mean yeah, you're still cool. If anything you're cooler now."
She laughed. "What, why? Because I'm a loser?"
"You aren't a loser! I am the loser! You actually, like, get out there and find roommates and date people and work jobs you hate. I don't even know how to drive and I'm twenty one now. I have no job. Not, like, a real one. I spend all day in the basement of my boyfriend's house, paying no rent, playing video games," Mae said.
"Come on, Mae, for real?" Trent asked.
She sighed. "I'm mostly kidding."
"Mae…" Molly turned around in her seat again, looking intently at Mae. "I'd give up my attractiveness if it meant I could have a loving, stable relationship and cool friends."
"Wow...really?" Mae replied.
"Yes. Really. Don't get me wrong, I like being so hot that everyone in the room turns and looks at me when I walk in, but like...it's getting old. I don't know. I just want people who I can trust. People who just...like me. They aren't trying to fuck me."
"Man, I feel kinda bad now…" Mae murmured.
"Admittedly yeah, me too," Trent said.
"It's okay. I didn't mean that about you guys. It's...different. I mean, I was totally going to hook up with you, Mae, when we first met. And honestly I think it's sort of amazing that you went through all this trouble just to find me."
"Some people would say it's horrifying and stalkerish behavior," Trent said.
"I know. And I'd feel that way if I got bad vibes from you. But I don't. Nothing but good vibes. And the thing is, I don't even mind that you were trying to find me to get laid. Because there was more to it than that. You didn't just tell me 'okay GTFO' after we had sex. And you, Trent, didn't just immediately shut off or get mad or whatever after you learned that not only was sex between me and you not on the table, but I was so totally going to hook up with your girlfriend. And you were, like, nice to me. Like really nice. Like, the kind of nice I read about in fucking books or shit. Do you know what he fucking did for me?"
"What?" Bea asked, leaning forward.
"I dumped the whole 'hey pretend we totally fucked and treat me like a hookup' thing in his lap, not only was he cool with it, he made sure to give me, like, a safeword in case I got uncomfortable with it." She giggled suddenly. "He said if he got too 'fresh'. I don't know why that's so funny. I guess it's so nineties. But whatever, it was like super sweet. He was actually worried about me, and didn't just see this as an opportunity to kiss and grope me."
"He's pretty sweet like that," Mae said.
"That's why he's rolling in the pussy," Bea said.
Trent laughed awkwardly. "So fucking weird to hear you say it like that."
"They're right. If I was bisexual I'd be fucking all over your dick, dude," Molly said.
"And that is also super weird to hear you say, but not bad," Trent replied.
"Okay, so, it sounds like you are sad. But that's gonna stop! You are officially on vacation! Just let us take care of everything!" Mae declared.
"You sure about that?" Molly asked.
"Yeah!" She paused. "Okay, like, we're not gonna get you coke or heroin or X or anything."
Molly laughed loudly. "That's cool. I'm just a weed and beer girl, and even then it's not like I get crazy or anything. My days of blackout drunk, puking on the floor are long behind me. I just like to get buzzed, get toasted, and just, like, vibe. Eat a pizza or something."
"We are that, like, a thousand percent," Mae said.
"We really are," Bea agreed.
"Then...cool. For the first time, I don't really know why you all are doing this for me, because Mae already got into my pants, Bea doesn't want into them, and Trent knows he isn't getting in them. But you're willing to drive me six fucking hours and buy me shit and let crash at your place for a week. That's, like, big. And too nice. But fuck it."
"Fuck it! We're having a party for my horror author boyfriend's first big book this week anyway, so let's just fucking party every day until then!" Mae yelled.
"Party!" Bea cried, then laughed.
"Party indeed," Trent said, and drove on.